Tag Archives: proverb

“The Path to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions”

Nationality: American – "Very American?"
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 28, 2014
Primary Language: English

The informant is a student at USC and housemate of the collector. They are a screenwriting major, and a person who considers themselves a floater among social groups – “sometimes hangs out with musicians, sometimes with theatre kids.” They come from a family where the mother was Jewish but the father wasn’t, and although the informant is not very religious, they consider Judaism as something core to their identity. 

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Let’s talk about writerly things, ‘cause you’re a writer. You belong to that subset of people. What about proverbs? Sayings?

Oh man. There’re some great ones. Ones that I love. Probably my favorite proverb is –

Is there one that you find yourself using a lot?

Yeah, actually. And it’s a very common one. Because I know a lot of people who would consider themselves nice. And I think other people would call them nice if asked to describe them. But their actions are often destructive, either indirectly or just through ignorance of certain things. There’s this great old proverb that’s been quoted by a number of Holocaust scholars. Which I find very interesting. It’s “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.” And that’s I think how constant – at least in terms of the Holocaust how it’s brought up is that Germany needed to rebuild after World War I. Which completely stripped them of everything. And Adolph Hitler promised a brighter future. And I mean obviously killing Jews weren’t “good intentions” but he wanted to rebuild the country and the sense of morale that was created that way was that way. And also I think everybody in the ghetto who didn’t realize what was going on was like “oh, this is probably fine, people would never do something like that.” That’s part of it. People are often well-intentioned but do things that are not so great.

There’s one thing that I love to recount, which is in The Avengers. Everybody loves The Avengers. And I understand why. It’s a very crowd-pleasing movie. And I loved it, up until it’s basically the last – it’s the big climax of the movie. And Loki, the villain of the film, is pontificating, like Loki is wont to do. And Loki is on this very intellectual monologue, and of course it’s about how he is dominant and whatever, “you are a plebeian without intelligence” or whatever, and then the Hulk comes in and he smashes him – and it’s like a joke, and it’s very funny and everybody in the theater laughed – every time I saw it, it was just a huge crowd-pleaser of a moment and everybody loved it and everybody quoted it to their friends afterwards. Or didn’t quote it, because the joke was physical. But brought it up. What I thought – and this is my interpretation of it, so I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am because I tend to be right about things like this, as a writer –  is  that Joss Whedon is a very very smart guy. And I respect the shit out of him for loads of reasons, Cabin in the Woods and Buffy being two of them. But what he did in that moment was he glorified bullying. And every bully who stands up to a kid, every bully who takes lunch money from a kid who’s an intellectual, or treats him like shit, like, I don’t know, I was tread in high school or middle school – mostly middle school. But every bully who treats a kid like that doesn’t treat a kid that way because he’s intentionally gonna be an asshole. He treats him that way because he thinks the intellectual kid’s being annoying, or pontificating like Loki was. And he thinks that what he’s doing is cool. And in that moment, that kid just got a justification and was validated for everything that he’s ever done that is shit on somebody who’s intelligent. And I think that is such a terrible message to send to people. It’s one moment – it is a laugh, it is a joke – and it plays brilliantly as a joke. But my god, I feel like a whole generation of kids is gonna see that, and see that movie because it was the number one grossing movie and like, one of the best superhero movies of all time – with that in it. People are gonna see that, and they’re gonna go, “oh man, I’m cool, bullying is cool. And being intellectual is stupid.” We have a huge problem in this country where being smart is not a trait that’s valued. In politics, even. The whole knock against Barack Obama in both elections was that he was too elite. He was too Harvard for the rest of the… field.  Of course neglecting to mention that McCain had seven houses and Mitt Romney for all intents and purposes was a multi-millionaire. But I don’t think that there should be a problem with being elite. I think we should want our leaders to be intelligent and well above average. I think now – I mean George W. Bush got elected because he could have a beer with somebody. Also because the state of Florida fucked Gore on the recount. At the same time, especially in middle America but even to some extent on the coast, we’ve demonized intellectualism. And when that thing happened in the Avengers, when Hulk smashed Loki, and it was a punchline, all I thought was “god damn it, we just set ourselves back another twenty years with this.” I don’t know where I started with this but that’s where I ended up.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

So yeah. It’s great intention, for Joss Whedon. It plays well in the theater, it’s a great joke, and it was a fantastic intention to – I think his intention with that joke was to sort of show that Loki was being an asshole. And Hulk was smashing him for being an asshole. But it didn’t read like that. I don’t think when you put it in the context of a memory – people don’t remember movies. They remember moments. And that’s a moment. So out of context that moment is just brawn beats brain. Which is so weird, because Joss has done such a great job with all of his other media at glorifying the brain.

