Monetary Thaumaturgy Part I: Language
One of the better tiny books I've ever bought has to be, in my opinion, In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World by Christopher J. Moore. In it, we learn that there are languages without certain terms speakers of other languages take for granted. Once those terms are made known, the odd language out might embrace the foreign term to express what was absent yet blazingly obvious once it was expressed and explained.
Some great examples include the French term Esprit de escalier, literally "the spirit of the staircase;" it's the feeling you get after figuring out the perfect thing to say at a party . . . once you are coming down the stairs leaving the party. There's the Yiddish kvell, a word Harlan Ellison defined as happiness beyond all other forms of happiness, like "the sun shining in the pit of your stomach." From Finnish, there's sisu, a dogged determination to avoid defeat against all odds of winning, even when the odds are seemingly impossible. The author provides an amusing example of sisu in the introduction:
"We're outnumbered," one soldier says. "There must be over forty of them, and only two of us."
"Dear God, it'll take us all day to bury them!"
For this post, perhaps the Japanese tatemae might be appropriate, meaning "the reality that everyone professes to be true, even though they may not privately believe it," and it's counterpoint honne, "the reality that you hold inwardly to be true, even though you would never admit it publicly." Both of those seem awkward to me, since I usually am quite open with my silly notions. Hey, let's face it: I come from the land of the phrase "The squeaky wheel gets greased," meaning those that complain are usually first to get their complaints addressed. We in the States are a very personally opinionated crowd in general (not that any given internet community would provide excessive evidence of this). In Japan, no such squeaky phrase exists . . . but they do say "The nail that stands tallest gets hit first." Two cultures, two attitudes toward expression of personal opinion.
I recently heard a TED Talk that extended the concept of language in a surprising direction.
(In case LJ is giving us more Luddite conniptions with the new YouTube code, here's a link. Really, LJ, how long must this go on?)
His research, to the video phobic, relates to languages that various strength in their time tenses. From this article on the topic:
Some tongues, including English, are strong future-time-reference, or FTR, languages. . . .
Chen theorized that weak-FTR languages would be more conducive to future-oriented behavior because, in those grammars, the future feels the same as the present. Linguists have mapped strong and weak FTR languages in Europe, so Chen correlated that information with data on behaviors that sacrifice present pleasures for the future self, like saving, exercising and avoiding tobacco. . . .
His results are rather mind-boggling: In Europe, speakers of weak-FTR languages (German, Finnish and Estonian are examples) were 30 percent more likely to have saved money in a given year than were equivalent speakers of a strong-FTR language (English, Spanish or Greek, for instance).
(I underlined.)
So, because we English speakers refer to the acts of saving, dieting, exercising and avoiding unhealthy habits as something we do in the future, we somehow manage to put it off for something we should do in the future, even to the point of forgetting to ever do it. We even have a strong tradition of reserving the future to a single day, New Year's. That's the first time we can make and forget our affirmations to do better for the future, in the future. Who knew our language might be more to blame than our laziness, or rather, that our laziness might have an origin in our language?
Here, we should talk like magicians. Not the illusionist entertainment sleight-of-hand magic types most often sawing women in half in special cabinets or making with the bunnies from the deep hats, but the magick with a K types. It is from these special practitioners that we get the concept of thaumaturgy. Though it originally meant workers of wonders and miracles, modern-day sorcerers, druids, magicians et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseum now refer to "thaumaturgy" as (according to one practitioner, the Archdruid John Michael Greer) "the manipulation of the human mind by pushing non-rational buttons" (a definition he gives in this podcast).
I should clarify: "Non-rational" here does not mean the same as "nonsense," but rather more like "subconscious" or "subliminal." If people were not affected by thaumaturgy, Greer reasons, would they spend as much time and treasure as they do in the United States acquiring and drinking "fizzy burnt sugar water?" Such is the power of thaumaturgy when applied to commercial advertising.
And here our native tongues are influencing the way we think, according to Chen. Where there is no overly explicit time difference between saving and spending, the speakers are more likely to save; where the time difference is quite explicit, people are more likely to spend now and worry about saving later. The lingual thaumaturgical influence later appears clearly only after we dissect the data.
Of course, in times of crisis that data might just be front-page news. Given that the countries called PIGS in Europe all have what Chen termed "strong-FTR," and the Northern European languaged countries "weak-FTR," perhaps we can stop blaming the people in those countries explicitly for their lack of spending restraint. Then again, with the disastrous notion of austerity and the punishment it implies so popular nowadays, uttering any defense of non-savers might be tantamount to tatemae.
