how different are we from each other - long ago and today?

How different are we from each other?

Jay Doubleyou: the english and the germans

Jay Doubleyou: language in ukraine: "“today the russian language is being used by the russian state to ignite hatred and justify the shameful war against ukraine."

Jay Doubleyou: not every english/swedish/german/russian-speaker is english/swedish/german/russian

Again: How different are we from each other?

Jay Doubleyou: britishness

Jay Doubleyou: english traditions which aren't english...

Jay Doubleyou: how others see us...

Some hundreds of thousands of years ago we were very different from each other:

[pages 91-93] The Dawn of Everything at The Dawn of Everything By David Graeber - (PDF/READ) 

Should we be celebrating linguistic difference?

Jay Doubleyou: we are by nature multilingual

Should we be giving immigrants classes in their own native languages?

Jay Doubleyou: global britain: seeing the languages of immigrants as an asset to be nurtured

Genetically we are the same:

“Everybody is the same; everybody is different,” said Mary-Claire King, an expert in human genetics at the University of Washington in Seattle. “That is the paradox.”

People Are Same, but Different - Los Angeles Times

Is it true that we are all the same? Or are we all different? People seem to argue on this topic endlessly.

We are all the same yet we are all different - PsychMechanics

We call these people the Denisovans. They’re a human species but are not us, not Neanderthals, and not one that was previously known. We saw that we interbred with the Denisovans, and they interbred with us. The further east you go today, the more Denisovan DNA you see in living people and the less Neanderthal.

Why Race Is Not a Thing, According to Genetics

Groups of chimpanzees within central Africa are more different genetically than humans living on different continents, an Oxford University-led study has found.

Chimps show much greater genetic diversity than humans | University of Oxford

Culturally we're diffrent:

You’ve heard about multicultural societies and groups, but have you thought about multicultural individuals and what they bring to organizations? Multicultural individuals — such as Chinese-Canadians, Turkish-Germans, or Arab-Americans — commonly think, perceive, behave, and respond to global workplace issues in more complex ways than monocultural individuals.
Some multicultural individuals translate these differences into career success. For example, a study of 100 Israeli managers working in Silicon Valley found that Israeli-American managers thought in more complex ways than managers who saw themselves as belonging to only Israeli or only American cultures. As a result, peers rated them as more competent managers and they were promoted faster.
Many people are confused about whether they are multicultural. Does having immigrant parents or grandparents, working internationally, or living in a multicultural city mean that you are multicultural?

What Makes You “Multicultural”

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do languages get simpler over time?

We can have a lot of fun with how languages develop over time:

On Christmas Eve last year, a 22-year-old student called Simon Roper posted a video on YouTube in which he reconstructed the development of the London accent from 1340 to 2006 in a single monologue. In whispered tones, Roper voiced men from 12 generations of the same imaginary family, speaking at 60-year intervals. Their vowels flattened and their monophthongs shifted as they talked of their daily life – of cooking and horses and cold winters – transforming from barely decipherable Chaucerians to cheeky 1930s Cockneys over the course of 16 minutes. His speech was faltering, full of human reality and strangely intense. He wrote the piece in his bedroom during lockdown, and it has been watched two million times.

Simon Roper: the 23-year-old reconstructing the past for millions of online viewers - New Statesman

With load more videos here:

Simon Roper - YouTube

For example:

Do Languages Get Simpler Over Time? - YouTube

Here are some more thoughts:

Simpler grammar, larger vocabulary: a linguistic paradox explained | Cornell Chronicle

Do languages get simpler over time?

Language complexity - Wikipedia

Finally:

Why English actually is relatively easy to learn (but not to master) – Christopher Wink

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education, education, education

the purpose of education:

> USA 1950s video: Jay Doubleyou: the purpose of education: from china to prussia to the united states

> Prussian factory system: to read: Jay Doubleyou: the prussian school system and the factory model of education

> John Taylor Gatto and FW Taylor: Jay Doubleyou: taylorism >>> and education; with video: Taylorism ABC World Report - YouTube

> Learning by objectives: Jay Doubleyou: behaviourism >>> and learning objectives >>> and the common european framework

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the case against education: 

> Pinky: The Pinky Show - Scary School Nightmare - YouTube and Jay Doubleyou: deschooling society

> Caplan: Jay Doubleyou: the case against education

> homework: Rockefeller: Jay Doubleyou: is the purpose of education 'social uplift' - or 'social control'?

