Asian and Western Minds, Part 2: How They Differ

Asian and Western Minds, Part 2: How They Differ

Apr 25, 2016 | Books, Thinking Better

This article is Part 2 of the Asian and Western Minds essay. Read Part 1 here. Together, they are the fifth edition of an essay series on worldview, titled Between Jerusalem and Athens. Read the first here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here.

 

In Part 1, we discussed the ancient philosophies that rooted the differences between the Western and Eastern worldview (see definitions of Western and Eastern in Part 1 of this article). Here, we continue with the specific ways in which they differ. Below are the key findings from a series of social psychology experiments done by Professor Richard E. Nisbett of the University of Michigan, which are outlined in the book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently… and Why.

1. Objects vs. Relationships

 

When given a scene to observe and asked to describe it, Easterners tend to be more holistic, paying attention to more details in the background than Westerners. Westerners, on the other hand, focus on the prominent objects in the scene. For example, when a picture of an underwater scene with plants and fish was shown to test participants, Easterners were more likely to say, “It looked like a pond,” whereas the Westerners were more likely to say, “There was a big fish, maybe a trout, moving off to the left.”

 

“Like ancient Greek philosophers, modern Westerners see a world of objects—discrete and unconnected things. Like ancient Chinese philosophers, modern Asians are inclined to see a world of substances—continuous masses of matter. The Westerner sees an abstract statue where the Asian sees a piece of marble; the Westerner sees a wall where the Asian sees concrete. There is much other evidence—of a historical, anecdotal, and systematic scientific nature—indicating that Westerners have an analytic view focusing on salient objects and their attributes, whereas Easterners have a holistic view focusing on continuities in substances and relationships in the environment.”

 

Because Easterners pay more attention to the environment and Westerners attend more to objects, Easterners are more likely to detect relationship among events than Westerners. Cause and effects are explained differently—the Easterners would attribute events and behaviors more to environmental causes, and Westerners more to the actors.

2. Controlling Situations

 

Westerners tend to believe that they can control situations more than Easterners. Because Easterners see the world as complex and interconnected, their sense of personal agency is less compared to Westerners.

 

“If life is simple and you only have to keep your eye on the ball in order to achieve something, life is controllable. If life is complex and subject to changes of fortune without notice, it may not matter where the ball is; life is simply not easily controlled. Surveys show that Asians feel themselves to be in less control than their Western counterparts. And rather than attempting to control situations, they are likely to try to adjust to them.”

 

A large consequence of the Western view is the magnificent scientific progress in the Western world.

 

“Easterners are almost surely closer to the truth than Westerners in their belief that the world is a highly complicated place and Westerners are undoubtedly often far too simple-minded in their explicit models of the world… On the other hand, it seems fairly clear that simple models are the most useful ones—at least in science—because they’re easier to disprove and consequently to improve upon. Most of Aristotle’s physical propositions have turned out to be demonstrably false. But Aristotle had testable propositions about the world while the Chinese did not: It was Westerners who established what the correct physical principles are.”

 

“Westerners’ success in science and their tendency to make certain mistakes in causal analysis derive from the same source. Freedom to pursue individual goals prompts people to model the situation so as to achieve those goals, which in turn encourages modeling events by working backward from effects to possible causes. When there is systematic testing of the model, as in science, the model can be corrected.”

 

Indeed, I believe, this is where Western thinking have deep advantages, and why science—or modern science as we know it—was largely a Greek endeavor.

3. Stability and Change

 

Westerners believe more in stability, assuming that the world doesn’t change much and that progress is linear, where Easterners see change all the time, and that “movement in a particular direction…may be a sign that events are about to reverse direction.”

4. Organizing the World

 

Westerners organize the world into categories while Easterners emphasize relationships. When Westerners group things, they do it based on whether they can be described by the same attributes, certain inherent properties of the objects. For Easterners, things are classed together because they influence and relate to each other.