You said this is a phrase you come back to a lot. Where did you pick it up from and why do you keep using it?

I was reading an interview with Sacha Baron Cohen, actually, he was the first one who I had heard use it, but he was quoting a book on the Holocaust and I looked him up and I did a whole thing. But I’ve used it in a lot of different – I’ve use it just – I tend to use it – ‘Cause I write a lot of political dramas. I tend to use it that way. Whenever I bring up something like that. Or if I’m ever discussing rape culture. It’s just something that happens a lot in rape culture. In Steubenville, y’know, a year or so ago, everybody on the news was like, “oh, these poor boys,” [laughs] and you could see where they were coming from. They were trying to say that they were just kids, they made a mistake. But at the same time there’s video of them on the internet going “she’s deader than OJ’s girlfriend” and I’m like “that’s not—no,” they deserve serious prison time. But I think in trying to make sure they aren’t false rape claims and certain things, that have happened in the past, we overcompensate and as a result we’ve created a culture that is not cool for women to speak out and that’s not ok.

Cause that’s the thing. I don’t think anybody on the – I’m a liberal. I don’t think anybody on the Christian right is negatively intentioned. I don’t think any of them want anything less than an excellent, morally fantastic country. But I think the way they’re going about it is wrong. And that’s – hence the path to hell being paved with good intentions. And maybe I’m the one fucking up America. Maybe I’m the one who’s being like “oh, maybe we should legalize and tax marijuana so we can pay for children’s college education” – maybe that’s a bad idea. Maybe that’s a terrible idea and it just won’t work, y’know? I don’t know. But yeah – anyway, it’s just something I come back to. It’s an interesting thing. It’s always an interesting conversation.

 

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Informant was verbose. I don’t necessarily agree with everything the informant said, but they very clearly demonstrated their interpretation and feelings about the chosen proverb.

Mexican proverb – El que nace para maceta…

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 46
Occupation: Psychotherapist
Residence: Mexico City, Mexico
Performance Date: March 15, 2014
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

My informant is a 46 year old bicultural/binational/bilingual woman who works as a psychotherapist, born to a White American father and a Mexican mother. She grew up in both the United States and Mexico but currently lives in Mexico City with her husband and two young sons.

This proverb is a common one according to her, and usually spreads among women—she couldn’t remember who told it to her, but knew it was one of the women in her early adolescence. She told it to me over breakfast at a restaurant as an example of how fatalist Mexican proverbs can be, and how that reflects Mexican cultural attitudes.

“El que nace para maceta no sale del corredor”

“Quien dice eso? De donde lo aprendiste?”

(shrugs) “Pues las vecinas, Paula, las abuelas, mi mamá, mas bien las mujeres.”

“Y que significa?”
“Osea si eres pendejo así te vas a quedar.”

“Como dirias que significa pendejo?”
“Ay pues, tonto, así menso, pero extremadamente.”

Translation:

“He who is born for the pot (plant pot) does not leave the hallway.”

“Who says that? Where did you learn it?”
(shrugs) “Well the [female] neighbors, Paula, grandmothers, my mom, mainly from women.”

“And what does it mean?”

“Like if you are a dumb bastard that’s how you’ll stay.”

“What would you say “pendejo” means?”

“Oh well, stupid, like idiotic, but extremely.”

When I inquired as to why she thinks this type of proverb is so common, she had this to say:

“Pues aqui en Mexico, todos somos medio fatalistas. Este tipo de modismo disculpa la gente la gente como es, y es como si no hay nada que puedas hacer para que las cosas sean distintas. Los mexicanos se afligen, pero tambien se consuelan con ese tipo de pensamiento de que ya pues ni modo, sabes?”

“Well here in Mexico, we’re all pretty fatalist. This kind of proverb excuses people from how they are, and it’s like there’s nothing you can do so that things can be different. Mexicans torture themselves, but also console themselves with this type of thought that, well, that’s it then, there’s no other way, you know?”

In terms of its cultural relevance and attitude, I think she hits it spot on. It implies that a person who is one way, who is born one way, can never really change, and this reflects a prevailing attitude about the inflexibility of life situations, and a perceived lack of control over oneself and one’s situation.

