Opinions please - Page 2

David · 17th October 2014, 06:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Quite simply it is not possible to understand one world view when working from the base of an entirely different world view.

You've got me wondering now Alan. Do you believe that all Javanese share the same world view? What about Westerners, or even to be more specific, how about Americans? Do you believe that my own personal world view is more likely to be closer to your own or what you might perceive as a Javanese world view? Or perhaps that my own world view is closer to whatever you believe to be the generic American world view? If you could answer these questions what evidence would you base these assumption on?

A. G. Maisey · 19th October 2014, 10:40 AM

Please accept my apologies for causing you any confusion David. I guess it is probably inevitable that some confusion must be generated when we are limited in discussion by what we can put on paper, but even so, I perhaps should have been more explicit with some of what I have written, although in all honesty, it did not occur to me that questions such as the ones you have framed might even arise. I sometimes take too much for granted. Call it a character fault.

You've raised a number of questions, so probably the easiest way for me to respond is to interpolate my responses:-

Do you believe that all Javanese share the same world view?

No, and I'll go further, I do not believe that even the same Javanese person holds a consistent world view.
The way most people see the world can vary according to situation, and that idea of "situation" automatically embraces the concept of time. This applies no less to a Javanese person than it does to anybody else.
For instance, the modern Javanese engineer who has come from a village background could well espouse one world view when in the work place, or outside his village environment, but when he is back in the village, he becomes a member of the village hierarchy and will adopt the hierarchical position and world view that is expected of him.

What about Westerners, or even to be more specific, how about Americans?

I'll assume that "Westerners" is near enough the same as "people from a Western European cultural base", thus, everybody in the Old World, plus those of us whose ancestors came from that Old World.

No, of course not, there is observable wide variation in the way different people from this base see and react to the world around them.
I'll assume that the generality already stated applies as much to all non-indigenous people from all the Americas as much as it does to people anywhere else with the group delineated by paragraph 1 of this response.

Of course, if we include indigenous people within the group, then again, we can expect situational variation in probably most cases, however, in the case of indigenous people who are still living as their ancestors lived, then it might be necessary to carry out very specific investigation of each individual group before any opinion could be formed.

Do you believe that my own personal world view is more likely to be closer to your own or what you might perceive as a Javanese world view?

No idea at all David. I'm sorry.

Or perhaps that my own world view is closer to whatever you believe to be the generic American world view?

Again, I am completely unable to answer this question.

If you could answer these questions what evidence would you base these assumption on?

What I've written above are not assumptions, they are opinions.
In one case above I have given a very brief outline of an informed opinion, in another case I have given an opinion that could probably be described as the opinion of an educated layman, in a couple of cases I have not given an opinion at all, simply because I have insufficient information to form an opinion.
One of the beauties of opinions is that anybody can have an opinion, and that opinion does not require any evidence at all to support it --- unless the person stating the opinion wishes others to adopt it, in which case he might well wheel out a whole barrow load of evidence.

My position in this thread is that any opinion that I state is up there for others to accept or reject as they see fit. I'm not pushing any barrow here. I don't care if anybody accepts my opinion, and I care even less if they reject it. In fact, I am more than happy to hear any argument against any of my opinions, and I won't argue back.

This thread was started to extract opinions. Arguing against the opinions of others is not really such a great way to encourage people to state their opinions.

David, in respect of the quote that preceded your questions:-

Quite simply it is not possible to understand one world view when working from the base of an entirely different world view.

As already stated, this is my opinion. It is an opinion that I have formed after a very long time spent reading anthropological text books, and reinforced by very close personal contact with two cultures that are not my own --- well, in one case very close and very lengthy contact, in the other case lengthy contact but lacking the same degree of personal contact. This opinion seems to me to reflect a widely held opinion within the community formed of professional anthropologists. These people could well be wrong. My own opinion, although an informed opinion, could well be wrong.

I have many character faults, and one of these is that when somebody can demonstrate that something I believe to be true, is in fact untrue, I am not offended in any way, rather I welcome the revelation of a new truth.

So it is, that if you can demonstrate that the opinion of mine that you have quoted is in fact inaccurate and insupportable, then I will welcome that revelation.

Jussi M. · 25th October 2014, 07:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

This thread was started to extract opinions. Arguing against the opinions of others is not really such a great way to encourage people to state their opinions.

Agreed....

Quote:

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Quite simply it is not possible to understand one world view when working from the base of an entirely different world view.

As already stated, this is my opinion.

...and accepted.

