I was originally going to title this Well DUH! in light of something I will discuss later, but that combination of anniversaries up there was simply too good to pass up. I'm writing this on the morning of Super Tuesday, a day which will have a major impact on whether the next US President is Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, but California's full results won't be in for a couple of weeks, and it will be days before a really good picture emerges, so whatever. In any event, I don't want to indulge in punditry, I've been around too long and too much to even consider second guessing the US populace or the US power elite. Hence I've got other stuff to throw against the wall today.

My "Well DUH" item which came by way of Pocket is an article that was originally published on March 9, 2018, by The Conversation.( https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-knowledge-about-different-culture... ) How Knowledge About Different Cultures Is Shaking the Foundations of Psychology by
Nicolas Geeraert, subtitled Much of an observation is determined by the observer, not the observed. immediately elicited a loud guffaw from me. That is, imo, only the tip of one iceberg, but how the crew and passengers of that particular ship were able to remain oblivious of it for so long still bewilders me.

Early on, the author tosses out the not at all surprising admission that insofar as psychology and particularly "experimental" psychology was primarily a product of North America and Europe, the views and opinions are skewed by the fact that the subject populations analyzed were pretty uniformly WEIRD. That's both an adjective and an acronym, standing for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and "Democratic". The author didn't put quotes around democratic and can presumably be forgiven for that misperception having no doubt not overimbibed on real history and historical analysis. It is, after all, what those subject nations and populations pretty much uniformly call themselves. Besides, neither oligarchy nor plutocracy readily lends itself to a cool and very telling acroynm.

The short and highly readable article then moves on to discussions of differences in various cultures specifically looking at the headings of Thinking Styles, The Self, and Mental Health. Consider, which two of these items go together: a panda, a monkey, and a banana. I, for what it's worth, flunked this little test. Without too much thought I quickly gave an answer which, I am told, is Eastern and holistic, because objects and their context are seen to be interrelated, whereas western analytic thinking generally ignores context. (this perception is no doubt a further example of the problems inherent in basing your perceptions and models on the WEIRD.) Panda and Monkey, we are told is the Western, analytic choice, because they are both animals, whilst monkey and banana is the Eastern, holistic choice because, as any child can tell you, monkeys eat bananas. I suppose that the same superficial and simplistic western "analysis" would apply to, perhaps, a fish, a butterfly, and a flower? But, that's ok, at least they're starting to learn, and having found the tip of one iceberg, may be expected to eventually realize that maybe they missed it so far because *they* have been ignoring the fact that context is everything. Ah well. This exercise is followed by an example that clearly shows that neither they nor most of their WEIRD subjects, even now, have been art majors, but you can read that for yourselves.

It is good that those in this field, which has a lot of influence on all of us in various ways ,are coming to recognize this problem, though the article exhibits various inadvertent instances thereof. I am reminded of the Buddhist Koan pointing to a person riding an ox in search of an ox,, which is, I suppose, Eastern and holistic to those sufficiently insular. Perhaps Einstein did a disservice in mentioning frames of reference in his work on relativity, so that people lost sight of the fact that they've always been fundamental to western thought too. I suspect even Freud had heard and used the word weltanschauung. Ah well, be that as it may, we are told that “cross-cultural psychology” is increasingly being taught (and presumably studied), and that:

With more research, we may well find that cultural differences pervade into even more areas where human behaviour was previously thought of as universal. But only by knowing about these effects will we ever be able to identify the core foundations of the human mind that we all share.

Perhaps they might even someday learn that normal means one of two things, perpendicular, or average.

#include

And, apropos the title way up there, check this out:https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/06/cancer-in-us-navy-nuclear-powere...

have a good one

Title Image is Shiva's Dance

It's an open thread, so have at it. The floor is yours
.