Mexican proverb: Arbol que nace torcido…

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 46
Occupation: Psychotherapist
Residence: Mexico City, Mexico
Performance Date: March 15, 2014
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

My informant is a 46 year old bicultural/binational/bilingual woman who works as a psychotherapist, born to a White American father and a Mexican mother. She grew up in both the United States and Mexico but currently lives in Mexico City with her husband and two young sons.

This proverb is a common one according to her, and usually spreads among women—she couldn’t remember who told it to her, but knew it was one of the women in her early adolescence. She told it to me over breakfast at a restaurant as an example of how fatalist Mexican proverbs can be, and how that reflects Mexican cultural attitudes.

“Árbol que nace torcido jamas su tronco endereza”
“Que significa?”
“Que la gente no puede cambiar, aunque quiera… no es su culpa, que así está la cosa.”

Translation: “Tree that is born twisted never its trunk will straighten”

“What does it mean?”
“That people cannot change, even if they want to… it’s not their fault, that’s just how it is.”

A more semantic translation would be “the tree that’s born twisted can never straighten its trunk”.

When I inquired as to why she thinks this type of proverb is so common, she had this to say:

“Pues aqui en Mexico, todos somos medio fatalistas. Este tipo de modismo disculpa la gente la gente como es, y es como si no hay nada que puedas hacer para que las cosas sean distintas. Los mexicanos se afligen, pero tambien se consuelan con ese tipo de pensamiento de que ya pues ni modo, sabes?”

“Well here in Mexico, we’re all pretty fatalist. This kind of proverb excuses people from how they are, and it’s like there’s nothing you can do so that things can be different. Mexicans torture themselves, but also console themselves with this type of thought that, well, that’s it then, there’s no other way, you know?”

In terms of its cultural relevance and attitude, I think she hits it spot on. It implies that a person who is one way, who is born one way, can never really change, and this reflects a prevailing attitude about the inflexibility of life situations, and a perceived lack of control over oneself and one’s situation.

She also informed me that the proverb is used in “a song about a homosexual”; I looked it up, and sure enough:

“El Gran Varon” by Willie Colón

Chorus:

“No se puede corregir

A la naturaleza

A lo que nace doblao

Jamas su tronco endereza”

http://www.lyricsg.com/64018/willie-colon/el-gran-varon-lyrics

Business Proverb

Nationality: Spanish
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/14
Primary Language: English

My informant is a senior in the Marshall School of Business.  He emphasizes in finance and spent his last summer as an investment banking summer analyst at Morgan Stanley.  I knew bankers had lots of stereotypes and figured he would have some interesting occupational folklore.  He gave me this proverb:

It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

He went on to explain that his boss had given him this piece of advice during his first week on the job.  It wasn’t necessarily meant for his internship because that was mostly about learning and questions were welcomed and encouraged, but it was more for his future career.  I interpreted it similarly to “Never be afraid to fail.”  This proverb attests to the go-getter, competitive mindset of investment bankers.

Silence Is Not Always Golden

Nationality: Indian
Age: 47
Occupation: Management Consultant, CEO
Residence: Cupertino, California (Originally from Hyderabad, AP, India)
Performance Date: 3/19/2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada

Item:

“Be wary of silent dogs and still waters.”

Context: 

The source interviewed related his personal experiences with this particular proverb – “Growing up, I always made the wrong friends. I didn’t know they were the wrong friends, but my dad did. Because he was my dad, and he knew everything. My friends were those people who would be incredibly sweet and make easy conversation, but would be very guarded around other people about their own secrets and opinions. One day, I stumbled upon these guys talking the classroom. I was outside in the corridor, and they didn’t know that I was there and listening to them. Naturally, they were talking about me. And they said some things that I can’t repeat in front of you. Upset, I went home and complained to my dad, who told me ‘Be wary of silent dogs and still waters’ – meaning it in particular about people who don’t voice their opinions on others frankly and instead plot and scheme behind the backs of others.”

Analysis:

This proverb is a classic Indian warning against people who don’t talk. Indian people in general are quite talkative, never hesitating to share their opinions, even and sometimes especially when it proves to awkward or unwanted. Therefore, when people aren’t talking, it means that they must be up to something. So, when someone isn’t being obnoxiously vocal about their opinions on your personality, sever all ties with them, because they probably don’t like or care about you.