“The future doesn’t, because time is made of events. Time has to be experienced to be real. Events create time like seasons, ceremonies. People produce as much time as they need. Long past, vibrant present, and no future.”
Beautiful but dangerous if we take it literally: yes, the present should be lived, but without words for the future we end up not budgeting for it. Language and culture co-evolve: culture preserves, language runs ahead and can lead. If you don’t update the lexicon, you take good care of the past (brooms and dustpans for horses) and miss the new problems (roads, railways, black exhaust). We need words that make the invisible visible maintenance, prevention, resilience, intergenerational return and a public vocabulary that works as an antibody: transparency, traceability, accountability. In practice: name things, tell the story of the invisible, give the future a seat at the table. Words are infrastructure: thanks to them we don’t steal the future we give it back with interest.
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I wonder how much language shapes culture, politics, and the economy. Or rather: which comes first language or culture?
Instinct says culture: you think, then you translate. Yet every time we find the right words, the way we think also changes. So language isn’t just the clothing of thought: it’s a lever.
Here’s how I see it: culture tends to stay put, it protects rites and stories. Language is restless: it changes, absorbs, invents new metaphors. Often it’s the visionaries those who see or feel differently who open new rooms with new words. Without that push we risk a world with technology sprinting and culture idling: fighting battles with yesterday’s concepts while work, study, friendships, and love have already changed platform and pace.
Concrete image. A mayor in the 1900 hands out brooms and dustpans because the city is full of horse manure. Real problem, practical fix. Meanwhile, in the next town they’re building roads and railways. You tidy the sidewalk; they change how people move. And while you’re looking at the horses, you miss the black exhaust from cars the new hidden cost you’ll notice too late. Without new words we risk treating the past well and failing to see the future slipping in through the side door.
There’s a line that floored me:
“The future doesn’t… Time is made of events… Long past, vibrant present, and no future.”
It’s poetic; it tells you: stay in the present. In many cultures it works like this: a long past, a vivid present, and a future with almost no words. Wonderful for living intensely. But if you make the present absolute, whose future are you stealing? Those who come after. (This is where intergenerational justice comes in: giving the future a seat at the table isn’t a whim, it’s a duty.)
Because there are invisible infrastructures that don’t make it into photos: bridge maintenance, sewers, digital archives, preventive healthcare, data literacy, cybersecurity. You don’t see them right away; you do when they’re missing. And here language returns: if we lack words like maintenance, prevention, resilience, intergenerational return, we don’t budget for them. If they’re not in the language, they don’t exist on the agenda.
Then there’s the awkward question: if the present rules, don’t shortcuts get easier? This isn’t determinism about “peoples destined to fail.” It’s cultural awareness. Corruption takes root where the public lexicon doesn’t demand accountability. Words like transparency, traceability, open data, benchmark, accountability aren’t technobabble: they’re linguistic antibodies. Once they enter everyday speech, expectations rise, and higher expectations create distributed oversight. (A word alone won’t change everything, but standards, metrics, and open data matter to make decisions accountable.)
It’s not “language first or culture first”: they co-evolve. It’s just that language moves faster and can pull. It doesn’t change the world outside your window; it changes the angle you use to look at it. And when the angle changes, choices change: what to fund, what to postpone, what to protect.