Talk:koyaanisqatsi

comment copied from Appendix talk:Terms considered difficult or impossible to translate into English:

• A Concise Hopi and English Lexicon (→ISBN, 1985), page 30, defines koyaanis- as "corrupted (re social life of a group)" and koyaanisqatsi as "corrupted life (re group)". Ekkehart Malotki, ‎Michael Lomatuway'ma, ‎Lorena Lomatuway'ma, Hopi Tales of Destruction (→ISBN, 2002), page 36, provides more detail, describing a village whose inhabitants supposedly became obsessed with playing a game (which in turn led to promiscuous sex and kwangwa'ewqatsi, "life of pleasure"), and neglected all their duties. "This chaotic state of affairs, marked by the total disintegration of all socially accepted standards and values, is referred to as koyaanisqatsi (corrupt life) in Hopi. Composed of the elements koyaanis-, which cannot occur in isolation, and qatsi (life/way of life), it represents the polar opposite of suyanisqatsi, which designates a 'life of harmony and balance.'" The village was annihilated. However, especially given the tendency of Westerners to romanticize or poeticize Native concepts, I am wary (especially given the two mentioned coordinate terms, which seem like SOPpy descriptions of the lifestyles they refer to) of attaching any more elaborate meaning to this than "corrupted (communal) lifestyle" or the "moral decay" that some people always think society is undergoing. In particular, the bit about it being "so crazy it calls for a new way of living" is not lexical but a cultural belief that in such situations it was best to totally destroy the old system and start over. - -sche (discuss) 22:45, 3 March 2018 (UTC)