Why don’t we have any new proverbs?

A stitch in time…

Actions speak louder…

Don’t count your chickens…

Where there’s smoke…

You can, I’m sure, complete all those sentences. You even know that they are proverbs, and  can explain exactly what they mean.

Isn’t that remarkable? Across generations and much of the English-speaking world, people know these sayings and treat them as inherited wisdom.

Here in East Africa we have our own: Haraka haraka haina baraka and bandu bandu humaliza gogo, to name just a couple.

But wait. A friend recently passed on a question doing the rounds online: why don’t we seem to create new proverbs? Think of the many common, wise and memorable sayings you know. How many originated during your lifetime?

Any at all?

So what’s going on here? Were our ancestors generally much wiser? Are humans just dumbing down over time? Or have we become too hurried, distracted and materialistic to distil experience into wisdom?

Many thinkers have pointed out that the truth is perhaps more subtle. We recognize an old proverb precisely because it has survived. A new one is still merely a phrase, slogan or joke awaiting the verdict of time.

In other words, we cannot yet know which of the common sayings of our era will eventually become folklore.

Nonetheless, our epoch is different. Old proverbs survived because they were repeated by generations, and carried through families, villages, faiths, and oral cultures.

Today, we produce endless aphorisms, slogans, quotes, memes and motivational lines. But almost none becomes proverbial. They arrive with an author, a logo, a hashtag and a sell-by date.

Now language travels instantly, but rarely settles. Why? A proverb needs a common culture. Ours is increasingly fragmented into online tribes, each with its own language and loyalties, and each quick to dismiss whatever comes from outside. 

Also, we try to brand our wisdom and claim ownership of it. Aphorisms now belong to someone: an influencer, an author, a consultancy.

Perhaps there is another reason, too. Much of our public language has become more literal and analytical. In the past we spoke of chickens coming home, of horses led to water. Modern language does not evoke so much as it explains. We live in the age of frameworks, not folklore.

The age of content produces quotations by the million, but very few proverbs. Wisdom needs repetition. Content demands novelty.

The question, then, is about more than language; it asks what modern society might be losing: shared culture, patience, intergenerational transmission and the ability to let an idea ripen beyond its author.

Perhaps the problem is not that we lack wisdom. It is that nothing now stays still long enough to become wise.

THE SIGNAL IN THE NOISE

Wisdom travels slowly, and lasts. Content travels instantly, and disappears.

 

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