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Split Thread Language and superstition

Elind

Philosopher
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Written Chinese is indeed unified across all the different Chinese languages. I worked with Chinese people (scientists), and a lot of them tend to 'write' characters in the palm of their hand while speaking. For another Chinese speaker and reader, this helps to understand what's meant when the speaker is not proficient enough in the language. For us westerners, it was just an amusing perk.

Could something about a symbolic written language have anything to do with the obvious superstitious prevalence in China, like paying great sums for rhinoceros horn powder and other similar crap that enhances erections better than cheap knockoff viagra (also Chinese), and helps planetary extinction in the process?

There's something rotten here, as the Danes once said, particularly in a nation that has more control over trivia than any other,

Split from
Posted By: kmortis
 
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Could something about a symbolic written language have anything to do with the obvious superstitious prevalence in China, like paying great sums for rhinoceros horn powder and other similar crap that enhances erections better than cheap knockoff viagra (also Chinese), and helps planetary extinction in the process?

There's something rotten here, as the Danes once said, particularly in a nation that has more control over trivia than any other,
Eh? This is a joke, I hope.
 
Do you think there is anything funny there?
Do you think there's anything seriously factual there? I mean the idea that using semagrams instead of alphabetic symbols makes you kill rhinoceroses.
 
Do you think there's anything seriously factual there? I mean the idea that using semagrams instead of alphabetic symbols makes you kill rhinoceroses.

I was speculating. China is a diverse country but compared with most others they seem to have many very obviously expressed superstitions. I don't mean fortune cookies which I believe are a western invention, but it may have roots in other things. For example, have you never noticed how names are often related to symbols of luck or wealth, and this applies to Korea as well. Gold, Lucky, etc, in English. Then there is feng Shui, not to mention superstitions about whether someone has died in a house or not. (Don't tell me it is about interior design). Then there is their version of astrology and year of (name an animal). And of course their ridiculous obsession with dried animal penises, or horn and so on.

Why? I don't think it is any religion and I doubt it is in DNA. Perhaps it might have something to do with thinking in symbols instead of phonetics, as in the writing.

It's a simple speculation. The behaviour is undeniable. Where do you think it comes from, given how widespread it appears to be? They are not primitive people in other regards.
 
I was speculating. China is a diverse country but compared with most others they seem to have many very obviously expressed superstitions. I don't mean fortune cookies which I believe are a western invention, but it may have roots in other things. For example, have you never noticed how names are often related to symbols of luck or wealth, and this applies to Korea as well. Gold, Lucky, etc, in English. Then there is feng Shui, not to mention superstitions about whether someone has died in a house or not. (Don't tell me it is about interior design). Then there is their version of astrology and year of (name an animal). And of course their ridiculous obsession with dried animal penises, or horn and so on.

Why? I don't think it is any religion and I doubt it is in DNA. Perhaps it might have something to do with thinking in symbols instead of phonetics, as in the writing.

It's a simple speculation. The behaviour is undeniable. Where do you think it comes from, given how widespread it appears to be? They are not primitive people in other regards.
These things are typical of rural superstitions and ALL of them have been or are common in areas of the world, e.g. Europe, where alphabetic writing has been the norm for centuries or millennia. Lucky names, numbers, everything.

It's just that these superstitions have died out or are dying out a bit faster here than in China, which is only now recovering from a longish period when it fell behind the West in many technical respects. I can't see that the writing system has much to do with it.
 
It's as simple as Christianity and Mohammedanism have systematically fought superstition for centuries while in China -and the East in general- apparently there wasn't any structured effort to eradicate them -except for eradicating the Christian religion--
 
These things are typical of rural superstitions and ALL of them have been or are common in areas of the world, e.g. Europe, where alphabetic writing has been the norm for centuries or millennia. Lucky names, numbers, everything.

It's just that these superstitions have died out or are dying out a bit faster here than in China, which is only now recovering from a longish period when it fell behind the West in many technical respects. I can't see that the writing system has much to do with it.

I haven't done a scholarly analysis counting superstitions, but I suggest that their obsessions with these matters are mainstream and part of the culture; not simply common rural matters that are dying out. OK, we have Santa Claus, we have the guy on a cross and we have burnt toast that looks like a woman, and we have daily horoscopes in newspapers; but nothing like what I see in China, at a distance.

