Synopsis: Co-founder and editor of The Philosophers' Magazine, JulianBaggini, explores Islamic, Chinese and Japanese philosophicaltraditions, and how they are expressed in a place's infrastructure, fromsignificant buildings to street signs. Baggini focuses on the theme ofharmony as an example of a common thread in these philosophies, which weshould recognise, but should not essentialise, exoticize ordomesticate.

I have to travel a lot for work for a sales/finance role. We usually have a little mini class before going to a new country that's just like the "here are differences between here and there", some basic "drive on the other side of the road", some "don't make small talk", some "don't break these laws that they have". But we've had a couple of specific sales trainings on selling in other countries that were really wild, and ended up being entirely true... Like if you pitch something in Japan the same way that you do in the U.S. it will fail every time. They just don't care about the same things. Like in some countries you basically just pitch dollars saved/made, in some you don't really even touch on that and just pitch "it will make your company operate more smoothly", in some you focus on the impact on people, etc... And you can tell that it is because of some fundamental difference in people's core beliefs that they have built their entire society on. It's always been really cool to think about.

I hope this isn’t too for off topic but your comment made me think of this remarkable video immediately. I’ve posted it in other subreddits related to the Ukraine war with lots of positive response. It is an amazing example of how the culture and history of a place can mold an entire population and should make us look at our own unspoken preconceptions and how they might have come about based simply on where we were born and raised.

The video isn’t short, but it is super interesting. Finnish Intelligence Officer on the Russian mindset from a Strategic Culture point of view. Why is Putin doing this? Why do so many Russians support him? How does he get away with the lies? (different kinds of lies in Russian culture etc) Where do oligarchs and religion and history fit into it all. If you watch it, enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw

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When I began to realize that these human behaviors were originally produced by the natural and geographical environment, and gradually evolved into traditions and customs in the later years, and rationalized and passed them down stably, everything became very reasonable.

The title of this paper is missing the reality out there. As a main example, China nor large chunks of its daily-life-culture are even close to embodying their main philosophies. In some areas, sure, but in most or all important areas it's not even close.

Ugh, you ever dealt with a religious fanatic Buddhist? It's a trip.

Any group that buys in a little to much into Confucianism is likewise pretty messed up.

Taoists are the most annoying though. They can talk a lot and say very little.

To best understand non-western cultures, understand they have their own flavor of messed up, just as we have baptists, fundamentalists, mormons, and Catholics. A Christian and a Buddhist might both be mind -body dualists, but they're approaching it from different angles.

It's all just fashion.

All beliefs are fashion except yours.

I'll have you know this is free range organic contempt with fair trade loathing. And occasionally bespoke disgust.

how should I pitch something in Japan?

Are you familiar with the theory of “jungle” culture vs. “desert” culture? It popped up in the media about 25 years ago.

The general idea is that if life is relatively easy (jungle culture), you end up with “honor-based” cultures, where people are very motivated by the perceptions of others.

In desert culture, life is very hard, so the culture tends to value pragmatism over appearance. (Note that cold, icy climate would be considered “desert” culture. Desert culture is just a way of saying “an environment that will kill you in an instant if you let your guard down. Food and shelter are not easy to come by.”)

It’s an interesting theory. It may have been ripped apart since the 90s, but, because it confirmed my own observations, I kinda liked it. (In the 1980s I worked with a lot of Americans, South Asians, East Asians, Arabs, Brits, and Scandinavians.)

I can use what I sold over there as an example. Sold corporate financial analytics software...

In the U.S. you're almost always selling bottom line. "This software will make your employees get work done faster so you save money". Over there you're much better off with "this product will reduce human error, making your results better". And over there you never say that it can replace employees. You say that it gives employees a tool to make them better at their job...

I had one particular company that had people inputting thousands upon thousands of blocks of financial data by hand. A software that they already had could have automated it, so without them even needing to pay anything I was like "in 10 minutes we can have your software set up to draw data automatically and input it from place A to place B, so that you won't have to pay people hundreds of man hours in salary to do it". And their response was basically "we can't do that. Inputting that data is someone's job, and to take it from them would dishonor both us and them". Where obviously pretty much anywhere in the West the response would be "hell yeah, sign me up"...

And they are really really focused on tradition. Like every company I worked with over there (and this was just like 3-4 years ago) would fax documents to the front desk at my hotel to get them to me instead of emailing. Because fax is what they've always done...

It takes a lot of getting used to, but they are so religious with it that once you are used to it you can count on expected responses almost 100% of the time .

