The Guaraní group did a wonderful job with their blog lecture! It was organized, informative and engaging. I also loved the pictures! For me, it was especially interesting to learn about Guaraní mythology, and that today, the seven monsters are still thought to be out and about in the countryside. It was also interesting to learn about the relationship the Guaraní have with nature and the environment. In fact, they believe that “more intense contact with the natural world involves a close relationship to the soul or to the respective protector of the being.” To tie in a keyword, the Guaraní ontology seems to especially highlight a non-divide between nature the human. The Guaraní “believe that nature can hear, feel, adorn itself, despair, get tired, get sick, and die” just like a human can.

Though many parts of this lecture stood out to me, there was one in particular that got me thinking: “Despite Guaraní culture and traditions being threatened, the Guaraní are proud of their cultures and continue to live their spirituality and pass on stories as their ancestors once did.” Pride is so interesting to me. Actually, fun fact (or maybe not so fun for those who have also studied lots of psychology), pride (as an emotion) has been a hot topic in the world of psychology for many years. At first it didn’t receive lots of attention because it wasn’t considered to be a primary emotion (such as happiness, disgust, sadness, etc). However, there is now evidence that there is in fact a universal pride expression, and all of this evidence suggests that pride is a basic human emotion. So why all this talk about pride? I just think it’s super interesting to think about the different ways that cultures or groups of people express pride. It’s interesting to think about its stability as well; unlike happiness, disgust and sadness, for example, which can all be switched on and off in seconds, pride seems to me to be slightly more sturdy or fixed. With the Guaraní, despite their culture and traditions being threatened, which would have heavily messed with their happiness and sadness, their pride remained strong until today. And they show this pride by continuing the engage with their spirituality and pass down ancestral stories.