Myths and Religion Essay - 899 Words

When this word â€Å"myth† is used, the term is usually related to a fable, invention or a fiction story. Over the years, many scholars started approaching the study of myth differently. These scholars have approach myths in a way their meaning was traditionally regarded. In many traditions these myth are true stories and never refer to as false stories. ( http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/grecoromanmyth1/a/whatismyth.htm ) In many of tradition, a myth carries within it a sense of sacred tradition and primordial relation. These myths are also serving as model for chosen tradition. Myths are extremely complex cultural reality that can be approached and interpreted from various viewpoints. These viewpoints are often related to the whole of†¦show more content†¦The religious minds relate muths to the sacredness of their belief. Sometime this sacredness is towards certain object. These objects can be animals, people, localized spaces within sacredness are found in the hi story of religion to be primitive to the most highly developed. Mysterious acts. These mysterious acts can be the manifestations of a stone or tree, which are consider elementary initiation. These mysterious acts also have supreme initiation, the most notable act is found in Christianity. This supreme initiation is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. (http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/general/ge-gues.htm). Even though a stone or a tree is, classify as an elementary imitation. Many fail to understand why people will consider a stone or a tree sacred. Many fail to understand that the veneration of the object itself is not involved. The stone or a tree is worship, because it is thought to become imbued with something sacred. This makes it no longer just a tree or a stone. When relating the power of myth to Taoism, one the greatest belief is found in the first cause of the universe. Tao is said to be the first cause of the universe. The force that produces the universe is what flow through all life. Tao is what a person needs to live harmoniously with nature. If anyone follows this religion, one must nurture the Ch’I, which is the air, and the breath that has been given to him or her. Each personShow MoreRelatedReligion and Myth1007 Words   |  5 PagesA biblical myth is defined by Burrows, (1946) as a symbolic, approximate expression of truth which the human mind cannot perceive sharply and completely, but can only glimpse vaguely, and therefore cannot adequately express. In bibilical interpretation a myth is a story which communicates a set of values or beliefs through imagery. The most important thing in the myth is the message and not the literal truth of the imagery. . 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Myths grant stability to a culture, and in this respect; serve to explain the unexplainable. From Barbra Sproul’s perspective, creation myths reveal basic religious concerns pertaining to how the universe was formed, and how people or societies are fashioned. Myths speak of the transcendent and unknowable aspects in a drama that attempt to reveal and give reason to human existenceRead MoreFoundations of Mythology870 Words   |  4 Pagesthe word myth used popularly? For example, what does the statement, â€Å"It’s a myth† mean? In contrast, how is the word myth used in the academic context? After considering the definition in your textbooks and course materials, write a definition in your own words. The statement â€Å"It’s a myth† to me means that it is not true or not fully true. There may be some truth but there is some false information added to the story. Myths- the rich rewards awaiting questioners willing to approach myths from numerousRead MoreThe Categories Of Religious Studies1124 Words   |  5 Pagesreligious studies students think of religion they think of people that are very passionate about their particular god, but most people do not understand why people act the way they do in religions. In religious studies they examine how different categories of religion help people of that religion conduct a structured way of life. There are many categories, that once are utilized, will help religious studies students obtain a deeper understanding of people in religions. The categories that will informRead MoreThe Cultural Aspects Of Culture995 Words   |  4 Pagesby the people that live in that specific location. That being said, religion can be indigenou s or non-indigenous. Indigenous religions are religions that are native to a place. Some good examples of indigenous religions are Shintoism, which is native to Japan, Christianity which, originated in Rome and Islam, which is believed to be originated in Mecca. A couple examples of non-indigenous religion are Voodoo and New Age. Religions originate when people that live close get together share their beliefRead MoreFoundations of Mythology Essay757 Words   |  4 PagesFoundations of Mythology Hum/105 June 25, 2013 Gayla Nelson Foundations of Mythology †¢ How is the word myth used popularly? For example, what does the statement, â€Å"It’s a myth† mean? In contrast, how is the word myth used in the academic context? After considering the definition in your textbooks and course materials, write a definition in your own words. The word â€Å"myth† can be used in so many ways and it can also have so many different meaning based on the contents of the word. It

Europa Europa Film Assignment Free Essays

