1. Let’s start out with a very elementary question…
Week 2 -- Culture
Let’s start out with a very elementary question…

2. How can you tell if someone is dead?
By this I mean definitive signs of death…
Not just maybe dead
After all, you never know when you might run into a dead body…

3. Definitive Signs? Not breathing? But they could still be revived..
No detectable pulse?
They might be revivable too…
Cold? Stiff?
Could have hypothermia.
Flat-lined on EKG?
Even some of those folks have come back

4. It’s Hard to Tell if Someone’s Dead
That’s what a famous Harvard anthropologist Richard Schultes told his student Wade Davis one day
In fact, people “come back” from the dead all the time…
That’s why we use embalming fluid and nail coffins shut
Too scary otherwise…

5. Zombies
Dr Shultes had an article “Alleged Zombie Kills Master” from Haiti.
He suspected Zombies might be real
He thought certain herbs and poisons might turn people into something very much like Zombies
He already knew that Blowfish poison sometimes caused people to be paralyzed with no vital signs, but to…
… STILL BE CONSCIOUS!

6. Going to Haiti He sent his student Wade Davis to Haiti to do research
What Davis found was written in a book The Serpent and the Rainbow.
(It was later made into a scary Hollywood horror movie)
So what did Davis find out?

7. What are Zombies? First we have to be clear on what zombies are:
Neither dead nor alive (undead)
Slow-moving, clumsy
Under the control of a voodoo Zombie Master
(They don’t eat brains, though)

8. What Davis Found Out
Shultes believed Zombies were created by a special poison
Davis found out though, that there were 3 ingredients necessary…

9. The three Ingredients to make a Zombie
1. A poison
2. An antidote
3. A little bit of sociology

10. How it might work
Suppose you lived in Haiti, and one day someone got pissed off at you
And it turned out it he was a Voodoo practitioner
Instead of flipping you off, he might put a curse on you to become a zombie.
But you don’t believe in zombies

11. The Voodoo Master’s Secret
What you don’t know is that the Voodoo master has many spies and allies
One day, one of them might be able to slip some zombie poison into your food
You’d collapse and everyone would think you are dead
But you could hear everything going on around you

12. Haiti features “Same Day” burials!
Lacking modern equipment, the doctor in Haiti would pronounce you dead
Because Haiti is so hot, people get buried the same day so they don’t stink
They would cart you away to the graveyard within hours

13. Join the “Undead” See the Underworld!
They would put you in the coffin
Nail it shut
Put the dirt back on your coffin
And you’d be buried
It would be very quiet
Maybe you would remember you were cursed

14. Zombies Need Love, Too…
At about midnight, you might be surprised to hear noises
… the sounds of people digging you up…
And the sounds of Voodoo drums…
They would open the coffin and give you a potion…
The Antidote!

15. The Antidote Wade Davis easily found out what the antidote was
An herb very similar to the well-known belladonna
In fact, it is often used as an anti-histamine
But it has side-effects

16. The Side Effects Drowsiness Clumsiness Groggy-ness
In fact, acting like a zombie.

17. Do we have a match? 1. Undead 2. Clumsy, slow-moving
3. Under control of the Zombie master
1. Zombie Poison
2. Zombie Antidote
Hmm, but would we be under his control?

18. A little bit of sociology
This is where the sociology comes in:
Remember, in Haiti, a lot of people believe in Voodoo
Not only that, you went through an experience of being killed and brought back to life
So if you believed 100% you were a zombie, would that make you one?

19. Zombie, yea or nay? No, but you might still act like one.
We know this because research on self-esteem shows that when people don’t believe they can do something, they never test it out
Or if they do, it’s half-hearted, so it always fails … thus proving them right.

20. Zombies Unite!
So Zombies are people who are brainwashed into thinking they are not free even though they really are.
But here’s the Kicker:
So are you.
That is -- whenever you accept someone else’s “reality” without testing it out

21. Culture is the Cult you are.
Culture is just another term for the brainwashing your society subjects you to
Do you think kissing is good, hamburgers are food, and terrorists are bad?
That’s because you are American
But you might not think so if you were a vegetarian, terrorist Eskimo.
(If there are such things).