Belief In Destiny Research Articles

Race, belief in destiny, and seat belt usage: a pilot study.

A survey of 1063 individuals found that when belief in destiny was statistically controlled, differences in seat belt use by race disappeared. Thus, racial differences in seat belt use are statistically accounted for and might be explained by belief in destiny. Efforts to increase seat belt use should target minority groups rather than include them in broadbrush programs. Further, these efforts should take into account this important difference in motivation.

History, Truth and Dialogue: Fernández de Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias (Bk XXXIII, Ch LIV)

Fernandez de Oviedo's concept of the making of history figures is one of the distinguishing characteristics of his Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535, 1547, 1557). Living in the geographical and chronological center of the Spanish Conquest of the New World, Oviedo, as Charles V's official Court Chronicler, recorded the momentous events of the Spanish encounter with the New World as they occurred.1 History was being made by the Spaniards, and Oviedo was responsible for gathering information and compiling reports for a history of the New World, which would preserve authentic evidence of the Conquest. Because he lived in the midst of the history about which he wrote, Oviedo's accounts often lack the breadth of information and the perspective time can lend to the writing of history. Writing over a period of thirty years, however, enabled the Court Chronicler to gather new information about incidents he had already recorded and this led him to engage in a process of continual correction, expansion, and revision of the history. Yet more significant to the understanding of Oviedo's concept of history than his own geographical and chronological situation is his preoccupation with writing a truthful representation of historical events. His dedication to the idea of a history that would mirror, as closely as possible, men's actions as they actually occurred, as the omnipresent God would have witnessed them, helps to explain his use of multiple reports of a single incident.2 In keeping with the biblical model of using multiple representations to indicate the author's desire for accuracy, if new information contradicted a previous report, Oviedo often revised the account or wrote another version of it in order to see again the events he had recorded; this methodology, he hoped, would reveal the true nature of the moral and natural history of the Indies.3 The Spanish historian's concept of a truthful history becomes clearer when viewed in light of the intellectual currents and political ideology that influenced him. For example, Oviedo's early exposure to Italian humanism and the classical historian's moralizing tendency;4 the author's belief in Spain's destiny to establish a universal Catholic empire and, therefore, his belief in the need to testify to the validity of the Spanish Conquest; and the author's recent conversion to Erasmian illuminism (about 1525) and its alternative to the novels of chivalry, el libro de verdad (Bataillon 247),5 are all influences that inform Oviedo's historical criteria, which he often elaborates in prologues and passages that correct his own earlier accounts of the same event. One of the most famous sections of the Historia general devoted to revising previous accounts about the Conquest of Mexico is the dialogue between Oviedo and Juan Cano. Included in the narration on the Conquest of Mexico (Bk XXXIII of the Second Part), the dialogue is one of the concluding chapters of the Book (Ch LIV).6 Situated among an assortment of information from various sources, which includes Cortes's Relaciones and Antonio de Mendoza's letters, the colloquy reflects Oviedo's data-collecting methods and his inclusion of multiple reports about the same event in his history.7 Given the frequency with which the Spanish chronicler employs multiple accounts, one is not surprised at his return in Chapter LIV to material treated earlier in Chapters XIV-XV. Rather, what does catch our attention is the historian's use of a new

The Genocidal Mentality: Philip II of Spain and Sultan Abdul Hamid II

A brief historical comparison of Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey and King Philip II of Spain with Adolph Hitler revealed several similar personality traits that may be characteristic determinants of individuals prone to undertake genocidal measures. A commitment to bureaucratic detail coupled with an opportunistic belief in a Messianic destiny are key factors in these absolute rulers. The former attribute is considered to be so common in industrial democracies that psychological tests designed to eliminate such persons from holding high elective office are impractical. Further historical research on individuals implicated in unwarranted continuing massacres may uncover items in the behavioral profile that can serve as sorting criteria to identify latent inhumanity.

