The glass got away from me!

“Se me cayó el vaso”

Language, agency & Argentina

Language is the architect of our inner world, and by extension, our culture and society. It is not a neutral conduit for thought but the very framework that makes thought possible. As Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) posits, by changing our language, we can change our lives. This principle, however, has a dark twin. The power to frame reality is also the power to corrupt it. In the hands of a manipulator, language becomes a tool of control, eroding a person’s sense of reality in the insidious psychological abuse known as gaslighting. On a societal scale, it becomes the engine of totalitarianism. George Orwell, in 1984, showed us how Newspeak and doublespeak could make objective truth disappear, rendering the concept of freedom itself unthinkable by narrowing the very words available to describe it. If “War is Peace,” then the individual’s capacity for judgment is annihilated. The battle for agency, for our ability to act and be responsible for our actions, begins and ends with the words we are given. Words that form our culture and society. What of the benign enemy within the idioma?

Now, let us descend from the heights of political theory into the mundane reality of a kitchen. A glass falls and shatters on the floor. How do we describe this simple event? In English, the sentence is direct and unambiguous: “I dropped the glass.” The pronoun “I” stands at the forefront, the undisputed agent of the action. We can soften the blow with an adverb—”I accidentally dropped the glass”—but we cannot escape our role as the actor. The language forces a confession of agency. We did it. It was our hand, our responsibility.

Now, consider the common Spanish equivalent: “Se me cayó el vaso” Literally translated, this means, “The glass got away from me.” The grammatical landscape has been completely transformed. The subject of the sentence is no longer the person; it is the glass. The person is relegated to the role of an indirect object (me), the passive recipient of the glass’s fateful action. This is not a lie or an evasion in the way a child might say, “The glass broke by itself.” It is a grammatically correct and socially sanctioned way of framing the event. The responsibility is diffused, displaced onto the inanimate object. The event simply happened to the person, yet this difference in framing can have profound influence upon agency.

This is not an isolated quirk. The “accidental se” is a recurring pattern in Spanish, used to describe a range of unintentional events. One might say, “Se me olvidó la cita” (The appointment was forgotten by me) or “Se me perdieron las llaves” (The keys got lost on me). In each case, the event is externalized. The language consistently provides an “out” from personal responsibility, subtly reinforcing a worldview where the individual is often the subject of external forces rather than the sole master of their domain. This fosters what psychologists might call an “external locus of control,” a feeling that life is something that happens to us, shaped by forces beyond our command. This is not to say that a Spanish speaker cannot take responsibility; they can and do. But the language provides a default, low-friction path to de-emphasize it. This stands in stark contrast to the English-speaking world, where the language itself is a constant, subtle drill sergeant of personal accountability. This cultural DNA, baked into the grammar, has profound implications.

The significance of this linguistic difference lies in its impact on the very engine of progress: agency. A sense of personal agency is the psychological bedrock of creativity, drive, and entrepreneurialism. To be an entrepreneur, you must believe you can see a problem, devise a solution, and execute it. You must believe you are the agent of change. When a culture’s language subtly reinforces the idea that events happen to you, it can dampen that entrepreneurial spark. Conversely, a language that constantly requires you to own your actions, for better or worse, can cultivate a mindset more conducive to the risks and rewards of capitalism. It is this cultural DNA that has arguably fueled the individualistic spirit of Anglophone economies, while contributing to the more collectivist and harmonious ethos of many Hispanic cultures, where preserving social cohesion can trump assigning individual fault.

This brings us to the collision of culture, history, and economics. It is tempting to blame the persistent poverty and political instability in many Latin American countries solely on history—the legacy of colonialism, resource extraction, and foreign interference. But this is an excuse. History is not an external force; it is created by people operating within a cultural and linguistic framework. The Spanish Empire was a world power, but it was built on a model of hierarchical, top-down control and resource extraction, a system deeply intertwined with and reinforced by the doctrines of the Catholic Church, which also emphasized a rigid hierarchy and deference to authority. This entire structure was antithetical to the individual agency that fuels modern capitalism. The language was perfectly suited to that imperial project. The colonies, like Argentina, however, inherited the cultural operating system of a subject people but without the power of the metropole—that is, without the centralized political authority, the global military reach, and the vast influx of wealth from its American possessions that once made Spain a world power. They were left with the framework of deference and hierarchy but without the imperial engine that had given it purpose and strength. This system has struggled to adapt to the demands of a modern, globalized world.

This leads to the most profound question of all: Can a society truly change its economic destiny without first undergoing a deep cultural and linguistic shift? Can you teach a culture a new way of being, using the very language that encodes the old way? The presidency of Javier Milei in Argentina is a live, high-stakes experiment in answering this question. Milei is not just an economist; he is a cultural warrior. His primary project is to wage a war of ideas, to inject a radical philosophy of liberty and individual agency directly into the Argentine consciousness. He is attempting to perform a “factory reset” on the nation’s cultural operating system, using the tools of a modern media personality to bypass traditional structures. He wants his people to stop saying, “Se me fue el vaso,” and start thinking, “I am responsible for my destiny.”

But can one man, however charismatic, overcome the inertia of a language spoken by millions? This is where the case of Singapore presents a powerful, and perhaps cautionary, counterpoint. Singapore, a nation with an ethnically Chinese majority, is a resounding success story of modern capitalism. Its founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, understood that to plug his small nation into the global economy, he had to adopt the global operating system. While citizens spoke various languages at home, he made English the language of government, law, and high finance. It was a deliberate, top-down decision to import not just a language, but a cultural framework of individualism, meritocracy, and the rule of law that came with it. Singapore’s success is powerful evidence that to achieve the hyper-individualistic, entrepreneurial form of capitalism, adopting a language more conducive to the concept of personal responsibility appears to be a massive advantage.

Singapore’s model raises the stakes for Milei’s project. He is trying to achieve Singapore’s outcome but with internal idiomatic mind blocks. He is attempting to reprogram the culture but is he swimming against the tide by using Spanish with its intrinsic characteristics? His struggle highlights the immense power of the words we inherit. The battle over whether a glass “got away from you” or was “dropped by you” is far more than a simple grammatical choice. It is a battle over the fundamental nature of reality, over who holds the power in our lives. It is a battle for the soul of a society, one fought against a cultural headwind.