From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: fj.misc
Subject: Re: There's-only-one-Truth-ism?
Date: 28 Jul 92 22:59:10 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

mtachiba@rkna50.riken.go.jp (Masahiko Tachibana) writes:

>In article <2180@aegis.or.jp> davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) writes:

>>In article <1992Jul27.120712.5954@rkna50.riken.go.jp> I write:
>>>This article from fj.misc is cross-posted to fj.soc.culture.
>>
>>I didn't see any cross-post in the Newsgroups: line so I left it as
>>it was...

>    Sorry, I am a new-comer to unix and the net-news system.  I got
>a mistake and I had to post the article independently.

Hmmm what newsreader are you using? I'm using nn and when I go to
followup it puts the Newsgroups:, Subject:, Distribution: and

[* other stuff omitted to keep this article down in size *]

>>It may sound too simple, but I've found that people who are
>>communication have something they can talk about underneath their
>>conclusions. While those who are only defending don't. Thus by
>>asking questions until you get down to something concrete works a
>>lot better than trying to give counter-examples. Once the full
>>meaning, in concrete terms, has been reached, it's fairly easy to
>>understand why somebody feels the way they do and one or the other
>>or both people in the dialog can update their position! 

>    It reminds me of the way of finding truth by European philosophers 
>like Socrates or De Cartes.  Questions after questions to others or 
>himself make things clear what I know of what I/he thinks of. 

Maybe so, I've never read either very much. 

>    In Orient, truth tends to come suddenly to one's mind after his 
>deep thinking inside.  It might be part of the reason why some discussions
>between those having oriental- and occidental- background end up in
>a silence with misterious grin of the former, who rely less on words.

While this may so in Japan, this hasn't been my experient in the
"Orient" if by that you include everything east of Istanbul. After
all, the Buddha was famous for his conversations and he was
Oriental, wasn't he? At least Nargarjuna says in the Maha-Prajna-
Paramita-Sastra that the Buddha was a skillful communicator....

>>On the other hand, if they can't answer the questions, there isn't
>>any sense in trying to have a dialog...

>    Except when there is `language-barrier' between you and others. 

According to what I know about how things work in Japan, this has
little to do with the so called 'language-barrier'. The phenomena
happens in both English-English or Japanese-Japanese or other-other
situations.

>    Mr Ishikawa complained that Japanese authorities should try
>to expand Japanese language eduction course in many countries in
>order that foreigners would not meet with too much difficulties 
>when they visit Japan.  (source: fj.news.group)

IMHO, this isn't a language education problem but just part of the
social conventions in Japan. Japan already has a huge amount of
language education courses (maybe too much!). Actually people
understand and speak English reasonably well. But if they don't want
to speak with foreigners that's another story :-)

>    Someone mentioned (elsewhere in the news) that you declared 
>you don't understand Japanese language.  Then you must have rich
>experience in it.  How did you manage to get over the barrier when
>you ask questions to Japanese people?  And I would like to know why
>you don't use Japanese, inevitably a best tool for communication in Japan.
>    For you it should be a FAQ, but this is the first time for me to
>ask this.  Thanks in advance.

Yes, it must seem strange. And it isn't easy to give a short answer.

Having already traveled/lived in a number of other countries, when I
came to Japan I already knew how to get things done without speaking
very much of the local language. Living here wasn't difficult. In
fact I find Japan one of the easiest countries ever! And since I had
come to Japan to earn my way and to learn something about how
English is effectively used, I spent the first two years studying
and practicing English. (In particular NLP, Neuro-Linguistic
Programming, but that's a *really* long story). 

At the end of the first two years things were moving along quite
well and I came to the conclusion that Japanese may not in fact be
the best tool for communcation. That may sound strange, but to get
the idea of what I'm talking about, ask those you know who speak
Japanese as a second language how many people they have interesting
and frutiful conversations with those who are not 1) members of the
same office/company, or 2) spouse/{girl|boy}friend. When I took this
informal kind of survey, the answer was none!  And in fact many
people I met here in the kansai complained that they never could
have anything more than a polite, on-the-surface tatemae conversation. 

So there I was having no problems with my daily life and people
telling me that even though they spoke Japanese they weren't having
much of any communication outside their work/family/romantic
interests. It just didn't make any sense to me to spend time
learning Japanese. Why spend a lot of time only to become a
henna-gaijin? with no effort at all I could remain a futsu-gaijin! 

Besides, at just about that time I became interested in PC
communcations as a way of actualizing my main goal, which is to
communicate with like-minded people all over the world. So instead
of spending my time learning Japanese, I spent two years writing a
the first Aegis in N88BASIC and 8086 Assembler for an NEC 9801. Even
here I didn't need to learn Japanese! I used to go down to BIT-Inn
in Osaka where I had met somebody who enjoyed speaking with me in
English about the problems I was having. So we would sit there and
communicate in English, Japanese, N88BASIC, whatever. Hey, if
somebody explains something and you write the program and it solves
the problem, I guess you must have communicated :-)

A couple of years were spent running Aegis (which at the time meant
"All Engish General Information System") and talking with people
online. Then another year was spent on TWICS talking with people
there, plus accessing places like ESTI BBS #1 in Estonia and MITS in
Finland. I also took part in the special international conference
NHK had on Galaxy-Net. All of this was with both Japanese and
non-Japanese in English. 

After that came a couple of years studying how to set up a
multi-line host connected to the net which resulted in learning how
to program a bit in C and how to sysadmin a UNIX host. Since UNIX is
written in C and many UNIX machines only have the English man pages,
I found many other people who could communicate with me in English. 

Now that Aegis-UNIX is up and running (limping some days :-) I'm
again at a fork in the road. Should I take the time to learn
Japanese so I can take part in fj.xxxx? Maybe. Should I continue on
with working with those on Aegis in English? Maybe. Not sure which
door will open before me.... 

Sorry for putting up such a long article but I always have
difficulty giving a short answer....

Dave

--
Dave McLane                                       davidg@aegis.or.jp
Sorry, I can only understand replies in English (or a little French).
You're free to copy/quote/translate this as long as credit is given. 
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087



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