Posted by anonymous on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:16 | #

Europeans are “in your face” people there always in your face that sums up european people very accurately. Europeans also place alot of emphasis on and tolerate the “all talk no action” way of living which is another trait that accurately describes them. Europeans laugh at themselves alot at there own stupidity, ignorance,cowardice etc…. Europeans tolerate alot of crap/s**t that alot of other nations would not tolerate so yes there is alot of difference and yes you are right the difference is very fascinating indeed, LOL!  This was not meant to be insulting but you did ask and ive given from my perspective a true and very accuarate picture of what I see.

Posted by Al Ross on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:35 | #

When my then 10 year old daughter began learning Japanese at an expatriate - founded, International School in South East Asia, her first lesson was on the crucial subject of ‘How to Agree’. That, I think, tells us how much value the Japanese place on harmonious in - group relations.

Posted by astrid on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:43 | #

A Japanese friend stayed with me for a time after she’d lost several hundred thousand in a bad investment. She’d sold her home, where she’d lived with her twenty year old son, for the money.  One day she had a huge argument with him on the phone. She was emotional and her tone was defensive. but I didn’t understand a word of the rapid Japanese. The only English she used was when she said, at intervals,  ‘I made a mistake! I made a mistake!’

Posted by ben tillman on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:43 | #

That is very telling, Al.

Posted by Steven E. Romer on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:59 | #

I have thought about this a lot, since I am a cognitive and evolutionary neuroscientist. That is how I came to understand the importance of race and the urgency of preserving ours. One thing that reflects our differences is obviously language. My most unique contribution to this discussion is probably from this angle. The oriental language style is atomized into each concept having a symbol that they need to memorize in the thousands, whereas ours uses an alphabet that has 26 letters that combine in different ways and with different contexts mean different things. They tend to look at particulars, while we focus more on overall working relationships. We are much more creative (probably because of this cognitive difference above all). We tend to distill basic elements and properties of things, rather than focusing on what they mean to human life and groups etc. Where an oriental sees a spoon and a fork, we see stainless steel that can be used for many things. Thats why our alphabet is like the periodic table of the elements, for example. It is also why we came up with the periodic table of the elements itself. We also have greek and latin root words encompassing basic concepts which we re-combine in different ways for different applications in the same way. We are using language to UNDERSTAND the world as it is—it conforms to objective reality and how it is made, they seem to use language more to communicate to others for more social reasons. Reality is made of basic elements re-combined. It is no coincidence that our western languages are set up and work like reality. We tend to make our minds align with reality primarily rather than have them align to human hierarchy, or relationships, or emotions. We are the objective and creative race—the most like a “creator”, the most able to read the writing of the “creator” of any race on Earth. Our people have given their lives for pure objective truth in the past—it is probably significant that I do not know of any other race which can make this claim. We are on the path to being like the creator—with all the powers and technologies that come with it, all the blessings. When you become like the sons of god, the blessings of heaven are bestowed upon you—that sort of thing (to use religious terminology). I wrote about this in my book “The Textbook of the Universe: the Genetic Ascent to God” where I show evidence that our ancestors who had these “creator” genes might very well have been the source of all the major religions on the Earth—from buddhism (the buddha was written to have piercing blue eyes), to Hinduism (caste system based on skin lightness, aryan invasions before that religion), and even the South American legend of the “creator-god” named “viracocha” who taught them civilization and had blue eyes and a beard. We are barely beginning to scratch the surface of what makes us all so different. Even though we have a very small amount of such politically-incorrect research being done, it is quite obvious there are vast differences and therefore vast differences in cultural outcomes, between peoples. Language is another window on these differences. They are temperamental and genetic from an early age—studies with infants show drastic differences in behavior and reactions between oriental and European infants in this regard, even newborns, that support the abovementioned later differences. Culture flows from genetics.