 

For example, given a picture of a chicken and grass, categories A and B, respectively, participants were told to choose the appropriate category for a cow. Westerners were more likely to choose chicken because cows and chicken belonged to the same taxonomic category, while Easterners preferred to group the cow with grass on the basis of their relationship; “cows eat grass.”

5. Role of Logic

 

Logic no doubt plays a prominent role in Western societies. It is used to understand events and also useful for argumentation. But if Westerners are concerned with reason, Easterners are more concerned with reasonableness, which means that they may “set logic aside in favor of desirability of conclusions.”

6. Resolving Contradictions

 

When confronted with apparent contradictions, Westerners are more inclined to insist on the correctness of one belief vs. another, whereas Easterners would try to find the Middle Way, transcend them and find the truth in both.

 

The Eastern principles in resolving contradictions are as follows:

  • The Principle of Change – the world is not static but dynamic and changeable. “Because reality is in constant flux, the concepts that reflect reality are fluid and subjective rather than being fixed and objective.”
  • The Principle of Contradiction – “because the world is constantly changing, oppositions, paradoxes, and anomalies are continuously being created” Opposites complete each other; they cannot exist without the other (Yin and Yang). Thus, apparent contradictions are in fact active harmony.
  • The Principle of Holism – “nothing exists in an isolated and independent way, but is connected to a multitude of different things. To really know a thing, we have to know all its relations.”

 

These principles compel Easterners to find the middle ground between extreme propositions. In the Western thought, there is a counterpart to the above principles in the Hegelian or Marxist dialectic: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. However, this form is seen as more aggressive because the purpose is to bolster one side and obliterate the contradiction rather than transcending the arguments.

 

For the Westerners, the principles of logic are committed to these laws:

  • The Law of Identity – a thing is itself and not some other thing. This thing is also consistent regardless of the context.
  • The Law of Noncontradiction – a proposition can’t be both true and false. A and not-A cannot be true at the same time.

 

For the Easterners,

 

“the rejection of conclusions because they seem formally contradictory can be mistaken, because concepts are merely reflections of things and it can sometimes be more sensible to admit that an apparent contradiction exists than to insist that either one state of affairs or its opposite is the true one.”

 

—

 

“Each of these orientations—the Western and the Eastern—is a self-reinforcing, homeostatic system. The social practices promote the worldviews; the worldviews dictate the appropriate thought processes; and the thought processes both justify the worldviews and support the social practices.”

 

—

 

The manifestations of these paradigms are reflected in the different ways Western and Eastern societies approach education, medicine, business–essentially all aspects of life–and can create misunderstandings in cross-cultural contexts. Results such as Nisbett’s are valuable for both Western and Eastern minds to understand each other.

 

Of course, the world is not divided as nicely as the East-and-West dichotomy. There are spectrums of worldviews around the world that we need to be more aware of, and I am now intrigued in mapping the world’s key thoughts to better understand humanity’s diversity and similarity.

 

Returning to Nisbett, it was hard for me not to abstain from performing self-diagnosis while reading a book like this, especially because my place of birth and upbringing is literally on the other side of the world where I currently live and work. I am both Eastern and Western, if calculated by the time I’ve spent in each world, near 50-50. Come back and visit the blog for an upcoming post on my personal cross-cultural experience!

[UPDATE: Read my personal, cross-cultural story in A Child of East and West, Part 1 and Part 2]

Image credit: Freeimages

Rock of Ages: Structures That Last

Rock of Ages: Structures That Last

Apr 8, 2016 | Faith

Giza. Chichen Itza. Magelang. Three locations where ancient structures stand for thousands of years. The pyramids of Giza have existed for over 4000 years, built out of quarried stones, stacked and shaped into place. El Castillo, the largest pyramid in the Chichen Itza complex in the Yucatan state of Mexico, is made out of rocks forming a 4-sided structure with stairs on each side. There are sculptures of serpents on the sides of the stairs on the northern side. Candi Borobudur, or the Borobudur Temple, in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia, is an impressive structure of stone carvings of Buddha facing all corners of the earth. The walls are relief panels with carvings that narrate Buddhist cosmology as well as daily living in 9th century Javanese society.

