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n 215 CHAPTER 10 From Tombstones to Star Trek:¡Qué poco soy! ¿No soy más? For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away But the word of the Lord endureth forever. 1 Peter 1:24 Yo creo que la muerte es un gran sueño. (I believe that death is a long sleep.) Pedro Ornelas, resident of Belen, New Mexico, at age ninety-five Joseph Campbell raises an interesting question about the differing views of death in planting cultures, on the one hand, and hunting and forest cultures, on the other. Planting cultures turn to the plant as a metaphor for understanding death. The self-regenerative powers of the plant mean that its nature can be characterized as “continuing inbeingness.” Pruning is helpful to a plant because it stimulates new growth. Out of the rot in a forest comes new life. Cut a branch from a tree, and new suckers appear in profusion. They are the “bright new little children who are part of the same plant.” Campbell concludes, “So in the forest and planting cultures, there is a sense of death as not death somehow, that death is required for new life. And the individual is not quite an individual; he is a branch of a plant” (Campbell 1988, 102). Some of what follows in this chapter is subjective. Subjectivity has been downplayed and derided, but subjectivity is as important as what is considered the objective with its scales, interview schedules, and so on. The reader is encouraged to read Mehan and Wood (1975) on the fallible in “objective research.” This chapter and the other two ciclo chapters (chapters 11 and 12) are a search for meaning. If the objectivists want to create a “ciclo” scale, then so be it. As farmers and stockmen, the Hispano people of northern New Mexico consider 216 n Chapter 10 life, death, and resurrection within a framework of completing the harvest, the coming of the dark winter, and the blooming of flowers and trees in the spring. El ciclo de vida y muerte (the cycle of life and death) is based on the premise that flora die in the late fall, only to return in the spring. Antonio Medina, a social philosopher from Mora, New Mexico, originally proposed the ciclo idea, but he did not elaborate. This chapter is the first of a trilogy on the ciclo de vida y muerte and an attempt to give this typified idea more form. The chapter considers the flower motif, whereas chapters 11 and 12 are about light and darkness, and despair and transcendence, respectively. In enlarging the scope of this inquiry, we can begin to see that these symbols are laden with meaning from the everyday life of Hispanos. We have to make clear that the ciclo dualism is incomplete. Octavio Paz deals with the dualism of life and death, though he also mentions but does not discuss the idea of resurrection (Paz 1961). His view is basically a pessimism that declares that both life and death are meaningless for the Mexican. These three chapters will also leave the question of resurrection empty, as did Paz. This does not mean that a deep need does not exist to find a larger meaning than just the brute struggle for life, ending in death. Resurrection is implicit in the text of the three chapters. One is not advocating any particular denominational view to these important questions. Each chapter will deal with a major idea. In this chapter what is contrasted are ideas from a former planting culture; it asks a question that technology cannot answer. The thesis of this chapter is that Hispano culture de más antes (from olden days) attempts to provide answers to the deepest question, “Is this all I am? Is there nothing else?” asked by Mr. Spock, the logical Vulcan in the first of the Star Trek films. A subordinate theme in chapter 10 is to ask the question can technology answer the most crucial question about our purpose in life. Chapter 11 is about light and darkness as a metaphor for life and death. The subtext in this chapter concerns germination and creation of a new consciousness in darkness. Chapter 12 deals with the nature of struggle with despair and the liberation of transcendence. It also covers rituals of giving thanks (dar gracias). The subtitle for this chapter is the merger...

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