From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: fj.misc
Subject: Re: There's-only-one-Truth-ism?
Date: 30 Jul 92 05:38:03 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

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

>In article <2189@aegis.or.jp> davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) writes:

>>I wrote:
>>>    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.
>Dave writes:
>>Hmmm what newsreader are you using? I'm using nn and when I go to
>>followup it puts the Newsgroups:, Subject:, Distribution: and
>>References: headers in the file I'm editing right now. 

>Here at RIKEN, we have Pnews for posting the news, and rn for news-
>reader.  One can post follow-up article by rn also.  At that time
>I saved Dave's article, overwrote it to prepare my follow-up, and
>posted by Pnews.  Pnews asked the Newsgroups: and I think I wrote 
>"fj.misc,fj.soc.culture", but the article was posted only to the
>latter.  I'm afraid I made a misspelling (e.g. fj.nisc, etc).
 
Even though I use nn to read, I used Pnews to post when I'm not
inside nn. I just tried the following command:

  $ Pnews aegis.bbs,aegis.test

It asked for a Subject: and when I was in the editor, the
Newsgroups: line said aegisbbs,aegis.test.

I also tried it with just

  $ Pnews

It asked for the Newsgroup(s), I entered 'aegisbbs,aegis.test' and
the Newsgroups: line came out the same. In both cases, the articles
were posted to both newsgroups.

Something wrong with Pnews on your system? ? ? 

> [stuffs deleted]

>I wrote:
>>>    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.
>Dave writes:
>>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....

>    Aha! I'm also in "We Japanese" syndrome or over-generalization without
>careful consideration for things other than me-related matters.  And this
>time "We Asians" instead of "We Japanese";  it includes bigger false.

I'm glad *you* said it :-)

>    And, as Dave says, I have read the Buddha's great ability in
>communication.  I had to notice there's many aspects in Oriental phylo-
>sophy, which of course include those based on intuition. 

Yes, I think so also. Just because it is based on intuition doesn't
necessarily mean that it is based *only* on intuition. 

One of the great attactions of Nagarjuna's Sastra (which attemped to
combine the various school of Buddhist thought) was his separation
of what is useful and appropriate for dealing with mundane
(everyday) life and what is useful and appropriate for dealing with
the ultimate nature of things:

  "The indeterminability of the ultimate nature is not of the same
   kind as the interminability of the mundane nature."

Nagajuna claims that one of our biggest mistakes is not to keep
these separate and equally useful but to try and deny one or the
other (or maybe even both). 

In a similar fashion, there are those who try to deny either 'logic'
or 'intuition' (or mabye even both). But I find Nagarjuna's argument
that these are simply "distinguishable aspects of a single entity"
convincing. 

>    By the way, a problem to deal with buddhism in English is that the 
>names of people, holy books etc. of buddhism are given as doubly 
>translated (Sanscrit -> Chinese -> Japanese) words in modern Japanese.
>It's troublesome that I have to consult big encyclopedia to get Japanese 
>translation corresponding to Nargarjuna and Maha-Prajna-Paramita-Sastra.
>(Same is true for modern Chinese names; How can you imagine that Deng 
>Shiao-ping and Toh Shou-hei are the same man?) 

The translation of the Sastra I have is by K. Vengtaka Ramanan which
was done when he was in residence at the Harvard-Yenching Institute
at Harvard University.  It's mainly in English but with Chinese
kanji in parenthesis and their Sanskrit equivalents in italics.
Since the original Sastra in Sanskrit was lost, he worked from the
Chinese version -> Engish & Sanskrit. 
    
>Dave wrote:
>>>>On the other hand, if they can't answer the questions, there isn't
>>>>any sense in trying to have a dialog...
>I wrote:
>>>    Except when there is `language-barrier' between you and others. 
>Dave writes:
>>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.

