I think the value of the preservation of culture comes in many cases from context.  For example, I'm a linguistics student and hear all the time about language-support programs for endangered languages.  Most of these languages belong to indigenous cultures that were steamrolled by colonialism; for example, my phonology professor is watching the last Menominee speakers die off pretty much before her eyes.  I think these preservation programs have value because of that context; it's about undoing as much as we can of a great wrong.  It's a little different situation than a language dying out for other, more arguably natural reasons.  I think the same argument could be made with little change with regard to any other cultural facet.

Stormcrow wrote:

And yeah, I do kind of feel the same way about saving endangered languages as I do about saving the panda. I certainly respect efforts to preserve the work of humans more than I respect efforts to preserve pandas, because I respect humans more than pandas. But it has that same futility.

Funny you would say this, because I was about to use this argument to support the preservation of both.

Stormcrow wrote:

So, culture. I'm kind of attached to mine, especially the ideas of human rights and human dignity that we invented. But it won't last forever. [...] I recognize that some day, everything I hold dear will have to cease.
[...] And in my opinion, even if there were a way to prevent this (and I can't think how there could be), we shouldn't attempt it. I'll always stand up and represent for the cultural values I believe in, but I'm not going to kick and scream too loudly at the thought that someday, no one will dance the Hora anymore. People die, and cultures die too. If they didn't, it would get a bit crowded. Some might say it's crowded already, but I don't mean to advocate wanton destruction either.

What's your perspective on the disparition of this ideas that you hold dear? Something that might happen within 50 years? Within 100? More? Do you feel it's going to happen during your lifetime? If you don't, perhaps it's easier to accept the idea of culture flowing, evolving and eventually disappearing. But if it's something you feel closer, something you see happening within 10 or 20 years or even less, sometimes the most natural / usual human reaction is to deny it or to fight it - anything, but accepting it with a shrug.

Why? Because humans are cultural beings. And not cultural in general, but more than this: determined, inscribed within one (two, three - a handful, it might depend on the complexity of the society) culture(s). And seeing this disappearing is the loss of a number of references our socialization is based upon. I cannot think that it's no big deal; it's definitely not in the long run, because as you said cultures appear and disappear constantly, but it's something that truly frightens an individual. Because even considering the facts that:

1) the space of a disappearing culture is necessarily filled with an alternative (an alternative that might play a main role in the disparition of the former one) and
2) humans have a theoretically extremely high capacity for adaptation...

... the abandon of a culture and adoption of another one takes some time, either for an individual or for a society, and it's a time for refusing values that one assumed to be the right ones and accepting values that one didn't consider theirs. You can argue that the less traumatic approach to this transition is giving up in what is old and embracing what's new. Because, as you said, there's no realistic way of bringing the old culture back. Only an idealistic one, and I assure you, there will be always a bunch of people (or more) ready to cling to this idealistic way, in hopes that it's still realistic, that the certain event horizon you mention has not been crossed. Because they won't accept that at some point a culture only has to expect death.

TL;DR: I see it as not so much a matter of prolonguing the life of an already dying culture, but the respect to the individuals (and their society) for whom the disappearing culture was their own.

Stormcrow wrote:

And here's where I come off as a complete asshole.......there is no difference between a culture disappearing due to a flood or "natural" reasons.....and a culture being exterminated by other humans. Well, morally, obviously, there's a difference. Genocide is terrible and should be prevented. But what is done CANNOT be undone. Once a culture goes past a certain event horizon, it's going to die, and there's no realistic way of bringing it back. Same goes for a species, really. If you only have three breeding pairs of a species, it's probably going to go extinct. And yeah, I do kind of feel the same way about saving endangered languages as I do about saving the panda. I certainly respect efforts to preserve the work of humans more than I respect efforts to preserve pandas, because I respect humans more than pandas. But it has that same futility.

I think in cases like Menominee, I think you're right and it's fucked.  But there's a lot of languages right now that could go either way, from Irish (lot of partial speakers) to Cherokee (15000 speakers) to Basque.  And the efforts on those tend to be a lot more emphasis on saving them now rather than writing them down for "someday", which is the treatment Menominee is getting.  I guess my point is that it's arguable a great many of these cultures haven't hit that point of no return yet.

My model is that cultural diversity is what happens when there is some barrier in place the prevent people from sharing ideas --typically a language barrier, though in the case of minorities like e.g. the Amish it can also be social norms saying that one group is is better than the other and should avoid being contaminated by it (the latter situation can be either symmetrical, as in medieval europe when both jews and christians considered their own values superior to the other, or asymetrical as when a language spoken by a low status group gets displaced by the surrounding high-status language).

Once you have such a barrier in place, the mix of ideas floating around in the two communities will start to diverge: someone thinks of a new cool style of clothing/dance/way to conduct meetings/art form, which catches on in one group but does not spread to another.

Often people (particularly language preservationists) claim that having cultural diversity around is good in itself -- sometimes comparing to biological ecosystems. That may well be, but my feeling is that the benefit from that is often outweighed by the lack of adoption of new good ideas.

