How the Greek Revered Their Gods :: Ancient Greece Greek History

How the Greek revered their gods In ancient times, the Greeks had absolute and undeniable respect for their gods. They demonstrated their admiration by putting in place many rituals and celebrations to reverence the gods that they loved and feared in order to ensure harmony with them. In particular, the focus will be on the religious beliefs of the Greeks, including prayer and sacrifice, as well as on festivals and the arts, such as the ancient Olympic games and theatre. These aspects of their culture made a significant contribution to their quality of life. Moreover, these topics will be examined in relation to the twelve Olympian gods and their associates. The ancient Greeks practiced a religion that was in effect, a building block to many ensuing pagan religions. This religion revolved around their reverence to the gods. Essentially, the Greeks worshipped numerous gods, making their religion polytheistic. They believed that exercising the opportunity to choose between a wide array of gods to worship offered them a great sense of freedom that they treasured. After all, the Greeks were known for their intellectual distinction of which their means of worship played a huge part. Each city-state, or polis, thus had an affiliated god who protected and guided its residents. Within a given polis, the belief in common gods unified the people. Ultimately, the Greeks yearned for this unity and order in the universe, which is a characteristic that is not unlike that of people today. It might seem contradictory that they believed in many gods and sought organization at the same time, for larger numbers are inherently unstable. But, to the god-fear ing Greeks, each god represented a different facet of life that together upheld an organized universe if each of these gods was properly appeased. To satisfy these gods, the Greeks participated in activities such as prayer and sacrifice and erected divine temples and centers for oracles in honor of specific gods. There is evidence of this institutionalization early on in the reign of the Olympian gods, thus forming the Olympian religion. The Olympian religion lacked the presence of true sentimentality, and the gods were not seen as forgiving or "flawless" as the Christian God is often portrayed. The Greek gods were portrayed as humans, which meant that they were not perfect. That is, the gods made mistakes, felt pain (e.g. Aphrodite in love with the mortal Adonis), and succumbed to anger and their tempers (e.

Interpretivists Approach to Suicide

Suicide is a phenomenon understudied in early 1960’s. One of the reasons was due to Durkheim’s ‘‘Le Suicide’’ (1897) had been widely ruled in sociology. Durkheim used a scientific approach to study the causalities of suicide. It was believed that there was little more to study on suicide. However, interpretivists such as Douglas criticised Durkheim’s study as not being reliable due to the fact he used quantitative data. Douglas believed that he failed to take into account society is constructed through people's interactions and all statistics are social construct.Interpretivists seek to find the reasons of suicide by find how society is socially constructed through the social interactions between people in society. Recently, there has been a new interpretive approach which has formed new explanation significantly diverse explanations to Durkheim's positivistic approach. Although interpretivists approaches have produced a more valid meani ng to suicide as some may say, it is still flawed. Douglas classification of suicide was trough social meaning through revenge,self-destruct,sympathetic,guilt etc.He believed that suicide was a way of responding by try to solve a problem. He looked at categorizing suicides according to their social meanings because the causes and responses to suicide vary from society to society. Douglas criticised Durkheim’s study of suicide rates based on it’s methodological grounds. He argued that suicide statistics hardly lacked any form of validity mainly because it could be misinterpreted by the coroner’s verdict.For example, Durkheim suggested that suicide rates were low in Catholic countries due to high social integration. Douglass criticised this he would say that as for Catholics suicide is a mortal sin families would put pressure on coroners to reach an alternative verdict and the suicide figures were low due to inaccuracies. Douglas sees suicide statistics as the res ult of negotiations between the different parties involved which can lead to distorted statistics.He thus says that Durkheim’s study of suicide isn’t useful in society because the statistics were based on coroner’s interpretations (therefore suicides are socially constructed) and so his study wasn’t reliable. He suggests it is more important to look at the meaning of suicide. He also suggested that we need to study them with qualitative methods and use case studies. However he denies that suicide could be explained by external factors. In this case, Douglas theory was considered invalid as he failed to show any kind of evidence to back his research.Atkinson (1978) believed that coroners had a common sense theory of suicide. They categorise suicide based on information from this theory; they consider four types of evidence relevant for reaching a verdict and if the evidence matches the incident then it is considered suicide. Their verdicts are based on sui cide notes, location and circumstances, life history and finally the mode of death. Atkinson also criticises Durkheim’s method of studying suicide, he identified that different cultures imply different interpretations for suicide.For example, he studied four English and Danish coroners and gave them the same case studies . He found that the Danish coroners are much more likely to come to a verdict on suicide based on probability of balance, whereas the English coroners looked for evidence to reach to a conclusion if a suicide was intent. Furthermore, Jean Baechler argued that Durkheim’s study of suicide isn’t useful because suicide can’t be explained wholly in terms of external factors. Not everyone whose business fails, or whose spouse dies, or who is a protestant in an urban area, kill themselves.Thus, to Baechler, suicide must always be at least partially explained through ‘personal factors’ that are particular to an individual and this is n’t possible with the use of official statistics – he thought that it would be more useful to study individual suicide cases and to categorise them – therefore suggesting that Durkheim’s study of suicide isn’t particularly useful in society because it was impossible to find the true meaning behind the suicides using only statistics.On the other hand, however, Steve Taylor criticises both Douglas and Baechler for failing to recognise the value of Durkheim’s work. He criticises Douglas for contradicting himself. At some points Douglas implies that suicide statistics can never be reliable since its always a matter of judgement whether a death is a suicide, but at other times he suggests that causes of suicide can be found; it’s difficult to see how this can be true if its impossible to be certain whether an act is a suicide.Commenting on Baechler, Taylor points out those individual cases often fit a number of categories, depending on the interpretation the researcher makes of the victim’s motives, and there is no reason to believe that these interpretations are any more reliable than suicide statistics. From this he suggested that suicides could be classified into four types such as thantation, submissive, sacrifice and appeal. Taylor approach is useful as it combined both qualitative and quantitative methods making his study both reliable and valid.However, Taylor has received a lot of criticism over the fact he used a lot of secondary data and is unaware of the inaccuracies it contained. It has also been shown that in reality you cannot simply classify suicide into four types. In conclusion, there are many criticisms against Durkheim’s study on suicide which suggest that it is not suitable to study the causalities of suicide and maybe the interpretivists. We should instead examine the interpretive theories of suicide.However, Hindess argues that such writers, whilst criticising the social constructi on of suicide statistics, simply ask us to believe that their interpretations of the â€Å"reality† of suicide are more valid than Durkheim's. He also states that interpretivists have no evidence to support their approach on suicide and simply want us to believe in their interpretations which are no more useful then Durkheim’s study on suicide. Nevertheless, Durkheim’s study was published in the 19th century so maybe it isn’t useful in modern industrial society as the results may not generalise to contemporary society.