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the power of negative expectation:

> book and BBC: BBC Radio 4 - The Expectation Effect by David Robson - How your expectations can transform your life and one episode: BBC Radio 4 - The Expectation Effect by David Robson, Limitless Willpower

> Jane Elliot: Jay Doubleyou: jane elliott - brown eyes vs blue eyes; video plus intro: Jane Elliott Brown Eyes vs Blue Eyes 1 - YouTube; video plus subtitles: Jane Elliott “Blue Eyes - Brown Eyes” Experiment Anti-Racism - YouTube; documentary: A Class Divided - Brown Eyes Blue Eyes Experiment - YouTube

> Stanford Experiment: the movie: The Stanford Prison Experiment Official Trailer #1 (2015) Ezra Miller Thriller Movie HD - YouTube; the documentary: The Stanford Prison Experiment - YouTube

> homework: more Expectation Effect: BBC Sounds - The Expectation Effect by David Robson - Available Episodes

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the alternatives for education:

> Homeschooling: Jay Doubleyou: homeschooling and deschooling

> Self-directed learning: Jay Doubleyou: self-directed education

> In India: Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education | TED Talk

> Getting outside and experimenting: Jay Doubleyou: tinkering school

> Socratic method: Jay Doubleyou: questioning and problem-solving

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britishness

What are the elements which make up 'Britishness'?

Jay Doubleyou: is there such a thing as 'british humour'?

Jay Doubleyou: english literature and english society

Jay Doubleyou: team gb... or uk?

Jay Doubleyou: small island or global britain

Jay Doubleyou: identity in the uk

What towns are 'typically British'?

My local town. Typically British in. every. way. : CasualUK

One element might be about what the British are not:

One reason is that the identity of Britain only began to be seriously investigated (as distinct from being taken for granted) after the Second World War, a time when peace and imperial retreat fostered a highly introverted view of the British past. With their subject reduced to a normally peaceful, increasingly disgruntled, and essentially second-ranking state on the peripheries of Europe, historians of Britain found it easier to understand its past in terms of internal social, political, religious, and cultural divisions, rather than approaching it as a one-time great power influencing and being influenced by every continent in the world...

Britishness and Otherness: An Argument on JSTOR

Colley - 1993 - Britishness and Otherness An Argument.pdf

How has empire influenced the British?

Jay Doubleyou: mle > multicultural london english

Jay Doubleyou: every town and city in britain profited from the slave trade

With an important book out here:

Jay Doubleyou: teaching empire in british schools

Jay Doubleyou: empire 2.0 and the 'imperial nostalgia' driving the british culture war

With more here:

Britain's Imperial Legacy: "It's Absolutely Everywhere" | HistoryExtra

Sathnam Sanghera on Empireland - How Imperialism Shaped Modern Britain - YouTube

Sathnam Sanghera and Samira Ahmed in Conversation, on Empireland | Humanists UK Convention 2021 - YouTube

"What the hell"?!

Empire State of Mind: Episode 1 - All 4

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other views: aspect and perspective

Here are some definitions:

• the form of a verb that shows how the meaning of that verb is considered in relation to time, typically expressing if an action is complete, repeated, or continuous  

ASPECT | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary

• the form of a verb group indicating whether an action, event, or situation is seen as continuing or as complete. In English there are two aspects, the progressive, such as ‘is arriving’ or ‘was arriving’, and the perfective, such as ‘has seen’ and ‘had seen’.  

ASPECT (noun) American English definition and synonyms | Macmillan Dictionary

And another:

• a particular feature of or way of thinking about something, esp. something complicated 

ASPECT | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary

Things can get a bit confusing:

Words Aspect and Perspective have similar meaning

This helps:

With both words, you can be talking in a purely physical manner (about the concrete ‘real’ world) or in a philosophical manner.

• Your perspective is the context in which, or the position from which, you view something or someone.
• He looks at crime from the perspective of a police officer.
• From his perspective, the second building seemed to tower over the first
• An aspect is a ‘side’, part, nuance, characteristic, or feature, or the directional orientation, of something or someone.
• He saw an aspect of the situation that had previously escaped his attention.
• The southern aspect of the house was really charming.