I guess my general philosophy is that we should look for what is good for individuals, not for cultures. In such a model, actions that are clearly destructive to a particular culture -- for example forcing parents to accept cochlear implants for their deaf children, or the Australian governments programs to make modern-day aboriginal society less patriarchical -- can none the less be good for individuals and the right thing to do.

Tamago wrote:

Without culture, there wouldn't be any cheese or yogert...that is all.

SECONDED

Also: marmite.

OK, Tamago, Bluesky? There are easily half a dozen threads already where those sorts of comments would be appropriate. But I'm trying to have an actual discussion here. Nothing wrong with making jokes, but if you don't have anything to add to the discussion, please keep it elsewhere.

Now, back to our talk. Asfa, you make several excellent points, as you so often do. It's true that if I saw my culture as under imminent threat of extinction, I might feel a little differently. On the other hand, there is a sort of cultural war going on at the moment, and I think my side is losing. For example, in 1999, 48% of Americans indicated they would never vote for an atheist. In 2007, that ratio had risen to 53%. Worrisome. And I can't say that I don't sympathize with people for whom this really is an immediate concern. I have a tendency to come on a little too strongly when I suspect people will disagree with me, I have to admit, and it seems to me that most people who are even aware of the issue are sort of on the other side of the fence from me. I don't mean to suggest that people should feel less about a culture dying than they do about people dying, which is often a terrible and painful thing. But.......that's how it is, and how it has to be. That's the point I was trying to raise.

Giovanna, you and I are on the same page here I think. I can happily spend days learning things about Harappan culture. But the fact that it's so dead that it's hard to even be sure what it was doesn't particularly trouble me. But I have to say I feel more like that about language too. You are right that there are unique concepts to each language, but....in the end, those concepts all have to go too. Part of the same process. I'm not saying that scholars shouldn't try to preserve these things, and I am certainly happy to come across neat little idioms in Ancient Hebrew, which is quite a bit more dead than Latin. Study is awesome. But....it goes away.

Pfft, I can't really argue with you. I am as I've said very attached to my cultural values and see nothing wrong with promoting them. But people in the hill country of Iraq would say the same thing about honor killings, so I try to be considerate of people who happen to be wrong. You also make an excellent point about where cultural diversity comes from, but I think it's more than what you said. No matter how many barriers to assimilation are removed, there will always be more. Hence, culture will never cease to diverge. And in that case, cultural diversity is something you only need to push for in context. Globally it's unavoidable.

End of the Tour, are you aware that you just cited an Onion article? Thought I'd check.

Lastly, OP...I kind of agree with you, but.... I'm not quite so confident in my objectivity. In fact, I don't really believe in objectivity. I don't think I'm wrong to promote freedom of speech or whatever, but then I wouldn't would I? Of course, I'm still going to promote it. Not quite sure how to say what I'm trying to say there.

Last edited by Stormcrow (03-31-2009 10:26:32 PM)

FWIW

Words:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/alba/tbh/ … ge03.shtml

Music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKfp7_G7UlQ
http://www.celticlyricscorner.net/compi … /canan.htm

That makes a lot of sense to me. I was just talking about language with a friend of mine recently and she claimed that only 50% of linguists accept language trees. Is there any truth to that? Sorry, off-topic.

As far as being able to describe the sheen of spears in more or less words goes, it seems to me that that does make a difference. It's pretty subtle, but I wouldn't say it doesn't matter. On the other hand, I don't know that I'm sure it doesn't matter...I'm pretty ambivalent about a lot of things. But it seems to me that if I say something in two words, versus saying it in ten, I've expressed a different idea. You get a different sense from something that takes a lot of words to explain than you do from something that only takes one or two. So subtle, but.....something?

But yeah, I think your statement about the Texans makes a lot of sense. Of course, it's backed up by experts who have studied these things, so it's nice of me to tell them that, eh? I wonder if they would speak Mandarin with a twang... But to present the other side of the argument, if they had a word for pork bun, and a mental image of what that pork bun was, wouldn't that make them more likely to at least attempt to make one? Assuming there are pigs around? Where do you draw the line between the word for pork bun and the knowledge of what a pork bun is? The knowledge that it's steamed? I mean, knowing what a microwave is doesn't mean that the typical person knows much of anything about how it works...

Well, many Polish writers who experienced war used to say (or are saying, because not everyone has died) that the war presented how fragile our culture is. They had a theory that after those crimes and horrible events words lost their meaning because they weren't strong enough to call things correctly. Culture was a base of humanity, it was perceived to be the oldest and the most solid part of European history. Philosphy and religion didn't prevent people from doing what they did. Few years destroyed 4 thousand years of substructures of our world. I wonder if it's true or not, but it's horrible to think that no matter how abundant culture is, there's still a risk of destroying it.

