-
1 Different Wo...
-
2 Practice
-
3 Interviews o...
To college students, rapid globalization calls for the shaping of intercultural personhood to integrate Eastern mysticism with Western science and rationalism. Eastern and Western world views differ in many aspects due to religious and philosophical systems.
1. Universe and Nature
The Western view of the universe is dualistic, materialistic and lifeless, while the Easterrn view is holistic, dynamic and spiritual.
2. Knowledge
The Eastern view places an emphasis on perceiving and knowing things and event holistically and synthetically, rather than analytically. The Western pursuit of knowledge has been based on the doctrine of a dualistic world view. While the Easterners look for the drive for growth in spiritual attainment of oneness with the universe, the Westerners seek it in material progress and social change.
3. Time
Whereas the East traditionally perceives time as a dynaic wheel with circular movement and the present as a reflection of the eternal, the West views time either as an arrow or as a moving river that comes from a distant place in the past and goes to an equally distant place in the future.
4. Communication
While the East emphasizes submission of the individual to the group, the West encourages individuality and individual needs. Interpersonal communication in the Eastern culture resides primarily in the subtle, implicit, nonverbal, contextual real and is understood intuitively, the Western communicative mode is primarily direct, explicit, and verbal, relying heavily on logical and rational perception, thinking, and articulation.
We need to realize that both rational and intuitive modes of experiencing life would be fully cultivated. With openness toward change, a willingness to revise our own cultural premises, and the enthusiasm to work it through, we are on the way to cultivating our fullest human potentialities and to contributing our share in this enormous process of cultural change.
