Review One: The Geography of Thought

Review One: The Geography of Thought
How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why
Richard E. Nisbett

This book was recommended to me sometime ago, long enough ago to forget who recommended it. It reads quickly and easily something most people might not associate with books on comparative social behavioural psychology. Perhaps insane people over analyze psychological differences between cultures however giving some framework to the differences an expatriate from the west encounters in any long-term stay in Asia is if anything to be highly appreciated and Nisbett covers the territory or sketches the major general differences in attitudes, perspectives, and attributions theories in an objective manner, highlighting the differences and making a strong case for the combined benefits of learning about one cultural mindset versus another.

This reading has been punctuated by a visit from an evangelical Bible thumping Christian who claims my Catholic sentiments and my curiosity regarding world religions is somewhat obtuse as in his mind there is no God but the One True God. At the same time I am reminded of various incidents in my life here in Korea and elsewhere where I have felt my values are not in tune with those stranger and friends around me Asian or Western alike. However listening to CBC Radio as I am attuned to do at times especially marking during exam weeks I caught a special program on the benefits of reading especially when seeking a moral lesson. I do seek moral lessons and find them at times in The Bible, at other times in other great books. The program describes the hypothetical extension of the messages we find in stories, parables, readings and the imaginative world one may create in one’s own mind to exercise the hypothesis read about. To practice the mind’s extensions into the stories and settings which often effects realizations and learnings of an intrinsic value in effect perhaps a reshaping or remoulding of self-image, self-expression, and self-searching.

It is easy to participate in such activities when one has the time to reflect on challenges such as existing as an expatriate with some degree of self-reliance and questioning the actions, thoughts and patterns of behaviour of others particularly when these do not coincide one’s own concepts of fairness, rightness, or understanding. Nisbett begins with a contrastive and comparative description of the ancient philosophical differences between Greek critical discourse and Chinese moral codes of Confucianism a set of standards most Koreans know well. While there are similarities there are also differences.

Freedom of movement was a practice of Ancient Greece according to Nisbett and an embodiment of liberty described as personal agency or the freedom to act and choose one’s path in life as one sees fit or that one’s actions determine one’s rewards or the fruit of labour. Such values consider few constraints are necessary in the development of a member of community with an individualistic purpose illustrated in the Greek sagas of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Even in the act of oral traditional recitation prior to actual written books on these folk tales indicates the freedom and creativity to tell the story in one’s own peculiar way, with some variations feely expected as there was no written scripts prior to the eighth or ninth centuries BC the degrees of freedom for story-tellers were then quite expansive as compared to any time since written texts became standard. Differences fueled argument, debate, and exchange of ideas and enriched a community fulfilling a curiosity and desire to learn and know as a result of one’s efforts to do so with a reward being innovative new ideas.

At roughly the same time Ancient Chinese festivities are described as being opportunities not to explore and discover new places and new ideas but to return to family ancestral homes, relatives, and close friends with a contrastive emphasis on the harmonious interactions within the family unit which could be quite large and comprised of several generations. I am reminded of the sizes of the first Europeans and their tiny door frames in Louisburg, Nova Scotia where the French held a major bastion in North America. The quality of life in a family tightly compacted within four tiny walls will greatly benefit from harmony if they can get it. Isolation perhaps seen as contemplative necessity among the Greeks is shunned in traditional Chinese history as Nisbett describes an Ancient Chinese character is considered an identity only in its interwoven interknit connections within a collective or family association. In this difference the power of a group’s agency or influence upon its interactions in a community of groups rather than an individual defines the difference in perspective also noted by Kluckhohn in his personality studies among the Navaho and others in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s.

It appears these differences remain alive and well in the modern worlds where East meets West and vice versa.