Borobudur Temple

Candi Borobudur, or Borobudur Temple, in Central Java, Indonesia

 

Each of these structures reflects the worldviews of the civilizations that created them. Both their function and aesthetics are filled with meaning, and somehow this deep meaning is communicated to anyone visiting its perimeters. When you come close to these structures, they generate a reaction in the soul.

Pyramid and sphinx

Pyramid and sphinx of Giza, Egypt. Credit: Freeimages

 

In Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down, reportedly one of the influential books that Elon Musk read when he first thought about building SpaceX, structural engineer J. E. Gordon reflects on structures and aesthetics in his first chapter:

 

“…although most artefacts are not primarily concerned with making an emotional or aesthetic effect, it is highly important to realize that there can be no such thing as an emotionally neutral statement. This is true whether the medium be speech or writing or painting or technological design. Whether we mean it or not, every single thing we design and make will have some kind of subjective impact, for good or bad, over and above its overtly rational purpose.”

 

Gordon contrasts the artefacts of the eighteenth century, which “seem to many of us to be at least pleasing and sometimes incomparably beautiful,” to the works of modern man—modern is a relative term–which is not so much filled with “active ugliness” as the “prevalence of the dull and the commonplace.”

 

“…man does not live by safety and efficiency alone, and we have to face the fact that, visually, the world is becoming an increasingly depressing place… Far too seldom is the heart rejoiced or does one feel any better or happier for looking at the works of modern man.”

 

It seems to me that the grandeur of exceptional structures lies in the spiritual aspect of the work, which is often the source of excellence that makes them out of the ordinary.

 

Ancient Engineering

 

On why these ancient structures last, I am toying with conjectures here. I’d defer to the civil engineers and architects to supply the scientific explanation.

 

Pyramids and temples were built by their creators to last. Whether it was a tribute to kings, ancestors, or gods, these structures reflected their beliefs about life and the afterlife. This to them was a perpetual reality that would never change. Why would it, if this was how the world worked? The bodies of past Pharaohs were not placed there temporarily, nor Buddhas arbitrarily placed in random directions. They were designed with intention of permanence.

 

If these structures were meant to last, they needed to be built in a certain way, much like the difference in attitude and approach when I know I’m making something for temporary use or for ever. Intent drives content, which in turn informs method.

 

The pyramid-like shape of these 3 structures to me seems very stable, although I would here open myself to counter examples that show other equally stable shapes. Admittedly, these 3 examples are simply based on my personal exposures, a lecture I heard recently on Egyptology, my recent visit to Chichen Itza, and my visit and pride in a notable accomplishment of my home country’s past civilizations.

 

Gordon also writes that pre-metallic structures of the past probably ‘force’ their engineers to think deeply about loads and stresses on the materials at their disposal:

 

“To make structures without the benefit of metals requires an instinct for the distribution and direction of stresses which is by no means always possessed by modern engineers; for the use of metals, which are so conveniently tough and uniform, has taken some of the intuition and also some of the thinking out of engineering.” 

 

Certainly there were numerous ancient structures that didn’t last, whether to due structural or environmental causes. Earthquakes, floods, and everything that could happen over the span of 4000 years might destroy even the most superior knowledge of stress distribution on solids. This, though, only makes our respect and admiration grow for the few structures that have survived history and the “primitive technologies” that created them.

 

Of Matter and Structure

 

There is also, however, something to be said about the materials used in these trans-millennial structures. They were made out of stones, probably because stones were the most readily available materials with load-bearing strength before the discovery, manipulation, and production of metals. Is it also possible that this choice material contributes to their survival?

