This may be an American thing: the particular American flavour of anti-intellectualism. I am told it doesn’t work nearly like this outside the Anglosphere.
(The Australian variant is related and tends more toward “poofter: someone who likes music more than football therefore must be beaten up.”)
Weird, “poofter” sounds like some kind of cushion or something.
It’s true that every document I read about “Immigrate to Australia! It’s the coolest place ever!” mentions something along the lines of “if you’re not interested in team & spectator sports sports you’re gonna be missing out on a lot of fun”. I always suspected it was an euphemism for something much worse, so I sort of made a mental note to avoid the place. Am I right?
The fact that similar-sounding words mean “footstool-y thing” and “homosexual man” is pure coincidence. Well, very nearly pure; both are related to the word “puff”.
If you’ll excuse me going off a tangent, I’d like to ask one (not so silly) question: why is it that every time I hear people talking about Hufflepuff (literally or figuratively), it’s always in a dismissive way, followed by a remark to the effect of “not that there’s anything wrong with them, wonderful people, salt of the earth”
Seriously, what’s wrong with huffing and puffing and being meek and loyal?
Seriously, what’s wrong with huffing and puffing and being meek and loyal?
The scientific literature I’ve read says that about half our species evolved to find those traits extremely unattractive for mate-searching, and low mating priority should spill over into other judgments of the person as per the affect heuristic.
In the real world, people like that may be a crucial part of society. In fiction, I don’t think they’re likely to be very interesting. Any examples of popular and/or respected Hufflepuff-centric fiction?
Not exclusively; that also happens with a sizeable fraction of the population in Italy and Ireland. It may depend on what teachers one has had—people who were made to study sciences at school with poor teachers and struggle to understand it might be still be resenting that—and I guess that science education in the US, Italy or Ireland is particularly awful (compared to, say, Scandinavia).
(This effect also seems to be at work—when someone my wingman and I have just cold-approached asks what we do and we say we study physics, most of the times they seem to all but untranslatable 1, whereas if it’s someone who’s already seem me sing/dance/whatever and already thinks I’m cool, they usually swoon.)
Also, ISTM that plenty of laymen outside America have never heard of Feynman.
EDIT: OTOH in Italy and Ireland IME this only affects “pure” sciences; engineers and medics are usually seen as high-status.
Also, ISTM that plenty of laymen outside America have never heard of Feynman.
I had never heard of Feynman until I read Methods of Rationality. Even Carl Sagan only vaguely rang a bell. And I only knew about Hawking before of a computer-game version of A Brief History Of Time.
So, yeah. On the other hand, you guys probably never heard of Herbert Marcuse, or Ortega y Gasset.
Engineers, doctors and technocrats have high status in the eyes of middle class India, but actual scientists, not very high, but definitely not low status. Mainly it is due to them being relatively high paying careers.
Among the middle class, a steady high paying job has higher status than a risky business. The business castes in India have almost their own parallel status hierarchy.
“poofter: someone who likes music more than football therefore must be beaten up.”
Does that apply only to certain genres of music? In my home town, rock musicians are very popular (at least in the rock music subculture, which comprises a sizeable fraction of the teenage and twentysomething population anyway); so are deejays in the disco music subculture. Hell, even people who sing karaoke and are good at it are usually seen as cool. I’m very surprised there’s a culturally western country where musicians are unpopular—unless it only applies to classical music or something.
EDIT: the “spectator sports” bit in Ritalin’s comment makes me guess you meant ‘likes listening to music more than watching football’, rather than ‘likes playing music more than playing football’ as I had interpreted it at first. I would be a little less surprised if this is right, but still somewhat surprised.
The whole point of spectator-sports is to roleplay war-of-the-tribes. You can’t do that as easily with music; even a music battle requires cooperation and harmony on some level, otherwise it’s a cacophony.
Jokes aside, I think you’re talking about a different side of the evolutionary-cognitive boundary than I was. (It seems very unlikely that what you say affects Australians differently from other people.)
