No they’re not. They’re common. Most everyone on this website has friends like that.[/quote]
Well, they’re as rare as Westerners are rare. I didn’t mean rare as in a rarity that is hard to find. I meant when looking at the whole picture. A better word might be minority. But even a minority could be 49%. Maybe uncommon. All these words can be so subjective anyhow: often can be every day, or once a year.
No they’re not. They’re common. Most everyone on this website has friends like that.[/quote]
Well, they’re as rare as Westerners are rare. I didn’t mean rare as in a rarity that is hard to find. I meant when looking at the whole picture. A better word might be minority. But even a minority could be 49%. Maybe uncommon. All these words can be so subjective anyhow: often could be every day or once a year.[/quote]
Ah well, whatever. Where I come from, the VAST majority of the population wear hoodies, mug people and drink Buckfast on the street on Saturday nights. I never knew a single one of them.
I said they were more or less lifeless; lacking in spirit and genuine emotions. I never said they were lazy: in fact, they work long hours; way too long in my opinion. Although I don’t necessarily equate that with hard-working, but rather long-working, they put in a good day’s work — just listlessly so. I’m talking generalities; exceptions abound.
I wasn’t referring to them as lazy. I was referring to your stereotype. Like saying Jews are penurious or Italians are shifty or whatever. It’s a load of crap.
A stereotype would be to prejudge a certain individual or all individuals to be a certain inflexible way because of race, class, creed, or whatever instead of by direct observation excluding those factors. Nevertheless, it is still possible to note individual differences in people while at the same time admitting of cultural tendencies. Is there not? If we took your extreme viewpoint, then we must deny that cultures are different at all, and that we’re just all one big culture. Then where’s the beauty of multiculturalism if there isn’t any? I’m a firm believer in multiculturalism. And making observations regarding them interests me.
Racism is falsely relegating these cultural tendencies to genes, which I’ve not done. It’s environment that explains most behavioral tendencies, not genes. For instance, research recently revealed that almost every race on earth should be the same height, even though they aren’t. Different countries and races seem to exhibit different heights. It isn’t because of genes; it’s because of environment, eating habits, and lifestyles. If we observe these differences in cultures, we can find solutions where there are problems, such as vitamin B deficiency causing beriberi because of polished rice, for instance. But if we did things your way, we’d be too embarrassed to talk about why the Dutch are the tallest and why Asians are often short, because of political correctness. Then, sadly, we’d never learn the importance and consequences of different diets and other contributing factors.
newsmax.com/archives/article … 0334.shtml
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … 00809.html
The Dutch are tall from spinning the windmills.
The Asians are short because they don’t have windmills.
I’m not embarrassed at all to say that.
[quote=“jdsmith”]The Dutch are tall from spinning the windmills.
The Asians are short because they don’t have windmills.[/quote]
I thought it was because of genes? I must be a racist. 
[quote=“Buttercup”][quote=“jdsmith”]The Dutch are tall from spinning the windmills.
The Asians are short because they don’t have windmills.[/quote]
I thought it was because of genes? I must be a racist. [/quote]
Genes fade. They play very little roll in one’s life. Windmills are a much more constant measure of one’s stature.
I shot at one once. BARBECUED it.
Yes. You said the Taiwanese are [quote]more or less lifeless; lacking in spirit and genuine emotions[/quote] and I called bullshit, based on what I have observed. Your claim is as close to the truth as saying Americans are loud and obese.
Yes. You said the Taiwanese are [/quote]
That may be. I’m open to the fact that I may be wrong. If so, there’s a perfectly good explanation for why I’ve observed what I’ve observed.
[quote=“Buttercup”][quote=“jdsmith”]The Dutch are tall from spinning the windmills.
The Asians are short because they don’t have windmills.[/quote]
I thought it was because of genes? I must be a racist. [/quote]
Well, actually, when we reach our maximal height potential, then genes are more responsible for our individual differences in height. But everyone in the world should be about the same maximal height — like the Dutch. When there are racial differences in height, however, it isn’t because of the gene factor; it’s because the genes haven’t had opportunity to fully express themselves. When that happens, environment is the more important factor than genes for height differences.
Add edit: You were half-right; maybe that makes you a semi-racist. 
Really? Wow!
That’s not on. We’re on the Intarweb here.