Don't get me wrong - I'm for preserving culture. Polish culture survived many hardships (Poles didn't have own territory for 123 years but managed to rebuild the country) and I appreciate this culture because of it. I'm just afraid it's more fragile than we think - not only cultures of small groups are endangered. I'm afraid that my language will vanish one day, you would be surprised how many people use Polish making mistakes every day. People are neglecting this and that's not so easy to find someone who always speaks correcly. (And I'm writing this in forein language, how ironic!)

satyreyes wrote:

Conversely, English has an astonishing number of words for what light does -- shine, gleam, twinkle, beam, blaze, glimmer, glisten, shimmer, sheen, flare, glitter, glare, flash, glint, glow, flicker, sparkle (...) Not all languages have so many subtle distinctions.  That doesn't mean they can't express the difference; they just can't all do it in one word.  If English died we wouldn't lose the ability to talk about the sheen of the enemy spears, but the alternatives might be less terse or poetic.

That's what I love in English. There's about 26 words for light actions such as shining. The English language has also more words that describe the way of looking than my first language. Fortunately we have many synonyms for expressing ugliness. There's also possible to describe feelings such as 'bitter disappointment because someone didn't do sth well towards us, especially in a relationship'.  In fact, this word has three letters in Polish and it is popular! What's funny, we don't have a word for bubblemaker, despite the fact we do have them in shops.

Sorry, I had to make that offtop.

Stormcrow wrote:

That makes a lot of sense to me. I was just talking about language with a friend of mine recently and she claimed that only 50% of linguists accept language trees. Is there any truth to that? Sorry, off-topic.

It's possible she meant that only 50% of linguists think that languages always develop along "family trees."  The empirical evidence for the descent of languages along the Indo-European language tree (ours) is pretty airtight, which proves that language trees can exist.  There are language families, though -- the languages of the Australian aborigines being one famous example -- where, if there is a tree at all, there has been so much cross-contamination among its "branches" that it is probably no longer possible to establish a genealogy.  So maybe not all language families develop in a vertical tree shape, or maybe they do but they develop horizontally too, and if the second component is strong enough it can overwhelm the first.

As far as being able to describe the sheen of spears in more or less words goes, it seems to me that that does make a difference. It's pretty subtle, but I wouldn't say it doesn't matter. On the other hand, I don't know that I'm sure it doesn't matter...I'm pretty ambivalent about a lot of things. But it seems to me that if I say something in two words, versus saying it in ten, I've expressed a different idea. You get a different sense from something that takes a lot of words to explain than you do from something that only takes one or two. So subtle, but.....something?

Yeah, one of the things that bothers me about semantics (a subfield of linguistics dealing with denotative meaning) is that as far as they're concerned "THROW(Godzilla-subj, Megalon-obj)" means the same thing as "Godzilla throws Megalon."  It's a very rigorous way of thinking about literal meaning but completely fails to capture the pragmatic or cognitive aspects of meaning -- how we perceive and react to each utterance.  Those are separate subfields of linguistics.  So yes, if it took ten words to describe a sheen, that might very well change the meaning in the final sense.  But that doesn't mean that we couldn't perceive a sheen, only that we wouldn't precisely be able to talk about it.  I want to protect English's wonderful array of words for the sake of poetry, but if "sheen" were forever excised from our vocabulary, like "niggardly" has recently been because of its coincidental resemblance to an unsavory word, it's hard to imagine how English-speaking cultures would crumble.

[T]o present the other side of the argument, if they had a word for pork bun, and a mental image of what that pork bun was, wouldn't that make them more likely to at least attempt to make one? Assuming there are pigs around? Where do you draw the line between the word for pork bun and the knowledge of what a pork bun is? The knowledge that it's steamed? I mean, knowing what a microwave is doesn't mean that the typical person knows much of anything about how it works...

Mm, but you're sneakily introducing the idea that this community of Texan Mandarin speakers has been exposed to pork buns, since otherwise they'd have had no reason to learn the word, and perhaps has been exposed to the tenets of Confucianism, since otherwise they wouldn't know Mandarin words like xiao (roughly, filial piety) and so on... so implicitly you're saying that they haven't actually been brought up in white-Texan culture, but in some kind of white-Texan-hybrid-Beijing-Mandarin culture, in which case, yes, I'd expect them to be more likely to make pork buns and perhaps practice or meditate on Confucianism.  But if, like most people, this community only learns words for things it's actually been exposed to, then I wouldn't expect them to make pork buns or meditate on Confucianism.  You see, the language has nothing to do with it; the language only reflects the culture.

Regarding the points talked about with the Chinese Texan thought experiment, and Mock Puppet's comments on how language affects thought, you guys might want to wiki the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is what this idea is.(I may have asked this before, but how do I do links, like, in the text rather than as an addition here)
  Basically, a lot of thinking was done about this when some guy back in the day claimed the Hopi language dealt with time in a more cyclical manner than English and therefore the Hopi must have a different conception of time.  TL:DR most people now buy the weak version that language and thought influence each other, but not the stronger claims that language determines thought.

But if so many words can only exist in cultural context, then.......what about language? I mean, if you remove all the words that have necessary cultural context, then what's left? What words in Chinese would they know in this experiment?