Nacirema - My first thoughts and changing of my thoughts

Nacirema or America?

          In our last Thursdays’ English class, we read a short essay about Nacirema. The title of this essay is “Body Ritual Among” written by Horace Miner in 1956. When I first started to read the essay, I was really surprised at Nacirema. I thought that Nacirema is an ancient tribe living brutally. It is because the author applied ceremonies and rituals which are includes ancient tribes so he criticized Nacirema people's behavior especially, the Nacirema culture.

The author criticized Nacirema people's behavior, especially the Nacirema culture in his essay because he applied ceremonies and rituals which belong to ancient tribes.

For instance, there is an expression, "extremes to which human behavior can go." In other words, this sentence means human behavior is going to limit. It applies the article will criticize human behavior in Nacirem. Also, this article satirizes three important things which related to people's life. One is shrine, another is latipso and the other is holy-mouth-men.

Shrine means bathroom which is one of the important places of human. I use it too and the author criticizes this stuff because people in Nacirema distinguish their property by how much bathrooms are in their houses. After I read about shrine, there were some stories about latipso. I read about latipso, I did not understand anything because there were no results when I read about latipso. So, I passed that, however, I was sure about that latipso was one of the important things in human life since the most things criticized in this essay were about the essential things for human. I could infer that the ‘Holy-mouth-men’ means dentists.. There is a sentence, "The Nacirema has an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they would believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them." This can be evidence that the Holy-mouth-men are the people who care Nacirema people's teeth, so I could infer them as dentists. Even though Nacirema people were afraid of their teeth, teeth have been one of the important parts of human.

All students include myself did not know about the exact meaning of Nacirema and other strange words. Then, teacher Menard said "Nacimer is the backward of American in its spelling." After I heard Menard's answer, most of my questions were solved. This essay absolutely satirizes American, however this was written in 1956. The year of 1956 was about 50 years ago. I can reflect two explanations. One is about that period, when the people in America lived as the essay expresses. They used market economy system, and they thought the property was really important. Also there are many cultures that the essay satirizes about and all of the cultures have been the main idea which author wanted to criticize. The other explanation is that the author predicts the future. The society will be more complex, so there may be various controversial cultures, so he wanted to explain that.

The phrase, " Thinking conversely" is really right. I could not guess that Nacirema was the back words of American. Many successful people such as Bill Gates or Steve jobs said "Think creatively and conversely!" May be Horace Miner thought the same as them. By thinking conversely, he could criticize the current American or the future American creatively. I decided to live like them. If I want to live conversely, I should think one thing in various ways, and this essay has a good motive that made me decide to live with diverse and creative thinking.