I miss the glory day’s gone bye when one was allow to challenge someone to a duel and it was not against the law.

Oh the problems of being a 3rd Class Immortal.

Every true American I have meet believes that we should be able to keep and even walk down the road with a firearm and not worry about violating a stupid law of some kind.

Tango Mike

Back to J's question:

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How do we frame a fundamentally different reference frame that still makes sense in the reference frame of the reader?

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I have certain well-formed, well-informed, and well-founded positions in these matters...but we agreed, coming into these fora, not to get too heavy into it.

One of the cultural differences (hmmmm, could argue it's kinda linguistic/cultural) which sticks out in my mind is from my Grandad who's from Connemara in Ireland, County Galway. Connemara is a Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area - sorry if I'm seeming patronising) He spoke only Irish until he was fourteen, when he then learnt English. His English was peppered with the way he thought, or rather he thought in Irish and turned the words into English. One which stands out in my mind is when I was about 13 and he asked me, "Whose jacket is that coat, over there by the wall with the window?" All this delivered in the semi-song of a Western Irish Gaelic speaker. There are loads others, but memory escapes me...

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How do we frame a fundamentally different reference frame that still makes sense in the reference frame of the reader?

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I think that's one reason we read fiction, to explore a strange world with which we're unfamiliar. Perhaps it's one reason the close third person POV is popular in modern fiction.

A culture is a product of its history and its living conditions. Its vocabulary reflects what matters to it. So the Eskimos have words for different kinds of snow, the English have words for different kinds of royalty and class, and the Americans have different words from the English presumably as a continuing gesture of defiance ;-)

I think that means that in fiction we need to show the culture, its history and living conditions throught the experiences, thoughts, feelings and memories of the characters. And move the story along at the same time.

But talking about the theories behind culutral differences... (in this case firearms). I was very intrigued by the "space argument," as I'm going to call it.

Are people in open spaces more inclined to favor firearms, and do people in tight spaces feel more threatened by them? I'm not going to say this is so, but it's certainly worth thinking about.

As for the U.S., I've always believed the 2nd ammendment is the product of the incidents at Lexington and Concorde. Which were over the siezing of stockpiles of firearms. (My family hails from Lexington.) Basically we have a lot of people who raised arms in order to combat a government they felt they didn't deserve--so the founders (which participated in this rebellion) were already of the mindset that it is a human right to organize and reject your government. And through experience they had decided that the way to do so was through warfare, which required weapons.

(again, this is all my own conjecture)

At the time of the constitution, which the 2nd ammendment was written for, there was a real fear that the new government wouldn't take, or if it did that it might go awry. If that happened, the founders (I believe) had the 2nd ammendment clause to try and help weapons to be available for the people, should they decide to revolt (if the government they'd designed went haywire, remember it was a pretty radical shift from normal western European government structures at the time.)

That's my theory. Which also includes the possibility that such an ammendment is outdated. I won't say it is or isn't.

I happen to understand the British and Japanese take on the issue a bit better than the folks of southern Mississippi. But I don't by any means discredit the legitimacy of their argument.

As mentioned above, one way to convey this to a reader would be to explain American history, which is a long story of self-reliance and reaction against the concept of being ruled, and European history, which is a much longer story of interdependence and varied-but always present--rulership.

Yeah. Sure, we do.

Actually, J makes an interesting example of an extremely egocentric culture. There have been and are quite a few of them. It's not like the US is the only one with this rather annoying characteristic.

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Actually, J makes an interesting example of an extremely egocentric culture. There have been and are quite a few of them. It's not like the US is the only one with this rather annoying characteristic.

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And I suppose Europe is full of countries that are immune to this disease...

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"J" tangentally mentione "egalite"---which brings up another problem: the equivalent words from one language to another do not necessarily mean the same thing.

Example: Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea contains numerous mistranslations based on taking things literally. At one point, he mentions a character has been in "la terre diable du Nebraska." (I do not have the phrase before me and may have it slightly wrong.)

This is usually translated as "the disagreeable territories of Nebraska"---a literal translation, which is extremely insulting, when you get down to it. But the phrase does not mean that. It really means "the Nebraska badlands"---a specific geographic and geologic area of Nebraska, a place where the character, a scientist, could be conducting exploration and research---not an insult at all. (Verne is considered a superb stylist in French, but nearly all translations of his work into English are poor.)

It would a masterful piece of writing to have two characters use the same word to refer to contradictory ideas--and the reader understanding both without confusion.

p.s. Jeanne, I'd be more than happy to have the discussion you insist on having--via email.

Consider having two languages that have the same sounding words but different meanings.
Or, consider where the fathers of the language designed it to make the meaning of blessings of another language as curses, to make sure they never become friendly.

Also, a Google books search will pull up books in foreign languages. Try searching for the title in French.

I believe Iranians speak Farsi not "Irani." I don't know how closely Farsi is related to Arabic, but I do know that most Iranians are Persians, not Arabs.

And I'm wondering if you meant " Creole " instead of "Krio" up there, RobertB.

I went through all the post from when I first posted until I found it.

http://www.hatrack.com/forums/index.shtml

I found it in the topic unrelated question

and I know why Omega was banned he is a complete nut.

I still cant get a hold of him. I wonder if he finished the editing my book?

When the Constitution was written America was fresh out of the War of Independence, and democracy was a new idea, so new that nobody was sure it would work.

