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When I first moved to Japan I was shocked at some of the food shows (of which there are millions on TV). It seemed that animals are either cute, poisonous, or

When I first moved to Japan I was shocked at some of the food shows (of which there are millions on TV). It seemed that animals are either cute, poisonous, or delicious. In retrospect I think you are right, though. I've never lived in a culture that didn't have those kinds of demarcations. When I was in the UK several years ago they had a horse meat scandal where it was determined that most of the most popular prepared "beef" meals had substantial amounts of horse meat in them. "Finally", I thought, "People will realise how delicious horse meat is". Nope. I once did a workshop on culture and common sense. It was in Japan and 50% of the audience was Japanese while 50% were from an English speaking country. I asked them to split up into groups, again 50-50 and debate what is better: standing up to take a shower or sitting down to take a shower (Japanese people tend to sit on small stools while showering). I had to break it up after less than 10 minutes because people were about to come to blows. Common sense is the thing that people use when they don't actually have a reason for something. It's heavily influenced by culture and sometimes there is absolutely no justification for it. It's just the way you do it. When you ask why you do it like that, the answer is always "It's common sense". If you push and try to get a reason, people will come up with reasons, but are often surprisingly aggressive in their responses. Counter acting that cultural common sense is like a personal attack to many people. Most people I know (from any country) value animal lives. However, they often express that in bizarre ways if you look at it logically. It's that cultural common sense. Would you put a glue trap down for a mouse and have it dehydrate to death (unbelievable suffering)? Would you do it for a kitten? There's no real reason for the difference. Common sense short circuits our reasoning, unfortunately.

dan00 8y ago
> Counter acting that cultural common sense is like a personal attack to many people. Perhaps people need all of this to keep their sanity. You just can not live in a complex world without these automatic cultural behaviours. For same people it seems to be quite hard to be concious about these in a way arbitary behaviours, without literally loosing their minds. So unfortunately there might be a limit for quite a few people how much they can take in this regard, because it certainly would help quite a lot for increasing the tolerance and the understanding of different cultures.
- sigi45 8y ago
  A few or a lot? I don't wanna be condescending or saying i'm better in any way. I have learned a lot over the years and grew. I have never thrown trash on the floor but that is thanks to my mum and her 'teachings'. My biggest issue with this is not necessarily that we kill our environment (worst case we 'used it up' we die and it might just come back) but i never stooped learning or being critical about something. You see so many people who got stuck and lots of those people got stuck on different things or habits or lives. It took a long time and lots of rethinking about things, what if those people (few or many) will never reach this necessary level and we (the 'other') have to force them through zeitgeist / laws / punshiment? Even if you have everyone reaching that necessary level, you will always have people in between. Shouldn't we start thinking on teaching live skills relevant for all of us?
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    I've thought a lot about this, and I agree in principle, but I can't figure out how to get passed the aggression. When people have their "common sense" challenged, they really seem to go off the deep end. As I said, people almost coming to blows over debating the merits of standing up or sitting down while showering -- never in my wildest dreams did I expect such an extreme reaction. I think the parent's post is right on the money. Most people are completely unaware of this short circuit as far as I can tell and probably it's just part of being human. The worst thing is that, being unaware, we simply don't register or recognise that we do it. I don't know you and so I'll take your statement that you never stopped learning or being critical about something at face value. The thing is everybody thinks they are the same! If I accused you of not being critical, of unconsciously accepting superficial information and wielding it as if it were gospel, you can imagine how you would feel. This is a deeply threatening accusation. The end result is that I can't effectively have that discussion. Has anybody here really (other than you, potentially) looked at their effect on the environment? Have they every thought about the impact that buying a new pair of trousers has? Or heating their house above 10 degrees? Or accepting sidewalks be built outside of their house (not to mention roads)? I'm being extreme to try to illuminate a point. I don't know anyone who has ever even tried to find out what those impacts are. "My bare minimum standard of living has got to be OK" is just more common sense and we all do it. It's easy to draw the line somewhere and rationalise that the other guy has it wrong -- because they almost certainly do! It's much harder to be introspective and say, "Hey I have no idea what's going on here and mostly I'm going on hope that what I'm doing is OK". Even to suggest that concept to people is to provoke anger (and I really hope I have avoided doing that in you). It's that anger that I don't know what to do with. There is no problem in saying, "OK, I've done the math and here is exactly the impact of my lifestyle and if everybody follows that lifestyle I can show that the planet will be OK" (well, really more than "no problem" if you can actually do it ;-) ). I'm sure you've tried suggesting to people ways of improving their lifestyle. What is always the response? "Don't be ridiculous.", followed by a lot of rationalisation. And if I say that even you with your enlightened ways are causing problems at about the same level of magnitude as others, then I am quite certain the response will be anger and a feeling of "Don't be ridiculous". The fact that such a comment from me would be completely unjustified is somewhat beside the point. Do you really know, or do you just hope that it's wrong? And if it's the latter, can you get beyond the anger of the accusation to improve? And even if you can, can you teach others to do it as well? That's the problem that has been going through my head for a decade. While I've thrown some mighty accusations in your direction, I hope you realise that I'm not really accusing you of anything. These are the accusations I threw at myself. These are the areas where I realised that I was wanting. While you may be the first exception, I've yet to meet anybody who hasn't been found wanting in this area, so I'm still at a loss.

