EmEtic

October 19, 2023

The Spate.

Lyrics

CAIN

Trying to understand why people do the things they do
I can glean a vivid picture just from subtle social cues
The logic of why I think the things I think
And the eyes staring daggers behind my back
It’s all second nature; I have to make sure I’m not hated
So I act according to what my surroundings have dictated

I want to see the intricate implications
The complexities happening on a subconscious level
And when I gain knowledge of the way these unspoken rules work¹
I’ll see that I can be idolized just as I can be shunned

After all this time spent walking around in this maze
I just want to find an escape from the pressure of these ways
Reaching out and passing through the boundaries
In search of a different perspective on things²
I glanced upon the record of a possibility
A code that doesn’t involve reacting with hostility

I want to see the intricate implications
The complexities happening on a subconscious level
And when I gain knowledge of the way these unspoken rules work
I’ll see that I can be idolized just as I can be shunned

I’ve lived among many places
And the truth follows me
I inspire fear and disgust universally³
So I seek the way out

I want to see the intricate implications
The complexities happening on a subconscious level
And when I gain knowledge of the way these unspoken rules work
I’ll see that I can be idolized just as I can be shunned

I want to see the intricate implications
The norms that rule over, create, and judge all of the world
In the end, it’s all arbitrary. Anything is possible!⁴
I’ll bend and break them, show the world what they’ve become blind to

Commentary

I grew up in many cultures, and I felt like the different environments around me were subtly influencing me in a way I can't pinpoint--from the way I dressed to my eye contact and body language. It frustrated me a lot, so I became interested in anthropology as a way for me to uncover and expose these things.

So I regularly visited the Spate, a restaurant where shards gather and discuss anthropology. That's where I learned about emic and etic--emic being the perspective you get from someone within a culture and etic being the perspective you get from an outsider--e.g. a researcher. Since I naturally found myself as an insider and an outsider in different places and at different times, I was pretty interested.

Even though I was not longer officially part of the City of Gray and Blue, I still wanted to visit the Spate. I went at a slow time, and I sat down at the bar for a while, listening to the conversations coming from the few occupied tables. The other shards were discussing ideas that regular people take as truth, but are actually culture-specific views. It lifted my spirits a lot--I felt like I was being told, "You don't have to listen to people who frame their views as absolute truth, there's a world of possibility out there." I've begun to realize this over the times I visited in the past, and I was glad I got to hear more from them.

I freely sang there--the other shards could no longer hear me. Not like I really made myself heard back when I had the ability to do so though. Before I knew it, I had gotten up and started walking outside, actually enjoying the scenery around me.

Notes

1 The thing is, emic perspectives will miss things that etic perspectives pick up on and vice versa. As Mostowlansky and Rota put it, "the distinction between emic and etic served to shed light on the difference between social scientists who analyse their informants’ interpretations of events (emic) and those who weigh such interpretations against the forces of economy, ecology, and technology (etic)." It's possible to combine emic and etic approaches to get a fuller picture. (Morris et al. 789) But y'know...if you combine the two words you get "emetic" which means "vomit-inducing" (usually referring to medicines that cause vomiting).

2 Because I felt shunned, I didn't want to buy into the cultures and values around me and grew to resent them. Aside from trying to understand what was influencing me, I was also hoping that I could find different ways of thinking about stuff like body language. Being an etic observer was also appealing, as to me it was another way to escape and become unshackled by culture.

3 There's this concept of a cultural universal, which is a trait that appears in all societies. Yes, the idea that I'm shunned universally contradicts the idea that I can find a culture where I'm idolized. Well, I'm being a bit ironic here, but I've learned that people who shun me do think their position is universal.

4 There was a debate on emics and etics between Kenneth L. Pike and Marvin Harris in the late 1980s. Pike had the viewpoint that "scholars themselves were ‘creatures of their scientifically and naturally categorized linguistic environment’ who may not recognize the ‘local’ or culture-specific nature of their own point of view", so an etic perspective isn't more objective than an emic one (Mostowlansky and Rota). This mirrors my own conclusion that values and culture are rather arbitrary, so I could break and change the norms I didn't like.

Works Cited

Morris, Michael W., et al. “Views from inside and Outside: Integrating Emic and Etic Insights about Culture and

Justice Judgment.” The Academy of Management Review, vol. 24, no. 4, 1999, pp. 781–96. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/259354. Accessed 19 Aug. 2023.

Mostowlansky, Till, and Andrea Rota. “Emic and Etic.” Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Nov. 2020,

www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/emic-and-etic. Accessed 22 Aug. 2023.

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