Read the presentation Civilization Differences - East and West at http://uwb2m-s.blogspot.com/2013/05/civilization-differences-east-and-west.html and comment
on it/ discuss it here. Present examples of differences.
English Conversation Course-7th term
Cultural diversity is something very fascinating. I had the opportunity to work with people from India. Their world is drastically other, although they have a lot of contact with western corporations and some work in them they still surprised me. Did not at any had the opportunity to talk with someone from China or Japan about their way of looking at the world and the system of values that profess. It seems to me that the cultural differences are presented stereotypes, but it should be kept in mind when we start the adventure with people from another country.
ReplyDeleteAfter the experience of working with the Hindus believe that it is necessary that at the beginning of the adventures that you understand their approach to personal and business spheres. The key is to have an open mind, willingness to learn new behaviors to learn about other cultures and people. In this case, all it is important to get rid of the tendency to judge everything else as inferior, as well as setting up more emphatically to the new people I met.
I've been to China few years ago on a 3 weeks journey across southern part of the country. I both met traditional eastern as well as western types of culture behaviour examples. From the other hand I'm visiting USA once per year for a week or two on a business trips. So one could say that these countries are on two opposite ends, so much different from each other. I personally think that in todays modern world, where globalization process is heavily developed it's very difficult to find pure examples of east and west across whole countries. It's more about particular people, groups of people, which way of life do they choose than comparing East to West. Let me give few examples that would support my thesis. In China once I was traveling by bus from one city to another. The distance was about 800km between the cities. I was quite shocked when leaving first city took us 4 hours, because of building suburbs and entering second city took another 4 hours - heavy equipement was everywhere down the road. So on a 800km distance there was maybe like 1 hour without seeing any workers and heavy equipement. Not mentioning Hong Kong, which is looking very similar to described West type of culture.
ReplyDeleteMost of my friends and colleagues from Americas are workaholics but there are few who value family and personal development more. Visting California and especially Los Angeles was amazing to me. I felt very comfortable in that region.
I think this article is a little bit biased. There is nothing untruthful written there, but there are only positive sides of eastern culture compared to areas in western culture which are widely considered to be negative (the pursuit of success and money, the cult of youth, etc.).
ReplyDeleteOf course in my opinion western culture has a lot of positives. Cultural mix can be good for us when we see bad and good sides and properly draw from this diversity.
This is obvious that those cultures are different. I've never been in Asia but I planed that I'll visit Asia. East and West should learn from each other. I think people from Asia put the emphasis in order to live in harmony with nature. They concentrate more on religion, tradition and community. Western culture is more busy, they are focused of themselves, always in hurry.
ReplyDeleteNowadays, cultural differences are getting more and more visible. Especially since people started realizing and discussing it. Obviously, as it is said in the presentation, these differences are various and they usually are the result of traditions, political situation or different religion. In my opinion, a crucial difference that a have read about somewhere and has not been mentioned in the presentation concerns expressing feelings i.e. we can notice that people who come from east are more likely to hide their true emotions than westerners. What is more, in many Asian countries it is also obvious that people cannot express powerful emotions such as anger. This tendency is caused by the fact that there is no place for authorities other than the ruling ones. When it comes to emotions such as complain or sadness, Asians are allowed to show them because they are powerless. As it appears to me, these are very interesting differences because they are not obvious but we can see and explain them only after some time of observation.
ReplyDeleteI've never been to asia, though I have some concept about their philosophy, as my mother is a buddist. They are totally diverse from us, when it comes to way of, and their focus in life. Acctually, what I have found it curious, that they think of math and physics as something trivial. They say that our science is very limited, and that we cant discribe world in such easy way, as some things are unsubscribeable and far beyond our understanding.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is that, we used think of ourself as humanity, that we are something special, and that we are most perfect creation in the world. They used to think of them selfs as a small part of some big clockwork.
One of the most visible and recognizable cultural differences between East and West are the trends in clothing.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that it is currently apply in China tendy from America or Europe, and America are waiting for China to dress the entire world. another significant difference is the identification with the Americans in the East, eg by tattooing the Chinese characters on the body or replace the fork sticks to meals.
I've never been Azia though it is one of the courses that I visited, a fascinating Great Wall, Beijing, beautiful and encouraging to see.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMy sister has been living in Asia for 2 years now and she told me that those ‘differences’ are just merely stereotypes of ‘white’ people. Honestly, I did not like this article because I see it as a bit racist… All over the world people are different and have different philosophies, attitudes and so on, but it does not depend on your race, skin color, language or religion. How many people in Poland do have a weak sense of self or a strong sense of interdependence? Do really Asians are like that?
ReplyDelete