In traditional Haitian culture, there is no direct equivalent of the mind. The self is made up of a three components. The corps cadavre is the physical body; the ti-bon anj or ‘little good angel’ loosely represents what we would consider as agency, awareness and memory; while the gwo bon anj or the ‘big good angel’ is the animating principle that manages motivation and movement.
“The mind is a guess” via mindhack
Cultured Bias is in the oddest places.
I have to freely admit, I’ve never thought about the fact that our body-mind dichtomy is actually a cultural artefact, I just took it as given. I mean, intellectually I knew that there must’ve been differences, but still… It’s very interesting to see how different the answers to the age old question of “what is self” actually is and that those answers greatly influence a culture.
I’ve covered the self-soul dichtomy1 in my worldbuilding for ToC, but I didn’t even think about questioning what definition of “self” the Trarr have.
Gotta fix that. Can’t let such a juicy bit of worldbuilding just laying around.
Anyway, “The mind is a guess” is a short column, but worth a read.
Footnotes:
- Trarr don’t believe in an incorruptable soul, but in an “ahma”, the echo their lives leave in the halls ↩
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