The Geography of Thought

 

 

 

 

 

 

VIEWPOINT

East-West: two different worlds that are having to live and work together more and more. Understanding each other better and learning how to take advantage of each other’s strong points will be the economic and cultural challenge in the years to come.

 

In his book, Richard Nisbett aims to push the limits of pluri-cultural understanding. Everyday, international project managers have to ensure that people from different cultural and linguistic universes work together productively. They therefore need a method to decipher—and regulate—collaborators’ and partners’ often-unexpected behavior.

In today’s post-communist world, our bi-polar planet seems to be rotating around two centers: the Euro-American constellation, and the forceful dynamic combination of Far-Eastern powers Japan, China, and Korea. For a long time and on both sides, the disparity of these two worlds generated Manichean attitudes that globalization now renders intolerable. We need to

draw on a psycho-sociological perspective in order to build an understanding of modern international relations. So, in the West, as in Asia, what mental concepts form the basis of cultural identities and behaviors?

 

# THE ROOTS OF DUALISM

The opposition between the East and the West is far from recent. The ocean that separates Aristotle’s descendants from those of Confucius has shaped different intellectual attitudes. Although, like Europeans, Asians believe the world is constantly changing, their way of thinking deviates from the West on a specific, key point: They believe that everything

eventually returns to its initial state. Thus, the idea of circularity that structures all of Asian thought. In contrast, Western thought appears linear.

 

And if the world really were a circle?

The image of the circumference of a circle is a basic symbol of life’s never-endingness. Not withstanding the parentheses of death, life renews itself from generation to generation. As a symbol of perpetual return, followed by necessary rebirth, the circle calmly affirms that nothing is definitive. Just like a wheel, life keeps on moving forward. Like a point that travels

around a circumference, any situation can evolve upwards or downwards. In the Asian way of thinking,

instability is the way things are meant to be. It is therefore natural for periods of auspiciousness and adversity to alternate throughout human history.

DOSSIERThe circle also evokes the notion of a central source of all power (illustrated by China’s ethnocentrism under Imperial China). Yet a circle’s primary characteristic is that each of the points of its circumference remains at a respectful distance from

its center. This is where the idea of submission to authority as an inevitable social given finds its roots.

And it structures all social relations in Asia. Furthermore, this conception explains something that has astonished European observers for a long time: the devotion of Japanese workers to their companies and their leaders. On the personal front, respect for power explains Asians’ devotion to their elders. Despite decades of Maoism, the age-old consideration of Chinese families for deceased relatives has carried through to modern-day China.

Furthermore, if the world is a circle, it is natural to want to connect two—or more—points of the circumference. And as a circle contains an infinite number of possible arcs, there is a constant in the Asian outlook which is to consider complexity as inherent to all situations. A problem is first and foremost a group of issues inseparable from the context from which it emanates. As a result, Asians have an intellectual mindset that will not classify issues hierarchically. The relationship to the context is a prerequisite to understanding anything. The yin and the yang, two inseparable principles, oppose and complete each other in a circle. They are the perfect image of the successful integration of opposites. From this stems the typical Asian aptitude for pragmatism as well as problem-solving on a case-by-case basis, far

from any theoretical consideration, in the practice of group management of oneself and others.

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DOSSIER MULTUCULTURALISM

The line: a development model?

 

In contrast, Western thought is like a line, which in itself symbolizes the whole history of humanity. As a line stems from an initial, distinct point of reference (the Big Bang, the year 0, the birth of a king or prophet, etc.), it enables us to define a before and an after. Thus the idea of progress which is inseparable from any Western ideology. Technical revolutions follow each other, and each one is enabled by previous advances. Concepts of stages, steps, eras, or periods transcend all our epistemology, be it geology, biology,

or explanations of the creation of the universe. Darwinism is a perfect reflection of how we have used the concept of linearity in the (Western) theory of evolution: we all come from an initial mother cell that, by successive, linear modifications led to the appearance of animals and then man. To bring order to this world that is defined by movement along a notalways-

straight line, Western thought invented formal logic, the ideal instrument for dealing with facts and objects. Thus the geometric terminology (segments, vectors, etc.) that is used to treat economic issues, as if everything happened on a single plane.