At first in the orphanage, Solomon goes through indoctrination, and the ideas are presented to him. From there it seems that he begins to change, but gets reinforcement when the bombs begin to I fall after the candy incident. In the interaction with the German troops, he adapts by lying on who he is really is to survive, and make it through the events. We will write a custom essay sample on Europa Europa Film Assignment or any similar topic only for you Order Now The theme of adapting ties with Judaism, because as Jews were expelled from place to place, as they moved they changed to fit into environment, and lastly survive through time. This Idea becomes visible because s Solomon moves from place to place, he changes his Identity to adapt and survive. However this Is not only a literal change of his Identity. At a point he pulls his skin on his pens In attempt to make It look Like he Is not circumcised. This Is a physical change that he tries to perform, but Is not able to do so In the end. From here It Is clear that he wants to hide out, but every time it is a change that goes with hiding his religion and the ideas that create that religious ideology. In the movie, adaptability becomes a need to survive, and in sense has relation to Judaism. Within the roots of Judaism has the sense of movement to find out that the ideas have dispersed. In the movie, the sense that he is exiled from his identity, and at times it seems that he is far out, and cannot come back. But as the plot develops, he attempts to return back to his true identity, but then to be caught within the lines of the Germans yet again. But then in the end he ends up returning to his real identity. But as he comes back, he learns that his family Is dead except for his brother, and In sense the family is dispersed away from each other. In the movie Europe Europe, there are various themes that are apparent. But the idea of adaptability to survive comes up over and over through the movie. It establishes that in the end the true identity that comes from your cultural background, ends up, at times having oneself to change for survival. Within the movie Solomon changes to survive, in hope that he may see the light in the end of tunnel. Through this ordeal, he confronts his religious beliefs and has doubts about them. But over and over through specific scenes he is reinserted that belief is still strong tit him. Through his perils he encounters various events, when these events take a turn for the worse; the belief is restored through some specific event, or him being saved from revealing his real identity. Solomon changes himself not to oppose his beliefs or even his religion, but more so to survive. From Judaism the idea of exile implies that you leave, and upon leaving you slightly alter yourself to fit In, and blend From here one can conclude that In various manners, Solomon performs an act that is identified within in his religion. Solomon survives Dye slung ten concept AT adapt TTY Tanat comes Walt n ten Idea AT exile, and is though he alters his belief, he is reinserted by his beliefs yet again that they are in reality in him. Even when he tries to pull his skin to cover his circumcision he fells the pains, and learns that the identity follows him regardless if he lives with them in the open, or if he attempts to hide them. Solomon holds the idea of adaptability to secure his life, and at the time it was one of his main concerns, and he successfully does so. How to cite Europa Europa Film Assignment, Papers

Relative Leader Member Exchanges †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Relative Leader Member Exchanges. Answer: Introduction: The aim of the assignment is to conduct critical analysis of a leader who is a role model to improve my leadership qualities and effectiveness. The assignment is divided into three stages. The first stage points out the qualities of a leader and ways she can use her leadership skills. The paper takes into account the branch manager of the logistics company I am employed as a junior manager. The first section is the observation section and discusses the leadership styles of the branch manager. It then delves into how she uses influence and power to lead her subordinates. The second stage contains the time line to describe this process of observing the manager. This is followed an interview of her to gain deeper insight of her leadership styles. The branch manager in the interview also reveals about the challenges she faces a leader and the importance of power to hold ones position in an organisation. The last stage contains self-reflection of mine about the leadership styles I would a pply when I gain promotion to a leaders position like the branch manager. It also contains a recommendation for the branch manager. The branch manager of the logistic company I work in is an employee who is often regarded as successful and effective leader. I report to her as a trainee manager and have the opportunity to interact with her on regular basis. Regular observations of her style of working and leading the branch reveals her leadership traits and behaviour. She influences her subordinates and uses Hawthorne effect to lead and motivate them. The branch manager holds a vintage of working for more than five years in the logistic company and has the experience of working in two other organisations. She currently holds the position of an assistant vice president in the logistic company and holds positive professional relationship with several other top officials. She uses her position and power to influence her subordinates (Vann, Coleman and Simpson 2014). The branch manager of the branch of the logistics company I am posted in uses influence both within and outside the organisations to secure business. She has years of experience of working in the logistics industry and knows how logistics industry works. She possess several leadership qualities like