How ever, things are not so black and white. - There is grey also, and that is where the exchange of ideas and opinions can, and will, happen granted that there is motivation for communication.

What Alan states above is that it is not possible to understand one world view when working from the base of another. With this - as a child of a mixed marriage between parents coming from two whole different cultures - I wholeheartedly concur and disagree. - It is not possible! Yet it is possible!

Uhmm... What?

Well... It is my opinion that one can learn to understand a foreign world view technically and thus learn to cope with it. This understanding how ever is clinical in it´s nature. Clinical in the same way that one can learn to play an instrument technically correct yet completely void of that intangible "tribe-uniting" emotional content that makes other people to make a connection with it.

So, is the technically competent musician a musician to begin with or a fraud?

What makes a musician? Alike we could ask what is the nature of the understanding we are actually discussing herein?

A. G. Maisey · 26th October 2014, 12:51 AM

I think that maybe we’re on the same page here Jussi.

Speaking in very general terms, I believe it is possible for somebody from one culture/society to understand the way in which people from a different culture/society perceive, understand, act and react in respect of the world around them, and the people around them. In fact, this is the core of the profession of anthropology.

However, these anthropologists do not gain this understanding by working from their own cultural or societal base, they first learn, as an academic discipline, the cultural or societal base that they wish to use in their evaluation of that culture or society. They learn the way in which to observe, evaluate, measure.

In this, one thing is true:- time alters perspective.

We can think about this statement in similar terms to the idea of Albert E’s ideas on relativity: stand up close to a moving train it looks different to the way it looks if we stand off at a distance.

So, if we are evaluating a culture, or a society as it is at the present time, it will appear to be different to what is was , say, 500 years ago. However, there will fundamental elements in the culture/society that remain more or less constant both for now, and for 500 years ago.

This understanding of the way in which people from a different cultural base see and understand things is an understanding that can be learnt, and in the case of Jawa there has been more than enough work done in this field for a good understanding to be gained purely from study of the written word.

However, for a person to be able to understand in the same way as people from a different culture or society understand, is a whole different thing than merely understanding the way in which they understand.

Many years ago I had a close friend who was department head of anthropology at Sydney University. We had lots of conversations about all sorts of things ranging from the best way to skin a kangaroo to the idea of witchcraft in 17th century Bulgaria. I’ve forgotten most of what he said, but one thing he said has remained firmly in my memory.

Broadly it was this:- the idea of “heaven”, or of “going to heaven after death” is completely different for a traditional Chinese person and a person from a Western European society.

The word used by the Chinese person to describe the place equivalent to our heaven will translate into English as “heaven”, but it is totally impossible for an Englishman, or a Frenchman, or other Western European to understand what this idea of heaven means to the Chinese person, because the Western European and the Chinese person are working from entirely different cultural bases which affect the way in which they think and evaluate the world around them and the concept of “existence”.

To come back to Jawa, I believe it is possible for any person with sufficient interest to learn the way in which a traditional Javanese person understands the world, and how he evaluates things working with that world view.

But to understand in the same way that the traditional Javanese person understands is very probably not possible unless one is born and lives his entire life as a traditional Javanese person.

