[MD] From each... to each

[craigerb at comcast.net]

[Arlo]
>language does indeed make you "what you are". 

I can see that if everyone says A is a "freedom fighter", then everyone will look favorably upon A. And if everyone says B is a "terrorist", then everyone will look unfavorably upon B.  But no one is going to say A is a "freedom fighter" unless they already look favorably upon A & mutatis mutandi for B.
Which way does the causation go?  Since this is an empirical question, there should be a handy-dandy test which answers it.
Craig  
-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Arlo J. Bensinger" <ajb102 at psu.edu> 

> Hi Craig, 
> 
> [Craig] 
> Very few people in our culture hold that "concern with oneself is all there is". 
> Americans have one of the most generous societies & civic consciousness is 
> generally high. 
> 
> [Arlo] 
> A man who gives a dime to feed a starving child, when all he has is that dime is 
> generous. A man who gives a thousand dollars when he has millions in the bank 
> is seeking tax breaks and social symbolic capital. 
> 
> This sounds cynical, and I say it *admittingly* antagonistically, but what is 
> often thought of as "generous" in our culture would be very much not so in 
> others. Now, I don't propose, for example, that there are only two options 
> here, selfish and selfless. In fact, I'd argue that this rhetorical dichotomy 
> is part of the problem. Richard Lederer had written we need a new word, and 
> proposes "selfful", to describe times when it is appropriate to think of 
> oneself, but with a nod to knowing there are times when it is appropriate to 
> think of others. 
> 
> Is this to say "all" Americans are a certain way? Of course not. That'd be 
> absurd. Even Lakoff, the man with the ugly head, would propose no such thing. 
> 
> [Craig] 
> Even if everyone were only selfish, it would not be the language that made them 
> so. Our language has the potential to express selfish, unselfish, 
> disinterested, etc. feelings. 
> 
> [Arlo] 
> At the risk of sliding into a conversation on "individual versus collective", 
> I'd argue that language does indeed make you "what you are". Language is, of 
> course, not deterministic, but it is structurating. The Indian's non-pairing of 
> "freedom" and "property", for example. It would be hard for many to imagine a 
> world where "inability to own things" and "freedom" could possibly co-exist, 
> and yet for the Indian, it is OUR world that is contradictory. 
> 
> Overall, you reminded me of a truism (at least as I, too, have experienced it). 
> William Least Heat-Moon, in Blue Highways, talks about traveling the country in 
> a pickup and just talking to regular folk he meets. He observes into his trip, 
> "why is it always the people with the least, who are the first to share?" 
> 
> Pirsig touches on this, as it relates to the Indian-Victorian schism, when he 
> talks about the perceived audacity of showing up at the door of a Victorian. 
> They would be appalled. But to the Indian, it would be natural simply to give 
> and to share. To the Victorian, obsessed with ownership, and using ownership to 
> secure social status, such sharing is heretical. 
> 
> You, me, we are not Indian. Nor are we Victorian. We are a hybrid. And so we 
> have inner tensions to go towards both. Most Americans, I'd say, deal with this 
> inner conflict every day. To share, or to keep? Is that the question? And what 
> is "sharing"? Dropping dimes in a collection plate? Inviting a homeless person 
> to spend the night? Volunteering ten hours a week to teach inner city kids to 
> read? Donating $1000 to charity, and then writing it off your taxes? 
> 
> But, I will admit, Craig. I am not much of an optimist in this regard. You seem 
> to be, and I applaud that. I hope you are right, and I hope I am wrong. I worry 
> that the language of "consumerism" (a term which I use to describe the SOM, 
> mercantile, social-superiority, orientation of modern culture) has drummed the 
> sharing, communal, selfful but not selfish or selfless, Indian right out of us. 
> I do see it still exists, by the way, but like Heat-Moon, only when I am among 
> the "lower socio-economic" folk. When I spend time with those "better off", I 
> see a dramatic concern with "my wealth" that starts to trump any consideration 
> for any thing else. But, that's just my experience. God, I do hope I am wrong. 
> 
> Arlo 
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