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The last few months, as the economy has folded in on itself and the once employed have become the unemployed, people have been quick to put a more positive spin on the situation by repeating the old adage that, “The Chinese word for ‘crisis’ combines ‘danger and opportunity.’ ” Like so many references in our popular culture, this conclusion is apparently a misread of the Chinese characters involved, and thereby says more about our own American ideals and the mythologies we like to cling to than it does about the culture it supposedly arose from. In English, a “crisis” indicates that awful things beyond our control are happening to us. But we prefer to think that everything is within our control; hence, we decide that this awful thing could be the proverbial “blessing in disguise” that forces us to rethink our priorities and move in a direction that might be better for us in the long run than the path we’ve complacently traveled upon in the past. Continue reading →