19th October 2014, 10:40 AM	#32
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,892	Please accept my apologies for causing you any confusion David. I guess it is probably inevitable that some confusion must be generated when we are limited in discussion by what we can put on paper, but even so, I perhaps should have been more explicit with some of what I have written, although in all honesty, it did not occur to me that questions such as the ones you have framed might even arise. I sometimes take too much for granted. Call it a character fault. You've raised a number of questions, so probably the easiest way for me to respond is to interpolate my responses:- Do you believe that all Javanese share the same world view? No, and I'll go further, I do not believe that even the same Javanese person holds a consistent world view. The way most people see the world can vary according to situation, and that idea of "situation" automatically embraces the concept of time. This applies no less to a Javanese person than it does to anybody else. For instance, the modern Javanese engineer who has come from a village background could well espouse one world view when in the work place, or outside his village environment, but when he is back in the village, he becomes a member of the village hierarchy and will adopt the hierarchical position and world view that is expected of him. What about Westerners, or even to be more specific, how about Americans? I'll assume that "Westerners" is near enough the same as "people from a Western European cultural base", thus, everybody in the Old World, plus those of us whose ancestors came from that Old World. No, of course not, there is observable wide variation in the way different people from this base see and react to the world around them. I'll assume that the generality already stated applies as much to all non-indigenous people from all the Americas as much as it does to people anywhere else with the group delineated by paragraph 1 of this response. Of course, if we include indigenous people within the group, then again, we can expect situational variation in probably most cases, however, in the case of indigenous people who are still living as their ancestors lived, then it might be necessary to carry out very specific investigation of each individual group before any opinion could be formed. Do you believe that my own personal world view is more likely to be closer to your own or what you might perceive as a Javanese world view? No idea at all David. I'm sorry. Or perhaps that my own world view is closer to whatever you believe to be the generic American world view? Again, I am completely unable to answer this question. If you could answer these questions what evidence would you base these assumption on? What I've written above are not assumptions, they are opinions. In one case above I have given a very brief outline of an informed opinion, in another case I have given an opinion that could probably be described as the opinion of an educated layman, in a couple of cases I have not given an opinion at all, simply because I have insufficient information to form an opinion. One of the beauties of opinions is that anybody can have an opinion, and that opinion does not require any evidence at all to support it --- unless the person stating the opinion wishes others to adopt it, in which case he might well wheel out a whole barrow load of evidence. My position in this thread is that any opinion that I state is up there for others to accept or reject as they see fit. I'm not pushing any barrow here. I don't care if anybody accepts my opinion, and I care even less if they reject it. In fact, I am more than happy to hear any argument against any of my opinions, and I won't argue back. This thread was started to extract opinions. Arguing against the opinions of others is not really such a great way to encourage people to state their opinions. David, in respect of the quote that preceded your questions:- Quite simply it is not possible to understand one world view when working from the base of an entirely different world view. As already stated, this is my opinion. It is an opinion that I have formed after a very long time spent reading anthropological text books, and reinforced by very close personal contact with two cultures that are not my own --- well, in one case very close and very lengthy contact, in the other case lengthy contact but lacking the same degree of personal contact. This opinion seems to me to reflect a widely held opinion within the community formed of professional anthropologists. These people could well be wrong. My own opinion, although an informed opinion, could well be wrong. I have many character faults, and one of these is that when somebody can demonstrate that something I believe to be true, is in fact untrue, I am not offended in any way, rather I welcome the revelation of a new truth. So it is, that if you can demonstrate that the opinion of mine that you have quoted is in fact inaccurate and insupportable, then I will welcome that revelation.

26th October 2014, 12:51 AM	#34
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,892	I think that maybe we’re on the same page here Jussi. Speaking in very general terms, I believe it is possible for somebody from one culture/society to understand the way in which people from a different culture/society perceive, understand, act and react in respect of the world around them, and the people around them. In fact, this is the core of the profession of anthropology. However, these anthropologists do not gain this understanding by working from their own cultural or societal base, they first learn, as an academic discipline, the cultural or societal base that they wish to use in their evaluation of that culture or society. They learn the way in which to observe, evaluate, measure. In this, one thing is true:- time alters perspective. We can think about this statement in similar terms to the idea of Albert E’s ideas on relativity: stand up close to a moving train it looks different to the way it looks if we stand off at a distance. So, if we are evaluating a culture, or a society as it is at the present time, it will appear to be different to what is was , say, 500 years ago. However, there will fundamental elements in the culture/society that remain more or less constant both for now, and for 500 years ago. This understanding of the way in which people from a different cultural base see and understand things is an understanding that can be learnt, and in the case of Jawa there has been more than enough work done in this field for a good understanding to be gained purely from study of the written word. However, for a person to be able to understand in the same way as people from a different culture or society understand, is a whole different thing than merely understanding the way in which they understand. Many years ago I had a close friend who was department head of anthropology at Sydney University. We had lots of conversations about all sorts of things ranging from the best way to skin a kangaroo to the idea of witchcraft in 17th century Bulgaria. I’ve forgotten most of what he said, but one thing he said has remained firmly in my memory. Broadly it was this:- the idea of “heaven”, or of “going to heaven after death” is completely different for a traditional Chinese person and a person from a Western European society. The word used by the Chinese person to describe the place equivalent to our heaven will translate into English as “heaven”, but it is totally impossible for an Englishman, or a Frenchman, or other Western European to understand what this idea of heaven means to the Chinese person, because the Western European and the Chinese person are working from entirely different cultural bases which affect the way in which they think and evaluate the world around them and the concept of “existence”. To come back to Jawa, I believe it is possible for any person with sufficient interest to learn the way in which a traditional Javanese person understands the world, and how he evaluates things working with that world view. But to understand in the same way that the traditional Javanese person understands is very probably not possible unless one is born and lives his entire life as a traditional Javanese person.