The striking difference was that while many of the African and Indian subjects registered predominantly positive experiences with their voices, not one American did. Rather, the U.S. subjects were more likely to report experiences as violent and hateful – and evidence of a sick condition. The Americans experienced voices as bombardment and as symptoms of a brain disease caused by genes or trauma. One participant described the voices as like torturing people, to take their eye out with a fork, or cut someones head and drink their blood, really nasty stuff. Other Americans (five of them) even spoke of their voices as a call to battle or war – the warfare of everyone just yelling. Moreover, the Americans mostly did not report that they knew who spoke to them and they seemed to have less personal relationships with their voices, according to Luhrmann. Among the Indians in Chennai, more than half (11) heard voices of kin or family members commanding them to do tasks. They talk as if elder people advising younger people, one subject said. That contrasts to the Americans, only two of whom heard family members. Also, the Indians heard fewer threatening voices than the Americans – several heard the voices as playful, as manifesting spirits or magic, and even as entertaining. Finally, not as many of them described the voices in terms of a medical or psychiatric problem, as all of the Americans did. In Accra, Ghana, where the culture accepts that disembodied spirits can talk, few subjects described voices in brain disease terms. When people talked about their voices, 10 of them called the experience predominantly positive; 16 of them reported hearing God audibly. Mostly, the voices are good, one participant remarked. news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614.html see science20/writer_on_the_edge/blog/scientists_discover_that_atheists_might_not_exist_and_thats_not_a_joke-139982 too. combine..
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 07:30:00 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015