Some great examples include the French term Esprit de escalier, literally "the spirit of the staircase;" it's the feeling you get after figuring out the perfect thing to say at a party . . . once you are coming down the stairs leaving the party. There's the Yiddish kvell, a word Harlan Ellison defined as happiness beyond all other forms of happiness, like "the sun shining in the pit of your stomach." From Finnish, there's sisu, a dogged determination to avoid defeat against all odds of winning, even when the odds are seemingly impossible. The author provides an amusing example of sisu in the introduction:
"We're outnumbered," one soldier says. "There must be over forty of them, and only two of us."
"Dear God, it'll take us all day to bury them!"
For this post, perhaps the Japanese tatemae might be appropriate, meaning "the reality that everyone professes to be true, even though they may not privately believe it," and it's counterpoint honne, "the reality that you hold inwardly to be true, even though you would never admit it publicly." Both of those seem awkward to me, since I usually am quite open with my silly notions. Hey, let's face it: I come from the land of the phrase "The squeaky wheel gets greased," meaning those that complain are usually first to get their complaints addressed. We in the States are a very personally opinionated crowd in general (not that any given internet community would provide excessive evidence of this). In Japan, no such squeaky phrase exists . . . but they do say "The nail that stands tallest gets hit first." Two cultures, two attitudes toward expression of personal opinion.
I recently heard a TED Talk that extended the concept of language in a surprising direction.
(In case LJ is giving us more Luddite conniptions with the new YouTube code, here's a link. Really, LJ, how long must this go on?)
His research, to the video phobic, relates to languages that various strength in their time tenses. From this article on the topic:
Some tongues, including English, are strong future-time-reference, or FTR, languages. . . .
Chen theorized that weak-FTR languages would be more conducive to future-oriented behavior because, in those grammars, the future feels the same as the present. Linguists have mapped strong and weak FTR languages in Europe, so Chen correlated that information with data on behaviors that sacrifice present pleasures for the future self, like saving, exercising and avoiding tobacco. . . .
His results are rather mind-boggling: In Europe, speakers of weak-FTR languages (German, Finnish and Estonian are examples) were 30 percent more likely to have saved money in a given year than were equivalent speakers of a strong-FTR language (English, Spanish or Greek, for instance).
(I underlined.)
So, because we English speakers refer to the acts of saving, dieting, exercising and avoiding unhealthy habits as something we do in the future, we somehow manage to put it off for something we should do in the future, even to the point of forgetting to ever do it. We even have a strong tradition of reserving the future to a single day, New Year's. That's the first time we can make and forget our affirmations to do better for the future, in the future. Who knew our language might be more to blame than our laziness, or rather, that our laziness might have an origin in our language?
Here, we should talk like magicians. Not the illusionist entertainment sleight-of-hand magic types most often sawing women in half in special cabinets or making with the bunnies from the deep hats, but the magick with a K types. It is from these special practitioners that we get the concept of thaumaturgy. Though it originally meant workers of wonders and miracles, modern-day sorcerers, druids, magicians et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseum now refer to "thaumaturgy" as (according to one practitioner, the Archdruid John Michael Greer) "the manipulation of the human mind by pushing non-rational buttons" (a definition he gives in this podcast).
I should clarify: "Non-rational" here does not mean the same as "nonsense," but rather more like "subconscious" or "subliminal." If people were not affected by thaumaturgy, Greer reasons, would they spend as much time and treasure as they do in the United States acquiring and drinking "fizzy burnt sugar water?" Such is the power of thaumaturgy when applied to commercial advertising.
And here our native tongues are influencing the way we think, according to Chen. Where there is no overly explicit time difference between saving and spending, the speakers are more likely to save; where the time difference is quite explicit, people are more likely to spend now and worry about saving later. The lingual thaumaturgical influence later appears clearly only after we dissect the data.
Of course, in times of crisis that data might just be front-page news. Given that the countries called PIGS in Europe all have what Chen termed "strong-FTR," and the Northern European languaged countries "weak-FTR," perhaps we can stop blaming the people in those countries explicitly for their lack of spending restraint. Then again, with the disastrous notion of austerity and the punishment it implies so popular nowadays, uttering any defense of non-savers might be tantamount to tatemae.