>    Yes, it does.  I simply wrote that line because I thought there
>should be some cases they can't answer the question from `language-
>barrier' against their will to have a dialog.  But it is true that
>if they have strong will to have a dialog, they may utilize "body-
>language" or any other means to prevent the failure of communication.
>In that sense, language-barrier is not the main problem, right?

For sure not being able to communicate in a common language is a
problem. But I don't think it's the *main* problem. Instead, I think
the ability to express what you want to communciate in various ways
(body language or otherwise) is the key to success. 

IMHO, a lot of times the "language-barrier" is sort of like "It's
difficult". All it means is the person doesn't want to spend any
time or energy communicating. In other words, it's an excuse....

>I wrote:
>>>    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)
>Dave writes:
>>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 :-)

>    Hmm, it's more than my imagination how many times you meet with 
>Japanese who reject communication to.   

But this isn't really a problem! Babe Ruth was a Home-Run King. He
was also a Strike-Out King. You have to lose some to win some, no
pain no gain, and all that :-) 

So IMHO meeting people (Japanese and otherwise) who don't want to
communicate only becomes a problem when you dwell on it. That is,
you begin to make it the major event. If you have enough people who
do want to communicate, who care's how many there are who don't :-)

>I wrote:
>>>    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.
>Dave writes:
>>Yes, it must seem strange. And it isn't easy to give a short answer.

>    [to avoid this article too long, below are excerpts]

>>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. [...]  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 [...]
>>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. 

>    The people you met in Kansai, you mean they are all foreigners?  
...

In this case, I was talking about people who had learned Japanese
but could only use it to have meaningful conversations with people
in their company or their family.

>    It's rather depressive conclusion, anyway.  Though I admit it,
>I do believe it depends on us native speakers' efforts to improve 
>Japanese language as more effective tool for communication.  

Why depressing? It's one of the great parts of living here. Some of
the happiest times of my life have been in the mountains all by
myself except for a few people I met along the trail. Living in
Japan is something like that. Very peaceful. 

And I presume that Japanese like any other language can be used for
various purposes. But if you ask Japanese (outside of the net, of
course :-) how many people they speak with who are not members of
their company or family in *Japanese*, I think very few or none at
all. Little to do with the language, lots to do with Japanese-style
social life. 

>    This is part of the reason I am now absorbed in the net-news where
>some people are fighting to find the way we make discussions in demo-
>cratic manner to reach to effective agreements.  

I'm not sure that democracy is the main event for the net. Instead
maybe it's something like 'multiple interpenetrating reality
systems'. An awful expression I know but what I mean is there are
many different kinds of discussions by different kinds of people
operating under a convention of "If you don't like it, don't read
it." But democracy tends to ask everyone to do the same thing after
voting on it. Here, voting on a newsgroup only means more people
voted for it than against it so the outcome is only relative...

>>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. [...]
>>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. [...]
>>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.... 

>    I understood you refuse on-the-surface accompanying (`otsukiai')
>to the Japanese people.  Then, it might be better to go the way you 
>are going.  Somebody says the structure of a language affects the
>way of thinking, doing things of the user of the language, and I find
>it true because I feel like having different personality when I am
>thinking in English from when I am thinking in Japanese.  

It's not only that I don't like to spend a lot of time in
on-the-surface conversation with Japanese, it's with anybody :-) But
I have found it easier to do outside of my native country ("Oh, I'm
sooo sorry, but I don't understand xxxxx"). And since people in the
U.S. tend to be Christian, the ideas we've talked about here are
pretty foreign to a lot of them. As you've probably guessed I'm not
only Christian: I feel that 'wisdom' or whatever you want to call it
has arrived in human societies in various forms over the ages. They
all have something so say, yet non save everything.... 

>    Mmmm. This sounds like a `Giving sermon to Buddha'.
>    Thank you for your efforts for replying impolite question.

The only thing that wouldn't have been so polite is if you had
replied, "Oh, you must be crazy".  This seems to be the reaction a
lot of people have when they here the assumptions of another culture :-)

Thanks for listening,

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
Newsgroups: fj.misc