The Geography of Thought

First, do the following experiments.

1) Read the instructions for each link, then click on it.
2) As quickly as you can, decide on your answers. Don't stop to think, just do it.

There is no right or wrong answer.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] - Which two things are related?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] - Which two things are related?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] - Which group matches the "Target Object"?

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Now if I were to ask you, Why did you choose those two? What would you tell me?

Explain your reasoning. Then scroll down.
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Researchers developed these tests to demonstrate cognitive differences between Western Europeans and East Asians. They argue that differing linguistic structures, educational institutions reaching back to ancient times (Classical vs. Confucian), and other "social organization and social practices" have resulted in the development of "logical" cognitive processes among the former and "dialectic" processes among the latter.

I. Chicken, grass, cow.

On average, people from Western Europe and North America chose the chicken and the cow. Why? Because the cow and the chicken are both animals.

People from China, Korea, and Japan chose the cow and the grass.
Why? Because cows eat grass.

II. Monkey, panda, banana.

On average, Westerners chose the monkey and the panda.
Why? Because the monkey and the panda are both animals. (I saw the documentary in which an American man said, "And not only that, they're both mammals, so it's obviously the monkey and the panda.")

On average, Asians chose the monkey and the banana.
Why? Because monkeys eat bananas, of course.

III. Flowering plants

The target object bears a "family resemblance" to Group 1, which was the average choice of East Asians. But it can be assigned to Group 2, which most Westerners did, "on the basis of a rule" (categorization).

"The authors find East Asians to be holistic, attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on 'dialectical' reasoning, whereas Westerners are more analytic, paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to understand its behavior. The 2 types of cognitive processes are embedded in different naive metaphysical systems and tacit epistemologies. The authors speculate that the origin of these differences is traceable to markedly different social systems. The theory and the evidence presented call into question long-held assumptions about basic cognitive processes and even about the appropriateness of the process-content distinction." -- [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Richard Nisbett, one of the American researchers, wrote this book about it: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I went with the cow+grass and monkey+banana, but chose group 2 for the flowers because their stems were similar.

What does that make me?

Not average?

If it's a cultural difference, in terms of learned behaviours, it means I have been more influenced by the East.

If these differences stem from genetics, then I don't know.

apaosha wrote:

I went with the cow+grass and monkey+banana, but chose group 2 for the flowers because their stems were similar.

What does that make me?

Funny...I did the same thing.

That's interesting. When I took these tests I scored like the average Westerner. Also I thought the flower matched Group 2 because the stems were similar. It took me a moment, though. At first I thought Group 1 because of the resemblance of the blooms. But it seemed that since stems are the base of the plant, they must be "basically" more similar to it than Group 1's plants. I recognize this as a kind of arbitrary logic. Is that how it was for you?

I watched a documentary on a Korean plane flight called East and West (which I have not been able to find since then, or I would share it). It must have been made in cooperation with these researchers. I came away with the impression that Eastern thought is more wise, but Western thought is more daring. (That may sound cliche but I can't think of better words.) Having watched it and read the book, it strikes me that the way Asians answered the above 3 questions is actually MORE "logical" and common-sense. But I also have a new appreciation for the "Western" way, since it indicates a kind of vigorous willpower to command and master the environment by classifying things.

In the documentary, they observed how a mother from America (I think it was) and a mother from China played with their toddlers. They had some toy cars, toy shovel and bucket, dolls, etc. and said "Just play with your child and teach them about these objects as you normally would." The American mother tended to say things like, "What's THIS? It's a CAR. What does the CAR do? VROOM VROOM" or whatever. "What's this? A shovel. Put the shovel in the bucket, see? You can put something in the bucket." The Chinese mother took the shovel and the bucket and said, "I have a great idea, why don't we make some food? Here, stir the pot." And she took the kid's hand and moved it around. "Wow, you stir so well. Why don't you make me something? I'd love to eat something delicious" or something like that.

