Tunnel Vision in Western Thought?

Sorry for carlessly misinterpreting the topic.

What do you mean by the "inability to see common trends in societies vs focusing on differences"?

The Reviews of Geography of thought doe not make it clear what you mean by the "inability to see common trends in societies vs focusing on differences" and your interchanges with the other people posting does not also does not make it clear what you mean by the inability to see common trends in societies vs focusing on differences".

 

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I wasn't talking about colonized people. I was talking about the Iroquois (Five Nations) and Cherokee Nations between 1600 and 1750.

And I wasn't talking about being more accommodating, but about being less accommodating, to colonial power- by being less racist, less culturally blinded, more perceptive, and more wise in their alliances and resistance.

The Iroquois were too accommodating to the English and French monarchies, too hostile to what they might have recognized as comrades in arms and providers of great cultural and technological strengths. Tunnel vision.

More to the point, how was it the same? The Iroquois were a nation, with an army and a government and military control of a large region. The Iroquois lived in towns, farmed, formed alliances and treaties as a governed people, defended territory by military campaign. They had a century's old formal trading relationship with the European monarchies by the time the first of what were to be the famous American pioneer settlers arrived.The Inuit were a collection of nomadic bands of coastline hunters who never had much to do with settlers or invaders (the ones on the Labrador coast had the longest dealings with Whites, whose fishing camps they had raided since the 1500s or before), never had much dealings with wartime alliances or treaties of relationship, who were still living basically as they always had until after WWII and the invention of the airplane, and whose subjugation, if that's the word, was by missionary, money, and disease rather than by force of arms.

The original Inuit peoples around Greenland - the Thule, the first ones to meet Whites - had moved in around 1400 and ethnically cleansed the area of its native peoples, btw. These "native" Dorset people were extinct, and their former homeland colonized by the Inuit Thule, just before the first time a White person saw a kayak.

 

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Yes every part of the west has tunnel vision and also every part of the East has tunnel vision. Each place and each person has their own style of tunnel vision. I can't judge the experiments and conclusions in the book without reading the book.

Nobody sees the big picture. Very few people even want to see the big picture.

There are varying degrees of wholeness and people see the aspects of wholeness that they are ready to see. Our minds are not big enough to see the whole.

Most people including Easterners just want a nice house, and good stuff, and a loving spouse, and children and security and status and to rule the world. Those desires don't lead towards holistic thinking except to the degree that semi-holistic thinking can be a useful skill towards obtaining objective goals.

I do see some signs that the west may have been more mechanistic and tunnel visioned in it's thinking than the East but the differences have often been overblown and exaggerated.

 

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Iroquois had some democracy that predates the arrival of the Europeans. Iroquois gave women respect and equality prior to most other cultures.

Great Law of the Iroquois that states, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations. I like that philosophy and wish the USA followed it. The Iroquois seem to have botched their Seven generations planning when the Europeans showed up because the Iroquois did not find a way to keep much of their lands. Fighting the Hurons might not have been the appropriate priority at that time.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond sheds light on who colonizes and who gets colonized and why.

 

One of the things I noticed different between American society and Arab society, for example, was the inability of Americans to relate to other societies [whether Asian, Arab, African or Latin] unless they were superficially similar in appearance. Everything and everyone else who is "different" is exotic, if not suspect.

Retrospectively, I felt more comfortable with the Arab society, even though I was less fluent in their language and knew less about them, because they were able to accept my "differences" as "normal" by assigning it to my culture. The attitude was markedly different.

In the context of this thread, I was struck by quads comment that I refer to native Americans in the context of other subjects like the Holocaust. I don't really see much differences in the effects of enforced segregation regardless of the target. Whether it is the caste system, bantustans, the warsaw ghetto or reservations, or even self imposed segregation, there is a distinct concept of otherness to it, a dehumanisation of the other, so to say, a reduced ability to identify with the other as part of a whole. Is this something less obvious to people like quadrophonics ?

One of the things I have wondered about, for instance, would Obama win the Presidency if he spoke like a "black man"?

Why don't they? Considering the impact of your decisions on your coming generations is how most societies keep their stability.

