Background image link:
http://weiweihua.deviantart.com/art/The-City-Moliya-In-Green-Valle-46549609
Sunday, September 28, 2014
ZingZang Avatar
Background image link:
http://weiweihua.deviantart.com/art/The-City-Moliya-In-Green-Valle-46549609
Symbols
http://dc472.4shared.com/img/YxnC2oM5/s7/13dc816c7e8/string_1_blue.png
Light bulb to symbolize education.
http://last-tuesdays.com/images/circle-handshake.png
(my own image)
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Zing Zang Culture
ENVIRONMENT: We are ZingZangs and we live on a distant planet in the universe called Cramos. We have two moons and one sun. Our climate varies throughout our planet. We live on a planet that is covered in greenery. It rains often in order to nourish our planet and the plants that flourish on it. We have mountains covered in fields of grass and a volcano at the top of one of our mountains. When the volcano erupts petals burst from the top onto the surrounding ground. We have many trees, but they are not normal trees. Our trees have large stumps that have channels within them in order to reach the top. The top of the trees are shaped like mushroom tops, these type of trees cover more than half of our planet. We have a river that flows throughout the entire colony, which can be used for transportation, rituals, and useful resources.
CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE:
NORMS: One of our cultural norms is that our children are seen as equals to adults. Everyone over 12 months old gets submerged in a capsule where they then acquire all the essential knowledge to survive in our society. All children are expected to do their part in society once they have reached the age of 10. Our society is governed by the women of our planet. The men handle the harvesting of food while the women handle the government. Women are the head of the households in our culture. The men are not treated as less of our society, their job of harvesting our food is so important and time consuming that the women must control the other aspects of our culture in order for our society to flourish. In our culture the way we greet one another is to place a hand flat on the chest of the other person in order to connect with each other's souls. We say goodbye by touching backs to one another than going on our way.
VALUES: Some of our values consist of kindness, equality, charity, and preservation of all life forms. Since we value kindness, it is frowned upon in our society to show hate or violence toward anyone. We value group harmony, and openness to ideas. We cleanse ourselves of hatred and anger each day by bathing in the river that flows through our colony. We rely on everyone in our society to make it work, everyone is essential to our success. We must cooperate with each other in order to prosper and continue our way of life. Preservation of life is the most important value of our culture. We believe that every part of our planet is living and it is our job to continue its life just like our lives.
WORLDVIEW: We see the world as our companion, we see it as a symbiotic relationship. We provide our planet with essential needs and it in return provides us with things essential to our survival. We perceive time in terms of moon cycles. When both of our moons are in the same phase, one day has elapsed. We take everything as it comes to us, we do not worry of the days to come, but rather focus on what is to be done on the current day. We don't know of any neighboring planets, as far as we know we are the only planet in our galaxy. We have knowledge of other galaxies and planets existing inside them, but we don't know anything of their culture or society.
SYMBOLS: We have an intertwined sun and moon mandala symbol that represents our belief in worshipping the moon and sun. This symbol is shown all over our society. We use this to show our sun and two moons that we appreciate them and their consistency in enabling us to provide for our people and our planet. The second symbol in our society is a blue string tied to an individual's finger to signify marriage and the unity of two souls. This string is tied to both parties in acknowledgement that they have committed to another being, and are to share their soul with that person. A circle with two hands clasping the other is a symbol for our government. This symbol represents the unity of our people in government, we all feed off one another. For our education system, the symbol is a light bulb. This correctly represents our education system, because with a "flip of a switch" all of the information essential to survival is input into the children's minds.
CLASSIFICATION OF REALITY: Our system for kinship is simple, all adults are your mother and father, every child or adolescent is your brother or sister. Your birth mother and father are called Shimi, while you address other adults as Shuma. Your blood siblings are called Kai, while other siblings are called Kari. Our agriculture is divided into various categories, such as products we can eat, use for clothing, healing, use for making materials, and many more. We categorize green in five different ways, there are greens of harvest, greens of planting, greens of wealth, greens of health, and greens of sickness. Each category of green is seen in a different way in order for our people to determine which it is. Flowers and plants are divided up into either plants/flowers that heal or that can be used as resources. Resources such as vines used for climbing and tying knots. Some plants can also be used to extract ink for writing purposes.
