A Good Read (if you're interested)

I just finished reading a book called "The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . and Why?" (thanks to Dave for introducing me to it) by Richard E. Nisbett. If you're interested in philosophy, cross-cultural studies, social psychology, or if you just want to challenge your brain with words like epistemology, dialectical, cognition, dichotomy, decontextualization, etc. then I recommend tackling this interesting study.

Spending just a short time in China, reveals that there's a marked difference in how Chinese and Americans think and how they perceive the world. For anyone planning to live abroad or work in a cross-cultural setting, this is important fact to keep in mind, especially Americans dealing with East Asians (Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese) since that's where the philosophical spectrum is at its widest. Americans often come to China, get exasperated with the apparent lack of logic and organization, and turn into ethnocentric, egotistical, "China bashers" who complain about everything and everyone (I always look at those people and think to myself, "just go home then and live among your 'own kind' if living abroad makes you that annoyed!")

In this book, the author traces the roots of our modern thinking back to the Greeks (for Westerners) and the Chinese (for Easterners). Ancient Greeks were concerned with personal agency--the sense that they were in charge of their own lives and free to act as they chose. This fundamental idea resulted in the Greeks have a strong sense of individual identity which fueled the Greeks' interest in debate, scientific discovery, and acquiring knowledge for it's own sake. The Greeks had a curiosity about the world around them and wanted to categorize and classify and then logically study what they saw. The ancient Chinese on the other hand were more focused on what their place in the world was and where they fit into society and focused on harmonizing relationships. Although the Chinese were in many ways more technologically advanced than the ancient Greeks, their lack of curiosity resulted in less scientific discoveries.

Building on that principal, this book reports on numerous studies that show how that historical background results in a different thinking by Easterners and Westerners today. One of the author's main findings in that, "Westerners attend primarily to the focal object or person and Asians attend more broadly to the field and to the relations between the object and the field. Westerns tend to assume that events are caused by the object and Asians are inclined to assign greater importance to the context." The author also shows how Americans tend to have an "either/or" mentality and Chinese people tend to have a "both/and" approach to contradictions. Some of the more interesting studies show pointed out in the book show that children in Western countries learn nouns more quickly while Eastern children learn more verbs; that Westerns see object whereas Easterners see substance (for example, Americans see a wall but Chinese people see concrete); and that Easterners expect and can deal with change better than Westerns can.

The author's conclusion seems to be that the Greek thought pattern was useful for science and technology but he finds it limited and sometimes even detrimental when it comes to social settings in modern day. The author seems to favor the Eastern mentality, but still employs Western logical methods to come to his conclusions. For my part, I agree that both Western and Eastern mentalities have their strong points but can leave big holes in some areas which I see played out a lot in my dealings with Chinese people and American people. But, as is obviously the point of such a study, it is important to realize your own cultural and philosophical biases when dealing with people of other countries on an everyday basis. While you can probably see how your viewpoint is right in a certain areas, you probably can't see in what areas your viewpoint might be flawed.

There's a lot more to this book; I'm oversimplifying its content and its conclusions. But it was insightful and is worth a read if you're going to find yourself in cross-cultural setting, especially with Americans and Chinese.