Culture Shift

I am intrigued by the idea of a lifestyle alienated from institutionalized society. I work towards this gradually, as there are still many uses for earning money. I do believe this money should be converted into more valuable, practical things readily, not saved for the sake of saving. I am zorking on a non QWERTY keyboard, so this will be a short entry.

I am in Toulouse, France. We flew to Girona, and immediately found our carpool host who I think drove us all the way to Toulouse (I slept during this drive, so I cannot be certain). Lunchtime now, then we rent bicycles situated at random stations in the city and bike around, to the movie theatre to see Invictus. What a pleasure it will be to hear South African accents. Ate Pate de Porc last night on morceaux de baguettes and a hard liquor made with anise as an appetizer!

Next day. movie was good, had my heart pounding and my tears almost jerking. Still dealing with this nonQWERTY keyboard. Movie reminded me how effective professional sports is in spreading emotion. It is like a national team, especially during some sort of world cup, invites its fans to surrender their emotional state to a massive tidal wave of emotion. People throw all kinds of baggage into it, and it is chosen as the catalyst for all sorts of situations in people`s lives. If the tidal wave reaches the shore, and they win, then happiness, relief, pride, ecstasy, erupt in a bar, or at a home infront of the TV, or in a car with the radio. The announcers and commentators use their voices and nonverbal communication to stimulate celebratory emotions, and then people start making loud, explicit expressions of their feelings, and go out into the streets looking for eachother, looking for that person who hasn`t yet realized what happened, or has gathered such an anti-celebratory emotional cloud over their head that they can hardly look up from their shoes. How good it must feel to be the messenger of victory and the infectious agent of the celebratory vibe! To see a face change into an expression of catharsis, to feel that wave of energy pour out of every crevace in their skull into the streets! And the wave gets bigger and bigger, fuelled by alcohol surely, and perhaps the premonition of a steamy night with little sleep and lots of sweat.

It is some expression of synchronicity, of nationalism, of collaborative energy, another slippery slope surrendering of individuality (in some cultures more readily than others). The success and happiness of sub-Saharan Africa stimulates good compassionate feelings in me: I hope an African team wins the football world cup this summer (Sorry Italy! Sorry Netherlands!).

So I am learning French. It is very interesting to see the subtle changes in my mind when I begin to learn a nez language. I was eating at a restaurant last night and started to wonder how different languages express thoughts and emotions. I wrote a bit about how judgements change perception, and how thoughts and emotions are changed when expressed and communicated with language. I think entropy applies here as well: an emotion or feeling, once expressed and transformed by language, can not return to its original, primordial, a priori state. Maybe it could if one suffered brain damage to the point of losing higher order functioning. Anyway, I am curious-and this is not really scientific because feelings cannot be exactly reproduced by oneself, and definitely not by another "scientist", and cannot be observed except by the focused inner awareness-how different languages applied to the same feeling or some inner thing to be expressed will transform it into different things as a result of the distinct cultural baggage, structure, and grammar of the languages. Can the love of a child for her kitten be expressed exactly the same in a Latin-based language than in English? Mandarin? Arabic? Do some of these languages provide better opportunity-with a more varied vocabulary, more supportive ordering of subject and object-to express certain emotions, emotions in general? Are Latin-based languages called "Romance languages" because they actually provide better tools for expression of romantic emotions?

I know some languages are better representatives of reality, such as Mandarin? where there is no isolated character for "I". There are no "I"slands in Mandarin, probably Cantonese too: there is only mention of "I" in a specific context, for example "I ate pork yesterday [they eat a lot of pork here in France, Italy too!]". I wonder if one can say, in Mandarin: "I am."

This is your homework: 

• Can one say, in Mandarin: "I am."
• If you are bilingual: the next time you experience an emotion or insight or feeling, try expressing it in writing or verbally in all the languages you know. Then meditate on how you fared in these languages in accurately expressing that feeling, assuming you have equal proficiency in the languages used.

Now we will rent bicycles for the day and go and visit an old Church to meditate in and explore its architecture.


Cheers,
Maurizio