From: ntetsuya@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Nishimura)
Subject: Re: Brainwashed
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 08:46:27 GMT
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523

In article <34534@twics.co.jp> dcroz@twics.co.jp writes:
>
[stuff deleted]

>deal with that subject.  But deal with it he did.  I'll mail you my copy if you
>promise to read and return it.
> 
	Thank you for offering but you don't have to do that.  If you can,
	cuold you just give me information about the material so that I can
	work on it when my time permits?

[stuff deleted]
> 
>=}If, as you might think, one culture can be inferior to another, why not
>=}abandoning it and adopting or adapting what you might call a "superior" and
>=}"better" culture?  Where in this world and in the past is a people who
>=}abandoned their culture and adopted a new culture?
> 
>     Well, unless we're all living in mousterian hunter-gatherer societies,
>*every* culture has repeatedly abandoned what they had for a better life.
>

	"Abandon," I meant was that to dump their own culture and adopt an
	entirely new culture.  I know what you are talking about and, actually, 	that's what I am thinking about.  The only difference, I asuume, is that	I just don't call it "abandonning."  I would call it "evolving" or 
	"developing."

	As you said, which I agree, the human being seeks for a better life.
	When we find a better way to live, we may either adopt or adapt it.
	And who judges the culture being imported is better?  No one else but
	the people who are importing it.  It's based on their preference.
	Then what is this preference based on?  Where does this preference come
	from?  I think it's based on the culture the people have had for a long 	time.
	
	I wrote that once some of the Japanese seriously considered that we
	should abandon the Japanese language and adopt a European language.  
	The reasons behind it were mostly based on the fact that they simply 
	"thought" that the European languages were better since they were 
	languages of civilized countries at that time.  Even if they had 
	succeeded to do so, it couldn't have completely changed the life style 
	of the Japanese although it might have affected it a lot.  

	If you call that a people taking a new thing in and stopping practicing
	an old thing "abandoning," I would agree.  But I would just choose not
	to use the word to refer this.

	Any way, to my knowledge, there is no culture which completely has 
	abandoned an old culture, if you will, and adopted an entirely new
	culture without showing any sign of old culture they had before.


>=}I believe it was based on whether they liked it or not.
> 
>     Sometimes, sure, particularly with trivial stuff like table manners.  But
>if by "liked it" you mean "found that it conduced to more happiness and well-
>being than what they had before," we are essentially in agreement.
> 

	Agree.


>=}Is this too simple???
> 
>     Yes, I think so.
> 
>     I don't agree with this proposition that it's "impossible" or "prejudiced"
>to make judgements about what might be good or bad in culture.

	Well, sorry, I should have made it clearer.  
	I just responded to the original poster's attitude which was so biased,
	which at least looked so to me.  If she ended up with her conclusions
	after having studied and learned about the Japanese culture she was 
	talking about by herself, and having practiced it by her own, few people	would have responded in a way we saw in this group.  I said it would
	be a source of racism because you really cannot tell anything by just
	biting a bit of information you can get, and if you do, you will see
	every person from that culture with that biased thought.  If she had
	studied the Japanese culture so long a time and ended up with the 
	conclusions, I would not have said anything (well, I might have wrtten
	a mail to her :-).  Any way I'm sorry for having been unclear (or am I 
	still?).



>							If we're
>deciding what kind of culture we want to live in, as we all are, every day,
>then *who* has a better right to make these judgements than we do?
> 
>     And who has the standing to tell us that we have no right to decide what
>kind of culture we want to live in?

	Again, at this point, I think we have been in agreement.



					Tetsuya Nishimura