The Reality Behind The Mask In “Ekpo Ikpaisong” In Annang Culture Of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

Abstract

The greatest success in modern scholarship came when man turned his
curious intellectual searchlight away from the universe toward himself.
Who/what is the human person? When Aristotle gave his simple answer to
this question he only awoke scholars to the complexity, the
multidimensionality and the incomprehensibility of the being in question
and the elusiveness of his character and nature. On the one hand man
parades outwardly what people are tempted to consider his characteristic
excellence - his ontological essence. While on the other he proves beyond
reasonable doubt by his surprising chameleon-like change of behaviour
and attitude that the external does not even suffice as a glimpse of the
beyond-the-empirical universe located beneath the 'surface'. Those are
instances which confirm succinctly that man is a masquerade - a composite
being. Christianity is at least aware of that much by maintaining that the
human person is made of body and soul.