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Anthropomorphization is another problem. As soon as people give things names, they start to treat them like they're individual people even if they're anything b
by XorNot 2y ago
Anthropomorphization is another problem. As soon as people give things names, they start to treat them like they're individual people even if they're anything but. How many times have you heard someone say "China will..." or "The US thinks..." or "Europe's opinion..."
Now these are all potentially useful, context-dependent shorthands...but they're absolutely ripe for misunderstanding. Something I find myself doing a lot these days is asking people to explain what exactly they think is happening on an individual, human level when they declare anything greater then that is "doing" something...because of course, no large organization ever does anything - they're all composed of individuals taking action, potentially under direction but still as individuals.
- xg15 2y agoI think the other extreme - to think about people only as isolated individuals without group identity or power relations - is also too simplifying. (It's also a useful thought exercise to deconstruct sentences like "the US decided to do X" and understand who or what really is meant with "the US" in that sentence. The US government? The political class? Some mainstream opinion in the general population?) But in general I agree with you, especially in the recent years. I find the level of anthropomorphization of countries lately honestly scary, and believe this is a strong sign of how much the political discourse already has shifted back into a "war" vocabulary. The intensity with which people argue this stuff also makes me wonder if they're still understanding it as a metaphor at all. Emotional attachment to flags, nations, peoples, shapes on a map, etc is real and is also a central component of war propaganda.