Might not be obvious, but this is the next in a series of “dialogues” with Dave Snowden. An example of the “dichotomies” Dave warns against.
Every choice of word is a binary chop, this not that. And however well defined (or not) the word is symbolic short-hand for whatever we have in mind in the dialogue in which we’re using it. One thing is clear the East and West short-hand are not about spatial geography.
“West” means the traditions of thought that came to us from Plato via Aristotle (and via the Islamic world) and Europe and hence everywhere else via conquest and empire. Obviously there are zillions of schools of thought, not to mention three distinct monotheistic-sibling religions with any number of factions, all footnotes to Plato, in that one “West” classification. (Typically distinguished in thought and language by objective thingness prior to any consideration of relations and dynamics.)
East simply means “not-West” in that sense. Outside that distinct boundary, the other side of that #GoodFence. As well as a collection of many distinct geographically Eastern / Asian schools of thought, more or less “religious” philosophies, Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism and more, it also includes any number of aboriginal / indigenous / native world-views, anywhere in the world, “East” being as far “West” as north and south America. (Typically distinguished in thought and language by dynamic interconnectedness prior to consideration of discrete things.)
Apart from a wide sprawling collection of sets of classes that fall under those two globally-exhaustive paragraphs, any “definition” of West and not-West can only be about those essential distinguishing feature(s) at that level, even though the many distinct subclasses within each share and differ by many other distinguishing features, enough to fight religious wars over.
The essential features being that discrete-objective, logical, “scientific” facts-based language view on the one hand and the dynamic-interconnected, intuitive, “wisdom” values-based language view on the other. The latter generally being excluded or denied or redefined to fit, the former. (That’s a whole book or ten.)
But it’s historically recurring many times over:
the recurring philosophical division between
the explicit / objective / discrete / classical and
the intuitive / implicit / embodied / romantic
Systems thinkers might see (say) Capra as the obvious “hippy” introduction of Eastern – Zen Buddhist – ideas to 20th century Western (US) living, but the doyens of the new physics, Heisenberg and Schrödinger (say) were there before the hippies and the beat generation, not to mention the romantic poets and transcendental philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries, and that’s just recent history of 21st century mindful – bodily & moral – engagement with our local environment and global ecosystem.
It ain’t a new fashion. It’s an eternal and universal truth.
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Post Note: Over at Channel (Iain) McGilchrist a very relevant recent “West vs Indigenous” conversation starter:
Does Language Shape the Way We See the World?
by Zoe JoncheereHi reader,
Quantum physicist David Bohm argued that we would never make real progress in understanding reality as long as we used Western languages, because they make us see the world as fixed and segmented, and as separate objects. He developed another language mode, verb-oriented, similar to indigenous languages, focussing on change, movement and interconnectedness.
I am setting up a research to develop such a language mode that can be put into practice. Eventually I want to bring together small groups of people to experiment and communicate with that language mode, and see how that affects our experience of reality.
I am very interested if people here have insights or recommendations to share. I am even open to find partners to join me on this journey.
I am a linguist and a writer of Belgian origin, living in Italy. Here is my website if you’d like to know more. https://zoejoncheere.com
Look forward to hearing from you. Thanks!
The distinction in the world views is embedded in the languages between the Western “Object” orientation and the Indigenous “Dynamic-Interconnectedness”. Again, we’re talking traditions. Wherever anyone is physically or culturally from in the world, if projects are couched in western language the work inherits that world-view.
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