love, man'chi, and all that jazz---emotions and C.J.Cherryhs' Foreigner

-->StartFragment -->human and atevi relations --- an ill-fated continuous misunderstanding of behavior caused by the difference between love and man'chi?

I would say, not necessarily so.

(hey, some people document and study the "alien language" Ragi, some make Bren Cameron paperdolls complete with vintage wardrobe, and some make incredibly ornate message cylinders in order to be in compliance with tradition and the guild. me, I have no crafty abilities so I must rely on nerdiness alone! lol)

given: love is not man'chi, and man'chi is not love. and the Mospheirans might not understand what man'chi is or how it influences behavior, and the atevi in general might not understand love or how it influences behavior.

but ask the atevi to explain man'chi, or the humans to explain love, and who can answer? even those who experience the emotion have a hard time understanding it. recently I have been thinking more about emotions and what they are, really.

and here is something that I was not really aware of before: the idea that not even all *human* peoples experience the same emotions.

quote:My third predilection is a bias toward history. Not only do I think the history of thinking about emotions is fascinating and revealing, but I believe that the emotions themselves are historical. This means, first of all, that they are processes, not discrete forms of momentary experience. But it also means that emotions change over time, that the emotional experiences of one generation or one epoch or one culture are not necessarily the same as those of another. /quote

[source] [readings]
he actually says "let me finesse the question"

I can give an example, but for the moment suffice it to say that not all human cultures have all the same emotions (as identified by their emotional experiences) as the rest. sometimes a word from another language might be translated as "joy" but mean something more specific that just doesn't translate because we don't have that word or concept. rather like "schadenfreude". there's no word for that in English, although in this instance we do indeed understand that feeling, once you point it out. we just didn't have a name for it. but sometimes we don't have a name for an emotion because we don't experience it.

and even if we do have the same basic word "grief" or "anger" etc, that doesn't indicate that it means the same thing or implies the same feelings or experiences. this varies from culture to culture.

my point basically is that human beings are the same, physically, to a great extent: we don't have incredibly various brains from one to the next. and yet, based on culture, we can have profoundly different recognized emotions and/or awareness of emotional experiences.

these differences are learned, not innate.

based on that basic idea, if a human child were raised in atevi fashion by atevi, he'd probably turn out much more ateva-like. I'm not saying that he would automatically have man'chi or anything---and this is because maybe there is some fundamental unsurmountable difference in the ... er... working of atevi brains or glands or etc compared to human? this, I leave as unknowable---but I'm saying that by being enculturated by the atevi, the child would have emotional experiences shaped by atevi understanding, and therefore would understand and identify with the Ragi culture *and therefore the Ragi emotional experiences*.

and if an ateva child were raised by Mospheiran fashion by humans, vice versa.

now of course that implies that nobody would treat the said child as an outsider and therefore not part of the culture etc etc... it assumes a great deal, actually. but *if* it could be done, then the result would be that the child would not be completely confounded by the society they grew up in.

meaning that the misunderstandings between mospheiran humans and ragi atevi are primarily cultural, and have actually little to do with emotional differences by themselves, biological or no.

if humans adopted ragi culture, or if atevi adopted mospheiran culture, the differences between them would not seem so glaring. not that either side is ever likely to just up and forget their own culture to absorb an alien one... but perhaps over time if the two societies learn more about the other's culture, and if music/art/fashion and other cultural influences continue to flow back and forth across the strait, then the misunderstandings will be less and less.

so, the situation is not fated or doomed to eternal mind-boggling conflict.

(of course neither is any cross-cultural situation on our planet, and yet look how well we handle things here.

this is along the same lines, what I mean: http://www.sil.org:8090/silebr/2004/silebr2004-009

the point I was relying on is the emotional experiences of one generation or one epoch or one culture are not necessarily the same as those of another.


I was rather pushing one point of view on the whole emotion debate, but there is actually plenty of biological and/or neurological evidence that the more basic and more universally cross-cultural human emotions *are* innate, and not based on culture (except for how you deal with them). Paul Ekman esp has pushed this idea and the research behind it. http://www.paulekman.com/


I was kind of waiting for someone to bring that up. the entire field of the study of emotions has really picked up pace in recent times. affective science is the new cognitive science, they say. people have their ideas, their theses, their hypotheses, but the matter has not been settled yet, by any means.


people still argue over what an emtion is, much less how it comes about and if it varies from culture to culture or no.

in other words, I'm wishing I could spark any kind of conversation on the matter, but it seems hopeless lol