 

Is the Asian mindset superior?

The Western approach is not without weaknesses. The fact that there are things that go outside the line forces knowledge processes to work in an alternate mode.

Since that which must be understood is theoretically not on the path, it is, by definition, foreign. It is up to scholars, through their expertise, to decide whether or not to attribute a meaning and a place in the chapters of human progress to the given element. This is quite the reverse of the Asian way of thinking, where knowledge is first an act of empathy and of revealing something that is already there. This attitude has naturally led Asians toward actions deployed in a search for harmony rather than toward abstract theorizing or speculation.

We may therefore wonder whether the Eastern frame of mind is superior to the Western, in that Asians seem to approach problems with a mindset that favors integrated, system-oriented visions. It is true that Westerners too often tend to reduce an issue to its

components. Finally, when it comes to human issues, the image of the circle--which makes a median and dialectic approach possible--facilitates the search for solutions. When considering any problem as a set of relations, one arrives at modern notions such as networks, links, and interweaving. On the contrary,

Western linearity leaves out whatever cannot be known for certain (most often, that which upsets our convictions). It generates practices that legitimise our preference for standard solutions where rules and theories are expected to wholly explain and handle complex reality. The attitude of the rulers toward Copernicus is a tragically perfect historical example of the rigidity of this outlook. If the circle and the line are truly key concepts which illustrate many of the differences in the mentality and approach that separate East and West, then we should examine how these concepts will hold up in times to come.

 

# SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE:

CULTURAL INTEGRATION OR IDENTITY

CONFLICTS?

When asked to imagine what East-West relations will be like in the future, historians, sociologists, economists, and futurologists have radically differentopinions.

The author

 

Richard E. NISBETT, Ph.D. of Psychology, teaches at

the University of Michigan where he is a Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor. He has received several awards, including the William James prize, and in 2002 he received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. The idea for this book was the result of a comment from one of his Chinese students: “The difference between us, Sir, is that I think that the world is a circle, whereas for you, it’s a line.” Richard Nisbett thus undertook a series of comparative studies with the participation of students and colleagues from various Asian universities (Peking, Kyoto, Seoul).

 

Inevitable violence on the horizon

For political science researcher Francis Fukuyama, the world is inevitably moving toward a convergence of political and economic systems and values. He believes that the diversity of the human experience is taking us to an “end of the story” which will be characterized by the triumph of capitalism and democracy. For others, like Samuel Huntington, humanity is moving in the direction of conflicts among civilizations primarily due to three protagonists: the Far East, Islam, and the West. Interwoven with historic and economic patterns, globalization will only exacerbate each players preoccupation with affirming and preserving their specific identity. According to Huntington, these conflicts are all the more inevitable in that “as more problems of ethnic and cultural conflict arise, the aggressively expanding Western culture fails in three ways: it is dishonest, immoral, and dangerous.”* He justifies this criticism, somewhat

unexpected in a scientific work, by pointing his finger at the intellectual weaknesses of Western understanding. His main failing is assuming that people are the same throughout the world. With the West believing its way of seeing the world is best, how can differences in viewpoints disappear? As globalization shrinks the theater of operations, conflicts will continue and inevitably become planetary. Furthermore, they will assume the dimensions of today’s technologies and thus could be extremely violent.

*HUNTINGTON, S., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon and Schuster, 1996, chapter 12, p. 310.

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DOSSIER MULTUCULTURALISM

Implacable “Westernization”?

