Well, it is true that I think that I think to post effectively on LW is to translate my rather diverse life experience to Americanese and it is leaky.
And some of us then have to translate that again into their own cultural concepts. “Jock” is not a word or a concept here in the UK, and “geek”, if it means anything here, just means someone into computers and sci-fi. Judging from Google, “jock” even in its home culture doesn’t mean what you’re using it to mean either. All that leaves is a pair of character sketches that don’t seem to correspond to any real categories.
Yes, because the UK is very special and excellent at it. Even Tolkien, the textbook example of the room-temperature scholar wrote to his son he was a “fierce” rugby player and “got his colours” in a year which I am not sure what it means but probably something good. Or Kate Middleton played hockey. So the UK is absolutely excellent and unique at not letting people bifurcate into body people / lower-class and mind-people / upper-class but also pushing high-class / mind-people to also be body people.
But in this article I was focusing on a different aspect, practicality, and again this is something that works very well in the UK, when I worked in Birmingham I constantly got the impression that people are more interested in tinkering / invention than overly abstract high-browery.
This is my point. If your culture is already on the balance, you don’t notice the problem at all but then OK because for you it is already solved.
An obvious close counter-example is France. Intellectuals of the Sartre type were never properly practical.
And some of us then have to translate that again into their own cultural concepts. “Jock” is not a word or a concept here in the UK, and “geek”, if it means anything here, just means someone into computers and sci-fi. Judging from Google, “jock” even in its home culture doesn’t mean what you’re using it to mean either. All that leaves is a pair of character sketches that don’t seem to correspond to any real categories.
Yes, because the UK is very special and excellent at it. Even Tolkien, the textbook example of the room-temperature scholar wrote to his son he was a “fierce” rugby player and “got his colours” in a year which I am not sure what it means but probably something good. Or Kate Middleton played hockey. So the UK is absolutely excellent and unique at not letting people bifurcate into body people / lower-class and mind-people / upper-class but also pushing high-class / mind-people to also be body people.
But in this article I was focusing on a different aspect, practicality, and again this is something that works very well in the UK, when I worked in Birmingham I constantly got the impression that people are more interested in tinkering / invention than overly abstract high-browery.
This is my point. If your culture is already on the balance, you don’t notice the problem at all but then OK because for you it is already solved.
An obvious close counter-example is France. Intellectuals of the Sartre type were never properly practical.