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'I really can't think of a good reason for small towns to exist any longer' I found this post really insensitive. But it's good, because it made me realize tha

by garply 17y ago

'I really can't think of a good reason for small towns to exist any longer' I found this post really insensitive. But it's good, because it made me realize that I've been insensitive in a similar way without knowing it. My brother and I grew up in a rural town of 6,000 in the Midwest. He went off to Harvard and is now a doctor on the West Coast and I went off to Stanford and now run a business in China. We visit home on the holidays. So you can say the article struck a personal note - I'd never read about the pattern before (though I was intuitively aware of it) and knowing that I'm contributing to it leaves me with a sense of melancholy. The point that you miss, jballanc, is that these are communities of living people - each with its own tiny culture. There are problems with these places that I don't know how to solve, but their gradual decay is sad in the same way that the destruction of cultures all over the world is sad. I have to thank you, though. As a foreigner in China whose invested a lot of time in mastering Mandarin, I've come to strongly believe that the elimination of the other Chinese dialects and the traditional character set is a very favorable thing. I've probably said, at some point or another, that I 'really couldn't think of a good reason for the traditional character set to exist anymore'. Until now, I've never been able to fully understand why, for example, some Taiwanese Americans get so upset about the gradual decline of their character set. When speaking to them about the issue, I must have come off as insensitive as you do to me. In the future, I will change my behavior.

jballanc 17y ago
I, too, grew up in a small Midwest town and have since lived in Miami, New York, and Silicon Valley. I guess you could say that I'm being insensitive, but I tend to see things a bit differently. Change is inevitable, and thinking that you can hold on to things forever is foolhardy at best. Yes, small town America has an ever so slightly different culture, and loosing it might be painful (much like loosing traditional print media, I should think). But I always think back to when I was 8. I had a stuffed toy animal that I loved and vowed never to give up. Then I realized that, while that stuffed animal represented a certain part of my life that I valued, it was time to move on. There will always be new things to value in the future. Now, as for the issue you raise of language, at the risk of sounding hypocritical I must say I've always been a strong proponent of preserving dialects and less common languages. I think it ultimately comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. I don't think that small town America represents a culture unique enough, or hard enough to recreate, that it's worth extraordinary attempts to preserve it. Languages, on the other hand, often represent hundreds or thousands of years of collective cultural knowledge, and once that's gone, it's gone. A last point I feel I should make: if there is some "intrinsic value" to small town America, I think attempting to preserve small towns by creating artificial incentives to keep headstrong youth from leaving would probably do as much or more to destroy that intrinsic value than just letting nature take its course, so to speak, and gradually reduce the number of small towns.
- ilyak 17y ago
  Small languages may be interesting but we just don't have enough humans to speak them all, as humans don't want to study small languages unless they happen to be hobbysts or acquire that language as children.
JCThoughtscream 17y ago
Oh, that's simple: the simplified set is ugly. Traditional writing is so close to being an art form onto itself, the difference is negligible. Furthermore, the change's fairly recent too, so you have three or four generations being told they have to relearn their own native language, and... yeah, organic evolution's preferable.
rdtsc 17y ago
> ... these are communities of living people - each with its own tiny culture. There are problems with these places that I don't know how to solve, but their gradual decay is sad in the same way that the destruction of cultures all over the world is sad. But if they are not self-sustainable then who will subsidize them. Should everyone's taxes go towards supporting unsustainable communities out in the middle of nowhere? There are lot of communities with their own culture. It gives us a fuzzy and warm feeling to think about the quiet little town and the local gathering at a local diner in the morning to chat and sociailize. But at the end of the day, if they are all living on welfare, we can only have so many such small towns. Often economic reality is at odds with our warm fuzzy feelings. This is one of those instances.
- garply 17y ago
  I don't believe that I suggested anywhere that we subsidize these communities or somehow act to stop what it is occurring. I said I didn't see any real solutions to the problems presented within them. I was taking issue with the idea that these towns are valueless - that nothing would be lost with their disappearance.
xiaoma 17y ago
What is this "decline" in traditional Chinese characters you're talking about? Unlike the PRC, Taiwan and HK both have universal literacy. Residents of Taiwan in particular are amongst the most voracious readers on the planet. According to one study I read, only the Japanese are reading more. Not only that, but mainlanders are now increasingly familiar with traditional characters, due to the influx of HK/TW music videos and movies. The opposite is not true... not even in HK. Whatever the reasons you have for disliking traditional characters, it's important to recognize that the simplification process involved a trade-off. Characters became faster to write by hand, somewhat more phonetic (for Mandarin speakers), but recognizability was sacrificed to a degree as was semantic information (e.g. swapping the 燕 out of 嚥 and slapping in an 因). In reading, the important thing is how distinct a character is from another, not how simple it is. Look at these character pairs (traditional/simplified) 義 vs. 叉 / 义 vs. 叉無 vs. 天 / 无 vs. 天廣 vs. 廠 / 广 vs. 厂術 vs. 木 / 术 vs. 木 When it comes to hand-writing, which isn't nearly as important as it was in the past, most people do use some simplifications for speed. Most aren't as extreme as the PRC simplifications were, though. In truth, simplification still hasn't met its original proponents' goals of promoting widespread literacy, while the areas using traditional characters achieved those goals without changing their writing system. The Taiwanese Americans you were speaking to were almost certainly aware of all of the above, but they might have been too polite or just too off-guard to point it out.