Emerson Hough by Delbert E. Wylder

Reviews 271 roulette and a dogsled race — , the warring bricklayers in Valley of the Moon, and a deadly human hunt from Adventure. Whether or not all these qualify as “sports writing” is perhaps debat­ able, but the quality of contest, of competition, is as evident in London’s handling of the bricklayer’s tug-of-war and ensuing melee as it is in the harrowing tale of Tom King, the washed-up Australian fighter of “A Piece of Steak” whose arteries have lost their elasticity and he his endurance. As Lachtman points out in his introductory piece, London took pride in his sporting instincts and while certainly no accomplished athlete, he swam, boxed, fenced, jumped, put the shot, tossed the caber, rode horseback, sailed boats and kites, surfed, went target-shooting and bicycling. He was a man of superb energy, “first and foremost a man of sporting blood and fighting spirit,” in Lachtman’s words. And from his own love of sport and belief in it as something reflective of society, came his somewhat pioneering use of it in fiction and essay. DALE L. WALKER The University of Texas at El Paso Emerson Hough. By Delbert E. Wylder. (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.; Twayne’s United States Authors Series, 1981. 163 pages, $13.95.) Emerson Hough by Delbert E. Wylder is a study in six chapters of a nearly forgotten author once famous as an outdoor-western journalist, con­ servationist, and popular western and historical novelist. The book is based on fully acknowledged use of two unpublished studies of Emerson Hough (“Emerson Hough and the Southwest: Selected Letters,” compiled by Dorys Crow Grover of East Texas State University; and Carole McCool Johnson’s dissertation, “Emerson Hough and the American West: A Biographical and Critical Study,” University of Texas at Austin, 1975) ; correspondence to and from Hough (mostly in the Iowa State Department of History and Archives, Des Moines, but also at Iowa City and Newton, Iowa) ; a careful reading of Hough’s fiction, essays, and newspaper and magazine columns; and a review of material pertaining to movie adaptations of a few of his novels. Wylder’s first two chapters are biographical and concern Hough’s rural boyhood in central Iowa, his university training at the State University of Iowa, his brief practice of law in White Oaks, New Mexico (during which he learned about western land, gold, cattle, and railroads), and then the start of his writing career through midwestern journalism and through rep­ resenting Forest and Stream in the West. From 1897 until his death, Hough workaholically produced historical romances and other fiction, muckraking 272 Western American Literature pieces, stories for juvenile readers, and essays of value to ecologists even today. Wylder ties the first two chapters together cleverly by a master metaphor: Hough strove to climb the ladder of material and professional success. His belief in social Darwinism and American Manifest Destiny comes out here as he moves up, slips back, and carries on bravely. Chapter three, clearly the best, concerns Hough’s activities as conserva­ tionist and muckraker. Like other good sportsmen, Hough both enjoyed fishing and hunting and also deplored ruinous western prodigality. Believ­ ing in the wilderness cult, he wrote and otherwise fought for the improve­ ment of Yellowstone National Park. He rightly believed that outdoorsmen should regard all wildlife as a national treasure and should “harvest” game as farmers harvest — planning to assure future “crops.” He favored less “monkeying with nature” (pp. 82-83) and more encouragement of natural regenerative processes. He urged youngsters to love nature and engage in participatory rather than spectator sports. When certain Establishment magazines dropped him for such radical opinions, Hough turned to long (often serialized) fiction, in an effort to produce money-making best-sellers. Chapters four and five concern, respectively, Hough’s western novels and his historical fiction. In neither genre was he lastingly successful. Wylder here summarizes the best of Hough’s novels too extensively and analyzes them rather skimpily. Thus, the six best Western novels — The Girl at the Halfway House (1900), Heart’s Desire (1905), The Way of a Man (1907), The Sagebrusher (1919), The Covered Wagon (1922), and North of 36 (1923) — are altogether...

Scandinavian belief in fate

In point of principle, Christianity does not give room for any belief in fate. Astrology, horoscopes, divination, etc., are strictly rejected. Belief in fate never disappeared in Christian countries, nor did it in Scandinavia in Christian times. Especially in folklore we can find it at any period: People believed in an implacable fate. All folklore is filled up with this belief in destiny. Nobody can escape his fate. The future lies in the hands of fate, and the time to come takes its form according to inscrutable laws. The pre-Christian period in Scandinavia, dominated by pagan Norse religion, and the secularized epoch of the 20th century, however, show more distinctive and more widespread beliefs in fate than does the Christian period. The present paper makes a comparison between these forms of belief.

Natural Law and Manifest Destiny in the Era of the American Revolution

Wee hope to plant a nation, where none before hath stood.—Alexander Whitaker, Good Newes from Virginia, 1613.Anthropological studies have shown that the myth of destiny, along with the myth of origin, has exerted a tremendous influence in shaping tribal mentality and sustaining tribal solidarity. In the history of many modern nations the influence of the myth of destiny can also be perceived. Thus, the belief in a peculiar destiny which had already been formulated among the separate colonies throughout the early period of American history was of special import in the growth of a consciousness of national identity among American colonists during the years of their struggle for independence.This study aims at scrutinizing the changes in the formulation and meaning, during the revolutionary era, of the myth of a peculiar destiny and the impact of the doctrine of natural law in bringing about these changes. The main theses are, first, that the American colonists met the need felt during the revolutionary era for new evidence of and support for an American “destiny” by appealing to the seemingly secure tenets of the doctrine of natural law; and, second, that, as a consequence of this intermingling of “destiny” and “natural law,” the assertion of an American destiny was transformed from a “faith” to a “certainty,” or, more accurately, from a dream to an appointment “manifest.”