dan00 8y ago

> Counter acting that cultural common sense is like a personal attack to many people. Perhaps people need all of this to keep their sanity. You just can not live in a complex world without these automatic cultural behaviours. For same people it seems to be quite hard to be concious about these in a way arbitary behaviours, without literally loosing their minds. So unfortunately there might be a limit for quite a few people how much they can take in this regard, because it certainly would help quite a lot for increasing the tolerance and the understanding of different cultures.

sigi45 8y ago
A few or a lot? I don't wanna be condescending or saying i'm better in any way. I have learned a lot over the years and grew. I have never thrown trash on the floor but that is thanks to my mum and her 'teachings'. My biggest issue with this is not necessarily that we kill our environment (worst case we 'used it up' we die and it might just come back) but i never stooped learning or being critical about something. You see so many people who got stuck and lots of those people got stuck on different things or habits or lives. It took a long time and lots of rethinking about things, what if those people (few or many) will never reach this necessary level and we (the 'other') have to force them through zeitgeist / laws / punshiment? Even if you have everyone reaching that necessary level, you will always have people in between. Shouldn't we start thinking on teaching live skills relevant for all of us?
- mikekchar 8y ago
  I've thought a lot about this, and I agree in principle, but I can't figure out how to get passed the aggression. When people have their "common sense" challenged, they really seem to go off the deep end. As I said, people almost coming to blows over debating the merits of standing up or sitting down while showering -- never in my wildest dreams did I expect such an extreme reaction. I think the parent's post is right on the money. Most people are completely unaware of this short circuit as far as I can tell and probably it's just part of being human. The worst thing is that, being unaware, we simply don't register or recognise that we do it. I don't know you and so I'll take your statement that you never stopped learning or being critical about something at face value. The thing is everybody thinks they are the same! If I accused you of not being critical, of unconsciously accepting superficial information and wielding it as if it were gospel, you can imagine how you would feel. This is a deeply threatening accusation. The end result is that I can't effectively have that discussion. Has anybody here really (other than you, potentially) looked at their effect on the environment? Have they every thought about the impact that buying a new pair of trousers has? Or heating their house above 10 degrees? Or accepting sidewalks be built outside of their house (not to mention roads)? I'm being extreme to try to illuminate a point. I don't know anyone who has ever even tried to find out what those impacts are. "My bare minimum standard of living has got to be OK" is just more common sense and we all do it. It's easy to draw the line somewhere and rationalise that the other guy has it wrong -- because they almost certainly do! It's much harder to be introspective and say, "Hey I have no idea what's going on here and mostly I'm going on hope that what I'm doing is OK". Even to suggest that concept to people is to provoke anger (and I really hope I have avoided doing that in you). It's that anger that I don't know what to do with. There is no problem in saying, "OK, I've done the math and here is exactly the impact of my lifestyle and if everybody follows that lifestyle I can show that the planet will be OK" (well, really more than "no problem" if you can actually do it ;-) ). I'm sure you've tried suggesting to people ways of improving their lifestyle. What is always the response? "Don't be ridiculous.", followed by a lot of rationalisation. And if I say that even you with your enlightened ways are causing problems at about the same level of magnitude as others, then I am quite certain the response will be anger and a feeling of "Don't be ridiculous". The fact that such a comment from me would be completely unjustified is somewhat beside the point. Do you really know, or do you just hope that it's wrong? And if it's the latter, can you get beyond the anger of the accusation to improve? And even if you can, can you teach others to do it as well? That's the problem that has been going through my head for a decade. While I've thrown some mighty accusations in your direction, I hope you realise that I'm not really accusing you of anything. These are the accusations I threw at myself. These are the areas where I realised that I was wanting. While you may be the first exception, I've yet to meet anybody who hasn't been found wanting in this area, so I'm still at a loss.