Wednesday, October 17, 2007

To ostracise

Hi all while reading our text recently I came across the interesting paragraph on the origins of the work ostracism. A Greek term, where if someone was violent or aggressive or rude they would have their name written down on a broken bit of pot and put in a large container in the centre of the market place. If someone had their name written 6,000 times the whole community agreed to give them 10years silent treatment. I was quite interested by this and started telling family and friends and was further interested by their reactions. Some people reacted by saying “wow that’s so harsh” or “that’s worse than prison”….others said “oh I wish we still had that in place today” or “what a great idea”……tell me what you all think in my poll...

1 comment:

Josie said...

Hi Rach
I also loved this pit if info and started telling people about it. When i first read it I thought that it was so funny and could think of no worse punishment. I don't think that it could still work today because our communities are generally much bigger and nobody knows everybody, so it would be hard to determine who you were allowed to talk to. Also I think that people would just move away as today i think our society is much more mobile. So while i think that sometime it would be great not to talk to people for a while i think that it would never work in today's day and age.