focus, confidence, integrity, passion for her profession, analytical power, decision making power, knowledge about the market and most importantly strong communication skills(Clarke 2013). She has exercised and displayed these leadership qualities of her on several occasion and has earned recognition from the apex management multiple times. Use of influence within the company: She uses her influences to make the employees including the junior work efficiently. She at first holds a meeting every morning with her subordinates to decide the productivity parameters she expects them to achieve for the day. The productivity parameters include the number of new customers each employee should meet and number of follow up appointments the employees should attend. Then she would ask her subordinates the estimated number of appointments meetings and which are likely to earn new customers who would use the logistics facility of the company. She would then analyse the business and the cash inflow these new customers can earn for the company(Epitropaki and Martin 2013). The branch manager would then ask the employees including the junior employees whether they have any difficulty in convincing any particular customer. If the employee in question happens to be a junior employee, she would ensure that a senior employee accompanies the junior employee for the appointment. If the employee happens to be a senior or if a customer is not agreeing to use the logistics facility of the company even after several appointments, she personally accompanies the employees on the next appointment. This support and concern for the employees and their performances reveals her focus and passion for business generation as a branch manager(DuBrin 2015). The branch manager has excellent communication and persuasive skills which she to influence the behaviour of her subordinate employees. She would keep on reminding the employees working under her that the apex management watches their performances and behaviour. She on regular basis make the employees realise that their high performances would bring about their own promotions, job satisfaction and career growth. She would hold personal meetings with poorly performing employees and advice them how to improve their performances(Northouse 2015). The branch manager keeps a watch over the performances of every employee working under her and congratulates high performing employees with rewards and recognition certificates. She would warn employees who show unprofessional and casual attitude towards their work. These actions of her reveal several leadership qualities. They reveal her concern for her followers and their performances. These actions of her reveal her motivation and performance analysing power. It can be said that these qualities of her have great influences on the employees at the branch(Daft 2014). Her continuous supervision encouraged employees to achieve high level of performances by acquiring new customers, maintaining healthy relationship with the existing customers. The outcome of her influence as a branch leader was that the employees succeeded in acquiring a huge client base that used the logistics facilities of the company which generated outstanding revenues for branch and the company as a whole. It is worth mentioning that some of the customers acquired and maintained under the leadership of the branch manager are multinational companies who uses the logistics facilities of the company and generates huge revenue on regular basis (Bernab-Moreno et al. 2015). Use of influence on the customers: The branch manager uses her excellent influential leadership powers to win customers from even bigger logistics companies. She first uses her tremendous communication and persuasive skills to win customers. She addresses and treats the new customers as if they were existing customers. She at first speaks to the customers, asks important questions and their business requirements to analyse their nature of logistics requirements(Tanriverdi and Uysal 2015). For example, if the customer happened to be a leading soft drink selling company, she would ask questions relating to the volume of inventory (bottles of soft drinks) they normally deliver per lot and the locations they send the inventory to. She then analyses the business needs of the customers based on their answers. She highlights before them the advantages of working with the company and the facilities, which the company can provide its customers. She would often compare between the facilities of the logistics companies to its co mpetitors to highlight the competitive advantage of the former. This aggressive influential process of acquiring clients of hers often succeeds in wining new customers for the logistics company(Dagger and Danaher 2014). I on a previous occasion interviewed her assistant and he too said that the branch manager uses her influence to win over customers to contribute to the companys clientele and business generation. The branch manager often uses her position to lead her subordinates to ensure steady generation of business and continuous inflow of revenue. The logistics company has two broad divisions, the operating offices which generate revenue and do all the back office operations and the logistics department which maintains the warehouses and logistics vehicles. The operating offices direct the logistics department to provide warehouses or logistics transport facilities to the customers and ensures the clients get superior logistics facilities. The sales staffs of the branch meet the clients at regular intervals to know about their complaints and new requirements(Pennings et al. 2014). They intimate their branch heads and the logistics department