E-mail

The Safir-Whorf hypothesis seems very logical to me because it is in the discussion of concepts that makes the concepts resonant with us. The words social justice have different meaning to me than they would a Chinese person because of the historical linguistic meanings of words and their combinations have been vastly different in the two different cultures.

This article in the Economist discusses Darwinist concepts, but what interested me the most is the Darwinist theory that justice is “probably an evolved phenomenon.”
The discourse in Western society and in SAE languages over centuries influenced by the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, and even as far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans has probably contributed to the evolution of the sense of justice.

To connect this to the concept of e-mail, I think my generation thinks much differently about e-mail but our thought processes are still evolutionarily linked to spoken communication. I don’t think e-mail has been around long enough to actually affect our thought processes yet.

However, I do think many people I know could benefit from the Jerz article. I’ve received the strangest, most informal e-mails that I find extremely rude because the person has not taken the time to greet me, identify themselves, and identify their reason for e-mailing. Any time you’re e-mailing someone you’re taking up some of his or her time. It is only polite to take up as little as possible by being direct as possible about what it is you want from that person.