 

That's interesting because me and a Persian were chatting last night and she said she felt very uncomfortable in Arab countries and that many Arabs have treated her like shit. She can't tell if it's because she a woman or a Shia. She said the last time she was in KSA a store owner told her father he wasn't a real man because real men have 4 wives (her father of course only has one wife) - he, the store owner, had 3 and would have 4 if he had a little more money. She said she often heard Arabs make snide remarks near her. They turned their backs on her when she wanted to go into a prayer room and when she went to retrieve her shoes they again all turned their backs to her. She said many of her friends live in London and CA and love life there. They feel free and "able to breath". Now this is a woman who likes Persia (hates the gov, but meh, who doesn't?) as well - maybe that's it?


But, I have heard a lot of expats say they liked living in Dubai.



Interesting two such very different experiences.


I wonder what it's like being a conservative Jew and walking around KSA? Do they feel as comfortable as Muslim SAM?

 

Can anyone find any picture of a Jew walking around openly in KSA? Or a Synagogue in the capital - I'd like to see some pictures anyway.

 

Not to worry. Your inability to distinguish between different forms of segregation, forced and unforced (such as an American Indian reservation and the Warsaw ghetto) or perceive the similarities between other forms, (such as the enforced segregation of women in Islamic countries and the Jim Crow laws in the US) is quite obvious.

Here's an aspect of the difference: In the US, you are an equal - therefore, your various actions and doings and opinions are potentially of real effect, they are potentially part of other people's lives. You are out of control, independent, and other people's ordinary comfort and safety depends on your voluntary cooperation with their norms. In Arab society you are under control, no threat - like a cute puppy or somebody's child in the US, your eccentricities are merely entertaining or shallowly social.

Here's another aspect: you obviously have had contact with only a fairly narrow segment of US society, and did not become familiar with it - it was strange to you, quite different from your upbringing, and resistant to your intuition. It is not much as you report, in my area, and even more different in places like Taos, New Mexico or Rochester, Minnesota.

And another: the Arabs could assign your behavior to your culture because they knew something of your culture - and it was more like theirs. And yours is more like theirs in certain key aspects, hence comfortable.

But carry on.

 

I think this difference between "East" and "West" has to do with 1. how people conceptualize who or what a person, an individual is, and 2. what the purpose of life is.

In the "West", the dominant conception seems to be that we are basically an aggregate of matter, thoughts, emotions, feelings, actions, possessions, and that there is only this one life time in which we can act; and that the purpose of life is "self-actualization", ie. the gratification of the body, thoughts, emotions etc. - that there is no higher purpose to being an individual than to gratify the individual aggregate.

One of the consequences of such reasoning is competitiveness, focusing on the differences is elementary to it.



In the traditional "East", things are different. They have a history of belief in karma and reincarnation, and/or belief that there is a higher purpose to life, a purpose that transcends the individual but which does not leave him at a loss (compare a Western version of a higher purpose - the Revolution - and what came of it "The revolution devours its own children"), and instead elevates him (such as the Buddhist enlightenement or God realization).

If one believes that one could take birth in the body of a dog, or a plant, or someone from a different race or caste, this automatically checks whatever hostility one may have toward dogs, other races etc.
The traditional Easterners couldn't take seriously bright ideas such as industrialization or atom bombs, because their belief that everything comes around again would stop them. Who would throw an atom bomb somewhere, witness the devastation it caused, if they believed that by doing so, this would then happen over and over and over again.

I think a consequence of the traditional Eastern reasoning and acting (I'm generalizing here, though, as this is a very complex topic) is more cooperation, more striving for harmonious coexistence, hence less focus on the differences, or evaluating the differences differently.

 

Most Americans have never left America. The American media is geared towards Americans who have never left America because they are the majority. I think the inferiority of the American media is the main reason that Americans are so ignorant. Media in places where it might become important to understand other cultures try harder to inform about other cultures. In America understanding other cultures feels more optional. If our media chooses to flatter us and stoke our patriotism rather than to inform us we would not know the difference unless we were scholars devoted to objectivity and research.

Media matters because that is the only contact most Americans had with other cultures prior to the huge wave of immigration that happened in the last 30 years. Obama would have been too exotic to become president had it not been for the huge wave of immigration that happened during the last 30 years.