heads about the complaints and new requirements of the customers. Our branch manager keeps a strict vigil on the requirements and the complaints of the customers. She ensures that their requirements are met and the complaints are resolved, if possibl e. This aggressive use of position to ensure customer satisfaction helps the company to maintain long term business relationships with big customers and generate continue revenue by providing logistics services to them(Gupta, Gautam and Khare 2015). The branch manager as one of the vice presidents of the company uses her power to ensure that the customers of the branch get prompt logistics services at best rates. She uses her power to influence the human resource department and a few senior managers to approve absorption of four competent outsource employees into the payroll of the company. The branch uses her position to highlight the high performances of the employees at the branch before the management. This ensures that the employee get recognitions and promotion to higher posts which bring them job satisfaction and career(Treem and Leonardi 2013). This effective and supportive leadership of the branch manager motivate the subordinate employees to attain high degree of business performance. It is this influence and power of hers that has made the branch the highest revenue and business earner branch(Fleming and Spicer 2014). Our branch uses her power of a vice president in her personal life to gain advantageous deals at hotels and restaurants. She is married and her husband is a lawyer. She used her position of a vice president to gain work life balance like availing herself paid vacations. She went to exotic tourist locations and stayed at five star hotels. She used her power to get the accounts department reimburse her all the personal expenses. She on one occasion used the companys logistics trucks to shift her home by paying minimum charges(Northouse 2015). The timeline of observing, interviewing and reflecting regarding the branch managers leadership skills spans over three years before the writing started. The observation spanned over three years since I joined the organisation. The interview of her took place a month ago and continued for two hours. It revealed the complexities of leadership roles and positions. The interview and the observation laid me to think the leadership qualities she possesses that make her a good leader. Hawthorne effect: Hawthorne effect or the observer effect refers to the response of individuals when they are under observation of senior employees. The theory gets its name of the place Hawthorne where Elton Mayo, the proposer of the theory conducted researches on employees to study their responses when they are under observation of superior employees. The theory tells that when employees are subjected to supervision of senior employees and senior managers, they improve their performances to get recognitions for the improvements in their performances(McCambridge, Witton and Elbourne 2014). Hawthorne effect can be observed in all organisations like logistics organisations where employees try to attain high levels of performances to achieve promotions and appraisals, which lead to their career development. The branch manager uses Hawthorne effect to ensure high performances among her employees. She makes them realise that their performances are continuously being watched by the apex management and the senior managers(Leurent et al. 2016). This emphasis on the need to maintain continuous level of high performances makes employees eligible for promotions. I got an opportunity to interview the branch manager, Mrs.... during the Know Your Leader event. There she revealed several aspects of her leadership activities like her leadership styles and challenges she faces as a leader. The branch manager told that according to her leadership is about leading subordinates and motivating them even during tough situations. She told the responsibilities of a leader to understand the position of her subordinate and see into the fact whether the subordinates requires any guidance or mentoring or not. She revealed that she follows a combination of various leadership styles while leading her subordinates. She told that when she holds the morning meeting, she encourages her subordinates to participate in the decision making at the morning meeting. She at that time follows participative leadership style in order to ensure that all the staff members contribute towards making strategies to generate business. When she assesses our performances at the end o f the day or a month, she assumes autocratic leadership style and gives us commands. This revealed several qualities of the branch manager as a leader. Her leadership qualities consist of decision-making power, analytical power, motivational power and focus. When asked about the complexities she faces as a leader, the branch manager replied that leadership is a very complex process because it involves decision-making. She revealed that at times she has to decide to expose the poor performances of the subordinates from the cluster head or to hide those performances and get hit by the cluster head. She revealed that as a leadership she thinks it important to motivate and provide mental support to her subordinates even when they are performing badly. A leader in her position, according to her should know to when to reprimand and when to support a subordinate. The branch manager revealed that leaders have to face several challenges while execting their duties and responsibilities as leaders. She told that there are several factors in the organisations like politics, pressure from seniors and peer pressure leads to the