• noun - : apathy, boredom
Example Sentence:
A restaurant reviewer in SF Weekly once described a brunch as "a stupefyingly lavish buffet spread that will do nothing to erase your acedia."Just when I thought the words couldn't get more challenging, here is one that was next to impossible for me to relate to culture. The main problem for me is that I find foreign cultures anything but boring. So, I realized I have to look at it as an insider. With that, the best I could come up with is the contrast between the North and the South in Spain.
While on vaca
tion throughout Andalucia, I noticed that people were always yelling at eachother. Well, I saw it as yelling, in actuality they were just conversing boisterously. However, if an Andalucian was transplanted to the North, he or she would experience much acedia with the calmness. Some would jokingly say in the South they can be as loud as the want, but in the North they have to worry about the ETA. It's not really a joke to laugh at, but perhaps it's an explanation for the difference.This contrast can also be seen between Austrians and Germans. Typically, Austrians think Germans suffer from much acedia. They speak slower and think....well, their jokes ar
en't always that funny. It could be that Austrians get frustrated from being thought of as "Southern Germany" and it could be that I'm biased due to my time in Graz, but Austrians seem to try hard to be distinguished from Germans and they seem to have more enthusiasm.Personally, I rarely suffer from acedia while in the southern realms. Maybe the exception is in the U.S. Once agian, I have bias from being born and raised in the South, but the North just seems to have much more to offer. Then again, the South has some fantatstic, unique, and culturally significant history.
In regards to boisterous speaking, I've heard comments like that before. Not really in a cultural context, but just family jibes from one side to another. It would seem as though the relationship between Austrians and Germans has something similar, but on a larger scale.
ReplyDeleteYour mention of the ETA led me to think of the Basque culture and something interesting I read about it... Basque is the most ancient language spoken in Europe, pre-Indo European, dating from the third century, if I'm not mistaken.
ReplyDeleteLooking at it as an insider is key - sometimes to really understand a culture, perhaps all times, you have to step into the shoes of the individuals of a culture, even our own, to grasp understanding... Can you think of other examples of acedia within the culture????
ReplyDeleteI agree with the "stepping in the culture" idea. I think that in order to really understand these common practices, we need to submerge ourselves in the everyday lives of these people. Take the Mexican culture for example....they too tend to speak quite loudly and freaking FAST soooo some1 from a rather acedian culture (like AR for example lol) might find it very imposing and intimidating.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't you say that we as Americans typify the Brits in the same way? As stuffy, boring people?
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ReplyDeleteKyle makes a good point, but I wouldn't put Americans on the opposite end of the spectrum from Brits. Instead I would say we're in the middle. the Brits are too stuffy with their royalty, the Australians too wild as ex-cons, and we're somewhere in the middle with a conglomerate of different cultures and attitudes.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I can see the difference between the north and south here, although in some ways I tend to think of the southern realm as being more "stuffy" (for extreme lack of a better term). I guess the notion of southern hospitality and the Bible-belt sort of support that notion. That is, of course, a huge stereotype, but I suppose that being born and raised here I, too, am suffering from a bit of acedia. :)
ReplyDeleteGood post!