My suggestion about symbolic language was a guess to be sure, and maybe the reason is simply that they substitute for the gory guy on a cross, or the one who road a horse into heaven, but I still say that there is something odd over there.
 
I was speculating. China is a diverse country but compared with most others they seem to have many very obviously expressed superstitions. I don't mean fortune cookies which I believe are a western invention, but it may have roots in other things. For example, have you never noticed how names are often related to symbols of luck or wealth, and this applies to Korea as well. Gold, Lucky, etc, in English. Then there is feng Shui, not to mention superstitions about whether someone has died in a house or not. (Don't tell me it is about interior design). Then there is their version of astrology and year of (name an animal). And of course their ridiculous obsession with dried animal penises, or horn and so on.

Why? I don't think it is any religion and I doubt it is in DNA. Perhaps it might have something to do with thinking in symbols instead of phonetics, as in the writing.

It's a simple speculation. The behaviour is undeniable. Where do you think it comes from, given how widespread it appears to be? They are not primitive people in other regards.

My suggestion about symbolic language was a guess to be sure, and maybe the reason is simply that they substitute for the gory guy on a cross, or the one who road a horse into heaven, but I still say that there is something odd over there.

I very much doubt it.

There has long been speculation that language affects culture (with the best known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis), but it has been pretty much debunked. There have been recent attempts to revive a very scaled-down version by people such as George Lakoff, and Lena Boroditsky among others, and there may well be some interesting points about language framing which may have psychological effects.

However, there is a far more obvious answer to that kind of speculation and that is that culture creates language. Instead of saying, "They have a different culture because of their writing, which looks a bit weird to me" you should think "Their writing is different (and looks weird to me) because they have a different culture." It's a much more parsimonious theory.
 
I very much doubt it.

There has long been speculation that language affects culture (with the best known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis), but it has been pretty much debunked. There have been recent attempts to revive a very scaled-down version by people such as George Lakoff, and Lena Boroditsky among others, and there may well be some interesting points about language framing which may have psychological effects.

However, there is a far more obvious answer to that kind of speculation and that is that culture creates language. Instead of saying, "They have a different culture because of their writing, which looks a bit weird to me" you should think "Their writing is different (and looks weird to me) because they have a different culture." It's a much more parsimonious theory.

Good points. Thanks.

However I will restate my dig about their "culture" that is more responsible than any other for the hunting to extinction of many animals. For a country that can find and jail people for tweets, but can't stop illegal yet openly practised trade in endangered animals, there is something rotten in the culture whatever the reasons.
 
Good points. Thanks.

However I will restate my dig about their "culture" that is more responsible than any other for the hunting to extinction of many animals. For a country that can find and jail people for tweets, but can't stop illegal yet openly practised trade in endangered animals, there is something rotten in the culture whatever the reasons.
Oh, so the issue isn't the writing, but the culture of the civilisation. That makes it easier to understand what you're getting at. I don't think it's much different. Trade in endangered species is very widespread, as is extinction of animals and plants. Where are the passenger pigeon, the great auk, the heath hen, the Carolina parakeet, the ivory billed woodpecker, the Eskimo curlew? To take from memory only a few N American birds. Now extinct birds.

The American Bison was reduced in a few decades from tens of millions to almost complete extinction. That is N America. The situation in Europe is if anything worse. Beavers were wiped out entirely in Britain and almost completely in Europe, to make hats. Many species have been eliminated for trivial reasons. Birds for feathers merely to decorate hats.

You are evidently looking for an excuse to be xenophobic.

I hope that the destruction of species can be halted before further irreversible damage is done. However, regrettably, the "rotten culture" of environmental destruction is not limited to one region of the world.