This was supposed to demonstrate that as young children Westerners are taught to classify objects and observe their qualities and behavior, whereas Asians are taught activities, emphasizing social relationships. You can see how this relates to the tests: a) Looking at monkeys and pandas as somewhat similar because they're animals with fur and they both eat plants with their hands, etc.---versus b) Looking at a monkey and then seeing the banana thinking, "Well he's probably gonna eat that fucking banana, isn't he?"

I read the book just after having come to Korea and after a couple years I find it to be helpful in my understanding of some "little things" that otherwise confuse Americans. Later I can share more on this subject, but I'm already typing too much here.

I believe most of the "Westerners" in this research were from English-speaking countries. That may also explain some of it. I don't have a copy of The Geography of Thought anymore but I remember it saying that continental Europeans, Eastern Europeans, and Middle-Easterners were not as polarized in their cognitive decisions. Southeast Asians and Indians were also not so far to one side as Chinese/Japanese/Koreans.

Anglo-Saxons are stereotypically logical-minded, even to a fault, right? Think of the founding of the British Museum, the Victorian passion for classifying everything in the universe.

The differences in modern European philosophical traditions (analytic versus continental) come to mind as well (at least as far as my limited knowledge).

In the book, Nisbett says that linguistically, Indo-European languages, especially English (he's American), always require subjects to be named. And nouns stick out, so to speak, as the emphasized parts of speech. Verbs come in in a kind of limbo-space between subjects and objects. Subject-->verb-->object.

Maybe some of you with native languages other than English can weigh in on this.

Asian languages, he says (and I can vouch for Korean to a limited degree), emphasize verbs more. Subject (often implicit)-->object-->verb. In Korean, it is very easy to turn a noun into a verb (so to speak) by adding "do" to the end of it. I heard that Japanese find it easy to learn Korean because of this, and it's a good rule for people who have a limited vocabulary. (A native speaker wouldn't have to resort to this I guess.) Even in the way Koreans talk, the emotional emphasis usually seems to be near the end of the sentence, where the verb comes in.

...But I forgot to ask, what role does the Enlightenment play in this?

Is this "Western" way more Hellenic? Or just more post-Christian and liberal?

Completely "asian", 3 out of 3.

Thanks for the topic. Let's keep this thread going. This seems to be something to learn from. The book got mixed reviews. It sounds very interesting though ( I always give more credit to authors, than critics.). Got me started watching the movie "Confucius" from youtube. The I Ching is really a part of Asia (China), I do not yet understand at all. It seems very "western" to me (for a lack of better description here).

My question: who can even lay claim on "ancient Greece"? The East or the West? The author, from the book-reviews I read, seems to be claiming ancient Greece for the West. And put China and Confucius up as the antipole in the East.

Spengler of course has a different approach to what a culture/civilization is, altogether, focussing on the time cycle it goes through. To him the Ancient Greek Civilization ended 500 A.D.. That's where the culture/civilization of the "Abendland" started in Europe and N. America and also the "Arabic Culture". (Which are different from each other. I have noted this falsely elsewhere -sorry-. There is a distinct Pagan Civilization -the "Abendland"- next to the Arabic Civilization). The Chinese Culture seems way old from a first glance at Spenglers map.

So in the West today, we have 2 competing Civilizations. The "Abendland" versus the "Arabic Civilization". This is what Samuel Huntington referred to with his "Clash of Civilizations". I don't know if he read Spengler though. Spengler explores how the "Abendland" is not synonymous with the greek Antique, but originated after ancient Greece had declined as a Civilization. At the same
time as the "Arabic Culture" was born. (about 500 A.D.)

We tend to get confused, because this "Clash" doesn't have any borders anymore. At least they are diminishing. So "the Abendland" doesn't equal "the West". And "the Arabic Culture" doesn't equal "the middle East".

East Asia is pretty "mixed" from all kinds of influences also. China plays a central role however. No doubt.

I love it!

And can we now say: the East equals the feminine and the West equals the masculine mind (way of thinking...)?

As a broad statement it's too simplistic to be useful, but I do think in those terms sometimes.

In some cases, especially in mixtures of the two, it may be the case that the feminine is the more dominant.

It may also be a sign of the times. I met my tutor again yesterday and we were discussing the state of modern Japan. She said there was very little Samurai spirit left.

We live in an ignoble age.

