This is an interesting comment in the book "The Horse, The Wheel, and Language" by David W. Anthony stating that language roots themselves shape our very perceptions of reality with conceptual "frameworks" and biases.
It is possible that the resultant loss of linguistic diversity has narrowed and channeled habits of perception in the modern world. For example, all Indo- Eu ro pe an languages force the speaker to pay attention to tense and number when talking about an action: you must specify whether the action is past, pres- ent, or future; and you must specify whether the actor is singular or plural. It is impossible to use an Indo- Eu ro pe an verb without deciding on these categories. Consequently speakers of Indo- Eu ro pe an languages habitually frame all events in terms of when they occurred and whether they involved multiple actors. Many other language families do not require the speaker to address these categories when speaking of an action, so tense and num- ber can remain unspecied.He goes on to compare it to the Hopi language embedded constructs.
On the other hand, other language families require that other aspects of reality be constantly used and recognized. For example, when de- scribing an event or condition in Hopi you must use grammatical mark- ers that specify whether you witnessed the event yourself, heard about it from someone else, or consider it to be an unchanging truth. Hopi speakers are forced by Hopi grammar to habitually frame all descrip- tions of reality in terms of the source and reliability of their information. The constant and automatic use of such categories generates habits in the perception and framing of the world that probably differ between people who use fundamentally different grammars.14 In that sense, the spread of Indo- Eu ro pe an grammars has perhaps reduced the diversity of human perceptual habits.
) and anothe points out the humor of Kafka (
which documents the vast amount of migrant girls coming in from the country-sides in rural China in their mid and young teens to work in the factories. They jump from factory to factory to whatever job seems best at the moment and take on a whole new life-style as the acclimate to working 6-7 days a week, 12 hour days at minimal pay and live in crammed small quarters (10 women in a 200 square foot apartment is average) supplied by the factories themselves. 
by a Harvard Negotiation Project. Hoping to overcome some of my fatal flaws when dealing with people, reading this I thought I'd evolve into a more intelligent communicator. I think I was pretty much wrong. There's all kinds of great ideas that seem logical and enlightening, but trying to remember any of them during a discussion, not only is difficult, but takes away all the fun.
by John Cassidy. Highly praised book, but about three-quarters through it I find no great insights or revelations which is what I wanted. First half just goes historically through the main thinkers including Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, the University of Chicago economists following Milton Friedman thinking (which I've also read and generally fall prey to such Libertarian thinking) and some others I was never aware of. 
. Now we're talking some fine reading here. Adams disguises truly insightful wisdom of the human species in the work environment as humour once again. His initial thesis is that all humans are weasels. Yes, even you and I. A weasel is a person who basically tries to gain as much advantage for his/her self and minimize as much pain. And in doing so a mode of behavior in dealing with other people (who area also looking for the same--but for themselves--in direct competition to your goals) tends to evolves whereby open truthfulness is fudged a bit here and there to wiggle and squirm one's way to success. It's that subtle mode of behavior that we all would rather not look at directly that Scott Adam's is so adept at finding and pointing out into revelatory "ah-ha" moments of "yes, I've done this" laughter.
