> For an Italian like me, this whole process is nothing short of a miracle. I grew up in a city where metro train boarding during rush hour feels like a prelude to the apocalypse
Going Japan reminds me of coming to the U.S. from Bangladesh. It’s so clean, so orderly, so disciplined. I’m in a grumpy mood for weeks when I get back to the U.S. Our major cities are such dumps in comparison to Tokyo or Kyoto.
The human brain is one of the most powerful filtering devices that exists. If you train it not to see something, that something can effectively disappear for you. Families, cults, and even societies quite often work on this premise.
> The basic force behind all culture formation is imitation
We are also limited by the linguistic structures we inhabit. And many languages have multiple variants. There is the respectful, obedient "formal" variant used at the workplace and the informal "colloquial" used in other places.
The "strong" sapir-whorf hypothesis, that cognitive and behavioral categories are limited by linguistic ones, is thoroughly discredited. At most they may influence our perceptions, but they do not constrain them.
Linguistics is one of the fields where HN consensus goes directly against the scholarly mainstream of the discipline for what I mostly find to be ideological reasons. So hopefully this isn't that and you're just a bit out of date. But there's been a big reevaluation of this in the last twenty years and virtually no contemporary working linguists represent the strong relative view anymore. It simply did not consistently produce useful results and has been abandoned.
I always enjoyed this aspect of being in Tokyo. Similar to rayiner's comment, I'd then get a huge shock on return to Europe.
But I was also struck by the flip side of this when reading Murakami's account of the sarin gas attacks (Underground). Everyone was so keen not to make a fuss that trains were sent on their way too soon, poisoning even more people.
> And culture is, by and large, random, arbitrary, and self-reinforcing.
The best definition of "culture" I've ever found is "how we do things 'round here". It's valid in both the large and in the small.
Of course, why and how we converge on those norms is mysterious, and the anthropologists, the psychologists, and etc. can have a go at explaining those parts. I can't.
Queueing culture is hilarious. Indians > Italians (ok, Italians are probably more entertaining), brits (I imagined them trying to bring queueing to indians and gave up... although india does have a semi-line culture in limited ways nowadays). As an american, grocery checkout queueing always angered me.
Yes, more so than everyone else who act like any animal.
I can’t help to think of the “human test” in Dune, when we use our minds to override our instinctive urges, it is human behavior.
you know that voice in the back of your end that amps you up for your first day of a new job, or springs to life when you see someone doing something annoying like cutting in line, or fuels the anxiety in the back of your mind as you lay awake at night? that's just your inner voice, right?
well, really, a lot of people share inner voices. everyone has their own spin on it, and some people's inner voices are completely different than anyone else's (maybe schizophrenics? or prophets?), but generally there are shared components.
the collective aspects of these shared inner voices, if not culture, are at the very least what creates culture.
Culture is huge nested networks of memes[1] which reinforce themselves and evolve via natural selection. Their substrate is our brains.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
> sarcasm is simply not a thing in Japan, and people aren't (I'm tempted to say can't be) sarcastic. It doesn't occur to them to be it.
Japanese culture absolutely has sarcasm, it simply manifests in an unfamiliar way. Homegoroshi (killing-compliment) and using a flagrantly inappropriate politeness register are some of the most common forms. Sarcasm, and more broadly humor, are highly contingent on culture and language but they're also cultural universals. They're just usually not that recognizable without familiarity with the culture and strong social skills.
The reason why people form two lines to board the Marunouchi line in Ikebukuro is not because they prioritize seating, or going as soon as possible.
The true reason is that the line forks into two lines later on, with the final station being either Honancho or Ogikubo. The second line that form is just for the people whose destination would not be served by the incoming train.
>Of course, I know that there is nothing innate in the miraculous "Japanese Way" because expats living here quickly adapt to the same behaviors.
That just proves it's not genetic/innate (which nobody seriously doubted). But it is a unique developed trait of a culture. The expacts merely "adapted" to it. The Japanese culture on the other hand, developed it (and thus gave this specific thing to adapt to).
Culture is a ritualized enslavement of the sexual other into a contract upholding institution. This institution may progress and diversify in time, forming a meta family aka a high trust society given economic circumstances. Not all cultures can form these contractcults and if you cant you are screwed in a world of large powers and nuclear proliferation.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 49.0 ms ] threadGoing Japan reminds me of coming to the U.S. from Bangladesh. It’s so clean, so orderly, so disciplined. I’m in a grumpy mood for weeks when I get back to the U.S. Our major cities are such dumps in comparison to Tokyo or Kyoto.
The human brain is one of the most powerful filtering devices that exists. If you train it not to see something, that something can effectively disappear for you. Families, cults, and even societies quite often work on this premise.
We are also limited by the linguistic structures we inhabit. And many languages have multiple variants. There is the respectful, obedient "formal" variant used at the workplace and the informal "colloquial" used in other places.
Linguistics is one of the fields where HN consensus goes directly against the scholarly mainstream of the discipline for what I mostly find to be ideological reasons. So hopefully this isn't that and you're just a bit out of date. But there's been a big reevaluation of this in the last twenty years and virtually no contemporary working linguists represent the strong relative view anymore. It simply did not consistently produce useful results and has been abandoned.
I always enjoyed this aspect of being in Tokyo. Similar to rayiner's comment, I'd then get a huge shock on return to Europe.
But I was also struck by the flip side of this when reading Murakami's account of the sarin gas attacks (Underground). Everyone was so keen not to make a fuss that trains were sent on their way too soon, poisoning even more people.
The best definition of "culture" I've ever found is "how we do things 'round here". It's valid in both the large and in the small.
Of course, why and how we converge on those norms is mysterious, and the anthropologists, the psychologists, and etc. can have a go at explaining those parts. I can't.
Yes, more so than everyone else who act like any animal. I can’t help to think of the “human test” in Dune, when we use our minds to override our instinctive urges, it is human behavior.
you know that voice in the back of your end that amps you up for your first day of a new job, or springs to life when you see someone doing something annoying like cutting in line, or fuels the anxiety in the back of your mind as you lay awake at night? that's just your inner voice, right?
well, really, a lot of people share inner voices. everyone has their own spin on it, and some people's inner voices are completely different than anyone else's (maybe schizophrenics? or prophets?), but generally there are shared components.
the collective aspects of these shared inner voices, if not culture, are at the very least what creates culture.
Japanese culture absolutely has sarcasm, it simply manifests in an unfamiliar way. Homegoroshi (killing-compliment) and using a flagrantly inappropriate politeness register are some of the most common forms. Sarcasm, and more broadly humor, are highly contingent on culture and language but they're also cultural universals. They're just usually not that recognizable without familiarity with the culture and strong social skills.
The true reason is that the line forks into two lines later on, with the final station being either Honancho or Ogikubo. The second line that form is just for the people whose destination would not be served by the incoming train.
That just proves it's not genetic/innate (which nobody seriously doubted). But it is a unique developed trait of a culture. The expacts merely "adapted" to it. The Japanese culture on the other hand, developed it (and thus gave this specific thing to adapt to).