But the samurai had a master, who he fought and died for. Like a soldier, who Satyr also referred to as feminized (within his status of being a soldier).

It is true, you cannot compare the Aryan warrior spirit of individuality and honor amongst equals with the Japanese sense of honor in regards to doing one's duty to the God-King figurehead.
I think it is also why they took so well to capitalism and why the Chinese adapted so well to communism.

For me the reason has to do with demographics.
That region and those tribes exprienced population pressures way before the westerners did.
They've gone through centuries of emasculating social engineering and memetic selection. They represent a glimpse into our own future.

Laconian wrote:

But the samurai had a master, who he fought and died for. Like a soldier, who Satyr also referred to as feminized (within his status of being a soldier).

To the Japanese the group, be it the corporation or in the old days the clan, takes on a meaning beyond the sum of its parts. It's like an almost supernatural ideal that they dedicate themselves to.
From this, in the Hagakure, comes: "The Way of the Samurai is death." Total dedication to the ideal, to the cause, to the group. We see this in the kamikaze pilots in WW2 also.

I had been telling her about Naoki Sato, the guy in that video you'd found. She thought that him living in a parasitical relationship with a young girl, while unable to support himself independently was dishonourable... hence lack of a Samurai spirit. A samurai would kill themselves rather than live in humiliation, Seppuku, but Sato chooses his own life over honour. Or indeed self-improvement. He is also lazy and has no will to extricate himself from the rut he has found himself in.

That idea of there being an unacceptable state at which to sink into, of a hatred of degeneration as it applies to the Self... the sense that one must meet the requirements of Honour and aspire to and reach a standard above a certain level or above a certain average was what she was saying was missing in Japan. Her opinion was that this degeneration represented by Sato was spreading as a consequence of the fading of Samurai ideals.

Nothing to do with selfishness, individuality or the master/slave dichotomy.

No Greek, or pagan for that matter, would have committed Harakiri for anyone.

A Greek sacrificed himself only for his own kind and then only by his own volition...not the command of another.

Therein is the Geography of Thought: they're not greek.

But suicide could be done voluntarily... or at least one could enter oneself willingly into a situation where suicide was inevitable, for the sake of honour. Again, one's own life or wellbeing was not considered to be more valuable than honour. That is nobility to the japanese.

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Quote :

The revenge of the forty-seven ronin (四十七士 Shi-jū-shichi-shi?), also known as the forty-seven samurai, the Akō vendetta, or the Genroku Akō incident (元禄赤穂事件 Genroku akō jiken?) took place in Japan at the start of the 18th century. One noted Japanese scholar described the tale as the country's "national legend."[1] It recounts the most famous case involving the samurai code of honor, bushidō.

The story tells of a group of samurai who were left leaderless (becoming ronin) after their daimyo (feudal lord) Asano Naganori was forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) for assaulting a court official named Kira Yoshinaka, whose title was Kōzuke no suke. The ronin avenged their master's honor after patiently waiting and planning for two years to kill Kira. In turn, the ronin were themselves forced to commit seppuku for committing the crime of murder. With much embellishment, this true story was popularized in Japanese culture as emblematic of the loyalty, sacrifice, persistence, and honor that all good people should preserve in their daily lives. The popularity of the almost mythical tale was only enhanced by rapid modernization during the Meiji era of Japanese history, when it is suggested many people in Japan longed for a return to their cultural roots.

I agree with the Demographics problem (too many people on too little space leads to forced feminization). That's why the East today is more feminized than the West even. But we're getting there. And there is nothing to be done about it, since there is no space to live out ones masculinity anymore. Shrinking spaces. Easterners may be weaker from their gene make-up

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, but their minds can be as masculine as westerners. And that's what counts to me, why I wouldn't discriminate in this sense, but do compare cultures. The greek ancient culture seems the most superior to me, but I still favor Shintoism also, but cannot put into words, as to why, yet. Todays western culture experiences a "clash of civilization" (S. Huntington), but without borders. Judeo-Christianity and Islam against our Pagan roots, that were conserved in the Enlightenment Era by writers such as Goethe.

