Summary Of Hegemony By Karen Armstrong

In Karen Armstrong’s passage titled “Homo religiosus”, she takes a spiritual approach writing about the indispensability of religion in ancient cultures. In contrast to Armstrong’s text, in her essay “Biographies of Hegemony”, Karen Ho writes about the cut-throat reality of Wall Street that mirrors the ancient religious rituals in a modern day environment. In a similar approach to Ho’s, in his text titled “Son”, Andrew Solomon writes a modern narrative describing his life struggles as a gay person who believed in himself and managed to overcome all obstacles and connect with his family. All three texts discuss the meaning of life and offer different approaches to reaching self-worth and happiness. Armstrong writes about several groups of people …show more content…
The strong group dynamic from prestigious universities is what keeps investment banking alive and it does its share by allowing its workers to live more than comfortably with the wages. To some people, being hired into a finance job allows people the “ultimate” level of happiness as would a religious belief. The investment banks make it clear “that if Harvard and Princeton students join the [investment banking] firms, then in a few years, they too can have it all,” (Ho 175). Unlike religious groups that come together and value life, investment bankers and prospective workers come together and value money. However, Armstrong writes that “religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of art, music, or poetry must be developed… intense effort is required..” (Armstrong 6), and the field of investment banking is also hard work. The field is competitive and cut-throat, and as Nicolas Bern said, they only hire “the smartest and most ambitious people,” (Ho 166). Religion is hard work to maintain just as it is hard to be in the field of finance. In our modern world, the “ultimate” is possible to be realized because of money, which people think is the key to happiness. However, it is instead the idea of being part of and accepted into a …show more content…
In Armstrong’s text, people found happiness in sharing the same beliefs as other people, and those beliefs were maintained as long as the people continued to believe. Similarly, Wall Street jobs continue to be popular and sought-after by students at Ivy League schools like Harvard and Princeton as long as the students believe that the job is the key to their happiness. The belief that the money from having a job on Wall Street will make you happy will continue as long as the students themselves believe that. Lastly, for Solomon who shared his own individual beliefs, he was conditioned to find something that he truly believed in, which was himself, and that gave him reason to live. Without a group to stand behind him, Solomon grew up alone and unable to identify himself. His own personal beliefs were lost in the mix with the other more popular beliefs. All in all, all three texts examine that if a group worships something for long, then that belief will stick around. For those who are alone, they need to believe in themselves in order to leave their mark of their