Just as recently in the West, there is some evidence of a welcome [url="http://ilovemyfiends.com/fiendforlife/china-outlaws-the-eating-of-tiger-penis-rhino-horn-and-other-endangered-animal-products/]shift of opinion[/url] in China. I hope it continues to be reflected in more effective legislation and enforcement.
China’s 1988 wildlife protection law is expected to be updated sometime in the next two years, and activists are cheered by indications that its citizens are increasingly receptive to such measures. E-commerce sites now monitor and block sales of endangered species, and an awareness campaign targeted at auction houses led many of them to remove rhino horn, tiger bone, and ivory from their sales, keeping $322 million in contraband off the market. “This is very encouraging,” Gabriel said. “The Chinese public actually supports stronger wildlife protection laws and stronger policy of the trade of endangered species.”​
 
It's as simple as Christianity and Mohammedanism have systematically fought superstition for centuries while in China -and the East in general- apparently there wasn't any structured effort to eradicate them -except for eradicating the Christian religion--
Chinese emperors were perfectly capable of suppressing more than solely the Christian religion, as wiki informs us.
The Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution initiated by Tang Emperor Wuzong reached its height in the year 845 CE. Among its purposes were to appropriate war funds and to cleanse China of foreign influences. As such, the persecution was directed not only towards Buddhism but also towards other foreign religions, such as Zoroastrianism, Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism. Only the native Chinese ideologies of Confucianism and Taoism survived the upheaval relatively unaffected.​
At various other times, persecution of non-official cults was less severe in China than in Europe.

In recent decades, persecution has been very widespread and systematic, particularly of foreign-origin religions, as in the days of Emperor Wuzong. Whatever may be the cause of this, I don't think these inconsistencies in the behaviour of Chinese administrations can be ascribed to the language or writing system. Symbolic scripts with pictorial elements have been constantly in use in China for millennia, while by contrast the level of religious tolerance has swung wildly from one extreme to another over periods of decades, or even overnight as in 846 AD, when Wuzhong died, and his persecution of Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Christians and Manicheans was immediately abandoned.
 
In recent decades, persecution has been very widespread and systematic, particularly of foreign-origin religions, as in the days of Emperor Wuzong. Whatever may be the cause of this, I don't think these inconsistencies in the behaviour of Chinese administrations can be ascribed to the language or writing system. Symbolic scripts with pictorial elements have been constantly in use in China for millennia, ...

If you read again what I wrote, I only said that probably they didn't fought their own superstitions like civilizations in the West did. Anyway, I agree with what you're saying in this different matter.

I also agree our fellow poster is giving free rein to a bit of xenophobia probably regarding some personal advocacies.

Without an structured education in these matters -all university level courses in humanities were a complement of my education both in science and economics- plus being cultured as Argentine social standards demand, I can say two things:

Besides their own evolution keeping some degree of consistency, languages condense the social and historical experience of the societies that speak them.

And most importantly, writing restructures conciousness*. The coding in the writing itself also matters. To us, westerners, it's hard to imagine the effect of a complex writing system that can cross language barriers and be a barrier itself with some people who speaks like oneself.

Besides, there's the matter of tradition. Not only local superstitions were persecuted in the West for centuries (up to 100,000 people were burnt to ashes in protestant societies while the Inquisition did the same to up to 7,000 in Catholic ones). We also invented fashion around 1400 what will increasingly become a social logic and the very basis of our modern societies evolved into an empire of the ephemerous** . The East was several centuries behind in this process and coming up to date it's being more chaotic, yet they look more traditionalistic to us.

So, it wouldn't surprise me Chinese contained elements that are reference to old superstitions that are cherished as part of old tradition. Like luna in Latin which means "light" or selene in Greek, meaning "the one that shines", used to avoid naming the moon as it may get you moonstruck or cast bad luck on you. Of course the original word for moon survives in Spanish mes (month) or English moon. In my own speaking it amazes me the frequency of elements referring to superstitions and the Catholic religion in colonial times. For instance, I -and many others- frequently say "toco madera" ("I knock on wood") while I gesture knocking twice on my head just to add "pero no tenía que tener patas" ("but it wasn't suppose to have legs -non human animal or furniture's-). It only means "I heartily hope not". That speaks of my connection with my fellow members of my society, not about the state of my belief system.

But I agree that obsession with animal phalluses in some levels of some societies look very low and primitive when compared with societies that develop and promote viagra and the like, and make a lot of money and get social standing and fame from doing it.

