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Post by cjm on Dec 27, 2015 18:18:59 GMT
Rousseau divided the world into the cold, intellectual north and the warm, emotional but vibrant south (see for example Derrida: Of Grammatology, John Hopkins (1997), pp222 et seq). There may in fact be more to this generalisation. When one looks at Proto-Indo-European (that is, to the reconstructed single common European language of some 6000 years ago - p103), it seems rather significant that there are no terms for party, celebration or feast – outside of ritual contexts (p257). There are indeed a few isolated terms for laugh , joy, intoxication, merriment and happiness – but none for revelry (pp336-338). Granted, this is a most crude way of determining such issue and it is very doubtful whether in fact we have anything close to the original vocabulary (p118-119). But there is, for example, the contrast with the extensive dairy vocabulary (pp261-262; 264-265) which would seem indicative of the importance of dairy products in that society. One may also note the abundant existence of a war/hate vocabulary (pp342-344). One wonders where the festive Carnival influence, which swept Europe at a later stage, came from. Isolated page references are to Mallory & Adams: The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European, Oxford University Press (2006), Reprint 2007. Trog has to be thanked for recommending this book (or similar), many years ago! |
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Post by Trog on Dec 28, 2015 9:58:36 GMT
I find it generally distasteful to agree with Rousseau, but here he has a point. However, what I would disagree with is if we are talking of inherent or genetically determined features here.
What you find is that people in the far north are generally miserable, cold, and often wet, and mostly pissed off with the world in principle. (This would explain a preponderance of words such as ‘kill’, ‘revenge’, ‘obliterate’, ‘smite’, ‘cast asunder’ etc in their vocabulary.) That they need not be necessarily so is evidenced by the gay abandon with which they can celebrate life when visiting warmer climes, as can be deduced from the many very modern-sounding German surnames to be found on the Cape Flats.
Conversely, to have a party, you need an ambient temperature of at least 18 degrees C. It is very difficult to get more than 4 people together in the same space at -40 degrees, and then you can’t get drunk because you’d probably die. Look at the French, for instance, who are generally considered to be amenable to having a good time, but it is difficult to imagine a more dour set of people than the French in Canada, where they are freezing their balls off.
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Post by cjm on Jan 3, 2016 16:40:53 GMT
 I find it generally distasteful to agree with Rousseau, but here he has a point. However, what I would disagree with is if we are talking of inherent or genetically determined features here. ... I don't know much about Rousseau apart from the usual generalisations but I think he would agree with you based on the following quotes:
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