You are not comparing Americans to the Indian who repairs shoes by the side of the road. You are comparing Americans to modern cosmopolitan Indians or cosmopolitan Arabs.

The world is like a comic book staring America to Americans. The less educated Indians view of America was also sort of comic book like and I sort of felt like an exotic semi-human circus freak spectacle and a source of entertainment when I was in some Indian villages in the 1980s.

Non-village Indians and Arabs and Europeans have always been used to being exposed to people of other ethnicities. This was not true for Americans until the last 30 years. There were Italian Americans and Irish Americans but their parents and usually their grand parents were born in America so they felt very American.

Also the legacy of slavery and the conquest of the Native Americans meant that Americans needed to live in a sort of fantasy understanding of other cultures. To be honest would have created a conflict between American's idealism and American's desire to fit in and be prosperous.

When I traveled I was struck by how one culture slowly transitions into the next culture as you travel in that direction. Austrians were like Germans mixed with Serbians. Serbians were like Austrians mixed with Greeks. Greeks were like Serbians mixed with Turks. (the Greeks would hate to hear me say they are like Turks) I have know Arabs though other than passing through two Arab Airports I have never been to an Arab country. Arabs seem to be like Greeks with a little bit of India mixed in. No wonder Arabs felt more familiar to you and no wonder that you did not seem strange to Arabs. India and the Middle East have always been connected. Europe felt more familiar to me than India did. [/QUOTE]

I agree with you. You would think that a good analogy would convey understanding but you can't make people understand what they don't want to understand. Blaming the victim is always an option. Loyalty and pride can make people refuse to see the analogy if the seeing analogy would require disloyalty or wound the pride. Even to change a belief could be a little uncomfortable if you had an ego investment in your own intellectual sophistication. I am still addicted to my beliefs and the idea of being smart even though I know how stupid that is.

If you can understand the tunnel vision of Shiv Sena then you can understand the tunnel vision of the various varieties of stubbornly ideologically indoctrinated Americans. Do Hindu extremists have their own TV networks?

No. Jeremiah Wright did two things wrong, he spoke like a black man and his observations were hurtful to American's pride. I don't think most white Americans particularly older white Americans are ready to elect a president who sounds black. I guess we don't judge a man by the color of his skin any more but we do judge people for sounding black. Some of the people I grew up with also prejudge white Americans who have southern accents as being sub standard.

If we asked Americans whether they cared about the wellbeing of future generations I think they would say that they do care. I don't know why the media never brings up planning for the distant future. The media never gets very deep into policy discussions presumably because they don't think that Americans are interested in mental puzzles. They think American attention spans can only be held by emotional dramas.

The politicians are only worried about their next election. The corporations are only worried about 3 months to ten years.

The whole global warming debate is about the long term future. But America lags behind the other educated people in understanding global warming presumably because more money has been spent trying to convince Americans that global warming is not real.

The American media is a real problem because it cares primarily that it deliver an audience to advertisers and has little concern about whether it informs people correctly and shapes opinion in a way that will benefit society. The problem is that short term profit has replaced social responsibility as the goal in every sector of American life in which the two goals compete for influence. This is not a choice that Americans ever consciously made.

I think the rest of the world is unconsciously on the path of increasingly adopting American style prioritizing of short term profits over social responsibility.

It is most people's jobs to help maximize profits. Who's job is it to look after the seventh generation yet unborn? The politicians and media seem to no longer want that job. The religious leaders don't seem qualified for the job. I guess the task has been left to the University professors.

 

I totally disagree. I think your evaluation of Buddhist societies are of a western interpretation. Right now I am in a Buddhist south east asian country where they eat dogs and everything else for that matter, I have seen SUV's hit a moto driver and continue on its way and I have seen them throw a live cat into a fire pit. They rape their natural environment for wealth and its only the western environmental groups that make a stink about it. They are known to sell their children from time to time to brothels and human traffickers. You say they don't recognize differences but they will take umbrage if you confuse them with their Thai or Vietnamese neighbors whom they absolutely hate. Social cooperation for the most part is based on a hierarchy of wealth and status. The higher purpose in life here is to raise ones social economic status not their spiritual status, if one wants to do that they become a monk. All the intellectual musings of what Buddhism really is are very different from how Buddhism actually functions in a buddhist society. As for human rights you are more likely to find it forthcoming from your western counterpart than your buddhist khmer where they shit on their poor and disenfranchised. It ain't all lotus flowers and meditation you know. You're conception of buddhism in buddhist society belongs on fantasy island.