 

Since metallic structures are relatively younger, it is quite unfair to compare stony and metallic structures on equal grounds. We don’t know (or, rather, I don’t know) whether metals will outlast stones, as in, if two pyramids were built, one with stone and one with metals in the same location, which one would last longer? We only have one version of history, so all we can do is credit the ancient glories to the stone structures.

 

As building materials, stones have notable advantages. They are by nature durable, fireproof, and nonreactive. They are not the easiest to work with due to their weight and non-uniformity, and they don’t provide good insulation (not good for places with extremely hot or cold weather). But their resistance to fire and moisture is a clear strength, unlike wood that is in fact fuel for fire and prone to decay, or metals that bend and melt due to heat. Stones will not rust, since the molecules are mostly oxidized and thus will not react with air or water. Further, it can be restored. Many of the ancient stone structures were once lost and re-discovered after many years of abandonment. But careful restoration could bring their old glories back, provided that enterprising people didn’t chip them away, and moss could be removed from stones. Compare this with common houses in North America, which, HGTV tells me, can undergo so much decay and destruction from being abandoned for a few years.

 

The Character of Stones

 

In the Biblical account, there is a section that flies over human history by giving each era a certain character through material symbols. In the book of Daniel chapter 2, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar had a dream which he forgot, and decreed his counselors to reproduce the dream and interpretation. Failure to do so would result in death. Daniel, a Hebrew prophet in the king’s court prayed to God and was granted the vision and its explanation.

 

The vision was of a statue with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly of brass, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay. Each section symbolized a kingdom, gold for Babylon, silver for Media and Persia, bronze for Greece, iron for Rome, and iron and clay for divided Rome.

 

At the end of the vision was a part that was a bit strange and discontinuous. A stone “cut out without hands” appeared, stroke the feet of the statue, and crumbled the whole structure down. This stone represented the kingdom of God, hence the discontinuity from the materials in the statue–metals refined by human civilizations–was fitting here.

 

Yet the choice of a stone to represent the kingdom of God was rather anticlimactic, wouldn’t you say? I would probably choose something majestic, like a big giant diamond to crush the entire human civilization. A plain old stone is neither flashy nor valuable.

 

Interestingly, however, the commentary continues to highlight that this last kingdom’s distinct characteristic was that it would last forever. Daniel 2:44 says, “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.” The other kingdoms pass away, but this one stays.

 

Perhaps there is something here, given what we know about the material characteristics of rocks and stones. In other places, Biblical references to rocks mean stability, strength and assurance (e.g., building on the rock, rock of salvation, etc). God Himself is referred to as the Rock of Israel.

 

It is not uncommon for the Bible to illustrate the kingdom of God with unusual symbols; a seed, leaven, a net cast into the sea, and numerous other unexpected metaphors. They are often humble, simple, and commonplace. Yet each time, they reveal a secret strength that is not always intuitive to human thinking, like the seed that grows into a tree, where birds can lodge in its branches. The baffling-ness calls its audience to think of reality as God sees it, that not everything is valued according to the marketplace and human commerce.

 

In the choice of a stone in Daniel 2, its durability, strength, and stability certainly reflects a characteristic of God’s kingdom. That sameness yesterday, today, and tomorrow is a key aspect of the Biblical God. I don’t know whether the author of the hymn “Rock of Ages” was thinking along this line, but that phrase is awfully and appropriately fitting.

 

Photo credit: Johnny Loi Photography

How To Be An Excellent Student

How To Be An Excellent Student

Mar 28, 2016 | Thinking Better

This article continues the series on how to be an excellent student and life learner. Read the previous article here: Before Learning: The Role of Awe in Life and Learning and After Learning: The Role of Reflection in Gaining Wisdom.

 

In After Learning, I shared what I wish I had done as a student to grasp the subject of my courses better. Here, I’m sharing tips specifically on how to be an excellent student who is not just smarter, but wiser, knowing how to contextualize and apply the knowledge to real life situations.