"A revolutionary study by the classical philologist and art historian Thomas McEvilley is about to challenge much of academia. In THE SHAPE OF ANCIENT THOUGHT, an empirical study of the roots of Western culture, the author argues that Eastern and Western civilizations have not always had separate, autonomous metaphysical schemes, but have mutually influenced each other over a long period of time."

"Question - Beloved Master, How is your Rebel concerned with "Zorba The Buddha"?

Osho - Maneesha, my rebel, my new man, is Zorba the Buddha. Mankind has lived believing either in the reality of the soul and the illusoriness of matter, or in the reality of matter and the illusoriness of the soul. You can divide the humanity of the past into the spiritualists and the materialists. But nobody has bothered to look at the reality of man. He is both together. He is neither just spirituality -- he is not just consciousness -- nor is he just matter. He is a tremendous harmony between matter and consciousness.

Or perhaps matter and consciousness are not two things, but only two aspects of one reality: matter is the outside of consciousness, and consciousness is the interiority of matter. But there has not been a single philosopher, sage, or religious mystic in the past who has declared this unity; they were all in favor of dividing man, calling one side real and the other side unreal. This has created an atmosphere of schizophrenia all over the earth.

You cannot live just as a body. That's what Jesus means when he says, "Man cannot live by bread alone" -- but this is only half the truth. You cannot live just as consciousness alone, you cannot live without bread either. You have two dimensions of your being, and both the dimensions have to be fulfilled, given equal opportunity for growth. But the past has been either in favor of one and against the other, or in favor of the other and against the first one.

Man as a totality has not been accepted. This has created misery, anguish, and a tremendous darkness; a night that has lasted for thousands of years, that seems to have no end. If you listen to the body, you condemn yourself; if you don't listen to the body, you suffer -- you are hungry, you are poor, you are thirsty. If you listen to consciousness only, your growth will be lopsided: your consciousness will grow but your body will shrink, and the balance will be lost. And in the balance is your health, in the balance is your wholeness, in the balance is your joy, your song, your dance.

The West has chosen to listen to the body, and has become completely deaf as far as the reality of consciousness is concerned. The ultimate result is great science, great technology, an affluent society, a richness of things mundane, worldly. And amidst all this abundance, a poor man without a soul, completely lost -- not knowing who he is, not knowing why he is, feeling almost an accident or a freak of nature.

Unless consciousness grows with the richness of the material world, the body -- matter -- becomes too heavy and the soul becomes too weak. You are too much burdened by your own inventions, your own discoveries. Rather than creating a beautiful life for you, they create a life which is felt by all the intelligentsia of the West as not worth living.

The East has chosen consciousness and has condemned matter and everything material, the body included, as maya, as illusory, as a mirage in a desert which only appears but has no reality in itself. The East has created a Gautam Buddha, a Mahavira, a Patanjali, a Kabir, a Farid, a Raidas -- a long line of people with great consciousness, with great awareness. But it has also created millions of poor people, hungry, starving, dying like dogs -- with not enough food, no pure water to drink, not enough clothes, not enough shelters.

A strange situation.... In the West every six months they have to drown billions and billions of dollars' worth of milk products and other foodstuff in the ocean, because it is surplus. They don't want to overload their warehouses, they don't want to lower their prices and destroy their economic structure. On the one hand, in Ethiopia one thousand people were dying every day, and at the same time the European Common Market was destroying so much food that the cost of destroying it was millions of dollars. That is not the cost of the food; it is the cost of taking it to the ocean, and throwing it into the ocean. Who is responsible for this situation?

The richest man in the West is searching for his soul and finding himself hollow, without any love, only lust; without any prayer, only parrot-like words that he has been taught in the Sunday schools. He has no religiousness, no feeling for other human beings, no reverence for life, for birds, for trees, for animals -- destruction is so easy.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have happened if man were not thought to be just matter. So many nuclear weapons would not have been piled up if man had been thought to be a hidden God, a hidden splendor; not to be destroyed but to be discovered, not to be destroyed but to be brought into the light -- a temple of God. But if man is just matter, just chemistry, physics, a skeleton covered with skin, then with death everything dies, nothing remains. That's why it becomes possible for an Adolf Hitler to kill six million people, without a hitch. If all people are just matter, there is no question of even thinking twice.