* Orality and Literacy, by Walter Ong, Chapter 4.
** Empire de l'ephémère, by Giles Lipovetsky (translated as The Empire of Fashion)
 
Not only local superstitions were persecuted in the West for centuries (up to 100,000 people were burnt to ashes in protestant societies while the Inquisition did the same to up to 7,000 in Catholic ones)
I'm not sure what you're counting here, or what your source is. But what you're comparing seems to be
- all and any people burned in protestant countries, with
- people burned specifically by the Inquisition in Catholic countries
Does that mean you believe that every person burned in Catholic countries died at the hands of the Inquisition?

I remember trying to get figures for victims of religious persecution in various countries, to contribute to a thread here a couple of years ago; but I found the data difficult of access, as well as obscure and contentious.
 
I'm not sure what you're counting here, or what your source is. But what you're comparing seems to be
- all and any people burned in protestant countries, with
- people burned specifically by the Inquisition in Catholic countries
Does that mean you believe that every person burned in Catholic countries died at the hands of the Inquisition?

I remember trying to get figures for victims of religious persecution in various countries, to contribute to a thread here a couple of years ago; but I found the data difficult of access, as well as obscure and contentious.

Again, I illustrated the fact that during a long period of time witch-craft was penalized by being burnt at the stake. No matter the real reason to burn someone, the fear indulging the "wrong" beliefs could carry dyer consequences on you was installed in the minds of Europeans during several centuries. I have no evidence of the same being practised in similar scale in the East. And that reverberates in the social experience, including language and its written forms. And we're back to the topic.
 
Again, I illustrated the fact that during a long period of time witch-craft was penalized by being burnt at the stake. No matter the real reason to burn someone, the fear indulging the "wrong" beliefs could carry dyer consequences on you was installed in the minds of Europeans during several centuries. I have no evidence of the same being practised in similar scale in the East. And that reverberates in the social experience, including language and its written forms. And we're back to the topic.
That's right. But I was looking at the specific figures you cited, which were, and remain, of interest to me as such.

The religions which were subject to less persecution in China - Confucianism and Taoism - appear to be moral or social codes, or systematisations of ancient ideas and practices, rather than religions in an institutional Western sense.

It may well be that "Abrahamic" religions are indebted to the early production of canonical holy books, and that these in turn owe their existence to the development of the alphabet, which is a West Semitic invention. To that degree the differences between Chinese and Western society may reflect the divergence in writing systems of the various early civilisations. But many other factors must also be in play.

Another suggestion derives from the apparent fact that the earliest inscriptions in the Fertile Crescent, dating from long before the invention of the alphabet, are mundane lists drawn up by accountants and surveyors; while the earliest Chinese inscriptions are prognostications by augurs and soothsayers, as well as spells and invocations, inscribed on bones and tortoise shells, presumably following sacrificial or other magical performances.
 
That makes me think of the magical attributions to language and writing through history, from the language called "Latin", so sacred, conservative and artificial in its time, only meant to the world of written words, that still today make people say Spanish comes from something called Vulgar Latin when in fact it comes from Ancient Italian. Or the radio discourse by Emperor Hirohito when Japan surrendered that almost nobody could understand (or how katakana changed use from something used by inferior members of society to something used to write foreign words).

That brings me back to the difficulty of different languages and how Spanish is the only one I know not needing some kind of phonetic transliteration to convey the pronunciation of every and each of its words (Italian dictionaries use to add a stress mark and separation into syllables to show pronunciation)
 
It's just that these superstitions have died out or are dying out a bit faster here than in China

I think that is due partly to their culture being much more communal and uniform. People tend to go along and not contradict common beliefs, so it takes a bit longer.
 
I think that is due partly to their culture being much more communal and uniform. People tend to go along and not contradict common beliefs, so it takes a bit longer.
The recent unprecedented urbanisation may change that.
 
You are evidently looking for an excuse to be xenophobic.

You are quite right in all the rest, but in this I am simply being realistically critical and even denigrating about a culture that can make most of our consumer products yet still be as primitive in their damaging superstitions as they are and as indifferent that their superdooper police state is; all while they pretend to be civilized.

Your comment about xenophobia is crass and stupid. Do you think that they are immune to such critique just because they are what they are and not what you assume I am?
 