 

These are not meant to replace the usual taking notes, completing assignments, and regular studying that are given activities of a student’s life. They are, instead, ways to get the most out of those other activities, be it lectures, assignments, office hours, etc. The goal is primarily to increase and deepen understanding of the subject, which secondarily, I would think, would reflect in the grades. These are also written in the context of a high school, college, or graduate course, but the principles are applicable to other learning contexts.

 

Before the Course

 

Study the syllabus. Your instructor has put together a plan on how she would guide you through a particular subject for the whole semester. This is done with no small effort. The syllabus is the highest level of perspective on everything you will learn. It tells you a lot about how the instructor thinks and what she deems as important. I used to not pay attention to this, to my own detriment, like the table of contents of a book. But in fact, this is a roadmap that, if followed, will guide your way throughout the semester. Study it; pose questions on why it is arranged this way. You can even ask the instructor the why and how she arranges her course during office hours. Let me tell you a secret: most instructors would be thrilled to be asked these questions by a genuine and true inquirer.

 

Studying the syllabus also helps you to know, before coming to lectures, what will be covered on a given day. This way, you won’t be a passive recipient of information, but an engaged, active listener. And an active listener will always absorb and retain more information.

 

Skim the textbook/reading materials. Spend a few minutes to an hour to skim the textbook and reading materials. The purpose of this is to get an initial impression on what you will learn. Read the first and last few paragraphs of each chapter to get a sense of its key ideas, flow, and arrangement of thoughts. When the course eventually gets to each section, your brain will have some memory and familiarity to the subject, and will absorb information better. Psychologically, you’ll be more at ease in facing a more familiar topic than a completely foreign one. If you’re majoring in something that requires loads of reading, skimming will help you retain more insights on the reading materials.

 

During the Course

 

Reflect each day. Ask yourself, what did I learn today? What happened in class? Sometimes we get too busy taking notes, running from one class to another, that we don’t get to absorb what is being taught. Take a few minutes to review the day. Remember, repetition deepens impression.

 

Each week, ask yourself, how does this week’s lessons connect with last week’s? Where are we now in the roadmap? How does it differ or enhance the previous topics? Refer back to the syllabus to see where you are in the context of the whole semester.

 

Converse with classmates, teaching assistants, and instructors about the subject. Ask questions that come up during your personal reflection time, listen to what they think, and synthesize your own conclusions. I may not remember what a lecture covers, but I can usually remember good conversations.

 

Go to office hours. Most instructors and TAs are just waiting for you to come and talk to them. They usually don’t see many students until an assignment is due or before exams. The truth is, they would love to have conversations with students from the beginning of the class. These are people who dedicate their lives to academia. Nothing gives them more joy and fulfillment than seeing students who love to learn. So talk to them. They’re humans, trust me. Ask them about their career, why they chose to be in academia. You may be in for surprises.

 

If you want to take it to the next level, create your own thought process map or chart in organizing the course materials. If you were to teach the course, how would you do it?

 

After the Course

 

Once the semester ends and final exams are over, don’t just discard the materials you’ve learned and dump all memory to oblivion. Spend some time contextualizing the course in the bigger framework of your life education.

 

What are the key principles you learned from the course?

 

Connect the subject with other courses or fields of study. How do they relate to each other? How do they make you a better doctor/engineer/social worker or whatever career you are pursuing? This exercise helps you understand what relevance does this subject have in the world. Write down your thoughts to summarize the course and the whole semester.

 

—

 

These things don’t have to take a lot of your time; a few minutes here and there will do. And you don’t even have to do all of them. You can start implementing one thing into your daily habits, and add on later. In fact, I would argue any one item would naturally lead to the others, since this is about approaching school as a wisdom seeker. When this self-evaluation becomes a habit, it will change the way you live and learn hereafter.

 

Further reading: 

If you want to learn more on how to be an efficient learner, read How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. It has a brilliant section on how to skim a book!

 

Photo credit: Freekpik

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