MY VIEW OF THE WORLD

Given an idea

how do different cultures interpret and absorb it?

AMERICAN

Layers. Each idea is dissected and fit into a specific layer, allowing entire layers to be moved freely. Interfaces between layers are standardized so one can ignore the small details and think about it at an abstract level, making way for scalability.

JAPANESE

Craft. Drop the idea anywhere you want, but make intelligent, consistent connections so that the whole picture is connected. Mastering the details is the bottom line, and everything is seen through the tinted glass of the nature of these "consistent connections". Very painstaking, but it creates people who are highly skilled at handling a wide array of ideas. Of course, ideas not consistent with the nature of the connections used, will not be connected - not that they are rejected - let's just imagine they don't exist.

CHINESE

Structure. Drop it anywhere you like, as long as it fits into the grid. Highly scalable and able to absorb any kind of ideas. The whole picture is so colorful and exciting sometimes you forget the rigidity behind the grid.

Wider European

Interest groups. Similar ideas are tightly knit together, but different ideas simply exist side by side. Of course that leads to an imbalance in powers - it's not the raw numbers that matter; it's the representation that counts.

INDIAN

Let it be. Similar ideas form groups naturally. Different ideas form their own relationships. There's no one single idea that binds everything together. Diversity is the key factor of resilience.

FRENCH

Egality. Let's abstract it up to a level where everything looks the same, then we can give everybody the same rights.

ENGLISH

Anything that doesn't look like the French will do.

「縁」

If you toss a coin once, you will get either a head, or a tail.

If you toss it twice, maybe you can get both a head and a tail, but there is still a big possibility that you end up with all heads or all tails.

If you toss it three times, you get a better chance of getting both heads and tails. The chances of getting all heads or all tails is much smaller, but the distribution is memoryless.

And if you can toss it an infinite number of times, you will get both heads and tails.

And that is to me what evolution is. A near-infinite number of attempts at life, so that we cover just about every permutation possible, effectively lowering the risk of extermination by an acceptable threshold of threats. Okay "every permutation" is a exaggeration, but that is the basis of why i believe a property of the world is its immense richness.

Within this richness, is it possible to match one animal/person to another such that they function well together? If I have a sample set of 20 people, I can't say for sure. But if I am given the theoretical infinity, then yes.

Is the theoretical infinity possible?

In the macro scale, yes. But on the micro scale, no.

On the macro scale, we see it in nature, how certain species form symbiotic relationships with another. Given enough time, the species works out what it needs.

But that process is not worked out by one generation, or for one creature.

Which is to say, if you ask me if you will meet the person of your life, I will say, maybe yes, maybe no.

But if everybody can reproduce an infinite number of fuzzy copies* of themselves, the possibility becomes very high, and all that is left is for those copies to meet.

And that chance of meeting and forming a meaningful relationship, on the basis that a theoretical infinite number of variations are available, creates the situation where the two persons/creatures can decide to make something out of it.

This is for me, the definition of 「縁」.

*I think this is the mistaken basis why a lot of people want to have children, and have their children be similar to themseles. Cool it, let nature do its work.