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I have a friend who is an anthropologist, and I love to talk to people in his field. From my perspective as a language person, there are two things that make anthropology interesting: it does not rely on the accuracy of language; it always looks at the human experience world from a historical perspective.
The first one is that it uses one story after another to organize language, but it believes that the same language has different meanings for different people. Psychologists and sociologists often pursue cold potential laws, but anthropologists are always expounding on a possibility. In this era of general experience anxiety, such possibility is precious.
The second one is a valuable perspective. If you put many things in a long enough time frame, your conclusions at the moment may be revised or even completely reversed. In the era of experience anxiety, we are constantly looking for explanations for everyday life, and even seemingly trivial things have to come up with a reason. A historical perspective can always give you a more comprehensive and objective explanation, and then come up with interesting stories.
A few days ago, I talked to my friend again, this time about "rituals."
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