by garply 17y ago

jballanc 17y ago

I, too, grew up in a small Midwest town and have since lived in Miami, New York, and Silicon Valley. I guess you could say that I'm being insensitive, but I tend to see things a bit differently. Change is inevitable, and thinking that you can hold on to things forever is foolhardy at best. Yes, small town America has an ever so slightly different culture, and loosing it might be painful (much like loosing traditional print media, I should think). But I always think back to when I was 8. I had a stuffed toy animal that I loved and vowed never to give up. Then I realized that, while that stuffed animal represented a certain part of my life that I valued, it was time to move on. There will always be new things to value in the future. Now, as for the issue you raise of language, at the risk of sounding hypocritical I must say I've always been a strong proponent of preserving dialects and less common languages. I think it ultimately comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. I don't think that small town America represents a culture unique enough, or hard enough to recreate, that it's worth extraordinary attempts to preserve it. Languages, on the other hand, often represent hundreds or thousands of years of collective cultural knowledge, and once that's gone, it's gone. A last point I feel I should make: if there is some "intrinsic value" to small town America, I think attempting to preserve small towns by creating artificial incentives to keep headstrong youth from leaving would probably do as much or more to destroy that intrinsic value than just letting nature take its course, so to speak, and gradually reduce the number of small towns.

ilyak 17y ago
Small languages may be interesting but we just don't have enough humans to speak them all, as humans don't want to study small languages unless they happen to be hobbysts or acquire that language as children.

JCThoughtscream 17y ago

Oh, that's simple: the simplified set is ugly. Traditional writing is so close to being an art form onto itself, the difference is negligible. Furthermore, the change's fairly recent too, so you have three or four generations being told they have to relearn their own native language, and... yeah, organic evolution's preferable.

rdtsc 17y ago

> ... these are communities of living people - each with its own tiny culture. There are problems with these places that I don't know how to solve, but their gradual decay is sad in the same way that the destruction of cultures all over the world is sad. But if they are not self-sustainable then who will subsidize them. Should everyone's taxes go towards supporting unsustainable communities out in the middle of nowhere? There are lot of communities with their own culture. It gives us a fuzzy and warm feeling to think about the quiet little town and the local gathering at a local diner in the morning to chat and sociailize. But at the end of the day, if they are all living on welfare, we can only have so many such small towns. Often economic reality is at odds with our warm fuzzy feelings. This is one of those instances.

garply 17y ago
I don't believe that I suggested anywhere that we subsidize these communities or somehow act to stop what it is occurring. I said I didn't see any real solutions to the problems presented within them. I was taking issue with the idea that these towns are valueless - that nothing would be lost with their disappearance.

xiaoma 17y ago

What is this "decline" in traditional Chinese characters you're talking about? Unlike the PRC, Taiwan and HK both have universal literacy. Residents of Taiwan in particular are amongst the most voracious readers on the planet. According to one study I read, only the Japanese are reading more. Not only that, but mainlanders are now increasingly familiar with traditional characters, due to the influx of HK/TW music videos and movies. The opposite is not true... not even in HK. Whatever the reasons you have for disliking traditional characters, it's important to recognize that the simplification process involved a trade-off. Characters became faster to write by hand, somewhat more phonetic (for Mandarin speakers), but recognizability was sacrificed to a degree as was semantic information (e.g. swapping the 燕 out of 嚥 and slapping in an 因). In reading, the important thing is how distinct a character is from another, not how simple it is. Look at these character pairs (traditional/simplified) 義 vs. 叉 / 义 vs. 叉無 vs. 天 / 无 vs. 天廣 vs. 廠 / 广 vs. 厂術 vs. 木 / 术 vs. 木 When it comes to hand-writing, which isn't nearly as important as it was in the past, most people do use some simplifications for speed. Most aren't as extreme as the PRC simplifications were, though. In truth, simplification still hasn't met its original proponents' goals of promoting widespread literacy, while the areas using traditional characters achieved those goals without changing their writing system. The Taiwanese Americans you were speaking to were almost certainly aware of all of the above, but they might have been too polite or just too off-guard to point it out.