This may be an American thing: the particular American flavour of anti-intellectualism. I am told it doesn’t work nearly like this outside the Anglosphere.
(The Australian variant is related and tends more toward “poofter: someone who likes music more than football therefore must be beaten up.”)
Weird, “poofter” sounds like some kind of cushion or something.
It’s true that every document I read about “Immigrate to Australia! It’s the coolest place ever!” mentions something along the lines of “if you’re not interested in team & spectator sports sports you’re gonna be missing out on a lot of fun”. I always suspected it was an euphemism for something much worse, so I sort of made a mental note to avoid the place. Am I right?
A pouf is a small cushion for sitting on or using as a footstool.
How does that relate to sexual preference and/or conformity to gender roles? Also, why is it bad? Cushions are nice.
The fact that similar-sounding words mean “footstool-y thing” and “homosexual man” is pure coincidence. Well, very nearly pure; both are related to the word “puff”.
If you’ll excuse me going off a tangent, I’d like to ask one (not so silly) question: why is it that every time I hear people talking about Hufflepuff (literally or figuratively), it’s always in a dismissive way, followed by a remark to the effect of “not that there’s anything wrong with them, wonderful people, salt of the earth”
Seriously, what’s wrong with huffing and puffing and being meek and loyal?
The scientific literature I’ve read says that about half our species evolved to find those traits extremely unattractive for mate-searching, and low mating priority should spill over into other judgments of the person as per the affect heuristic.
In the real world, people like that may be a crucial part of society. In fiction, I don’t think they’re likely to be very interesting. Any examples of popular and/or respected Hufflepuff-centric fiction?
Not exclusively; that also happens with a sizeable fraction of the population in Italy and Ireland. It may depend on what teachers one has had—people who were made to study sciences at school with poor teachers and struggle to understand it might be still be resenting that—and I guess that science education in the US, Italy or Ireland is particularly awful (compared to, say, Scandinavia).
(This effect also seems to be at work—when someone my wingman and I have just cold-approached asks what we do and we say we study physics, most of the times they seem to all but untranslatable 1, whereas if it’s someone who’s already seem me sing/dance/whatever and already thinks I’m cool, they usually swoon.)
Also, ISTM that plenty of laymen outside America have never heard of Feynman.
EDIT: OTOH in Italy and Ireland IME this only affects “pure” sciences; engineers and medics are usually seen as high-status.
I had never heard of Feynman until I read Methods of Rationality. Even Carl Sagan only vaguely rang a bell. And I only knew about Hawking before of a computer-game version of A Brief History Of Time.
So, yeah. On the other hand, you guys probably never heard of Herbert Marcuse, or Ortega y Gasset.
Engineers, doctors and technocrats have high status in the eyes of middle class India, but actual scientists, not very high, but definitely not low status. Mainly it is due to them being relatively high paying careers.
Among the middle class, a steady high paying job has higher status than a risky business. The business castes in India have almost their own parallel status hierarchy.
Does that apply only to certain genres of music? In my home town, rock musicians are very popular (at least in the rock music subculture, which comprises a sizeable fraction of the teenage and twentysomething population anyway); so are deejays in the disco music subculture. Hell, even people who sing karaoke and are good at it are usually seen as cool. I’m very surprised there’s a culturally western country where musicians are unpopular—unless it only applies to classical music or something.
EDIT: the “spectator sports” bit in Ritalin’s comment makes me guess you meant ‘likes listening to music more than watching football’, rather than ‘likes playing music more than playing football’ as I had interpreted it at first. I would be a little less surprised if this is right, but still somewhat surprised.
The whole point of spectator-sports is to roleplay war-of-the-tribes. You can’t do that as easily with music; even a music battle requires cooperation and harmony on some level, otherwise it’s a cacophony.
Er… have you heard the lyrics to certain metal songs?
Jokes aside, I think you’re talking about a different side of the evolutionary-cognitive boundary than I was. (It seems very unlikely that what you say affects Australians differently from other people.)