STRUCTURE: In our culture, our religion consists of worshiping the sun and moons. We believe that the sun and moon have supernatural powers, and can destroy our planet if we do not show our appreciation. The sun and moons provide us with light, warmth, nutrients to our plants, and a view outside of our everyday life. By worshiping and believing in the moons and sun being higher powers, it gives reason as to why things happen. Marriage in our culture is for an intimate connection of two souls, it is not used for stability purposes. In our culture, marriage is the union of two beings as one. Our people marry to feel the connection of touching someone's inner self and being completely connected to that person. During a marriage ceremony, the two beings have a blue string tied around both of their hands to signify their two souls becoming one. Each marriage ceremony is performed when the two moons are at their highest peak. The ceremonies are performed outside next to the river that flows through the city. The Government of our culture is just in place to make sure harvesting and education of children goes smoothly. Everyone works together towards one goal, success of our society. We do not have many meticulous laws stating one someone can and cannot do. Our government is used as a guide if needed, everyone is united as one. Our education system is a simple one, after a year of living every child is placed inside a capsule where they are given all the essential knowledge to survive and prosper. This type of education reduces the amount of time our kids need to spend in school or learning ways to survive. We automatically give them everything they need to know. This way of educating our people allows for everyone to have equal amounts of knowledge, no matter what family you come from, you receive the same amount of education as everyone else in our culture. There are no class distinctions in our society, we all have the same amount of power in our culture. The only distinctions made are that men do the harvesting of our goods, while women participate in the government and formal aspects of our culture. Our planet consists of two million people. Our culture and planet is small but we use every aspect of it to our benefit. In our culture childhood is short lived, after the age of 10, children must begin doing their part in our society. At this age they are have the same amount of knowledge as any adult, thus being treated equal to adults. Once the children hit puberty, they may begin searching for a partner. It is not essential for everyone to find a partner and to marry, if one chooses to be without a partner there are no consequences. As people reach old age and come near to death, the entire society gets together to celebrate the person's life. Once someone has died, they are cremated and put into the fertilizer where a tree will soon grow. This is to put yourself back into nature once your physical life has ended.
CULTURAL EMPHASIS: In our society, we have an emphasis on the harvest of plants and food, as well as shades and meanings of green. We have many words referring to plants or flowers, as well as the seeds we plant and harvest. We use specific terms for our blood parents and siblings, compared to the rest of the community that we still consider our parents and siblings. In addition to the nature emphasis and kinship differences, we also focus on our two moons and our sun. We use different terms for each phase the moon goes through. It helps us keep track of our days and time.
CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE:
NORMS: One of our cultural norms is that our children are seen as equals to adults. Everyone over 12 months old gets submerged in a capsule where they then acquire all the essential knowledge to survive in our society. All children are expected to do their part in society once they have reached the age of 10. Our society is governed by the women of our planet. The men handle the harvesting of food while the women handle the government. Women are the head of the households in our culture. The men are not treated as less of our society, their job of harvesting our food is so important and time consuming that the women must control the other aspects of our culture in order for our society to flourish. In our culture the way we greet one another is to place a hand flat on the chest of the other person in order to connect with each other's souls. We say goodbye by touching backs to one another than going on our way.
VALUES: Some of our values consist of kindness, equality, charity, and preservation of all life forms. Since we value kindness, it is frowned upon in our society to show hate or violence toward anyone. We value group harmony, and openness to ideas. We cleanse ourselves of hatred and anger each day by bathing in the river that flows through our colony. We rely on everyone in our society to make it work, everyone is essential to our success. We must cooperate with each other in order to prosper and continue our way of life. Preservation of life is the most important value of our culture. We believe that every part of our planet is living and it is our job to continue its life just like our lives.
WORLDVIEW: We see the world as our companion, we see it as a symbiotic relationship. We provide our planet with essential needs and it in return provides us with things essential to our survival. We perceive time in terms of moon cycles. When both of our moons are in the same phase, one day has elapsed. We take everything as it comes to us, we do not worry of the days to come, but rather focus on what is to be done on the current day. We don't know of any neighboring planets, as far as we know we are the only planet in our galaxy. We have knowledge of other galaxies and planets existing inside them, but we don't know anything of their culture or society.