Very insightful! Thanks for sharing this.

I'll definitely have to check that out later! Looks interesting for sure

Ya I loved it. Your welcome! It was very eye opening. And timely!

> I had one particular company that had people inputting thousands upon thousands of blocks of financial data by hand. A software that they already had could have automated it, so without them even needing to pay anything I was like "in 10 minutes we can have your software set up to draw data automatically and input it from place A to place B, so that you won't have to pay people hundreds of man hours in salary to do it". And their response was basically "we can't do that. Inputting that data is someone's job, and to take it from them would dishonor both us and them". Where obviously pretty much anywhere in the West the response would be "hell yeah, sign me up"...

I can confirm that they behave like this, yes. And frankly, to me it always seemed to be a much better mindset.

and the whole "always say maybe, never say no"

Yea I respect that a lot

And this is where the cultural breakdown happens lol. You read that and saw. "Oh, they respect their employees and because of their honor they won't automate them." When what he's really saying, and what a Japanese businessman is saying, is.

"By verbalizing this decision we lose face/honor." They all know that automation will decrease employment but you never acknowledge or verbalize the matter!

Like the poster gave as an example, you say "it reduces human error." They are intelligent, they know it also means decreasing needed employees, again, you just don't say the quiet part out loud.

I know full well what they mean. I'm partially japanese and have already been in the country several times. I also have family there.

Frankly, your last paragraph is a rather hilarious admission that you don't really know much about the country (or its laws). Japanese work culture is brimming with bizarre issues (just google "japanese black companies"), but mass terminations that put workers at risk are not one of them. This also presents its own problems, of course (the ojisan who doesn't work is a classic), but that in no way changes my previous assertion:

>And frankly, to me it always seemed to be a much better mindset

Not to be all "well ackshually.." , but Buddhism teaches neither duality nor non-duality. As is par for the course in Buddhism, it's more of a middle way between the two 😉

So you haven't worked there? I spent 12 years in a Japanese school and spent 2 years working in a Japanese Consulate, I'm very familiar with the work culture and how they view things.

The problem with your initial assertion is that it's fundamentally false. There isn't some holy rule that they won't risk their employees' careers or automate them out of a job.

They will make many of the same decisions any classic C suite would make but in a non verbalized way.

This is the quality content that brings me here. Thank you for sharing!

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Excellent share. Thank you!

I have, yes. That's kind of implied by my post.

You claim to have worked there, but you seem to be unaware of japanese laws on terminating employees.

Interesting. I saw a different mode that proposed cultures of honor were typically more associated with pastoral nomadism, which would be more like a desert culture in your metaphor.

My pleasure!

You should read your own link, because you can get fired after showing financial loss, and I'm well aware of Japanese labor laws. One of my main jobs was facilitating work visas for foreign nationals. But this is all besides the point, nowhere did I posit that mass layoffs are normal.

What I am saying and what you can't seem to comprehend is that Japanese C suites aren't avoiding increasing efficiency and automation in some honor based care for their employees. At least not any more than western ones, what they care about is not verbalizing that dishonor. Even among equals.

There isn't any special difference in the underlying human behavior. It's just how they approach the outward situation.

So then if a Japanese company has layoffs how do they usually frame that message?

I wonder if this explains why my foreign colleague had no honor.

>You should read your own link, because you can get fired after showing financial loss, and I'm well aware of Japanese labor laws. One of my main jobs was facilitating work visas for foreign nationals. But this is all besides the point, nowhere did I posit that mass layoffs are normal.

Re-read the entire conversation. You claimed a " cultural breakdown" in a discussion regarding japanese companies not wanting to replace an enormous amount of workers by using software. Getting fired due to financial losses is another matter entirely and, even then, it's not an easy measure, and this is also mentioned in the link.

>What I am saying and what you can't seem to comprehend is that Japanese C suites aren't avoiding increasing efficiency and automation in some honor based care for their employees. At least not any more than western ones, what they care about is not verbalizing that dishonor. Even among equals.

As I've said from my original post, I know very well what they mean. The point here is that terminating workers en masse is seem as a socially unacceptable measure, and that is reflected in how companies approach pitches. And, once again, I consider that a much more admirable mindset. I'm not calling anybody a saint, I'm saying societal structures there are different in this regard, and I consider that a positive thing.

I know I'm repeating myself, but despite your claims that you are an "expert" in japanese matters, this conversation makes it quite likely that you are either not as informed as you claim to be or simply not taking the time to properly read and interpret what is being posted.

