Unguided Blog

I can never understand what is wrong with the Americans and their obsession with acronyms. My first encounter with them was years ago, in an inter-company board meeting. Dressed casual as previously instructed, we were sitting around a big U-shaped table. At the open edge of the table was a screen on which various slides about development, financials and various stuff would be shown.

The gentleman, well, supposedly higher ranking than the rest of us took the microphone and a parade of acronyms began. One after the other, non-stop, a myriad of acronyms were being shot at us, without showing any sign of mercy or regret: kpi, pnl, bs, pso, tsr, roi, abc, def.. The list was long. Do not get me wrong. I knew what he was talking about, that bs stood for balance sheet, not bullshit for example, but the scene was so surreal that it was like we were orbiting the Earth in a shuttle, and all those acronyms were floating in the cabin at zero gravity. At one point, I almost opened my mouth to catch and swallow one (Now you know what goes on inside those board meetings; making thousands per hour while you are sweating for a few bucks is not so easy). I poured myself a cup of coffee, instead.

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I think I mentioned it in an article about Hereke, barely touching it, though. One thing that confuses foreigners who try to learn Turkish (like expats or diplomats) and those in the acquired perception group who forgot it after learning another language is the present tense, which unfortunately does not exist, contrary to popular belief. It is one of the primary sources of disinformation.

Just like German, Romanian etc, present tense is packed into present continuous tense. Yet, every language book I have seen practically says there is one in Turkish, and shows what we call “wide tense” as the English equivalent (or any language having a present tense) for it. As any English speaker trying to learn Turkish will testify, probably even before reading this article, they are not the same. And this leads to a state of confusion where Discordia is probably having the time of her life.

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The trouble with the group of acquired perception is they are extremely vocal, and they are often cited as experts by numerous sources. Not only they pump, via media, a variety of interesting but useless b.s. that does not make sense, they also alter or adversely affect the natural perception group, because the latter think the former as locals.

First things first, I consider any information, idea, observation made naturally from outside, by a non-local an invaluable contribution. See, as locals we are inside our little box, have never had the opportunity to look from outside or above. The constraints that stop us are not only geographical. The biases, habits and all follow us wherever we go. So, we will never have the opportunity to have that different angle, the angle of the outsider, fresh, unprecedented, free of all that in a way poison us, yet at the same time make us who we are.

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Before we begin our debunking journey, let me complete the theoretical framework to a certain extent. In Days of Disinformation I pinpointed three groups disseminating disinformation, namely, those who are paid to do so, foreigners with a naturally different perception and locals with different acquired perception; and we added that subjects of the third group, locals educated a la Western style have a disadvantage to form associations between concepts which is vital to critical thinking.

The problem is two-fold and both are related to language. In this article we shall only investigate critical thinking deficiency resulting from lack of concept association.

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A typical mind educated in the West is linear, it has been structured that way in the name of deeper analysis, ceteris paribus. It is aware that by keeping all variables but two constant, it creates an artificial world, and thinks that it is necessary, often desirable, and most of the time the only way. This strategy works surprisingly well, in the West that is.

I often come across an article, a comment, or a news story etc, trying to analyze Turkey. Rarely I agree with them. In approximately half of the cases, if I jump to the conclusion I would agree to it, but when I start from the beginning, with the author’s premises, my conclusion will not be the same or be a completely different one. This naturally follows to a scenario in which even if the wording of the conclusion is the same, its meaning is not, or different premises are required for me to reach the author’s conclusion. It is I call a natural difference of perception.

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