Proverbs
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008In recent days my mind has dwelt on the idea of the proverb; those short phrases that embody some important truth in an elegant, easy to convey form. I have thought of how they embody truisms not only for a given culture, but in many cases for humanity as a whole.
Sometimes they represent some fact of life in a given subculture or endeavor. In the open source community they say “Release early, release often” because doing so is considered the best path to success. In the business and financial circles I’ve heard them say “Bulls win, pigs die” as a warning against excessive greed. “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”, shows us the essence of the creative process.
Others, I think, provide a window into the profound mechanics of an entire society; simple constructs that nonetheless have wide ranging effects on a culture’s more visible manifestations. Consider these proverbs in light of the histories that spawned them: the Japanese say, “The nail that sticks up get hammered down”, while the westerners say “Fortune favours the bold”.