In face of this predetermined, pessimistic scenario, Fukuyama appears to subscribe to the disconcerting predictions of his counterpart on the other side of the Pacific. The progressive Americanization of the world is taken for granted and is an overpowering trend in human history that will be difficult to reverse. Beyond the fact of seeing jeans and t-shirts everywhere, there is a multitude of signs that indicates an irresistible “Westernization” of our societies. Among other examples, he cites the introduction of English in elementary education in France after years of resistance. The same can be seen in Asia, where the best university courses seem to be replicas of those given in New England’s most prestigious institutions. The situation is identical in China. Ten years ago, a study was carried out in Beijing on families’ educational hopes and expectations. It confirmed that parents’ top priority was to provide their children with tools that would enable them to become autonomous,

a value which, like independence, resourcefulness, and reactivity, holds a dominant position in American society. Another recent study carried out by Richard Nisbett and Nancy Wong among Chinese students at the University of Peking and American students at the University of Michigan revealed that the first group accorded more importance to Western values of

equality, imagination, independence, and openmindedness than the University of Michigan students themselves! Conversely, the American students demonstrated a clear preference for self-discipline, loyalty, respect for tradition and family—Asian values if ever there were any. And they did so with a propensity far superior to their Chinese counterparts!

 

Appeal of the Western model…

It is thus as if the two systems of thought are influencing and penetrating each other. Is this

tendency a result of globalization? Or, on the contrary, does it announce a true value consensus? The author provides several incontestable facts that credit the (optimistic) hypothesis of a slow but overwhelming convergence toward Western models. Thus, in Japan, a capitalist country for over a century, we can expect people to continue to encourage values

of independence, freedom, and rationalism. Even if Japanese practices are an example of a sort of “Easternization” of capitalism—in terms of factors like company loyalty, team spirit, and spontaneous cooperation among corporations—it is nevertheless clear that the economic miracle that followed WWII can largely be attributed to the adoption of Western principles. The same is true in politics, where, despite oligarchic practices, the country has adapted quite

well to a constitution written by the Americans shortly after Hiroshima. And despite tension due to economic difficulties, Tokyo does not appear to question the democratic model at all.

When it comes to Korea—whose industrial performance illustrates how much the country has

learned from the West—there is a rate of conversion to Christianity that is unequalled elsewhere. According to Richard Nisbett, this is significant in that the attraction for beliefs so radically different from Buddhism reveals a true drive to Westernize. As for China, although its government does not display interest in political democracy, the extremely rapid industrialization is a result of importing Western technologies. And China’s development process—more complex organizations, urbanization, mastery of sophisticated technology—is

clearly reminiscent of what happens in the West.

 

…or the end of Western pre-eminence?

But there are also signals suggesting that the opposite hypothesis may be true. This is all the more true because there are obvious trends that would be difficult to deny and whose characteristics are quite constant. Take Singapore, Taiwan, and Iran: three countries with unquestionable industrial development that have not adopted a Western mindset. Indeed, everything that has happened indicates that these countries are voluntarily limiting communication with the West to the minimum required for economic exchange. Despite normal diplomatic relations, these three states have not demonstrated any cultural curiosity as far as the West is concerned. Another sign not to be ignored: in 2007, the most common language on the Web will no longer be English, but Chinese. A similar prediction states that

half of international air traffic will soon be concentrated over the Pacific zone. Finally, as far as daily life is concerned,

behavioral practices illustrate evident incursion. In addition to the appeal of Asian cooking throughout the occident, the Western infatuation with Asian therapies such as acupuncture or holistic medicine provides food for thought -- not to mention Buddhism, which has become quite popular among Western populations.

 

Is the solution a mixture of East and West?

Nisbett’s study presents numerous conclusions. There are two that we shall primarily retain. First, the eruption of Eastern thought—as conveyed by Japan or China—on the Western human science scene has just barely begun. The contribution of Asian intellectuals to the renewal of our ways of thinking will be of capital importance in producing innovative and more effective conceptual tools. Secondly, under these influences, Western social habits will evolve, as will societal choices. For the time being, we are witnessing an acculturation of the East by the West. This is true to the degree that it is nearly impossible, from the perspective of behavior, to differentiate between an Asian student and a native Californian on an American university campus. But the time will come when Asian values will penetrate the West’s analytical and Cartesian mindset. This mental revolution is what tomorrow’s decision-makers should start preparing for today. ■

Based on The Geography of Thought: How Asians

and Westerners Think Differently…and Why,

by Richard E. Nisbett,

Nicholas Brealey Publishing, April 2003.