It’s an editor thing. The job turns us into reservoirs of trivia and walking encyclopedias.
Hehe.
It’s an editor thing. The job turns us into reservoirs of trivia and walking encyclopedias.[/quote]
Or lame spewers of racist assumptions, depending on how happy we be as their employee, one supposes.
HG
[quote=“TheGingerMan”]It’s all very well to talk about social history, exposure to democratic modes, etc.
Yet so much of this avoids the absolute population density, something like second highest in the world. This is going to have an impermeable affect on social interactions.
[/quote]
Yeah, I’ve wondered about this too. Any country you go, there are wide differences between urban and rural life. I’ve heard that Japan is so densely populated that there really is no rural life really.
Although I see a difference between Taipei and the rest of Taiwan regarding the vim factor, it doesn’t seem to parallel with say Seoul and the rest of Korea, or New York and Kansas. There are differences to be sure — just not that one…
Rural life in Japan is quite alive and … declining. Shikoku is clearly the vanguard of rural, with northern Hokkaido not far behind. You can still find kaya no yane (thatched roofs) on inhabited houses in Shikoku. A second barometer of rural is whether you see people, usu. women, carrying possessions in furoshiki (a large square cloth). Even on Honshu, in remote areas of the far north or far south, there are farming and fishing villages, with a third barometer of rural: the stench of “nightsoil” as fertilizer.
[quote=“bob_honest”]Well, no-one mentioned Confucius so far? It’s not for the KTV that they try to blend in so well into society mainstream here.
Confucius… family discipline… find your place in society… suppress your emotions so everyone can keep face.
Family and friends are all that matters.[/quote]
One Confucian trait that irritates me is deference to government and government officials. In Confucianist society, these functionaries were the cream of the crop: they had been rigorously tested and the best chosen for prominent positions in government — a system that didn’t lead to democratic thinking. Upon entering officialdom, there was little pressure to continue on with genius and innovation to maintain that position, as would be the case for competive businesses in the free market.
In a well-entrenched capitalist society, however, all the geniuses and bright talent flock to vibrant businesses, where salaries are highest. That’s the way it should be; and you can witness this in Japan, which has been a democracy for sixty years. Taiwan and Korea are still catching up, with the IT sector leading the way and other sectors still needing to make that rise, like editing and — as Mucha Man astutely noted earlier — the service sector.
As it stands, the Taiwanese system still closely resembles the autocratic years, which aren’t too far removed. And so there still remains this imperialist attitude at the top, which attitude sets the upper crust as final arbiters that can never make mistakes and that can never be challenged. Considerations of accuracy or objectivity and notions of right or wrong get hastily defenestrated or embarrassingly swept under the rug.
I’ve encountered it as editor of textbooks that are subject to government approval. The MOE often makes royal edicts concerning English grammar, which ought to be left to us conscientious editors. After all, it isn’t their names listed in the textbooks as editor; mine is — as well as other editors’. And we like to be associated with our work. Fearing government retribution, the Taiwanese staff, however, are fine with these dictates and, if left to them, would just accept them — if it weren’t for us foreign editors protesting them. The MOE concedes to us when we quote them sources that prove our positions. But that’s backwards: they should be the ones citing authorities when they make their rulings. I haven’t had much experience with other government branches, but clearly, I’m not impressed with the MOE.
The MOE has a long history of spitting at the international community in many areas, like turning a blind eye to and even encouraging copyright violations of Hollywood movies on their college intranet — and Coke lawyers were peeved when they learned that the MOE was encouraging improper trademark usage in textbooks by listing Coke on their 2,000 list of English “words” for Taiwanese children to learn. (It’s been removed recently).
Nonsense. Confucianism is a religion, if you stretch it a little — more like a philosophy. Words mean things. Here is Merriam-Webster on racism:
A racist view would have us believe that genes are the responsible factor, and inflexibly so. Behavior stemming from Confucianism, however, is an environmental factor, not an inherited one; therefore Confucianism can affect people impressionably, transformably, or even not at all, irrespective of race: there’s no Confucianism gene. I think a lot of people are trying to conflate cultural criticism with racism; they’re different things entirely. American books written by prominent authors that engage in culture criticism (even of their own American culture) abound. Many Taiwanese intellectuals have made comments positive and negative about the influence of Confucianism on culture. I’ve read some of their articles — in Chinese.