So, depending on your perspective, you might notice different aspects of things or people.

What is the difference between perspective and aspect? - Quora

Taking this further...

What aspects do different Wikipedias show - and what perspectives do they present?

Jay Doubleyou: alternative wikipedias

Same questions for different state media:

Jay Doubleyou: china, the bbc and disinformation

Same questions for you and me:

Jay Doubleyou: othering

For example:

The term orientalism denotes the exaggeration of difference, the presumption of Western superiority, and the application of clichéd analytical models for perceiving the "Oriental world".

Orientalism (book) - Wikipedia

Orientalismo (saggio) - Wikipedia (Italian)

Orientalism - Conservapedia

contrary to the Orient which serves which serves as Europe's polar opposite, Balkan is Europe's "Other within"

Imagining the Balkans - Wikipedia

Balkanizmi (knjiga) – Wikipedija (Croatian)

To build a conceptual framework around a notion of Us-versus-Them is, in effect, to pretend that the principal consideration is epistemological and natural—our civilization is known and accepted, theirs is different and strange—whereas, in fact, the framework separating us from them is belligerent, constructed, and situational.

Other (philosophy) - Wikipedia

Othering – Wikipedia (German)

Us vs. Them: The process of othering | CMHR

What is Othering - YouTube

Finally:

Jay Doubleyou: north, east, south, west - what do they mean?

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profiles: johnson and putin ... and macron and scholz... and musk and bezos

Can you give a profile of your country's leader?

When the UK prime minister resigned in June, the BBC put together a radio series to try and understand Boris Johnson a little more:

Try from 2:30 where we learn about his name - and his origins:

BBC Radio 4 - Boris, 1. The Early Years

He could be a little confusing:

Coronavirus: Matt Lucas mocks Boris Johnson’s ‘confusing’ lockdown speech | The Independent | The Independent

Boris Johnson speech by Matt Lucas - Little Britain - YouTube

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the BBC put together a radio series profiling the Russian leader Vladimir Putin:

BBC Radio 4 - Putin

Here we look at his origins:

Putin - 1. The Moth - BBC Sounds

Here's a talk from a top Russian/French journalist with a different perspective:

Vladimir Pozner: How the United States Created Vladimir Putin - YouTube

For another perspective from Russia Today, here's an interview in English with the president of Syria in October 2020:

Part of President Assad's interview with Rossiya Segodnya News Agency - YouTube

For some 'easier' English, here's a profile or two:

BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / Queen Elizabeth II: What is the Platinum Jubilee?

BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / Remembering Desmond Tutu

And:

Twitter - ESL Lesson Plan - Breaking News English Lesson

Elon Musk - ESL Lesson Plan - Breaking News English Lesson

Helping Nature - ESL Lesson Plan - Breaking News English Lesson

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the importance of 'soft power'

Are Scandinavian countries the 'best'?

Scandinavia, the Crown of Civilisation:Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland

World Happiness Index 2022 | countryeconomy.com

Jay Doubleyou: in/equality - the pay gap - part 3

Report-Card-16-Worlds-of-Influence-child-wellbeing.pdf

Jay Doubleyou: crime and punishment

And they can laugh at themselves:

In 790 AD, the Vikings of Norheim have a hectic schedule that includes pillaging, plundering, enslaving others and solving problems with violence.

Norsemen (Vikingane) Season 1 Official Netflix HD Trailer - YouTube

Ättestupa Norsemen - YouTube

The Norsemen Duel (Holmgang) - YouTube

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What is actually 'the best' country?

Jay Doubleyou: what's the best country?

Watch from 8:30 here:

Which country does the most good for the world? | Simon Anholt - YouTube

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Which country is trying to be 'the best'?

Listen from 36:00 here:

Archive on 4 - A Hard Look at Soft Power - BBC Sounds

To finish with some political satire:

Black Mirror S03E01 Airport scene - YouTube

Social Credit in China: Looking Beyond the “Black Mirror” Nightmare - NYU School of Law – CHRGJ

China’s ‘social credit’ system is a real-life ‘Black Mirror’ nightmare

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