With unicorn panties on the table, what were they to do? I’d do a lot of dishonorable things for unicorn panties. (Who am I kidding? I HAVE done dishonorable things for unicorn panties.)

Joking aside, I always try to be careful judging individuals by group tendencies. Doing otherwise is a slippery slope.

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"What is honored in a country is cultivated there" - Plato

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What if we put it simpler. (Or at least less academically)...

Just listen and make fewer assumptions. You might find yourself learning more naturally about both the philosophy and culture of a place.

I don't get militant atheism. It's not as if there isn't a crazy conundrum no matter what you believe. E.g. it's about equally crazy to believe the universe has lasted forever, that it was created from nothing, that a god existed forever, or that a god was created from nothing. We have zero observations to understand what makes sense in that context. So what if some people believe the answer there is something more spiritual?

Additionally, the majority of religious belief, seen through the lens of atheism, is the formalization of conventional wisdom by people who lived out their entire lives centuries ago. It's not fashion nor is it messed up. It's mostly about rejecting certain short-term lifestyles in favor of one that promises stabler, more long-term happiness. E.g. it's quite common for a person having tons of promiscuous sex to enter abusive relationships and be in turmoil. Sex bonds people whether it's rational or not, so it turns out it's not a good idea to start bonding with someone you know nothing about. Similarly, people found if you do drugs all the time, your life can crash and burn, so many religions have rules against that. Religions are all about human nature, and they were liked so much that they passed on first through word of mouth and then through writing for literally thousands of years. Their messages resonate with the human condition.

No one will be passing on your negativity generation to generation, but there surely will be know-it-alls in future generations that prefer to short-circuit all thinking to promote the delusion that they're superior. "It's all so simple. Trust me, I know everything." I'm sorry if your day-to-day thinking is dedicated solely to simplifying everything that makes other people human. You'll likely find, once you age beyond 18-25, that you were mistaken here. It happens to all sorts of people, and it's generally social/life inexperience that promotes such swift simplifications in regards to everything and every argument and every conflict. I'd bet you ignore other tough problems like war. "It's so simple just stop killing others and be fair." Thanks, genius, we know. There happens to be more present than that.

It sounds like environmental determinism with a fresh coat of paint tbh

Well yeah it’s just a way of describing 2 types of environments and how they determine human behavior

Extremely interesting

Hoo, haven't had someone step into the ring and just openly attack atheism in quite a while.

>I don't get militant atheism.

I'd prefer dissenting rather than militant. I'm not out to kill or conquer you, but I certainly disagree and I'm up for debating it. But it comes from dealing with theists.

>It's not as if there isn't a crazy conundrum no matter what you believe.

Except it's NOT crazy if the rules are consistent and jive with everything else. From all the other rules, to everything we see, to everything everyone else has ever experienced. ESPECIALLY if it's useful. A rational belief isn't crazy, that's a false equivalence trying to drag me down to your level. And what IS "crazy" anyway? It's when you can't understand someone's irrational reasoning, and that happens very quickly when they believe in things that can't both be true at the same time.

>E.g. it's about equally crazy to believe the universe has lasted forever,

Sure. Crazy. Especially when you look at how entropy behaves. We've observed this all over the place and it's fundamental in thermodynamics, your refrigerator, all the power plants you benefit from in your daily life.

>that it was created from nothing,

AND HERE IT IS. The tired regurgitated lie. This is absolutely NOT what the big bang theory says. But it's what the christian propaganda has spread about the globe in an effort to poison people's brains. Want to know why I dissent? It's the LIES. Lie to me and I just double down on my distrust and skepticism. Where there's a propaganda campaign organized against a particular belief I re-question everything I've ever heard about it and try to figure out where the lies end and the truth starts.

But yes. The genesis of energy would be VERY crazy considering what the big bang theory tells us, and the observable iron-clad rule of conservation of energy. People are worked very hard for millennia to violate it and failed.

>that a god existed forever, or that a god was created from nothing.

Yes, both very crazy. No observable evidence what so ever. Unless you're being poetical or playing some word games.

You know what isn't crazy? SCIENCE. There's plenty of bits which we don't know the complete truth yet. The difference between how much light we see (and how we think galaxies form) and how much gravity we feel and how fast stuff is spinning around the milky way. But rather than put on some bravado con-man bluff, we can acknowledge that we don't know, and hunt down an answer. All our ideas about how all this stuff works aren't going to be perfect, but if we repeatedly get less wrong than before, we'll approach the truth FAR better and faster than any religion ever will.