Deudas, mal crédito, bancarrota y efectos migratorios

Al iniciar un trà ¡mite migratorio como, por ejemplo, una peticià ³n de familiar o naturalizacià ³n para obtener la ciudadanà ­a americana es comà ºn preguntarse si las deudas pendientes, un mal crà ©dito o la bancarrota  pueden afectar negativamente a la solicitud. La razà ³n de esa preocupacià ³n nace, por una parte, del requisito de tener una situacià ³n situacià ³n econà ³mica saneada para solicitar ciertos beneficios migratorios, como por ejemplo la peticià ³n de cà ³nyuge, hijos, hermanos o padres y, por otro, porque cierto tipo de deudas impide que salgan adelante peticiones migratorias.   Por su importancia, en este artà ­culo se explica en quà © casos y  cà ³mo esas situaciones pueden afectar a los casos migratorios, destacando en primer lugar cuando son irrelevantes y, en segundo lugar, cuando sà ­ se tienen en cuenta a la hora de decidir si se aprueba o no una peticià ³n migratoria. Ademà ¡s, se seà ±alan quà © beneficios recibidos del gobierno se consideran carga pà ºblica y, por lo tanto, afectan negativamente y, por otro lado, cuà ¡les se pueden recibir sin problemas porque no tienen consecuencias migratorias. Casos en los que las deudas y mal crà ©dito no tienen consecuencias migratorias Si se tiene una deuda por no pagar, por ejemplo, a la compaà ±Ãƒ ­a de telà ©fono, una deuda privada, la factura de un mà ©dico, etc, no tiene generalmente efectos ni consulares ni migratorios negativas. Es decir, no afecta a lo que se resuelve con respecto a la peticià ³n. Y ello es asà ­ porque se considera que son asuntos civiles. Lo mismo sucede con el mal crà ©dito. En el caso de peticiones para un familiar de la tarjeta de residencia permanente, tambià ©n conocida como  green card,  lo que importa es que el solicitante tenga ingresos y/o patrimonio  suficientes y demostrables para cubrir las obligaciones del affidavit of support, tambià ©n conocido como declaracià ³n de sostenimiento. Si tiene mal crà ©dito o deuda pendiente, es irrelevante. Casos en los que las malas finanzas sà ­ tienen efectos migratorios Cuando la deuda se convierte en un asunto penal, como por ejemplo, en una estafa u otros semejantes entonces sà ­ que tiene efectos migratorios y puede ser causa para que nieguen visas, peticiones de residencia permanente o de ciudadanà ­a por naturalizacià ³n. Tambià ©n puede ser una causa para que se impida en el control de paso migratorio  el ingreso a Estados Unidos de un extranjero. Si la deuda es con la Hacienda de Estados Unidos (IRS), tambià ©n es un problema que hay que resolver antes de iniciar los trà ¡mites con inmigracià ³n o los consulados. Si la deuda es mà ©dica y el importe de la factura lo pagà ³ Medicaid, tambià ©n puede ser muy problemà ¡tico si se considera que fue un caso de carga pà ºblica. Por ejemplo, si una mujer extranjera tiene a un bebà © en Estados Unidos y no paga por el parto y luego se regresa a su paà ­s, tanto esa mamà ¡ como el papà ¡ el bebà © pueden perder la visa de turista. Con el agravante de que no hay forma de salirse de este problema en concreto. Si se trata de una deuda por no pagar pensià ³n alimenticia (child support), segà ºn las circunstancias del caso puede tener como consecuencia que no se pueden obtener visas americanas, ni la residencia permanente y la ciudadanà ­a por naturalizacià ³n. Y, en casos extremos, puede dar lugar incluso a la deportacià ³n. Incluso, dependiendo del monto de la deuda, los