The West has lost its soul, its interiority. Surrounded by meaninglessness, boredom, anguish, it is not finding itself. All the success of science is proving of no use, because the house is full of everything, but the master of the house is missing. Here, in the East, the master is alive but the house is empty. It is difficult to rejoice with hungry stomachs, with sick bodies, with death surrounding you; it is impossible to meditate. So, unnecessarily, we have been losers. All our saints, and all our philosophers, spiritualists and materialists both, are responsible for this immense crime against man.

Zorba the Buddha is the answer. It is the synthesis of matter and soul. It is a declaration that there is no conflict between matter and consciousness, that we can be rich on both sides. We can have everything that the world can provide, that science and technology can produce, and we can still have everything that a Buddha, a Kabir, a Nanak finds in his inner being -- the flowers of ecstasy, the fragrance of godliness, the wings of ultimate freedom.

Zorba the Buddha is the new man, is the rebel. His rebellion consists of destroying the schizophrenia of man, destroying the dividedness -- destroying spirituality as against materialism, and destroying materialism as against spirituality. It is a manifesto that body and soul are together: that existence is full of spirituality, that even mountains are alive, that even trees are sensitive, that the whole existence is both -- or perhaps just one energy expressing itself in two ways, as matter and as consciousness. When energy is purified, it expresses itself as consciousness; when energy is crude, unpurified, dense, it appears as matter. But the whole existence is nothing but an energy field.

This is my experience, it is not my philosophy. And this is supported by modern physics and its researches: existence is energy. We can allow man to have both the worlds together. He need not renounce this world to get the other world, neither has he to deny the other world to enjoy this world. In fact, to have only one world while you are capable of having both is to be unnecessarily poor.

Zorba the Buddha is the richest possibility. He will live his nature to its utmost and he will sing songs of this earth. He will not betray the earth, and he will not betray the sky either. He will claim all that this earth has -- all the flowers, all the pleasures -- and he will also claim all the stars of the sky. He will claim the whole existence as his home.
The man of the past was poor because he divided existence. The new man, my rebel, Zorba the Buddha, claims the whole world as his home. All that it contains is for us, and we have to use it in every possible way -- without any guilt, without any conflict, without any choice. Choicelessly enjoy all that matter is capable of, and rejoice in all that consciousness is capable of.

Be a Zorba, but don't stop there.
Go on moving towards being a Buddha.
Zorba is half, Buddha is half.

There is an ancient story. In a forest nearby to a city there lived two beggars. Naturally they were enemies to each other, as all professionals are -- two doctors, two professors, two saints. One was blind and one was lame, and both were very competitive; the whole day they were competing with each other in the city.

But one night their huts caught fire, because the whole forest was on fire. The blind man could run out, but he could not see where to run, he could not see where the fire had not yet spread. The lame man could see that there are still possibilities of getting out of this fire, but he could not run out. The fire was too fast, wild, so the lame man could only see his death coming. They both realized that they needed each other. The lame man had a sudden realization, "The other man can run, the blind man can run, and I can see." They forgot all their competition. In such a critical moment, when both were facing death, each necessarily forgot all stupid enmities.

They created a great synthesis; they agreed that the blind man would carry the lame man on his shoulders, and they would function as one man -- the lame man could see, and the blind man could run. They saved their lives. And because they saved each other's lives they became friends; for the first time they dropped their antagonism.
Zorba is blind -- he cannot see, but he can dance, he can sing, he can rejoice. The Buddha can see, but he can only see. He is pure eyes, just clarity and perception, but he cannot dance; he is crippled, he cannot sing, he cannot rejoice.

It is time. The world is a wildfire; everybody's life is in danger. The meeting of Zorba and Buddha can save the whole humanity. Their meeting is the only hope. Buddha can contribute consciousness, clarity, eyes to see beyond, eyes to see that which is almost invisible. Zorba can give his whole being to Buddha's vision -- and let it not remain just a dry vision, but make it a dancing, rejoicing, ecstatic way of life.

