[xmca] interesting perspective on Luria's work in Asia

["Peter Smagorinsky" <smago@uga.edu>]

David Brooks: Gail, I don't know if you had a chance to see my
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/opinion/17brooks.html>  column Tuesday,
but China always gets me thinking big. I look at the long history and bright
future of that civilization-state and suddenly you've got to chase me down
with a butterfly net to impose the grip of reality on my grandiose and
free-floating ideas. It's runaway Spengler Syndrome.

Asians place emphasis on context while Westerners place more emphasis on
individuals. 

But I do have one more Grand Historical Theory to spin out for you, and it
involves thinking styles. Different cultures and groups have different
styles of thinking, or to be more precise, the average behavior is different
from one group to another. So is it possible that Westerners, on average,
have thinking styles that make them ill-suited for the problems of the
future while Asians have styles that make them better suited? 

Gail Collins: David, I still remember when Japan was going to eat our lunch
with their natural inclination toward teamwork. I'm issuing an early protest
because when it comes to anything having to do with the brain, you are so
far ahead of me that when you're done I know I won't have a good rejoinder. 

David Brooks: Asians place emphasis on context while Westerners place more
emphasis on individuals. This seems like a gross generalization but it is
robustly supported by hundreds and hundreds of studies. Richard Nisbett's
book, "The Geography of
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/selected.html>  Thought" summarizes
some of the evidence. 

If you show Americans a fish tank, they'll talk about the biggest fish in
the tank. If you show Asians a tank they will make, on average, 60 percent
more references to the context and the features of the scene. Western
parents tend to emphasize nouns and categories when teaching their kids,
Korean parents tend to emphasize verbs and relationships. If you show
Americans a picture of a chicken, a cow and grass, they will lump the
chicken and the cow, because they are both animals. Asians are more likely
to lump the cow and the grass because cows eat grass. They have a
relationship.

The mode of thought more common in Asia is better suited to the complex
networks that make up the modern world. The contextual, associational style
is simply more valid. The linear style we've inherited from the Greeks is
less adaptive toward the modern age. I think the West may be doomed.

Avoid giving too much credence to theories about how any group is
particularly well adapted to anything. 

Gail Collins: David, you may be the one who understands how the brain works
but I am so far ahead of you on doom that you will never catch up. I was
educated by nuns. My classroom had a map in which countries were only red
(communist) or pink (leaning communist) or white (free - for now). The only
white countries were the United States and Ireland.

David Brooks: I haven't even mentioned gender differences yet. I think the
same things I've said about Asians can be said about women as compared to
men. 

I don't know if you've had a chance to read this stuff as part of your book
research, but my understanding is that the cognitive processing of male and
female brains is mostly the same except for in one area: social cognition.
Women, on average, pick up more social signals. 

Gail Collins: Still skeptical. Given the long span of time in which women
were said to be particularly well-suited for everything from typing (tiny
fingers) to domesticity ("She has a head almost too small for intellect and
just big enough for love.") I'm becoming increasingly leery of giving too
much credence to theories about how any group is particularly well adapted
to anything.

David Brooks: I actually don't care if this is genetic or cultural (to the
extent there is a difference between these things). My point is that in a
service economy, the ability to pick up social cues is a huge advantage. 

Basically, I'm saying that two groups I'm a member of - Westernized men -
may have been well adapted to the agricultural and industrial societies, but
our thinking styles are not well adapted to the networked age of social
information flows. 

I'm not just saying the West is doomed. I think Western men, like me, are
doomed unless we change and adapt quickly!

Gail Collins: Ah, what I hear is the sound of a group that was on top for so
long and then goes into a funk at the first sign of really serious
competition. As a nation, we're in trauma over the very idea that anybody
else might be the economic superpower. As a gender, guys who were perfectly
fine with the idea of women in business or in Congress are totally unnerved
with the thought that their gender someday actually might not be running the
show.

The one advantage China definitely has is its longer view of history. One
day you're perfecting gunpowder and toothpaste and moveable type - then you
fall into a 500-year slump. There's no inevitable winner - in fact, there
doesn't need to be a winner at all. We can all do fine. 

As far as China goes, my main concern is that we don't let this turn of
events make us nuts. We're not going to be able to go back to borrowing our
way to an ever-higher standard of living and we're going to have to be
smarter, especially in the way we run our politics.

For Western men, the good news is that we Western women do not intend to
maintain economic prowess on our own. You're coming along, too. Otherwise,
it really wouldn't be any fun.

 

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