>Additionally, the majority of religious belief, seen through the lens of atheism, is the formalization of conventional wisdom by people who lived out their entire lives centuries ago.

That I'll agree with. Religion is important to study if you want to know anything about anthropology. Before we knew better it was a strong driving force in a lot of law, medicine, economics... just a whole lot. And it's important from a sociological angle to know how and why pockets of a population are going to be irrational. Where the conventional wisdom is quite foolish, like where they flagellate themselves, you'll find a lot of irrational behavior.

>[religions enforce] lifestyles in favor of one that promises stabler, more long-term happiness

Except, you know, the ones that REJECT hedonism. Which is many of them. Most religions are a pile of rules that helped and supported whoever was in power. If telling people they would be happy in the afterlife let them work harder and behave while they were alive, that was a message the rulers could get behind. What helps the nation really does have a lot of overlap with helping the people within the nation. And any nation with a religion built around self-destructive actions tend to, you know, self-destruct on a larger scale.

And this is a very important bit. Where they were once useful tools and steering people into behaviors that helped the group, the religions abide by evolutionary processes themselves just as much as species do. The self-destructive ones die out, the ones that don't spread themselves die out, the ones that conquer and infect others survive. The evolutionary process has left us only with the old-time religions that SERVE TO SELF PERPETUATE THEMSELVES. Now a days, religions are more about helping themselves rather than the people within the group.

Coincidentally, old-time religions are dying out because they're incompatible with the current modern society. The only survivors will be the ones that don't butt heads with rational thought and flee off to the god of the gaps or refine themselves strictly to moral conundrums. (Game theory and sociology are coming for you too).

>Religions are all about human nature,

Religions are all about everything. You can't just cherry pick the bits that talk about psychology. If you're okay with tossing out the garbage bits like genesis, any depiction of the super-natural like walking on water, virgin birth, coming back from the dead, reincarnation, multiplying fish, burning oil without consumption, everything the church did to Galileo and Turing, and on and on and on... oh and what the church said about tectonic plates. Even that was controversial back in the day. It's like a constant ball and chain holding us back. But if you're okay with just ditching all claims made by all the religions that aren't strictly psychological or sociological, then all the more power to you. It's a step in the right direction.

I wanted to toss in the crusades, Muhammad's pedophilia, the treatment of women, everything most of them say about homosexuality, whatever nonsense was going through those guys' heads on 9/11/2001.... but that IS what religion suggests we do as far as "human nature" goes. I dissent.

>No one will be passing on your negativity generation to generation

My children are free to believe what they want, but so far when it comes up in conversation they're not believers. What I'm really pushing onto them, and this isn't up to them, is rationality.

> know-it-alls

This really isn't the insult you think it is. I strive to know all I can. What exactly is wrong with that and why would you treat knowledge as negative? That, I think, is the most telling thing about your entire rant.

EDIT: Oh, a snarky late update while saying you're too lazy to read anything?

>I'm sorry if your day-to-day thinking is dedicated solely to simplifying everything that makes other people human. You'll likely find, once you age beyond 18-25, that you were mistaken here. It happens to all sorts of people, and it's generally social/life inexperience that promotes such swift simplifications in regards to everything and every argument and every conflict. I'd bet you ignore other tough problems like war. "It's so simple just stop killing others and be fair." Thanks, genius, we know. There happens to be more present than that.

Simplifying everything? Yes. The simplest explanation that jives with everything else is the best explanation.

Beyond 25? I'm hitting 40. Geeze, another attempted low-blow swing and a miss. You're really not good at this.

War? ...War sucks. You know what REALLY sucks? All the religious war that was fought over absolute bullshit reasons. But you want a real solution to war? Nukes and trade. The threat of nuclear retribution has kept the gits at the top from invading each other and trade has stopped them from attacking to their own detriment. Violate those rules and suffer, as Russia is showing us. (And, sadly, that Ukraine really should have kept the nukes)

But what if I really really wanted to keep a domesticated philosopher as a pet?

Thanks for sharing, I didn't know that before. My family members are from different countries having different culture background, I tried to understand their behavior and things they taught me, sometimes they were totally different.

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It's just putting yourself in their shoes.

> I'd prefer dissenting rather than militant. I'm not out to kill or conquer you, but I certainly disagree and I'm up for debating it. But it comes from dealing with theists. > >

Sorry man, but I'm not going to read everything you wrote. It just shows how badly you feel you need to demonstrate you're superior to everyone else, which is what I wrote in my original reply.

Well there's the pretty obvious reason you "just don't get" a lot of things.

Read more. It'll help. Best of luck out there.