Together
The Hedgehog Dilemma and an important lesson from 2020
I had planned and redrafted a different piece for this very first post, but at this liminal space of the new year, I usually look back and ahead, like the two-faced Roman god Janus.
Out of curiosity, I re-read the first entry of my blog in January 2020.
“As I look back, the pages of last year’s daily diary put together an answer to the inevitable question Where did the year go? Job assignments, writing, journaling, coffee appointments with new friends, classes… the smudges, the dog-eared pages, the colour-coded flags bear testimony to a year of adjustment to the London world I had left twelve years ago.” At around that time, the Covid-19 virus, which didn’t even have a name, was just a negligible headline among the endless scrolling: nothing I needed to worry about. The rest is history still in the making.
This January I look back at a much-changed world with compassion, for what the world has been through, and with gratitude, for being granted enough time to be writing this. And I look ahead to an ever-changing world with anticipation and hope to a year that has shown the essential truth of the unity of humanity.
This newsletter is about making connections between ideas, texts, cultures, attempting to fit pieces of the puzzle without knowing what the big picture is. I plan to pick up pieces one by one, and see where they fit in the bigger picture of my reality.
I’ll start with a winter story, also known as The Hedgehog Dilemma (thanks to Schopenhauer).
(Story credit: Arthur Schopenhauer; image credit: me)
It’s a freezing day in the hedgehog nest, so the hedgehogs move closer in order to warm up. But when they do, they get pricked by each other’s spikes, so they move apart again – but then they get cold, they move closer…and so on and so forth. The idea is that in all relationships we try to strike the fine balance between being warm enough and not being pricked.
The Hedgehog Dilemma highlights two very basic human needs, to be together with others and to have enough space. This always reminds me of Brown and Levinson’s influential theory of politeness, which is based on the concept of ‘face’, that is “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself,”[sic: this is a late 80s text] and consists of two kinds of face needs, positive and negative.
I pause here for a necessary clarification: “positive” and “negative” are not used in the everyday sense of “good” and “bad” but rather in the sense of “attracting” and “repelling” borrowed from physics (never been my forte, so that’s as far the explanation goes).
Positive face needs relate to the basic need of every rational human being to be liked; to belong; to have their actions approved by others; to be included and to be part of social networks (hedgehogs coming closer to keep warm).
Negative face needs have to do with the basic need of every rational human being to have freedom of action; to be free from imposition and disturbance; to have their privacy/boundaries respected (hedgehogs trying to avoid each other’s spikes).
The theory argues that these needs are universal for all humans, even if their expressions differ across cultures. Can you recall misunderstandings or even blunders in an interaction? The two face needs may be worth considering.
An English colleague of mine from my teaching days shared one of his from the time he was teaching in Afghanistan. After receiving some bad news from home, he asked an Afghan colleague, “Could I have some space please? I’d like to be alone for a bit.” The Afghan colleague who had been trying to comfort him was promptly offended.
A lot can be written about this – as indeed it has. Thousands of pages of theses and papers were written analysing, refuting, modifying, fine-tuning the theory, supplying evidence from various cultures, showing how it applies or doesn’t. I’ve done it too, trying it on for size on my adoptive compatriots, the Iranians, but in the past year I’ve thought about it in a different way.
The pandemic took good care of negative face needs: social distancing continues to ensure that individual space is not encroached upon; having to wear a mask helps me think twice before I speak and gives me a second chance to reformulate an ill-thought utterance.
It's the positive face needs that suffered most; but in the loneliness and isolation, people found new and different ways to connect with strangers, and give and receive support, often virtually. To my mind, the past year drove home the truth that we need to be with others and to be connected. It’s the need for warmth and togetherness and belonging that drives the hedgehogs into the nest in the first place. It will do great things for humanity in the year that has just begun.
Crossed my path
…and opened up a path for over nine months now: the virtual writing community London Writers’ Salon that hosts Writers’ Hour. It is still going strong and stronger. Four (among the many) lessons I learned from them:
1. Don’t get it perfect, get it done (perfection doesn’t exist);
2. Everyone’s path is individual (don’t compare yourself to anyone else);
3. Other writers struggle with the same issues as I do (I am not a freak after all);
4. I don’t need to know the complete plan before I start; the work, and the universe, will show the way. That’s the magic that’s happening in the Salon.
How to feel gratitude: an inspirational video tweet by Donald Roberson (author of How to Think like a Roman Emperor). And just to show how small the world is, this clip is filmed at the foot of the statue of Athena (a connection between gratitude and wisdom?) at the Pedion Areos park in Athens, a ten minutes’ walk from where I grew up and where I was walked in my pram.
Small talk, big deal: All right? How you getting on? Fellow linguists Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne look at how we connect big time through small talk - which is not small at all.
Postcard (from) home
Dear Professor Sifianou
It is quite apposite that I write this first postcard to you, since I can never think of the politeness theory without thinking of you. You taught me Morphology in my second undergraduate year in the University of Athens. A few years later, I sat in the University of London Senate House Library, stooping over a microfiche reader and frantically taking notes from your study of politeness phenomena in Greece and England. It was this study that inspired my work on Iranian politeness. When I managed to borrow the physical book, I photocopied the acknowledgments page, folded it carefully in my diary, and when the going got hard, kept reading it like a spell. As luck would have it, you were later asked to be my thesis external examiner in Cardiff.
Twenty-four years have passed since then, but I wanted to say that even if we have not met often since, I feel that our connection between teacher and pupil is always there, precious and invisible. And a lot of gratitude for what you’ve done.
Sofia
The recurring motifs of this newsletter are human connections and what may interfere with them: from a nod acknowledging the presence of another to the exchange of small talk and communal rituals. I’ve got several ideas for future posts on the insider/outsider gaze at a culture; how different cultures may understand concepts such as respect, an apology or a compliment very differently; the use of names, titles and pronouns and what they reveal. But I welcome suggestions on any related topics!
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Have a great year!
Very interesting Sofia, and have subscribed. Your musings range well across differences and I love the hedgehogs. Am feeling prickly at the moment! But snug in bed browsing and connecting.
I grew up in a culture that fosters "positive face," and now live here in America where "negative space" feels more dominant. I see the difference again and again, even in the most fleeting of human interactions. An American born friend told me, just the other day, that her adult son had asked if it was alright to come for a visit a day ahead of schedule this past holiday season. Never, in my native country would that question be asked. Over there, you belong in your parents' home, forever, and come and go as you please!