What is the value of something that has lasted a thousand years?
Today, Hà Trang and Kim discuss the weight and importance of traditions. Through Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Kim draws similarities between Jackson's chilling human sacrifice ritual with the recent Grindadrap in Faroe Islands, where over 1400 dolphins were killed in the name of tradition. It begs the question: is the preservation of our own identities worth the rejection, erasure, and even life, of others?
Similarly, Hà Trang reads Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" and ponders about what exactly are we walling out, and more importantly, what are we so bent on walling in? How much of our identity is based upon the continuation of these collective cultural practices and memory? Will we, and our culture, become obsolete if we discard a tradition that has largely become obsolete?
