Originally posted by Iflyfish
Farasha wrote: This kind of philosophy is to be found in some other cultures as well - I was confronted with it in quite some VERY different cultures
- usually when people are BELIEVERS of any Religion Or Old Cultures (mostly it goes hand in hand). The analytical solution- thinking, is more common
in younger cultures, or rather secular people.
Interesting that you would call this a philosophy. I am not so sure it is a philosophy that we talk of here. Maybe more like the skin discussion you
were having earlier with longlegs. Our acculturation becomes part of us. It is integrated into the self. I believe we are born with native capacities,
the raw stuff of our neurology that sets the stage for the learning and conditioning that takes place. Brain damage or birth defects can cause people
to act certain ways regardless of their upbringing. People born with Attention Deficit Disorder are impulsive because their frontal lobes are under
active and do not act to inhibit behavior. Their hyperactivity and impulsivity is not a philosophy. It is a way that the brain functions in the body.
I think that we are shaped by scripting from our families, culture, subculture, peer group, social class and religion. We get messages from all of
these sources as to what it is to be a person in the context where we are raised. This scripting is laid down in our neurology and reaction patterns
are formed. These response patterns become habitual and sometimes stereotypical.
There are people on this list who have traveled much more extensively than I and may have more to add to this discussion on this issue. I do not have
a lot of cross cultural experience to relate directly to. However I think that the ways that characterize the differences between Norte Americanos an
Mexicans are also found as one compares Eastern and Western Societies. I read I believe it was Suzuki, the man who brought Zen Buddhism to North
America who wrote Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis who compared two poets describing a similar experience of encountering a flower. He compared the
twelfth or thirteenth century Japanese poet Bash and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Tennyson wrote Flower In A Crannied Wall”, please excuse my crude
rendition, it goes something like this, “Flower in a crannied wall, I hold you in my hand, were I to know you, root and all, I would know what God and
man is”. Now Basho comes across a nazuna flower blooming by a hedge. His poem goes something like this, “Ah!! It is spring! And the nazuna is blooming
by the hedge!” I believe that this comparison demonstrates one of the differences we are talking about in relation to Mexicans and Norte Americanos.
Tennyson wants to take it apart and see how it works so he can understand larger principles. Basho reacts to it. He does nothing TO it. There is
nothing to do. The experience is all there is. I am not saying one is better. Maybe both ways of operating in the world have utility in different
circumstances. This line of thinking makes me wonder what the functional utility is of these different ways of interacting with the world. They must
have survival value of they would not be so ingrained. It ain’t the water.
There are zealots and fundamentalists in all religions. There are people in all religions that take their literature specifically and concretely and
those who approach these things for their symbolic value. i.e. some believe that there was literally a virgin birth while others believe there is a
spiritual life that is entered into via a painful process and the myth of the virgin birth points to that concept.
The religious fundamentalist of course wants to limit questioning and exploration and does not see spiritual growth as a journey but as a destination,
that one must be at or be damned. That sort of thinking is of course antithetical to analytic thinking.
I wonder what significance there is in Mexico having been a conquered nation and before that ruled by brutal regimes. I wonder what role the fact that
Japan is an island and had up until recently a rigid and brutal feudal system has to play on these cultural differences. I wonder what role the
wilderness and the west have played in the development of Norte Americano ways of being. What is it in German history that would end up with them
developing so much science? What role does the age of a culture play in all of this? Good question.
Iflyfish when not staying up too late |
, and I can't figure out what took me so long! Most of the people I deal with appreciate my feeble attempts,
while for others I provide comic relief!
