My younger brother is currently taking a few intersession courses at U.W.O., trying to recoup some of the grades he lost to a year of heavy tranquilizers, and hoping to accomplish his goal of one day becoming the best Viking banker in the country. I'm not sure he's realized that double-pronged beards are somewhat incompatible with the accepted image of a financial ethics expert... but I suppose that's irrelevant, since his philosophy skills are significantly less patchy than his meagre stubble. Besides, all will be forgiven when he convinces the money dealers that top-down plundering is a-okay. Plunder away.



If he doesn't become a banker, he'll probably devote himself to unearthing Viking ruins and building replica long ships. For this reason, he's taking some anthropology courses, along with his ethics training. So tonight I had the pleasure of editing a take-home mid-term exam, which was e-mailed to me an hour before it was due (fitting with his typical "Heath, can you edit my essay?" method) and returned to him with two minutes to spare (our shared "how to complete an essay" method).

I enjoy editing any paper. When the topic is first year anthropology? Pure pleasure. A nostalgic reminder of the ideas, lectures, stories, and texts that have blown my mind, and integrally influenced the ways in which I view the world and myself in it. Anthropology is a trippy, sweet discipline, in so many ways. And for the sake of this world, I think we all need a little anthropologist in us - something to temper the complacent acceptance of things that are and things that should be.

(psychedelic drugs might work too...)

But no discipline is perfect, and no discipline is complete. As I consider what step I want to take next - in my education, in my career - I resent the concept of 'discipline' and the ways that we've compartmentalized and codified knowledge. A favourite prof urged my class to see anthropology as an anthropologist - know that it's just an institution, a "contagious idea." That doesn't mean it isn't "real" - but it does severely challenge the certainty of "truth."

It frightens me that so many academics, researchers, thinkers, and doers believe so deeply in their chosen disciplines and fields (perhaps including myself, in spite of myself). This is how we exclude knowledge, this is how inaccuracy, insufficiency, and inequality become entrenched as "truth."

And to shift topics once again, this is why I value so many of my relationships. I'm glad that my friends and family are thinkers and talkers. I'm glad that we argue, blather, ramble, and rant together. It comforts me, as I think about my future plans, to know that most of you will challenge me at some point, in those moments of self-righteous certainty.

I look at the now defunct costume blog and see a marvel of interdisciplinary majesty: a psychologist and anthropologist, bred to be enemies, but bringing the love.



Finally, let's come full circle, and end this lengthy post with an important survey.  Anyone who'd like to see my brother start a Vikings blog, all say "Hail Oden" 

Damn it Dan, I want to know what Vikings ate.