Body Ritual Among the American

           When I first read about the Body ritual of the Nacirema, I thought this essay was badly written. Overall essay was looking down on a culture of the Nacirema. Since I thought we should respect other cultures even when they are exotic and unique, the essay was full of biases about Nacirema. However, after I knew that “Nacirema” is actually “American” written backward, I realized the essay did not intended to look down on a culture but was intending to criticize the modernized culture of America.

           After realizing “Nacirema” stands for “American”, I was soon able to find numerous metaphors in the essay. “Shrines” was metaphor for “Bathrooms”, “Medicine man” for “Doctor”, “Herbalists” for “Pharmacists”, “Scraping face with sharp materials” for “Shaving”, “Laptiso” for “Hospital” and more on. The essay was actually criticizing the culture of American rather than looking down on a barbaric culture.

           I was amazed how I had absolutely no doubt on our life style. I thought it was reasonable for hospital to get fees for treating patients. But I found myself thinking how cruel Nacirema is for not treating patience no matter what if they didn’t have the gifts. I thought it was fair to do birth control. However I found myself thinking negatively towards how Nacirema avoid pregnancy and how they taboo natural phenomena. Our culture which we live in thinking how it’s so modernized, rational, and advanced had so many irony inside.

           When I first read the essay I wondered how such cultures including pain could developed. Since naturally people are built to fear pain and avoid it. In the essay it is told such culture is held due to absolute faith of people. This motivated me to rethink about our development. Our what we called science that we have absolute truth in it. People who don’t have belief in science is considered uneducated. Since science is believed to be so logical and reasonable, educated, normal people should have faith in science. Well, maybe isn’t our belief dangerous? Maybe science is having too much power in modern society. It is true science is logical and reasonable. It is also true it helped our development. But now it’s time to slow down a bit and rethink about it. Science indeed helped us have technological development but is our moral and culture following up the development? Not only advance in science is important, but advance in social awareness must follow.