Re: CHAT: facing your own mortality (as a conlanger)

On 05/07/08 00:14:38, Lars Finsen wrote:

> Western culture is more individualised than most other known
> cultures. Perhaps there's something in our genes, perhaps the local
> magnetic fields are influencing our brains, or perhaps the eastern
> religions simply have repressed individuality more efficiently than
> they have done in the west. Anyway, we probably wouldn't have this
> discussion if we were Chinese. Or maybe not even if we were born a
> 1000 or even 100 years earlier.
If it's local magnetic fields, it'd have to be a very strange pattern
given that Australia is a western culture in the far south east. If
anything the magnetic fields should be opposite here :)

(I for my part reckon it's purely cultural and it wouldn't've taken
much to make it so; if you start with wanting the best for your tribe,
there's not much difference in changing that to wanting the best for
your nation and wanting the best for yourself as the tribe is subsumed
to larger groups.)

--
Tristan.