November 14, 2018 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
On Reputation
The public humiliation of Hester Prynne was
followed by the sentence of wearing an embroidered letter “A” in scarlet on her
dress for the rest of her life.
Can you guess what the letter “A” stood
for?
It was never explicitly mentioned in the
book but in all probabilities it stands for adulteress.
She later was incarcerated in a prison cell
for not revealing the name of the child’s father and lover who quite ironically
is the minister of her church Arthur Dimmesdale.
Perhaps the most poignantly acerbic scene
is the moment when the minister is sent to the prison cell along with a
Reverend to question the ill-fated young beauty about her lover.
So reputation of a target or a person is
something like this scarlet letter “A” that sticks on to him or her and is hard
to get rid off.
Sociologists sometimes consider the
reputation to be even more powerful than a scarlet letter as once its clings on
to the target the concerned person is left powerless to do much about it.
At least in theory Hester Prynne could have
gotten rid of the scarlet letter on her dress but a reputation is almost
impossible to erase from one’s character.
Reputation is thus not only important to be
built but also to be maintained which requires constant hard work that may not
be everybody’s cup of tea.
Yet it is much harder to be diligent and honest
than to seem so since laziness and cheating/dishonesty is inbuilt in our nature
it makes easier for us apes to choose appearance over reality.
From all this discussion so far it is now
not obscure to understand why mythological stories specially the religious
mythological stories that “explain” our origins and assign meanings to our
existence are so crucial to so many of us.
Moreover, for centuries of years in our
past history myths served an explanatory purpose since the “primitive
civilizations” were unable to formulate impersonal natural laws.
To call men of past “primitive” may
actually be fallacious considering how most “modern apes” interpret nature in
spite of great advances made in decoding of the natural laws.
As the American journalist and cultural
critique H. L. Mencken wrote:
“The most common of all follies is to
believe passionately in the palpably not true.
It is the chief occupation of mankind.”
Steven Pinker the renowned linguist adds to
it, “In culture after culture, people believe that the souls live on after
death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine the truth, and
that illness and misfortunes are caused and alleviated by spirits, ghosts, saints…and
gods.”
Religious myths unlike accepted fiction
will contain story of gods, creation and a religious or magical account of the
beginning of the world.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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