SYMBOLS: We have an intertwined sun and moon mandala symbol that represents our belief in worshipping the moon and sun. This symbol is shown all over our society. We use this to show our sun and two moons that we appreciate them and their consistency in enabling us to provide for our people and our planet. The second symbol in our society is a blue string tied to an individual's finger to signify marriage and the unity of two souls. This string is tied to both parties in acknowledgement that they have committed to another being, and are to share their soul with that person. A circle with two hands clasping the other is a symbol for our government. This symbol represents the unity of our people in government, we all feed off one another. For our education system, the symbol is a light bulb. This correctly represents our education system, because with a "flip of a switch" all of the information essential to survival is input into the children's minds.
CLASSIFICATION OF REALITY: Our system for kinship is simple, all adults are your mother and father, every child or adolescent is your brother or sister. Your birth mother and father are called Shimi, while you address other adults as Shuma. Your blood siblings are called Kai, while other siblings are called Kari. Our agriculture is divided into various categories, such as products we can eat, use for clothing, healing, use for making materials, and many more. We categorize green in five different ways, there are greens of harvest, greens of planting, greens of wealth, greens of health, and greens of sickness. Each category of green is seen in a different way in order for our people to determine which it is. Flowers and plants are divided up into either plants/flowers that heal or that can be used as resources. Resources such as vines used for climbing and tying knots. Some plants can also be used to extract ink for writing purposes.
STRUCTURE: In our culture, our religion consists of worshiping the sun and moons. We believe that the sun and moon have supernatural powers, and can destroy our planet if we do not show our appreciation. The sun and moons provide us with light, warmth, nutrients to our plants, and a view outside of our everyday life. By worshiping and believing in the moons and sun being higher powers, it gives reason as to why things happen. Marriage in our culture is for an intimate connection of two souls, it is not used for stability purposes. In our culture, marriage is the union of two beings as one. Our people marry to feel the connection of touching someone's inner self and being completely connected to that person. During a marriage ceremony, the two beings have a blue string tied around both of their hands to signify their two souls becoming one. Each marriage ceremony is performed when the two moons are at their highest peak. The ceremonies are performed outside next to the river that flows through the city. The Government of our culture is just in place to make sure harvesting and education of children goes smoothly. Everyone works together towards one goal, success of our society. We do not have many meticulous laws stating one someone can and cannot do. Our government is used as a guide if needed, everyone is united as one. Our education system is a simple one, after a year of living every child is placed inside a capsule where they are given all the essential knowledge to survive and prosper. This type of education reduces the amount of time our kids need to spend in school or learning ways to survive. We automatically give them everything they need to know. This way of educating our people allows for everyone to have equal amounts of knowledge, no matter what family you come from, you receive the same amount of education as everyone else in our culture. There are no class distinctions in our society, we all have the same amount of power in our culture. The only distinctions made are that men do the harvesting of our goods, while women participate in the government and formal aspects of our culture. Our planet consists of two million people. Our culture and planet is small but we use every aspect of it to our benefit. In our culture childhood is short lived, after the age of 10, children must begin doing their part in our society. At this age they are have the same amount of knowledge as any adult, thus being treated equal to adults. Once the children hit puberty, they may begin searching for a partner. It is not essential for everyone to find a partner and to marry, if one chooses to be without a partner there are no consequences. As people reach old age and come near to death, the entire society gets together to celebrate the person's life. Once someone has died, they are cremated and put into the fertilizer where a tree will soon grow. This is to put yourself back into nature once your physical life has ended.
CULTURAL EMPHASIS: In our society, we have an emphasis on the harvest of plants and food, as well as shades and meanings of green. We have many words referring to plants or flowers, as well as the seeds we plant and harvest. We use specific terms for our blood parents and siblings, compared to the rest of the community that we still consider our parents and siblings. In addition to the nature emphasis and kinship differences, we also focus on our two moons and our sun. We use different terms for each phase the moon goes through. It helps us keep track of our days and time.
Section 3A Essay
The children of the ZingZang
culture learn language in multiple ways, before being submerged into the
knowledge capsule at one year, mothers will hum to their children our language.
Mothers also sing to their children to teach them parts of our language. The
ZingZang children only learn one language. Our children only experience cooing
and babbling as their prelinguistic vocalizations, because by the age of 12
months, we submerge them in a capsule that gives them full language
understanding and capacity.
