The cart or the horse的意思

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Reader question:

Please explain “the cart” and “the horse” in this passage from the New Yorker (Why is American history so murderous? by Jill Lepore November 9, 2009):

The implications of Roth’s argument are, as he realizes, distressing. Democracy requires dissent. If a high American murder rate is a function of not placing our trust in government, are we doomed to endure a high murder rate? Roth takes his case all the way to the White House: “The statistics make it clear that in the twentieth century, homicide rates have fallen during the terms of presidents who have inspired the poor or have governed from the center with a popular mandate, and they have risen during the terms of presidents who presided over political and economic crises, abused their power, or engaged in unpopular wars.” The homicide rate appears to correlate with Presidential approval ratings. If Roth is right, electing a bad President is dangerous and inciting people to hate any President, good or bad, could be deadly. But which is the cart, and which the horse? The Presidential approval rate might be a proxy for all sorts of measures of a well or poorly adjusted society. Or maybe there’s another horse, somewhere, some third factor, that determines both the Presidential approval rate and the homicide rate. It’s hard to say, partly because, in using quantitative methods to make an argument about the human condition, Roth has wandered into a no man’s land between the social sciences and the humanities. After a while, arguments made in that no man’s land tend to devolve into meaninglessness: good government is good, bad government is bad, and everything’s better when everything’s better. Correlating murder with a lack of faith and trust may contain its horror, but only because, in a bar graph, atrocity yields to banality.

My comments:

The cart and horse refers to the age-old proverb “don’t put the cart before the horse”, that is, don’t mistake a cause as an effect, or vice versa.

In other words, don’t reverse the accepted order of things – and the accepted order of things is: the horse pulls the cart, not the other way around. If you ask the cart to pull the horse, it’ll be the same as asking a dog’s tail to “wag the dog”, another term I’ve written about in this column.

Anyways, In the passage above, by asking “which is the cart, and which is the horse?”, the author merely wonders whether lack of trust in government (as evidenced by low presidential ratings) leads to greater degrees of lawlessness (or specifically more murders) or whether it is the other way around. Or, as the authors wants to know, is there another horse (another unexamined factor) somewhere?

Well, it’s hard to say, as the author concedes, but that’s neither here nor there, as America’s murderous history is not of our concern here. Of our concern here is the mere proverb “putting the cart over the horse”, and this proverb “has been used since antiquity but was first recorded in English in 1520”, according to American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms.

Here are two recent media examples:

1. Putting the cart before the horse:

Monday was a volatile day in the global financial markets. With the Nikkei down 5% and European bourses down 2% in overnight trading, we should understand that more volatility awaits us in the coming days and weeks.

As I survey this situation in serene tranquility away from market turmoil, I realize that I am very troubled by how the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was handled. In my estimation, it was like putting the cart before the horse - allowing a financial institution to fail before you have worked out a mechanism of how to deal with that failure.

This one action will expose the global financial system to enormous additional risk.

- Lehman’s Bankruptcy Creates Systemic Risk, by Edward Harrison, SeekingAlpha.com, September 16, 2008.

2. Don’t put the cart before the horse:

Reading the recent news stories about Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, it struck me that she is a prime example of someone who has gone about setting up her own business in totally the wrong manner.

The Duchess turns 50 this week and maybe it’s time to stop living in the manner to which she has become accustomed; she reportedly still keeps an entourage of staff on her payroll including personal assistants and a driver to take her to expensive restaurants in a Bentley Continental.

At the same time, however, her US business has been forced to close with debts of more than $1m (£630,000).

Hartmoor, a company set up to manage the Duchess’ career in media and public speaking, is being wound up by creditors. There has also been a succession of creditors in the UK that has lodged county court claims over unpaid bills. These were eventually paid, we are told.

What a contradiction: on the one hand Sarah Ferguson wants to live the lavish lifestyle but on the other hand her business was bleeding money and the swanky façade of an office on Madison Avenue was hiding a failing company.

She put the cart before the horse by occupying a 5,600 square foot office in one of the most exclusive districts of New York, paying an astronomical rent, and needlessly hiring an excessive number of employees.

As I’ve always maintained, anyone can set up a business but to make it successful you need to work hard to keep costs down at all times, especially at the beginning. My advice to any entrepreneur would be to save money on premises and employees in the tough first few months of trading; start slowly and build up business steadily, rather than splashing out on all trappings of success without actually making a profit.

- Don’t put the cart before the horse, By Duncan Bannatyne, Telegraph.co.uk, October 15, 2009.

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