 

Black men from where? The US south? The US north? Nigeria or Mozambique? Trinidad or Jamaica? Manchester England or London? What exactly DOES a 'black man' sound like Sam? Or do they all go around saying 'yo yo yo my biatch' while dobbie doobing to Snoop dog? You are no more culturally 'broad' than the 'westerner' as you would like to believe. I mean you assume that a 'black man' has a singular way of speaking and that it would be different from a white man of the same socio economic local environment.

So much for cultural and ethnic sensitivity.

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I'm just shocked no one picked up on that. I mean I don't exactly think that all white men speak with a southern drawl, the same southern drawl that blacks from the american south speak with. Hey sam know anything about a New York dialect?

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What a joke.

A better question would be if a white man could become president if he sounded like he came from the lower echelons of backwater southern society, the kind of place where they swallow their words and think possum a dietary staple. A good education my dear is a great equalizer.

 

Not to mention a Lebonese who works here for the UN who recently told me that the palestinian refugees are hated in his country and they wish the whole situation could end so that they could get rid of them all. Its a drain on their society and creates 'security issues'. Some of them try and mainstream themselves of course he said but for the most part they moan and groan. That's the reality behind 'sensitivity'.

I also know some expats who love living in Dubai but there are also those who find it a tad bit superficial and too wealth based.

 

I'm sorry - which society undergoes "self-imposed segregation"?

 

Barack Obama does speak like a black man. An educated Chicago black man with an international upbringing, to be specific.

Did you mean to ask if Obama would have won if he spoke like a nigger?

If so, why did you conflate that with "black man?" Failure to percieve the difference?

 

Halachic Jews, Brahmins, Amish. How can you make out? They have a policy of excommunication if you leave the community. Even the Parsis were like that before.

So native Americans choose to be less educated, poor and unemployed?

I see what you mean. I should compare Americans to those Indians who don't even know there was British rule in India. The kind who only vote for guys from their "community". Seen like that, I find it easier to understand some of my experiences there.

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The "tunnel vision" of the Shiv Sena is a flexible animal [see Mi Shivajirao Bhosle Boltoi]. Nevertheless, they felt "betrayed" by the Marathi Manus this year, after they were severely trounced in the elections. Of course, the Marathi Manus has more interesting things to do than navel gaze at his roots, but I see your point.

Yes I noted that all people in various parts of the states spoke in the language and accent of their white counterparts there.

How far would Obama have gone if he spoke Kenyan, Hawaiin or Indonesian?

 

forgive me..
i just walked into the middle of this conversation..

RE;native americans..
specificly navajo's
i live in the four corners and the/a navajo reservation is only 5 minutes from here..they have the option to live outside the reservation,many do..many are struggleing just as you and i do,
there is a different culture on the reservation than elsewhere,takes awhile to understand..
these guys don't shine shoe's roadside..but you will find many selling homemade jewelry and rugs..its common to be at a restaurant and see a navajo come through with a tray of jewelry to sell..or to see a rug display in a parking lot..

dunno how this applies to the current conversation....

 

My question was: can they leave the reservation and still easily be educated in their own languages, follow their own diet, customs, religion and culture or does leaving the reservation entail giving up being an Indian in favour of being a westernised American?

I was wondering if they could be part of a whole or whether it was a question of choosing and discarding elements of one society in favour of another.

 

educated yes..in their own language..certain curriculums do, but not as a rule..
there dietary habits are the same as ours, they overdose on McDonalds just like us..
i haven't yet been to any of their cultural celebrations, but they have quite a few..
i think they do the same as everyone else, try to incorperate the best of both worlds into their lives..
personally i think the reservation is a safety net for them when they crash in westernized society,and some ppl know how easy that happens..