How culture wires the brain - Oriental/Occidental
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This is typical Japanophilia. They're a smart people, but there's a simple reason why they used complex joinery over nails and it's not cultural background bullshit. Their iron sucked.
It’s not about japophilia, he seems to himself prefer the Western design philosophies (minimalistic, rationalistic, individualistic), but is intelligent enough to notice and contemplate the differences that can be observed. The idea of a single focal point v wholistic context is both very interesting and totally demonstrable through the art, design, and other cultural expressions we see, and that’s just one of the many examples he used to build his case
I feel attacked, this guy keeps telling me I look at things like an Asian. I'm not that much of a weeb goddamnit.
Lol. I think it’s a good thing. If you were born with your western thought patterns, demonstrating eastern thought patterns shows you’ve grown beyond your starting point. Same thing in reverse for Eastern born minds. Now some weebs are just mentally ill but that’s a different issue lmao
Maybe it's not the culture that does it, maybe there's an inherent, slight difference in genes within a species that causes cultural differences to arise (the ones that don't depend on the local natural environment, like food preferences, that is. Which way to read things is pretty arbitrary; another species might write in spirals or something - but visually different populations within that species might start their spirals differently (outward vs inward, let's say).
Considering a relatively common critique of “Asian cultures” is a “hive mentality”, the suggestion of a genetic component should be open to investigation, but we all know why it won’t be studied in academia. The whole nurture v nature aspect to the subject adds an interesting additional layer.
I recall an experiment done with infants where they would cover the nose and see whether the infant would try to remove the obstruction or simply open their mouths instead. Asian infants overwhelmingly did the latter. But Idk what study this was specifically so don't quote me on that.
Note that the current war isn't so much an economic one (capitalism vs Marxist/Bolshevist communism) like the Cold War was, it's a social war -- individualism vs communalism.
I've started to suspect that the whole thing with flamboyant faggotry, sexual identity bullshit, etc, is a form of accellerationism fed to us by the communalists - the message being "look at how ridiculous individual liberty is - it's just anarchy, chaos, and degeneracy!" It's part and parcel of breaking down society so that white humans will accept more communalism.
Ever notice what the difference is between Western and Eastern spiritual philosophy is? It's to do with determinism vs free will, and the existence of the individual vs individuality being an illusion.
Eastern reincanation teaches that any sense of "you" is an illusion, the shapeless soul has no sense of self, species, or anything else, and the end goal of existence is to eventually give up that individuality to Become One with Nirvana or whatever they want to call it. When Westerners imagine it, there's always a discrete "you" that persists from life to life and back to the Afterlife, no matter what body you're born into (and I think this is the root reason for people getting confused about what they are - the memory wiping process isn't perfect, and is maybe breaking down. Too many other species are being forced against their will into, say, human bodies, and remember all those aborted Chinese girls?)
Islam is "eastern" in the sense that it believes in determinism - that everything was written before God even existed (think Elder Scrolls - that's the Koran in their view.) You are an infidel so that Muslims can have a target for to get them a ticket to Paradise ....
I prefer Japanese websites way better. Americans are bland.
His examples of Eastern websites look just like Western ones did in the 90s and early 00s. It wasn't until relatively recently that the minimalist flat thing became trendy. But this guy choosing to use login pages as the examples of Western design is really disingenuous.
Screenshots of the Yahoo homepage 1996 - 2016. Changes in design are interesting. So is the invasion of ads.
https://mashable.com/feature/yahoo-history
Mostly driven by technical improvements up until 2006. Then it gets "decluttered" with a creeping emphasis on what other people are watching/reading. Then the "popular searches" starts moving up in emphasis. Then it finishes 2016 with a third of the page being ads, then "trending," and then [artificially] surfaced articles about politics and entertainment. In 10 years it went from a tool, a directory service, to something designed to push curated narratives to you.
While joinery is always fascinating to me, the variety of materials and techniques to make them useful as well as artistic expression, the overall concept of colonising another culture, be that adding, copying or removing aspects of it, isn't just stuck to physical aspects or linguistic ones.
The very crear of an individual and the cultures they came from is something under attack by those claiming to be progressive and using cultural identity as a commoditised weapon to prohibit people from finding out who they truly are from their exploration of self.
The irony is that this very argument would have been used in the past to stop people trying other foods, religions, philosophical thoughts, sexual acts, languages and other aspects of others which could be worth exploring by being draconian and 'correct' in their dogma which they insisted through force was correct.
The modern enlightenment seems to have to luminance which is ironic considering those who seem to be the furthest into progressive ideals would consider themselves able to see better than those who brought them this far.
Anywas, Norm Abram for the win!
Great video. I enjoy Japanese joinery techniques. Their artisan philosophies are fascinating. I should be a Shintian lol