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What would be an interesting study would be to graph the preciseness with which a culture views time and the level of advanced society they have. Slavery to th

What would be an interesting study would be to graph the preciseness with which a culture views time and the level of advanced society they have. Slavery to the clock may stick in the craw a bit, but cultures that took time seriously could co-ordinate groups and individuals better and get more done. The result was a higher standard of living. Is the Japanese obsession with getting their trains precisely on time one of the reasons they were able to industrialise so quickly?

daveFNbuck 9y ago
How do you measure the level of advanced society?
- vinchuco 9y ago
  Whatever makes you feel better about yourself, obviously /s
frooxie 9y ago
According to the book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism", countries become hardworking and disciplined because of economic development, rather than the other way around. A long but interesting quote: "Having toured lots of factories in a developing country, an Australian management consultant told the government officials who had invited him: “My impression as to your cheap labor was soon disillusioned when I saw your people at work. No doubt they are lowly paid, but the return is equally so; to see your men at work made me feel that you are a very satisfied easy-going race who reckon time is no object. When I spoke to some managers they informed me that it was impossible to change the habits of national heritage.” This Australian consultant was understandably worried that the workers of the country he was visiting did not have the right work eithic. In fact, he was being quite polite. He could have been blunt and just called them lazy. No wonder the country was poor — not dirt poor, but with an income level that was less than a quarter of Australia’s. The country in question… was Japan in 1915. It doesn’t feel quite right that someone from Australia (a nation known today for its ability to have a good time) could call the Japanese lazy. But this is how most westerners saw Japan a century ago. In his 1903 book, Evolution of the Japanese, the American missionary Sidney Gulick observed that many Japanese “give an impression…of being lazy and utterly indifferent to the passage of time.” Gulick was no casual observer. He lived in Japan for 25 years (1888-1913), fully mastered the Japanese language, and taught in Japanese university. After his return to the US, he was known for his campaign for racial equality on behalf of Asian Americans. Nevertheless, he saw ample confirmation of the cultural stereotype of the Japanese as an “easy-going” and “emotional” people who possessed qualities like “lightness of heart, freedom from all anxiety for the future, living chiefly for the present.” (...) This was not just a western prejudice against eastern peoples. The British used to say similar things about the Germans. Before their economic take-off in the mid-19th century, the Germans were typically described by the British as “a dull and heavy people.” “Indolence” was a word that was frequently associated with the Germanic nature."
- ue_ 9y ago
  I wonder if the idea works now, too. Are the common perceptions of Japanese or Germans as particularly hard or intelligent workers false? Just as the Germans were thought of as indolent years ago, they are thought of as laborious today. I've always been of the opinion that these are myths with little or cherrypicked anecdota as backup. It makes little sense to me to judge millions of people like that.
paganel 9y ago
Too lazy to search for the exact reference but I remember reading a book by famed French medievalist Jacques le Goff (I think it was "Pour un autre Moyen Âge") where he tells the story of how clocks first showed up in city center towers in and around Northern France and Flanders, around the 1300s, as a mean of "regulating" the activity of city-dwellers who were now working as laborers in the newly created "industrial" manufactures (the Medieval Period came with its own industrial revolution). That area of the world has remained one of the most developed in the world well into the 20th century.

daveFNbuck 9y ago

How do you measure the level of advanced society?

vinchuco 9y ago
Whatever makes you feel better about yourself, obviously /s

frooxie 9y ago

According to the book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism", countries become hardworking and disciplined because of economic development, rather than the other way around. A long but interesting quote: "Having toured lots of factories in a developing country, an Australian management consultant told the government officials who had invited him: “My impression as to your cheap labor was soon disillusioned when I saw your people at work. No doubt they are lowly paid, but the return is equally so; to see your men at work made me feel that you are a very satisfied easy-going race who reckon time is no object. When I spoke to some managers they informed me that it was impossible to change the habits of national heritage.” This Australian consultant was understandably worried that the workers of the country he was visiting did not have the right work eithic. In fact, he was being quite polite. He could have been blunt and just called them lazy. No wonder the country was poor — not dirt poor, but with an income level that was less than a quarter of Australia’s. The country in question… was Japan in 1915. It doesn’t feel quite right that someone from Australia (a nation known today for its ability to have a good time) could call the Japanese lazy. But this is how most westerners saw Japan a century ago. In his 1903 book, Evolution of the Japanese, the American missionary Sidney Gulick observed that many Japanese “give an impression…of being lazy and utterly indifferent to the passage of time.” Gulick was no casual observer. He lived in Japan for 25 years (1888-1913), fully mastered the Japanese language, and taught in Japanese university. After his return to the US, he was known for his campaign for racial equality on behalf of Asian Americans. Nevertheless, he saw ample confirmation of the cultural stereotype of the Japanese as an “easy-going” and “emotional” people who possessed qualities like “lightness of heart, freedom from all anxiety for the future, living chiefly for the present.” (...) This was not just a western prejudice against eastern peoples. The British used to say similar things about the Germans. Before their economic take-off in the mid-19th century, the Germans were typically described by the British as “a dull and heavy people.” “Indolence” was a word that was frequently associated with the Germanic nature."

ue_ 9y ago
I wonder if the idea works now, too. Are the common perceptions of Japanese or Germans as particularly hard or intelligent workers false? Just as the Germans were thought of as indolent years ago, they are thought of as laborious today. I've always been of the opinion that these are myths with little or cherrypicked anecdota as backup. It makes little sense to me to judge millions of people like that.

paganel 9y ago

Too lazy to search for the exact reference but I remember reading a book by famed French medievalist Jacques le Goff (I think it was "Pour un autre Moyen Âge") where he tells the story of how clocks first showed up in city center towers in and around Northern France and Flanders, around the 1300s, as a mean of "regulating" the activity of city-dwellers who were now working as laborers in the newly created "industrial" manufactures (the Medieval Period came with its own industrial revolution). That area of the world has remained one of the most developed in the world well into the 20th century.