challenges a leader faces. The told that when she started her career as an executive, she had faced challenges from her seniors who would try to demean her motivation. She however told that she has received a lot of support from her peer employees and her immediate bosses. She told that an employee in order to rise in her career should perform well and accept challenges as opportunities. The branch manager told that the employees should gain support from the superior employees and the employees at the same level of hierarchy to achieve promotion and appraisal at the initial stage. She further revealed that the employees in the later stages gain power and use it to influence their colleagues. She revealed that use of power and influence in the later stage help employees to gain promotions and other job facilities. She quipped that power and influence are also instrumental in achieving career growth and stability. They help employees to counteract the impact of the pressure created by other employees. Third stage: Self reflection and recommendations: I learnt several aspects of leadership by observing and feedback of my role model, the branch manager. I can recommend that my own leadership quality can be improved by applying her leadership styles. I have observed that the branch manager uses influence and power to conduct her duties as a branch manager successfully. I have observed that she uses her influence both within and outside the organisation. She uses her influence to make her subordinates perform well. I can opine that her influential position encouraged all the employees of my branch to work harder to generate business. She holds morning meetings to decide on the business to be generated for a day and divide it among us, the employees working under her. Upon reflecting I can point out that while leading us she combines various styles of leadership. She assigns our daily targets individually without asking for our opinion in an authoritative manner. When she asks for our feedback while forming the business generation str ategy, she encourages us to participate. Here I can point out she followed participative leadership style to lead us. I can also point out from my observation that as a leader the branch manager has excellent understanding about the needs of the customers, which she combines with her influential position to acquire customers. She treats even new customers as existing customers, which helps in optimising their decision to work to the logistics company. Upon reflecting on my leadership skills, I feel that I require improving my own leadership skills. I feel that I would combine several leadership theories and practices to better by leadership effectiveness and qualities. Leadership styles and practices to be applied by me: I would follow democratic leadership style and encourage my subordinates to participate in the decision making process. This would make them feel more responsible and encourage them to perform highly. I would also use strategic leadership style and help the upper management to communicate its expectation from subordinates more clearly. I would emphasis on creating a positive environment in the organisation so that the employees feel more motivated to perform higher. The next leadership style I would use is Hawthorne effect like the branch manager. I would make the employees working under me realise that their performances are being continuously watched by the senior managers and me. Upon evaluation of all the three leadership styles I feel that the democratic style will help me to gain participation of the all the employees in decision-making. Hence following this style will encourage the employees to express their innovative selling techniques. Upon evaluating the necessity of strat egic leadership style I can point out that this style will instrumental in bringing about positive changes in the attitudes of the employees which would ultimately transform into their high performances. Hawthorne effect as per my evaluation would keep the employees alert about the continuous supervision of the senior manager over them. It would help them to keep a track on their individual performances. Thus in my opinion combining these three styles of leadership would help me to gain their participation in business acquisition strategy making on one hand and make them achieve their own performances. This would ultimately transform into the high performance of the branch as a whole and help the branch employees to achieve promotions from the senior management. This would also help me to get promotion since high performances of my subordinates would prove my effective leadership qualities before the upper management. Recommendations: The previous discussions about the use of power by the branch manager show that she uses her power to make the accounts department pay her personal bills. It is my recommendation to the branch manager that she should not use her power to have her personal bills paid because it affects the financial resources available to the company. Conclusion: I have arrived at the conclusion that leadership qualities like focus and communication skills help the leaders in the organisation to lead their subordinates. I have also learnt that use of influence and power are inseparable components of leadership activities carried out by employees holding high positions like that of a branch manager. I have also learnt that successful leaders in their initial phases have to face lot of challenges in order to reach high position. I would like to conclude by stating that successful leaders combine various leadership styles in order to lead their followers. 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