But human nature is not human nature. It depends on a place and a time.
Yes. But they are subject to debate, modification and change according to the time and place.
Look at the two translations. Look at only those two people, if they are the only translators of the Precepts. How much their personal understanding of those words and concepts have influenced the English readers of this work. Every Engish reader and learner of the Precepts has a knowledge base shaped by these two people. Such it is with culture.
I agree with you. To some extent. But cultures name emotions. Cultures concentrate on or favor certain emotions, naming them, etc.
Just like words for snow in Eskimo culture, there are like hundreds of them. And did you know that the there are like hundreds of names for the color white and gray in Eskimo culture because there is so much of it and it is so important in their lives.
The same is true of emotions. We learn to name emotions based upon what our culture teaches us. I will look into this to give you specific examples, which I am fairly certain exist both cross-culturally, and also based upon anthropological study.
I agree. But rules can also be a two way street. Sometimes rules are oppressive. They are either no longer suitable for their times, or they are imposed too harshly, or both. People collectively rise up and change them.
Social rules or precepts are negotiated over time. If they were not we would die off as did the dinosaurs because our rules would oppress us and they would no longer serve us.
Yes. And you can only know a piece of anything, a very, very tiny piece. Like the blind men and the elephant. Was that the story?
Yes.
And it takes each of us a lifetime to even begin to get anything. So, if we start speaking up before age 85 or thereabouts we are nothing but young upstarts.
At the same time, there can be new ways to understand old things. There is the most fascinating work being done for the past 40 years or so. Cross disciplinary by an architect out of UC Berkeley.
I think his name is Christopher Alexander. The book is called A Pattern Language. I have got it here, somewhere. It is totally against modern architecture and design and he was as much as reviled by his contemporaries.
What he did was identify and examine common elements of traditional architecture going back through the ages and cross-culturally, and he found that there were universal ways to live that fostered rather than stifled human communication, contentment and belonging. He identified these as patterns. Things so simple as benches in front of a house or window reading nooks.
All of which were ignored in Modern Architecture to the absolute distress of inhabitants of modern homes and offices. As if we all decided to build prisons to live in rather than homes. Except we didn't decide, architects did.
Well, as reviled as he was by other architects he was embraced by systems theorists and mathematicians especially those who worked in computer science, because these patterns he had identified worked to enhance human communication across systems. They were universals based on our hard-wiring.
No. In Western Culture, after say 1400, yes.
No, in lots of other places and times. More, no. We are an aberration. Self-interest is not our nature. We are taught it in this specific culture because it serves the culture. It does not serve us.
I really do not think so.
Little children go to school. In kindergarten when they see a peer struggling with an answer they do what ever they can to help him find the answer. They cooperate. They see themselves as in it together. They see the win as for everybody, not each one for him or herself.
By the end of first grade these same children see each other as competitors. They elbow each other to win. By this point they know there is just one winner. Sharing, and helping have stopped. The win is now for me. Just me.
This is taught. It is not developmental. Because studies have shown over and over again that if cooperation is supported it is maintained.
