00:11
Hi Len. Hi Asami. How are you? I just never know how to start this, but...
That could be a whole episode by itself. That's not... We can talk about, you know,
ways to start up conversation and... Surprisingly difficult.
Surprisingly difficult, especially in a language that is new to you or unfamiliar to you.
Yeah. The cues can be different, so...
Yeah. So what do we want to talk about today?
Perfect. So I think we were looking at our running list, and we saw the phrase,
it builds character. Yeah, it literally just says, like, comma,
like quotation mark. Yeah.
It builds character and like no other notes or links or explanation on it. And so I cannot
remember when we talked about this or when we decided that we should talk about this.
Well, you see, Asami, the struggle of trying to figure out what notes mean that I placed there
months in the past builds character. So it's all full circle. It really helps.
Listeners, that was an example usage of how to use the phrase, it builds characters.
But okay, maybe for those of us who haven't heard that phrase all that often,
what does that mean? When do you use it?
Sure. So yeah, if you haven't heard that phrase before, what it's implying is that
for a usually difficult or challenging experience, this experience you're having
will result in you becoming a better person or have stronger skills or be more...
More of anything, really. It's this idea of because you have struggled and had a difficult
thing, you will be improved on the other side when you finish that type of thing.
Usually it's attached to things like, you know, perseverance and determination and those words,
that's the fundamental or the baseline meaning behind the phrase, it builds character.
It gets used a little differently than that sometimes, which we can talk about, but that's
the idea. So yeah, I'm trying to think of like Japanese equivalent, because that concept of
doing a hard thing that's supposed to be good for you, that exists in Japan,
in Japanese language. I mean, I think we're actually full of it.
03:04
Maybe too much, but we can talk about that later. That's another.
Yeah, I think it exists, but nothing comes to my head that is sort of similar
to the idiomatic phrasing of it builds character.
Maybe I don't know the idioms yet. Is there something else you want to add there before I
share a thought?
No, no, no, no. I mean, it sounds too...
It sounds more like it's good for you than it builds character.
Because if you literally translate it builds character,
it sounds awkward as hell, like it just doesn't sound like something you would say in conversation.
That's pretty much what I'm told all the time when I do a straight English to Japanese
translation. But I was going to suggest, and I think there's a relatedness here,
because you've mentioned in sort of the average of Japanese culture, there is that sense of,
right, like struggling through the thing you're doing with the implication that something good
is at the other side, with I think the idea of pointing out the struggle as like a really
important part, right? Like it has to be a struggle sometimes.
I would just suggest that it's present, not as an idiom, but in the words, right,
ganbaru and gaman, right? Like the idea of, you know, obviously those have other meanings,
and they're not translated like that, to my knowledge, they're not usually translated that
way. But they have the experience of, like, nothing that you're doing right now is going to
change, but you are just going to have to try harder and continue doing what you're doing,
right? In English, maybe it's just like, well, good luck, try harder, I guess. That has a different
feeling. But it's kind of close, it's kind of close to this, right? Like, if I say, if I say,
like, ganbatte, it's like, it's not just good luck, it feels like you're gonna have to do it anyway.
I hope that it goes well for you. And at the end, like, I hope it's I hope it's a good thing,
maybe. Yeah, not all the time. There's nuance there. Ganbatte implies that after the phrase,
you're expecting increase in effort. Yeah, that's right. And, and, yeah, like, whether,
like, whether that's good for them or not, is not a concern of the person saying ganbatte,
06:06
it's just ganbatte, right? Yeah. And 99% of the time, it's probably used in the same equivalent
of like, good luck. But the fact that the good luck equivalent is ganbatte, in Japanese,
is an indication that this idea of perseverance as a virtue, and doing hard things
that will be good for you in future is ingrained in our culture. Yeah, I think that's a great
explanation of it. Because that Yeah, yeah, you're right. I don't think it's right on par.
