A Linguistic Fate

Every time someone asks the question, “does fate exist?” the follow up question I always want to ask is what really is the difference between “fate” and “cause and effect?” Fate would imply that there is this grand tapestry that if only we were to glimpse at it, the future of humankind would be clear. While I have no proof that this tapestry doesn’t exist, I implore people to actually observe the things around them before jumping to such conclusions. I sometimes wonder if people really look around them and think of all the different little things and forces around them that are effecting their everyday lives.  For example take, oh I dunno, Linguistic Relativity.

Linguistic Relativity is the theory that the language people speak can influence their thought. Then, following that thinking, all the different languages can potentially lead to many different influences on thinking. For example, take the word “amaeru” from the Japanese language. It means to passively love someone or something. Seeing that there is no real single word equivalent in the English language, it is hard not to think that people speaking Japanese perhaps find the idea of passive love more important than the typical English speaker.

Which is interesting because it is not to say that “amae” or “passive love” doesn’t exist in English speaking countries. Old American newspaper comics such as Family Circus, Dennis the Menace appeal come directly from people’s need to passively love something. These comics most of the time fore-go attempting to be funny like their other newspaper brethren and opt to be more “cute.” Not cute just in appearance, but the type of cute that comes with the inexperience and helplessness of children. By reading the foibles of the Keane family from family circus, the comic strip attempts to appeal to the audiences love of taking care of children and relate to the needs and worries that their own children have (for if people want to “passively love” it is not too much to say that there are also people who desire to fulfill that passive love actively).

So then, if there is a need for “passive love” in America, how come there is not a single word for it like in Japanese? There are many theories I could relay, but my personal opinion is that, starting from kindergarten, Japanese education emphasizes on more emotional realization than intellectual pursuits. From my own experience in Japanese kindergartens and from reading Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited (by Joseph Tobin, Yeh Hsueh, and Mayumi Karasawa) it is not hard to see that the very base of Japanese schools is for the students to have a strong emotional base to work from and have empathy for all things, big and small. American kindergartens (again, from my own experience and the book) tend to shy away from anything too emotional. It is then a process of connecting the dots of having that strong emphasis on emotional health in Japanese education can easily lead to the recognition of “amae” while American schools surely deal with children’s emotion, but it is not nearly as explicit.

Then I suppose the question is: What came first, the chicken or the egg? Is this emphasis on emotion influenced by the language, or is the language influenced by the culture? Well, a little of both I suppose. I am not personally sure which came first (and it would take an expert historical linguist to even have an idea), but what I think is that no matter what came first, the cultural emphasis and the language propel each other. They both seem to reinforce each other in order to attain their goal. It is this “reinforcing” that I believe people need to be more aware of. There are so many cultural things that people take for granted and assign to “fate” instead of analyzing themselves and realizing that their very language can trap people sometimes. Perhaps fate exists somehow in this universe, but until people recognize all the things affecting them, I think it is best to leave “fate” to the philosophers.