I did a thing about the differences between Japan (that is, anime) and the United States (that is, poorly-executed action movies) a while ago, and I've been thinking a lot more about the differences between the "East" and the "West" recently. I've already talked about our differing perceptions of the snake in another post too.
I think it's fair to say that East and West have been pretty different right from the get-go. Here's where the broad brush comes out; I'm grossly over-generalizing, but stick with me. Western society tends to focus on individualism and devotes a lot of attention to those who deviate, or strike out against convention to be their own person. Eastern societies, on the other hand, often have a greater emphasis on social duty, to the family on the small scale and to the overall community at the larger scales.
Religions from the two regions are superficially very different as well. Western religions (those that survive, anyway) are generally monotheistic. Eastern religions tend to be polytheistic (at the surface level; more on this later). Western religion also generally holds humanity to be fallen and morally corrupt in some way, casting humanity as undergoing a struggle to overcome its wicked nature and reunite with divinity. Eastern traditions also hold that humanity has its flaws to overcome, but tend to emphasize a much more positive view of nature, both human nature and nature in general.
The differences continue endlessly, but that's a good baseplate for what I want to talk about: the underlying reason all these cultures sometimes seem incompatible across the imaginary East-West "line."
The main division is one, simply, of world view. I mentioned that the two regions' religions were respectively mono- and polytheistic, and I may have been a little disingenuous; that isn't actually the problem. Many of the superficially "polytheistic" religions are merely paying homage to many avatars and aspects of one essential divine entity, when you consider them more deeply. So if that's not it, what is?
My opinion, anyway, is that the fundamental difference is how the divine entity is positioned in our mind, as opposed to an issue of its single or multiple nature. Western religions as a whole hold the divine being to be a sort of great originating point, a single Fact that was, and from which all other things and energies emanate. Take, for example, the Jewish title Ehyeh, sometimes translated as "I AM," or Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, confusingly "I am to continue to be" (essentially equivalent to the Christian "was, is, and is to come"). Christianity speaks extensively of God the Creator, the single primary entity that always has been and looked out into nothing to create everything.
The East has a different and somewhat more complicated view of the whole matter. All the gods of Hinduism, for example, are manifestations or representations of an ongoing and consistent energy flowing through all things. Well, wait, isn't that the same as in the West? Ah, tricky. No, the East has gods that represent aspects of an all-powerful energy, and the West generally has one single deity that is the energy's source.
So, put shortly: the West thinks God is the starting point from which all other things proceed, and the East thinks God is also present in the procession of things. In the West, God is the source of all energy, and in the East God is closer to being the energy itself.
This is a post mostly intended to a) express my opinion regardin the starting point of the fundamental differences between the East and West and b) inform the reader. I know I don't propose any solutions here, but I thought this would be something useful to think about while understanding various cultures and how they interact.
Also, to be clear: difference does not imply a hierarchy. No, I do not think Western religions are evil because of the Crusades, nor do I think India is full of heathens praying to false idols, or whatever. It's impossible, in my opinion, to study religions and come up with many really negative thoughts, if you're doing it right.
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