Dr. Gradegesin opened with a story about gratitude. The story was about Iwa, the granddaughter of patience, who married orummila, the god of wisdom. Iwa told orummila that she would only marry him if he did not stress her. Through marrying Iwa, Orummila gained honor and fortune, but was still unsatisfied. He began to stress Iwa about cooking and cleaning until he left him. After she left, clients stopped coming to him and he lost some of his fortune. Orummila searched for Iwa, apologized, and convinced her to return to him. Iwa is a symbol or character in the story because if you lose it, you lose everything.
Gradegesin went on to talk about Ma’at, representing truth, justice, order, balance, and harmony. Principles of Ma’at include no sinning, robbery, stealing, killing, swindling, lying, cursing, ignoring truth, adultery, making people cry, being depressed without reason, assaulting, polluting oneself, disobeying the law, acting hastily, working evil, cursing, disrespecting the dead, etc.
Gradegesin also told a story about a man who prosecuted his own father, to Plato’s great confusion, and posed the philosophical question, “Do the gods love what you do because it is the right thing, or is it the right thing because the gods love it?”
He went on to speak about Ptahhotep, a principle meaning that “a man of character is a man of wealth, and he talked about the Coffin Texts, written from 2200-1800 BCE for the tombs of nobles. These Coffin Texts inspired Moses. He also spoke about Iwa as character and existence.
I thought this was one of the most interesting lectures thus far. I really enjoyed the stories, and the African talking drums. The speaker did go off on a lot of tangents that made his lecture hard to follow, but it was full of good advice and kept my attention.
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