But I think it does show the underlying feeling there. Yeah, there's something interesting that
it builds character is like, thrown around as phrase, both kind of sarcastically, as well as
like, sometimes genuinely rather scarily, genuinely, scarily, genuinely. And that I
think brings us to the other way. I've heard it builds character, which is with the scary genuine,
like, somebody who is using it. I think it's scary for maybe a different reason, perhaps,
but it's somebody who uses the phrase, it builds character as an excuse for like the challenging
situation somebody is going through, right? This is, this is maybe along the same lines as
people who just think that others are being lazy, right, or not doing enough, or they should be
doing harder instead of trying to understand the situation, right? It's like, well, it builds
character, you know, I, man, every generation above me is about to get angry. So, like, you know,
I walked to school uphill both ways in the snow at negative 30 Celsius. And, you know, that built
character, I'm a better person for all of the challenges. And it's sometimes used sometimes
used as a, it doesn't look like a weapon at first, but kind of like a weapon. It's a,
it's a way to say that, like, these bad things are good for you. But there's still bad things.
It's used as a justification for survivor bias. Yeah, yeah, it's certainly can get
included in that space. And that is, yeah, you have made it through. So like the struggle must
have been necessary. Right? So, yeah, which I always have a hard time kind of negotiating
09:00
that in my mind, because there are difficult experiences in my life that I do think is very
responsible for who I am today. And I'm, you know, for all intents and purposes, I'm pretty
happy with how I turned out so far. So that's wonderful. That's not a bad thing, right? No,
not at all. That's great. But, but like, there are definitely other hard things that happened to me
that was like, I didn't need that. I didn't need that to be a better person. Right? I would just
shit. Yes, it was, in fact, just shit. Right. And I think both are true. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And that's at least one of the factors that makes it so easy for people to this might be an
uncommon word for some people, but to conflate the ideas, right? So to take the sort of both ideas
that are technically separate, but because they have this similarity, you start to merge them
together. And they seem the same, right? So it becomes all struggle and challenge is beneficial.
And it loses the nuance that like, you know, that that's not true. Sometimes it's just bad.
Sometimes it's actually just bad for no reason. Right, exactly. And like, we can't always pick
those apart when I tend to sort of sit in my brain and think about things like this.
Maybe one of the first thoughts is that we as people tend to find great ways to add stress
and struggle to our lives, whether we are intending to or not. And so, like, you know,
if we can remove some of the things that are challenges and are problems to large
groups of people, and that, you know, are just there to create a higher barrier,
people are going to find the ways that maybe better help them, right, to struggle, right? If I
have to worry less, I go towards like the idea of surviving, right? If I have to worry less
about surviving every day, then I have more ability to struggle with learning or understanding
these new concepts, right? Like, if you take away the struggles that are relatively meaningless,
you actually can then benefit from the struggles that have more meaning. And so,
you know, that's, that's where some of the nuance comes in.
But I feel like it's also really hard, like, hindsight is 20-20, right?
Well, yeah.
It's always hard when you are going through the hard stuff, like, in situ.
12:04
Yes.
Very, very hard to know, is this a good kind of hard, or like, bad kind of hard?
Yeah, this is perhaps where it's helpful both for people to have more opportunities with
self-reflection type stuff, but also for those that are watching, maybe the next generations
coming, you aren't there to make all of their decisions for them, right? Like, I didn't want
the generations above us to make all the decisions for, you know, there's an independence and a
communal space in here. But I can definitely help somebody at that stage see whether that
challenge they're going through, like, might have an effect that is worthwhile in the end.
Or I can maybe recognize that, ah, everyone at this, like, entire school, for example,
is currently struggling with something that doesn't really need to be a problem anymore,
right? Like, I went through that, but that doesn't give you what they think it gives you,
right? Like, we have evidence to the contrary. And maybe, maybe that changes, right? We could
get into a whole conversation, I think, about how we've changed the types of things that in
school spaces, we decide we need and the type of struggle that's there, right?
Yeah.
But the point would be to adjust it, right? Because there's a great example. Like you said,
you don't know in the moment. So there's no reason to, like, either tell somebody,
your struggle is definitely going to be worthwhile, or tell them that it's not,
it's just to be like, hey, that is hard. That's actually really hard right now what you're going
through. Like, you know, maybe we're not sure what to do with that just yet. But it's hard.
We'll have to think about it later. You know? Yeah. Yeah.
I want to continue on with this line of thought about things that builds character,
quote unquote. But maybe let's go to the next episode to do that.
Yeah.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and find us on x at
ego.science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C. See you next time!