The ambassador of Sri Lanka wrote a letter to me saying that I should stop using the words "Zorba the Buddha"... because Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country, and he said, "It hurts our religious feelings that you are mixing strange people, Zorba and Buddha."

I wrote to him, "Perhaps you don't understand that Buddha is nobody's personal property, and Buddha is not necessarily the Gautam Buddha who you have been worshipping for thousands of years in your temples. Buddha simply means `the awakened one.' It is an adjective; it is not a personal name. Jesus can be called the buddha; Mahavira was called, in Jaina scriptures, the buddha; Lao Tzu can be called a buddha -- anybody who is enlightened is a buddha. The word buddha simply means `the awakened one.'

"Now, awakening is nobody's property; everybody who can sleep can also awaken. It is just a natural, logical, corollary -- if you are capable of sleeping, you are capable of waking up. Zorba is asleep; hence he has the capacity to be awake. So please don't get unnecessarily enraged, angry. I am not talking about your Gautam Buddha; I am talking about the pure quality of awakening. I am using it only as a symbol. "Zorba the Buddha simply means a new name for a new human being, a new name for a new age, a new name for a new beginning."

He has not replied. Even people who are holding posts of ambassadors are so utterly ignorant, so stupid. He thought that he was writing a very significant letter to me, without even understanding the meaning of the Buddha. Buddha was not the name of Gautama. His name was Gautam Siddhartha. Buddha was not his name -- the name given by his parents was Gautam Siddharth. Siddharth was his name, Gautama was his family name. He is called Buddha because he became awakened; otherwise he was also a Zorba. Anybody who is not awakened is a Zorba.

Zorba is a fictitious character, a man who believed in the pleasures of the body, in the pleasures of the senses. He enjoyed life to the fullest, without bothering about what is going to happen to him in the next life, whether he will enter into heaven or be thrown into hell. He was a poor servant; his boss was very rich, but very serious, long faced -- very British.

One full-moon night... I have not been able to forget what he said to his boss. Zorba was in his cabin. He went outside, with his guitar -- he was going to dance on the beach -- and he invited the boss. He said, "Boss, only one thing is wrong with you -- you think too much. Just come on! This is not the time for thinking; the moon is full, and the whole ocean is dancing. Don't miss this challenge."

He dragged the boss by his arm. His boss tried not to go with him, because Zorba was absolutely mad, he used to dance on the beach every night! The boss was feeling embarrassed.... What if somebody comes and sees that he is also standing with Zorba? And Zorba was not only inviting his boss to stand by; he was inviting him to start dancing!

Seeing the full-moon night and the ocean dancing, and the waves, and Zorba singing with his guitar, suddenly the boss started feeling an energy in his legs that he had never felt before. Encouraged and persuaded, he finally joined the dance; at first reluctantly, glancing all around, but there was nobody on the beach in the middle of the night. Then he forgot all about the world, and started. He became one with Zorba the dancer, and the ocean the dancer, and the moon the dancer. Everything became lost. It all became a dance.

Zorba is a fictitious character, and Buddha is an adjective for anyone who drops his sleep and becomes awake. No Buddhist need feel hurt. I am giving Buddha energy to dance, and I am giving Zorba eyes to see beyond the skies to faraway destinies of existence and evolution. My rebel is nobody other than Zorba the Buddha."

Source - Osho Book "The Rebel"

I don't think Osho understood Zorba AT ALL, as proven here (pars pro toto, so his followers show his understanding:)

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I posted the above text, because I agree with his east/west difference from his eastern point of view. It is simplistic, but hits the nail on the head. If you follow his logic though this would make his "spirituality" and himself as a guru obsolete, since if there is no personal soul..(as Indians believe) what need is there for spirituality?! Osho was a fool, a great actor.

Zorba was a Buddha, like Osho, but unlike those modern buddhists. But like the Stoics and Epicureans (and earlier greek philosophers they relied on).

I chose

I. cow+chicken ... because both are animals
II. panda+monkey ... because both are animals and mammals
III. Group 1 ... because of the form of the petals and the leaf, at a quick glance, the flower seemed to rather belong to group 1.