General Purpose Rant & Chat Thread (698)

36 Name: 27 2005-09-14 16:28 ID:XkVJZvtf

>>35

  1. "On average, women bear children more often than men."
  2. "The Japanese are more likely to accept the yin (the dark part of yin/yang duality) and to perceive reality as something that has to be unified somehow."

Number 1 is pretty easy to confirm as holding true, and is even useful for extrapolating from groups down to individuals. Number 2 is vague and actually makes no statements that are supported by any kind of evidence, or testable any meaningful way. It also smacks of the "orientals are mystical beings living in harmony with the world" new-age fallacy. All it does is to play into our preconceptions, and glorifies the Other, letting us feel good about ourself as modern world citizens who appreciate the wisdom of Other Cultures.

All this while in actuality, you can take an average Japanese person and an average Westerner, and find that beyond language and some social mores, there's hardly any difference. The difference between any two individuals picked out of either group is likely to be far, far larger.

So while there is some difference in outlook, on average, it's most likely far less than people who talk about unifying yin and yang would think, and even that difference is largely overwhelmed by the difference between indivduals, making any insights you gain this way largely useless.

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