Nick May wrote:
> Of course, there is a profound concept of "3rd party access to the
> interiority of the other" in Japan - but it is a rather different
> one. It rests - I suspect - ultimately on the sheer unknowability of
> the other and the lack of communicability of their emotions, desires
> and needs. What is the most stressful thing for a Japanese person?
> Well - I have asked many of them - and it all comes back to
> "understanding what the other person is thinking". "Why don't you ask
> them?" one asks, in one's naive, empiricist way - and the answer
> usually comes down to "because it would make them angry" - which
> seems to be related in part to the other party not always really
> "knowing" in any epistemically rich sense what their needs and
> desires are, and thus being quite unable to communicate them.
(allow me to make some over-simplifications, please)
I think that saying that Japanese people have difficulty knowing their
own interiority is not this simple. There is one more factor. Their
interiority *includes* the will of the group, and this is unknown at the
outset, hence the eto neeees, doushiyos, . . .
Decision-making here in Japan relies to a lage extent on some kind of
consensus. Japanese often have difficulty expressing what they would
like to do in part, because they can't frm an opinion about such without
some group input. It's a catch-22. How can I know myself, when being
social means "myself" includes those around me, when I don't know them
either? Getting the ball rolling is the most difficult part.
In this guise, computers/keitai's, etc. easily become an extension of
self. Three friends deciding where to go for dinner is just as hard with
or without a keitai, skype, or what have you. The underlying separation
between people is far more than that between people and their devices.
Greg
Received on Sun Mar 25 11:39:23 2007