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If You're Fat, Broke, and Smoking, Blame Language
First time accepted submitter derekmead writes "A Yale researcher says that culture differences how much money we save, how well we take care of ourselves, and other behavior indicative of taking the long view, are all based on language. His study argues that the way a language's syntax refers to the future (PDF) affects how its speakers perceive the future. For example, English and Greek make strong distinctions between the present and the future, while German doesn't, while English and Greek speakers are statistically poorer and in worse health than Germans. (The study includes a broader swath of languages/nationalities, but that's a start.)"
I think he's full of crap. More exactly, he merely restates the Whorf hypothesis (badly and out of context) and then proceeds to misapply it.
Also, he apparently doesn't speak German, which uses a construction quite similar to that of English for forming the future tense ("I will go"/"Ich werde gehen"), and allows for substitution with the present in informal speech to about the same extent ("We're going to the library next weekend"/"Wir gehen nächstes Wochenende in die Bibliothek" vs. formal "We will go to the library next weekend"/"Wir werden nächstes Wochenende in die Bibliothek gehen").
No matter how much you want to blame the victim, bad things really do happen to people because of circumstances outside of their control.
Your general message is a good one. People should be responsible for themselves. But claiming that the locus of control should always be internal simply flies in the face of reality.
For example, what if one's boss really is a jerk? No matter how hard you work to please him, you cannot. If you internalized that locus of control, you would conclude that there is something terribly wrong with you. That's not a healthy frame of mind at all.
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Oh, I should also point out that if you happen to be more fortunate than others, internalizing your good fortune is a great way to feel superior. Obviously, someone in that position is going to be biased into thinking he got there on his own, instead of being extraordinarily lucky.
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Except the champion eater is Japanese.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
The basic structure of English hasn't changed a lot in fifty years. On the other hand, the body shape of English speakers sure has changed. We are much more obese.
My favourite stereotype of Germans is that they are a bunch of fat beer guzzling guys in lederhosen. If we chose the right times and places, we could show that Germans were fat and Americans were thin.
The thesis, that we as a nation are obese because of the language we speak, doesn't stand up to even cursory inspection.