In
addition to teaching our language at a young age, in our culture we have an
emphasis on equality. This means that in our language we use gender neutral terms
for addressing the public. In ZingZang culture, children and adults are also
seen as equals. You may only call someone a child if they are under the age of
10. This is because at the age of ten they are expected to begin doing their
part for our society. They learn everything they need to know about language,
survival and success when submerged in the capsule at one year. So for us age
does not mean the same thing as it does in other cultures. We do not rob our
children of a childhood we give them 9 years after receiving the essential
knowledge to be a child. Our kind progresses much faster than others with
language. One of our most prominent values is kindness, so in our language
there are no words that express hate and anger. With no access to a word for these kinds of
feelings, people do not express these negative feelings onto other people in our
culture. The most important value in ZingZang life is preservation of life. We
believe that all things are living and it is our duty to keep it continue its
life. Our food strategies are simple, we plant, grow, and harvest all of our
food. There are no words for fast food, or restaurants, or dine in. Nothing to
express someone else preparing our food for us. We prepare our own food at home.
Our cultural emphasis are harvesting enough food not only for our own families
but for the other families if they have a small harvest. We all share the food
that we grow with those who need it. Since planting and harvesting is a big
part of our culture, we have many words in our language to describe plants and
shades of green.
Moreover, our language came from
the oldest ancestors of our people. When they inhabited our planet may moons
ago they saw a potential for a flourishing society. They began wandering our planet and touching
everything they could. They cataloged every place they went, with pictures of
what it looked like and name for each thing in that specific place. The
ancestors wanted to create a way where no matter what family you came from, you
would all get the same amount pf education.
As the men began putting together all the cataloged places and words
they had into a language, the women started building a capsule of knowledge, so
that each child learn all necessary things for survival, language being one of
them. Surprisingly our language has been pretty stable throughout ZingZang
time. The Biggest change has been the addition of new plant life words,
resulting from the creation of hybrid plants in our culture. We have used our
skills to create new plant forms. In our culture we use the nature around us
for healing, at some point we discovered that the combination between two
plants was better than just using one. However, since we have a high value on
preservation of life, we did not want to use both plants each time, so we tried
to find a way to make a hybrid. This would mean we could still use the
medication, but we would not be depleting the plant life forms in the process. As
hard as we try to keep everything on our planet living, not all things last
forever. The plants we do not use, that we just nourish and keep living, start
to produce less and less offspring. Through the years some of these plants have
died of or become something different. The names of the plants that have died
off have been lost from our language from lack of use. Fortunately, the reborn
plants receive new names to get added into our language. So as things die we
indeed lose language for these things but when new things emerge we quickly
make names and add them to the language.
Further, our language does not
express emotion well, we have simple words that express love, sadness,
happiness or gratitude. These words are some of the simplest of words in our
entire language. We do not use language to show affection. Most of our
expression of emotion comes from our body language and other nonverbal
communications such as facial features. If we do not like something we scrunch
our noses and faces up real tight to show discomfort and overall
dissatisfaction. When we want to express happiness it is done in two ways. One
with a big smile and arms held out wide, and two with a smile and a two hands
on abdomen. The first display of happiness is usually associated with happiness
to see someone, or something that has just occurred sparking joy inside a
person. The second is used to just show overall content and pure happiness.
When we greet someone, we do not say anything, we place our hands on the other person’s
chest to connect to their soul and acknowledge their existence. When we are
leaving a place or trying to say goodbye, we touch backs of the other people
around us and go about our day. When we do speak we make direct eye contact
with the person we are speaking to. If we are in a group of people we try to
make eye contact with each person throughout the conversation. In our culture
it is normal to be in very close proximity to one another even in public speaking.
We consider everyone family, so it is common for people in group discussion to
all be within arm’s reach. People in ZingZang culture like to express their
commitment to our sun and moon gods by using colors from our various plant
life, and tattooing themselves with symbols of our gods and writing to the
gods.
