We're Not Always the Right Ones - "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"

           

           When I first read “Body Rituals among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner, I was struck speechless. I remember myself thinking ‘Who in the world are these people? How can they do such cruel things to others? Oh god, okay, enough with the cultural relativism nonsense, look at these people! No, no, no, they’re just wrong. This isn’t something that can be justified. I am not even going to try to understand them. Ever!’

           It probably wasn’t an unusual response for this piece, though. Most of those reading this for the first time would have thought similarly. Miner talks about the extreme customs of the Nacirema in this essay. Here’s an example: those called the holy-mouth-men “have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these objects in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man opens the client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes.” Setting aside the other equally shocking customs, this alone is enough to nauseate the readers. Miner himself, at some point in the essay, also goes to the extent of regarding these people as a group of sadists and masochists enjoying these cruel rituals.

           Although I, personally, couldn’t get even close to understanding these people, what I wrote as a reflection of this essay was about the good old cultural relativism. Even if we think of these people as cruel sadists, all these unique rituals might mean something important to the Nacirema. We can’t just simply say, “We’re the best, you’re just primitive.”

           Then came the realization.

           This essay actually was about Americans—‘Nacirema’ is, in fact, ‘American’ backwards.

           Imagine how shocked I was.

           ‘Oh wow, it all makes sense now……’

           There was no cultural relativism to be discussed in the first place. The Nacirema culture was the American culture itself, only seen through a different perspective, and what I was doing was getting disgusted at the culture of one of the most civilized countries in the world. This essay was just a display of how our own custom can be viewed as something really weird by others. The “holy-mouth-man” mentioned above? Dentists. Think about it. When we have cavities, we go to the dentist, who “enlarges” the holes and fill them with amalgam, the “magical material.” It is true that some are scared of going to the dentists, and it is also true that we sometimes feel pain, which makes it possible to express it as “ritual torture” in the writing.

           Miner does a great job of fooling the readers. While reading the essay, I didn’t even think of connecting Nacirema to America. Of course, the topic itself, drawing the readers in by surprising and disgusting them at the same time, would have contributed to it, but the author’s use of high-level vocabulary words and a very academic tone probably did much more. Miner uses the word ‘ablution’ when he simply could have used ‘washing.’ Throughout the essay, he maintains a very academic and inquiring tone—the use of formal expressions, quotes from experts, and even a bibliography at the end—which makes this work look like the product of an extensive study. And this altogether prevents the readers from getting the slightest hint of deception—there wouldn’t be wordplay in such an academically written paper now, would there?

           This essay could be just something to laugh at for some people, but knowing the real intention of the author, there is an underlying message: we are at no position to judge others. If this applies to the American culture, there’s no reason why it can’t be applied to other cultures, including the Korean culture. There are dentists and hospitals in Korea too, and men shave their beards and girls go on diets—in other words, Koreans have “holy-mouth-men” and “temples” where elaborate ceremonies are held to cure people; men conduct the practice of “scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument,” and girls go on “ritual fasts to make fat people thin.”

The Masai

           Different people perceive things differently, based on what they know and what they are familiar with. Just as we think of the Masai people to be uncivilized and unhygienic to go hunting with spears and drink cow blood, they might as well dismiss us as crazy people trying to do everything with a lump of metal—smartphones. Unless we can be sure that we understand their mindsets perfectly and thus can look at their customs entirely from their perspective, we cannot tell how desirable following a custom is. Therefore, we should perceive of other cultures just as they are and respect them.