Your comment about xenophobia is crass and stupid. Do you think that they are immune to such critique just because they are what they are and not what you assume I am?
Can you clarify? That bolded bit in fact looks a bit xenophobic, applied to a whole cultural or ethnic group.
 
Can you clarify? That bolded bit in fact looks a bit xenophobic, applied to a whole cultural or ethnic group.

It applies to a nation. Do you have a problem with criticizing China? You don't seem to comprehend that it includes many cultural and ethnic groups, just like most nations these days including to a possibly greater degree the USA. I criticize the superstitions of the dominant governing part.

Your PC attitude is boring.
 
It applies to a nation. Do you have a problem with criticizing China? You don't seem to comprehend that it includes many cultural and ethnic groups, just like most nations these days including to a possibly greater degree the USA. I criticize the superstitions of the dominant governing part.

Your PC attitude is boring.
Sorry about being a PC-gone-mad bore. But you're not criticising the "superstitions of the dominant governing part". You are saying this, or you were before I started boring you with my PC.
Could something about a symbolic written language have anything to do with the obvious superstitious prevalence in China, like paying great sums for rhinoceros horn powder and other similar crap that enhances erections better than cheap knockoff viagra (also Chinese), and helps planetary extinction in the process?

There's something rotten here, as the Danes once said, particularly in a nation that has more control over trivia than any other
 
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Sorry about being a PC-gone-mad bore. But you're not criticising the "superstitions of the dominant governing part". You are saying this, or you were before I started boring you with my PC.

You are the one calling xenophobia when you have nothing else to say. As to my earlier premise, yes, I question the basis of what I perceive as a recognized and socially accepted superstitious culture unlike anything I see in the west which is also clearly tolerated in its most damaging aspects by the authorities who could easily curtail the practises mentioned.

Perhaps it has nothing to do with written language, and others have addressed that intelligently. You haven't.
 
You are the one calling xenophobia when you have nothing else to say. As to my earlier premise, yes, I question the basis of what I perceive as a recognized and socially accepted superstitious culture unlike anything I see in the west which is also clearly tolerated in its most damaging aspects by the authorities who could easily curtail the practises mentioned.

Perhaps it has nothing to do with written language, and others have addressed that intelligently. You haven't.
I would be interested to know why you find my approach to the question of language unintelligent. If you have reasons for preferring statements on the topic made by other people, I would of course be grateful to know what they are. That would be a useful and informative discussion.
 
In "Nanking Requiem" the novelist Ha Jin recreates the Japanese rampage through Nanking in 1937. His narrator is an educated woman with a son studying in Japan. She is embarrassed during a lunar eclipse when neighborhood residents are banging pots and pans to scare away the dragon who is eating the moon. The implication is that superstition lingered in China while Japan was industrializing. My modest knowledge of China is based on accounts by Chinese writers, but I don't get the sense that the superstition is related to the form of writing. For whatever reason, it seems China developed an advanced civilization, but then stagnated during a time when many cultures were advancing in science and technology. I hope this impression does not make me sound xenophobic. You don't have to be xenophobic to be concerned that crackpot medical theories can lead to trafficking in parts of endangered animals.
 
In "Nanking Requiem" the novelist Ha Jin recreates the Japanese rampage through Nanking in 1937. His narrator is an educated woman with a son studying in Japan. She is embarrassed during a lunar eclipse when neighborhood residents are banging pots and pans to scare away the dragon who is eating the moon. The implication is that superstition lingered in China while Japan was industrializing. My modest knowledge of China is based on accounts by Chinese writers, but I don't get the sense that the superstition is related to the form of writing. For whatever reason, it seems China developed an advanced civilization, but then stagnated during a time when many cultures were advancing in science and technology. I hope this impression does not make me sound xenophobic. You don't have to be xenophobic to be concerned that crackpot medical theories can lead to trafficking in parts of endangered animals.
It is certainly not at all xenophobic to say that China stagnated during a time when many cultures were advancing in science and technology, or that during this period of stagnation crackpot theories were widely influential.

That is exactly what happened, and only in very recent years has China substantially recovered its place as a power in the world as a centre of industry and technology. But like you I can't see that this is related to the form of writing. Chinese writing can be used to write magic spells, or sustain a space program. Just like the Roman letters used in Europe.
 
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