As has been mentioned, the children
of our culture know all language by the age of one. This means that instead of
gradually gaining more words for their vocabulary over the first couple years
of their life, we give them all to them at one. After they have learned the
language of our people, the children like to play a game where they make up
words to replace specific words in the language to trick the adults. All
children participate in this game, but once they begin working in our society
they must stop the game and speak properly. For example instead of using the
word for using the word for birth mother shimi, children will say shishi. This
word has the first half of the original word repeated. It seems like a simple
change but for some reason the adults to not catch on. The children go around
the houses yelling, “ShiShi! ShiShi!” but the mothers never understand their
children. Other words on the list for the game are jari, mimi, panga, mori, and
caprisee. These words are the children’s ways of saying sibling, medicine,
drink, food, and cup.
Furthermore, our language and culture are interconnected in all aspects.
Our language reflects how our culture operates, and culture is a reflection of
how our language is structured. In
ZingZang life, our people do many things. The daily activities of the ZingZang
people consist of the men going to do the planting and harvesting of the food
and plants. The men go around and make sure that every plant has sufficient water
and light, as well as planting new seeds, or gathering plants for medication
and healing. Each plant that needs some assistance gets cataloged, each newly
planted seed for a plant gets cataloged, and anything taken for healing is
cataloged as well. Our extensive vocabulary on plants helps us to identify what
plant is what and which plants we need to grow more or less of. The men also
have to make sure that the food they have planted is growing properly and
nothing has gone wrong. If there is a problem with any of the food that must be
cataloged as well. If there is food that is ready to harvest and to be taken
back to the main village, the men take proper precautions as to not disrupt the
growing of other food and plants in the area when taking up the finished food.
On the other hand the women of our culture go to our main village every
morning, and run the government. All women of our culture work together
cohesively. The women look over all the cataloged papers that the men bring
back if there are plants that need to be taken care of more extensively, they
will appoint certain men to do the job. The children under the age of ten get
to explore and play with the other kids. If the children are over ten then the
boys have to go with the men and learn their job as men, and the girls have to
go with the women to learn their job. Other activities that the ZingZang people
like to do is go to the sacred river and swim or relax and talk with each
other. Some ZingZang women like to take their babies to the river and sing to
them or hum to them as they watch the other children play. In addition to
relaxation or conversation, many ZingZangs like to read by the river as well.
One of the most important activities that all ZingZang people participate in,
is the giving thanks to our sun and moon Gods. Each ZingZang gets together a
gift, it can be made by hand or I could be a plant or a seed. There are no
guidelines to what type of gift you bring, as long as you bring something. They
then place all the gifts in the sacred river, clasp hands with one another and
bow. This is our way of showing our Gods our appreciation.
To illustrate our vocabulary, we
use the term living plants for many things. Plant/s= grass, any tree, flower,
bush, weeds, roots, seeds, broken off bark, leaves, twigs, fungi, dirt, water.
All of these things we consider to be plants because we believe that anything
in nature that grows and dies, or flows, and is useful to us but is not human
is a living plant. We believe that all of these things are living, because they
provide something for our planet. Food=
potato, corn, wheat, seeds, tomato, watermelon, oranges, apples,
strawberries, lettuce, onions, peppers, green beans, peas, bananas, chicken,
beef, fish. All of these are what we consider food because you can grow or
raise every single one of these items. Our food system is all planting and
harvesting, as well as raising animals. Furniture= leaf beds, branches, wooden
chair, tree stump, wooden table. These are all parts of furniture in our
language because we live in inside trees, so a lot of our furniture is made
from bark and other natural resources. Animals= chicken, cows, dogs, bugs,
fish, birds, turtles, snakes, frogs, lizards. These are all the animals that
live on our planet. Chicken, cows, and fish are all animals we use for food. The
other animals are either pets or animals that live within the nature.
Lastly, in our culture we see
everyone equally, so our language does not have many gender specific, race
specific, or class specific words. In fact we do not have any words showing
class, because we do not have any form of a class system in our culture. To
have these words in our language would be pointless, for they would never be
used. The only language difference between men and women, is that the women
tend to speak faster and louder than men. This is a result of women being the
ones controlling our government and often have to talk to large crowds of
people. The men talk softer and at a normal pace because there is no need for
them to speak loud and fast. They do all the harvesting and taking care of our
plants. Their talking can be soft and still be useful, there are times when
calling out to other men that they need to raise their voice, but that is a
rare occurrence.
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