Devon Bennett
17 November 2003
Homo Necans Section One Reflection
The approach that Walter Burkert uses to describe the facet of human characteristic dealing with death and its vast effect on humanity assisted greatly my understanding of the similarities in communities. As exclusion is factored as a basis of community, Burkert explains specifically that community, while steeped in tradition and ritual, is not an inherent condition of human kind. “A demonstration whereby the individual proclaims his membership and place in the community” (p. 24). I was reaffirmed in this reading that people are not intrinsically part of a community, but that through selective exclusion, and subsequent inclusion, societies form their ranks. Exclusion is a system used in every group to determine both the membership and government thereof. The identity of the society being dependent on the changes affected on each member (p. 25), I interpreted a paradox in the essential makeup of communities. Do humans create communities and their characteristics, or are they developed by the prevalent traits of the society in which they choose to participate?
One sure fact illustrated through this text, however, is that all communities are inherently similar based solely on their origins. “Somewhere in between, in the vast reaches of the unknowable, are the ‘origins’” (p. 31). In a society built either upon an evolutional or creational dogma, Homo sapiens had a beginning, and every modern civilization is the product of deviation from that origination. Religion has previously been addressed in class as a means of differentiating communities. Homo Necans, however, portrays it as an encompassing attribute, present in every culture. “There has yet to be a community without ritual” (p. 34). “Practically all human cultures are shaped by religion… religious ritual is advantageous in the process of selection… for the continuance of group identity” (p. 26).