ciudadanos americanos pueden encontrase con que no pueden sacar el pasaporte y, por lo tanto, no pueden viajar internacionalmente. Destacar que el child support puede ser solicitado no sà ³lo para nià ±os que viven en Estados Unidos sino tambià ©n en el caso de residir en otros paà ­ses cuando tienen a al menos el padre o la madre viviendo en Estados Unidos. En estos casos, tener en cuenta que  la Embajada americana en el paà ­s de residencia del menor no puede ayudar en estos casos. La razà ³n es que este es un tema de los estados,  no del gobierno federal. Algunos paà ­ses, como  Mà ©xico, tienen firmados acuerdos de reclamo de pensià ³n alimenticia con varios estados.  En los casos en los que no hay tales acuerdos y se desea exigir el pago de dicha pensià ³n, contactar con la agencia de  child support  del estado en el que vive el papà ¡ o la mamà ¡. O contratar a un  abogado en dicho estado. Ademà ¡s, tener en cuenta que el tener un papà ¡ que es estadounidense  no da automà ¡ticamente derecho a adquirir la ciudadanà ­a americana  cuando se nace fuera de los Estados Unidos. Ademà ¡s  que en el caso de reclamar pensiones de alimentos en el caso de nià ±os nacidos fuera de matrimonio primero es necesario  establecer legalmente la filiacià ³n. Quà © beneficios son considerados como una carga pà ºblica Uno de los requisitos legales para ser admisible a los Estados Unidos es no ser considerado una carga pà ºblica. Y es que por esta causa se pueden negar un amplio abanico de peticiones o solicitudes migratorias como, por ejemplo, una  visa no inmigrante o una visa inmigrante o el ajuste de Estatus o para adquirir la ciudadanà ­a por naturalizacià ³n. Se considera que es una carga pà ºblica haber recibido del gobierno beneficios monetarios como, por ejemplo, el Suplemento de Ingresos de Seguridad (SSI, por sus siglas en inglà ©s), o Asistencia Temporal a Familias en Necesidad  (TANF, por sus siglas en inglà ©s). Destacar que estos beneficios pueden recibir otros nombres dependiendo del estado. Por ejemplo,   en California al programa TANF se le conoce como CalWorks. Finalmente, tener en cuenta que la regla general sobre los efectos migratorios de recibir beneficios considerados como carga pà ºblica tiene importantes excepciones. Por ejemplo, asilados y refugiados pueden recibir TANF y SSI sin problemas. Quà © beneficios no se consideran carga pà ºblica Se puede recibir del gobierno sin problemas WIC para infantes y embarazadas, cupones o estampillas de alimentos, que en California reciben el nombre de Calfresh. Asimismo, se puede aceptar ayuda a la vivienda o para guarderà ­as, Headstar o Medicaid para menores. En otras palabras, recibir este tipo de  beneficios no perjudica a peticiones o solicitudes migratorias que se realicen despuà ©s. Quà © hacer si se tiene una deuda con posibles consecuencias migratorias Si se tienen dudas sobre si una deuda puede afectar negativamente a una peticià ³n migratoria, antes de presentarla es recomendable contactar con un abogado de buena reputacià ³n o con una organizacià ³n de apoyo legal a migrantes para determinar si realmente tiene impacto migratorio y, en caso afirmativo, decidir quà © pasos tomar.   Generalmente en estos casos, lo mà ¡s recomendable es contactar con la agencia encargada del cobro de la deuda (collection agency  en inglà ©s) e intentar llegar a un acuerdo sobre la cantidad a pagar y los plazos para hacerlo. Este es un artà ­culo informativo. No es asesorà ­a legal.