Philosophy Now Forum

To make it clear as the British have a different meaning for custom:

"a traditional and widely accepted way of behaving or doing something that is specific to a particular society, place, or time."

Three cases come to my mind and there are far more:

1) Cow-chip throwing

2) The running of the bulls. In Spain people have gotten hurt and, I believe, killed. What makes them do it?

3) Becoming a man. In Africa somewhere, there's a tribe that have their young male members jump off a high platform with only a rope attached to the ankle to break their fall (in one case, the boy's head hit the ground - he survived). This is how male members become men according to tribal custom.

Overall how did these customs and others develop and what keeps them going?

Any comments?

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Tue Jun 27, 2017 9:55 pm 3) Becoming a man. In Africa somewhere, there's a tribe that have their young male members jump off a high platform with only a rope attached to the ankle to break their fall (in one case, the boy's head hit the ground - he survived). This is how male members become men according to tribal custom.

I'm pretty sure you mean these guys in Vanuatu (South Pacific).


But here's some Englishmen chasing a cheese down a steep hill. I understand fairly serious injuries are common. Over here most of these traditional foolish sports evolved from old harvest celebrations in very ancient times where dumb things were done by young men to impress girls.

Thankfully we now have technology to save us from this sort of thing. All you need to do now is make your telephone send her a picture of an aubergine (egg plant) and that seems to get stuff done. Actually this seems like quite an odd custom too, now I write it out loud.

The Spanish goat throwing festival is hopefully derived from something much weirder than balls out lust though. Otherwise Spanish girls are impressed by some weird stuff, and I don't want to know what pictures one must send them via telephone these days.