Since America had won her independence by arming herself, and the people provided their own guns, the idea was to bind into the Constitution the right of people to carry guns so that, should democracy fail, they could rise up against the government and dispose of it, like they despatched the Brits. Arming people was the final check against a government that went badly awry, as had the King and his taxes on the colonies.

Today there's a large proportion of Americans (not all, about 5 to 4 if the Supreme Court Justices are a measure) who believe that (a) individuals should be able to arm themselves either to rid the country of a corrupt government, or to control local government officials and police who get it wrong; and (b) that if individuals are armed, criminals are less likely to attack them and, if they do, they can defend themselves.

From these ideas America has become accustomed to keeping its government and officials democratically accountable and its citizenry civilised through some sense of mutual fear.

I've long understood (b) but (a) is new to me.

I'm beginning to think the American use of the word "democracy" is a little different from the English. For us "democracy" means we settle everything through debate and vote and the rule of law, no exceptions. We want to make democracy work because we can't think of anything better, and we don't want to resort to violence if it fails. We have other ways of making governments accountable--civil disobedience, strikes, street marches--and yes, sometimes those descend into riots and if we really need weapons, we've always got kitchen knives, Molotov Cocktails and the like.

We expect (not necessarily trust) and demand our government officials and police to be accountable for their actions through the democratic process. There are laws and checks and balances and, in the case of the Police, an Independent Police Complaints Authority to keep it that way. When things go wrong, which they do, individuals will complain and get heard. It's not perfect, but we think it works, and we're always striving to improve it of course. A free press that thinks critically and reports accurately and fearlessly is an important aspect of the checks and balances; they're not perfect either but their part in this system of governance is vital. These are some of the ways we manage democracy--in other words, make sure the democratic process works and the government and its officials are accountable to the people--without feeling a need to arm individuals.

In everyday life, we don't care for a climate of fear, wondering who's carrying a weapon concealed in their coat or under the driving seat of their car. So we control guns. Or at least try to. And knives.

(In Germany, democracy is not preserved by arming everyone. Nobody was going to propose that after the Second World War. Instead, they keep government accountable by splitting the major sources of national power--government, judiciary and banking--amongst three different states, because Hitler had risen to power by controlling all three, without too much difficulty because they were co-located in the same city.)

The gun debate is really rather falsely put. It's polarised between those who are portrayed as wanting to control guns, and those who do not. Yet, in America, guns are controlled. Can you carry a gun--or even a pocket knife--into a government building or onto a plane? No. Can you drive your own personal Sherman tank up Pennsylvania Avenue? No. Can you purchase a gun over the counter at Sports Authority without photo ID? No. It's a question of the degree of control.

While it's true that many Europeans feel that the European Union is chipping away at our democratic rights, I doubt that any of us feel that arming individuals is the right way to defeat that. The Irish got it right and voted against the European Constitution (or whatever it's now called). Sooner or later our elected national politicans will reign the Eurocrats in, or in the extreme there will be strikes and civil disobedience.

There's a shared belief, I think, that we have enough control over our governments and their officers through the democratic process. We won't need to take guns to the streets ever again.
Or if we do, the consequences of mass carnage are too terrible to contemplate; all the more reason to make democracy work.

Finally, I don't think we should give up on understanding each other. As populations grow and global competition for natural resources intensifies nations must learn to live together, or die.

Well put, and I think you laid out the central differences very well:

1) Europeans trust their governments to follow their own rules, or, if they don't, that they can be forced to return to the rules through peaceful means--in other words, that armed rebellion will never again be necessary to secure freedom--Americans assume the opposite; and

2) Europeans prefer to stop everyone from engaging in a behavior because someone might misbehave, while Americans prefer to let people do as they like and then punish those who actually do misbehave. I don't think it's too much of an oversimplification to say that Americans and Europeans just make very different value judgments about where the seesaw between liberty and security should lie.

As you aptly noted, it is (at this point in history) a matter of degree in some ways. A lot of urban and blue state Americans think entirely along European lines. But it's also a matter of fundamental differences in thinking, particularly as to point 1.

Even though I hail from a relatively rural, extremely conservative bubble of an environment. I agree with you, and have always found the British (and Japanese) perspective on the issue to be the most modern, the most socially evolved given this day and age.

However, I think it's intertesting (and important) to explore the psychology (as you have done) of different countries. For instance, if I was writing a modern Sherlock Holmes (type book) in London, it would be useful to understand how available firearms are, and what people think of them. I wouldn't want to assume they are thought of and treated the same as here in the U.S. by default, simply because I am ignorant.

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try Amazon's French website.

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We also worked with some refugees from Rwanda, and I learned how to say "Thank you," in Kirwanda. They spoke French more than they did English, so that was another adventure.

When I arrived in Florida I thought my English colleagues had cultivated comical, faux-American accents. But I learned though experiences like my butter request (it's "boodre", almost rhymes with "booker" and the "er" is foreshortened) that while our English accents were largely an attraction, certain words could get you into trouble and you had to change your pronunciation--or even the word--to survive. Examples I remember include "tomaydoe", "bayzil" (not basil), "process" (first syllable rhymes with product, not (p)rowing boat), "skedule" (not "shedule") --and, of course, trunk and hood, and fries not chips.

Cheers,
Pat