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The weaker Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as “Linguistic Relativism”, proposes that the “facilities” of your language influence the kinds of thoughts that you will have, that your thoughts are effectively guided in a certain direction based on the language you are using. This is well-known to Rubyists, particularly in the RSpec/BDD world, so I won’t talk too much about that in this article. There are many other articles covering the interactions between RSpec and Sapir-Whorf and BDD.

What I’d like to talk about in this post is another much more subtle, but powerful impact of Sapir-Whorf.

A number of years ago, I wrote an essay about Freedom. I came up with two major definitions for it: Freedom From and Freedom To.

Freedom From is the freedom from chains, from things that are stopping you from doing what you want. Freedom From tends to be physical, anchored in reality. I am not free to fly because of the laws of physics. I am not free to buy a small palace in central London because of the laws of mortgage finance.

Its similar but different twin is Freedom To. This is the freedom to realise that you even have a choice about something. Where Freedom From is limited by reality, Freedom To is only limited by your own mind. As such, it’s much less obvious, and harder to see, so that I can’t even give an example of how it affects me. By definition I am unaware of it. I can give an example of how it affects someone else, though: someone who does not realise that there is a shortcut in what he does that could save him time is not free to do his job more efficiently. In a more general way, someone who distrusts others lacks the freedom to build a great relationship.

It’s Freedom To, of course, that is directly related to Sapir-Whorf. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is specific to language, and postulates that the limitations of your language influences your behaviour. But what is language? It’s a tool that your mind uses to articulate concepts. Sapir-Whorf can be generalised: all the tools your mind uses to articulate concepts have an effect on your behaviour.

Where do books come into this? Well, in my experience, people tend to articulate their problems in terms of their experiences. If you’ve never met a certain problem before, you might not even realise you have that problem. If you’ve somehow realised it but have never seen anyone resolve it, you might be discouraged into thinking that it is insoluble. The entire movement of Design Patterns, in Software Engineering, is built on the idea that most problems are easily solved by applying a solution that has been perfected by many people over the years. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a catalogue of Design Patterns for life?

As it happens, there is, although it’s not quite so handy as to fit on a Wikipedia page.

From the Epic of Gilgamesh five thousand years ago, which lets the reader grapple with the meaning of death and loss (a topic of great relevance throughout human history), to much more modern creations by writers all around the world, authors have been putting on paper the problems, and the solutions, that they discovered in their lives. Building on each other’s work, yet solving the same eternal problems over and over again, they have built an enormous catalogue of life patterns that you can use to enrich your mind and the vocabulary of your mind.

Acquiring this catalogue will directly increase your Freedom To, by making the invisible visible, by creating possibilities where before there was only a lack of possibilities.

There’s just one problem in this: that wisdom of the centuries is expressed through hundreds of thousands, millions, maybe tens of millions of volumes of literature throughout the ages. Obviously not all of it is worth reading. With experience, as your knowledge of books increases, you can pick and choose what to read with a reasonable chance of choosing right, but what to do at the beginning, if you haven’t read much?

Well, one of the great things about great literature is that it tends to last. Time is a very effective filter. If you want to ensure that what you read is worth reading, read old books. Most of the problems that we deal with in our lives are completely unoriginal, and have been occurring and reoccurring for thousands of years if not more (and that’s true even if you think that your particular situation is unique and different from all others; there is nothing new under the sun). Start with classic authors, like Dickens, Twain, Jules Verne, Tolstoy, Balzac, Grimm, Dumas, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and other giants of world literature, and you won’t go far wrong.

Read those books, and you can increase your own freedom of thought, your Freedom To.

It’s a lengthy endeavour, no doubt, but isn’t your life worth the effort?