SuppliedIn thinking about ‘world pain’ we see all around us, Donna Miles-Mojab reminds us of the words in Martin Creed’s artwork on Worcester Boulevard.OPINION: It turns out there are a host of words for sadness that don’t have an equivalent in English. I came across a list of 18 online. For instance, in my native language of Farsi, there is the word ‘ghoseh’, which is close to grief but not quiet the same; “ghoseh” is more like a practice in holding sadness. Germans, who have an undeserved reputation for being emotionless, actually have a vocabulary rich with evocative words that describe all sorts of emotions. Some have found their way into English usage, like ‘schadenfreude’ (the pleasure derived from witnessing someone else’s misfortune) and ‘zeitgeist’ (the defining spirit of a particular period of time). READ MORE: Fake trees herald two new shows at Christchurch Art Gallery Lean together, look out for each other after Christchurch mosque shootings An audience with Turner Prize artist Martin Creed British artist Martin Creed talks about his new Christchurch artwork But the German word most relevant to the current state of the world is ‘weltschmerz’, which translates to “world weariness” or “world pain”. It is a sentimental sadness that has its roots in the knowledge that our world could be better, and we are better than this. What is crucial about ‘weltschmerz’ is that it is not a type of distress that leads to apathy – on the contrary, ‘world pain’, like all pain, is a warning that something is wrong, and we should look for a cure. So, in a way it is a good thing because, although world pain is bad, our numbness to it would be worse. ‘Weltschmerz’ has been described as “pain suffered both in the world and at the state of the world, with the sense that the two are linked”. I didn’t know it at the time, but the pain we felt after the Christchurch mosque shootings was in fact ‘world pain’ – a collective sadness linked to both the state of our hateful world and our own sense of guilt for turning a blind eye to it. The post-Covid world has increased our ‘world pain’. There are economic and health worries everywhere. What adds to our despair is that we intuitively know that our world is broken because we are broken. So what do we do about our anguish and how do we turn our pain into action? Well, maybe a good starting point would be to acknowledge what’s good in the world. Violence, both in the long run and the short run, has declined. We know this from the evidence put forward by Steven Pinker’s well-known book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. The book argues that we are less cruel and more peaceful than any previous period of human existence. In fact, our world is getting much better across a whole host of measures, from extreme poverty and hunger to child mortality and illiteracy rates. Feeling grateful is a great way of fighting ‘world pain’. Thankfully, Kiwis know how to practice the art of gratitude. Most of us are good at reminding each other and ourselves how lucky we are in New Zealand. But where Kiwis fall beh
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