Hi Bruce:
> Platt, if you're interested in the differences in the way people think
> in Eastern and Western cultures, I would refer you to the work of Edward
> T. Hall.
>
> Hall is a cultural anthropologist who writes books that are quite
> compelling and profound for nonanthropologists, like me. He argues,
> among other things, that societies can be divided between "low context"
> and "high context" cultures. In the former, people "spell everything
> out", assuming that others have little common experience on which to
> rely. In the latter, people communicate with more subtlety and take for
> granted that others share a common "context" that need not be made
> explicit.
>
> For me, this distinction between "low context" and "high context"
> cultures is an incredibly useful lens through which to understand the
> world -- sort of like Pirsig's "classic/romantic" and "static/dynamic"
> dualities. It helps explains differences between Americans (who tend to
> be relatively "low context") and people from other, more "high context"
> cultures. It also is helpful in understanding the differences between
> the ways that men and women tend to communicate.
>
> I can't do Hall's work justice in a note like this, but would highly
> recommend his book "Beyond Culture" -- it's one of those eye-opening
> books, like Pirsig's, that can really affect your life in important
> ways. To get a small taste of Hall's work, you can also read an article
> about him that I just found on the web (apparently written for the
> neurolinguistic programming community, but without much jargon):
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Brianvanderhorst/edward_t_hall_great_.htm
Thanks for the tip, Bruce. I'll check it out. While cruising the Web
the other day I came across the following quote from Dr. Marilyn
Schlitz, research director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, that
supports Pirsig's contention that mind emerged from the social
level, not the physical:
"We have our first person subjectivity--that inner experience. We
have the third-person objectivity, which we can study using
electrodes and PET scans and different kinds of physiological
monitoring techniques. But there is another 'person' I believe we
must include in any appreciation of consciousness, the second-
person perspective, which is the relational aspect of
consciousness. All of our concepts, our symbols, the meaning
systems by which we can even have a conversation are based on
a shared set of cultural assumptions . . . And so I would submit
that there are data out there suggesting that consciousness is
more than just the brain--or at least suggesting that the brain's
capacities are far more than what we've currently reduced them to.
But because our worldview--our Western scientific way of thinking--
limits our assumptions, we interpret those data with a particular
set of filters, which may limit our ability to actually get closer to the
truth about what is the nature of reality."
Sounds to me like something Pirsig could have written, especially
the last sentence.
Platt
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