Eastern & Western Design: How Culture Rewires The Brain
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- Опубліковано 16 тра 2024
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These were the two main sources I used when researching this video (I also referenced several other studies, however):
"The Weirdest People in the World" by Joseph Henrich: amzn.to/46g5AEt
"The Geography of Thought" by Richard Nisbett: amzn.to/3Fn7ast
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Culture completely changes the way our brains process information. And because of that, various cultures design things very differently.
Big shout out to Marc Levinson for reading over my script and giving feedback on it! All content directed and written by John Mauriello. John Mauriello has been working professionally as an industrial designer since 2010. He is an Adjunct Professor of industrial design at California College of the Arts.
Time stamps:
0:00 Intro
1:32 Japanese Joinery
3:18 Culture Changes The Way Your Brain Processes Information
4:34 Ground News
5:49 Differences In Visual Processing Between East & West
8:25 East & West Is Only Telling A Small Part of the Story
9:11 Being Born in A Culture Is Like Wearing Pink Glasses
10:45 Why Is Western Culture & Design Like That?
17:40 Why is Eastern Culture & Design Like That?
21:25 How Geography Changes Culture & Design
22:46 How Language Changes Culture & Design
26:54 How Culture Informs Design PROCESS
31:35 Is A Singular Design Vision Really Necessary?
33:47 Copying
34:55 What Should You DO?
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NOTE: The Himba tribe was only very marginally worse at identifying blue (we're talking milliseconds). However, it is true that people who don't have a word for a specific color in their language are worse at identifying it. Whether that has to do with simple linguistics or actual perception is hard to really test. It's probably a bit of both. I just wanted to point out this discrepancy, because the video makes it seem more pronounced than it really is.
The idea of Japanese thinking being similar to China is completely opposite. I am Singaporean Chinese, with parents from Singapore. Chinese often look at all the details then develop ideas at the end. Chinese often will do things as simple, or complex as necessary for the circumstance. Where as Japanese are laser focused on particular tasks and revealing all the details. My Japanese rice cooker makes no sense to me as I rather have a wind up cord, and 1 click preset button. Instead, my Japanese rice cooker tortures me (and all of the people that bought it) by installing literally 4 parts before use(including the rice scoop holder). Basically, Chinese analyze the subject indiscriminately, then make an assessment at the end to develop the context, details, then concept.
Hello! I found this video very interesting and yeah it tickled my brain a bit. I'd also like to present some of my views or things I've experienced.
According to me, when you used the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis for the Vacuum Cleaner, I found it amusing that English Designers should have a harder time designing a "vacuum cleaner" like Dust Sucker at least tells whether it sucks up all the dust or blows it away, but Vacuum Cleaner sounds like cleaning and creating a Vacuum to me.
And I do feel the word complexity is quite high in Western Languages and they do feel more eloquent to use. Again we have an example of the Vacuum Cleaner, but this isn't always the case like Leaf Blower or Dishwasher.
Another thing I thought about is the difference in how we eat like the West Dining Experience expects precise amounts of food in orderly way like a teaspoon or tablespoon, while the Indian Dining and Cooking Experience I am familiar with does have rough measurements but doesn't always be a precise amount to the gram but is more contextual I feel based on how fresh/dry the food is, rather than the perfection.
I feel Western thinking has shaped the way our world works with Economic and Scientific development, which is okay for some stuff but the way we try to arrive at one case after abstraction and ignoring all other factors in something of importance makes me again feel differences between different cultures.
Another thing I find funny is how beauty standard used to be before, with most of the people at the top of the rung preferring extravagant displays in dressing sense but our modern society prefers quite the plain and drab, practical look. There are some styles which are extremely practical while extravagant in modern day clothing but generally I do see a funny change.
I also understand that we do have some outliers and contradictions among all, as a student pursuing a research course. I find myself contradictory or rather a mish mash of western practices, Indian senses and also my own twists to those.
Overall this video was a fun experience to think deep and also link it to my own understandings.
bro its from chinese not japanese
The himba tribe and the color blue experiment was exaggerated, for a bbc report fyi
Not so much worse at identifying it, but rather less spontaneously likely to identify it as importantly different without having context for what is required and why.
It's actually extremely easy to adapt to spotting a pattern once you know what the pattern is, however, your ability to identify the pattern is highly dependent on whether you're aware of how subtle the expectations might be. For example, if you ask me about which of three squares is a "differen't color" and one is navy, one is royal blue, and one is cyan, I immediately recognize that cyan is distinct, but I classify them all as "blue" so unless you clarify what kind of difference you mean... I'm not going to know whether you mean the one that's much lighter... or the one that's darker and grayer... or the one's fully saturated and neutral valued...
Because I'm _expecting_ you to be asking "which one is RED" or some other color that's EXTREMELY obviously different. They're all obviously different, but not obviously enough for me to expect that to be what you mean, unless you clarify it... and then, once I have that context I'll be able to apply it to every subsequent question as long as you don't arbitrarily change the rules.
Great video, but the reason Japanese joinery came to be the way it is wasn't due to Shinto beliefs or Japanese philosophy. Early Japanese architecture from the Jomon and Yayoi period did NOT employ this method of construction, as the joinery originally came from Ancient China; more precisely, it was the Han dynasty that spread its architectural knowledge over to the Japanese archipelago through the Korean peninsula. This is why China, Korea, and Vietnam ALL have had the same joinery system, not just Japan, even though these countries did not believe in Shinto.
Carpentry student here. This is pretty much correct.
Some other interesting factors to consider.
Traditional Japanese carpentry is not done on a waist high bench but rather on the floor and small "stool" like sawhorses. This means that a lot of the traditional wood working tools are built with a bias on pulling rather than pushing. Because it easier to use a pull saw on the floor than a push saw
Also the large amounts complicated joints was induced by the fact that Japans iron supply was more expensive than most of the rest of the world and traditional Japanese carpenters built assuming no nails or fastners would be available.
I think the fact it was hard to get nails also influenced them adopting this Chinese technique 😅 more so than Shinto lol
But you know ❤ Ty for the history lesson
There are also the practical reasons that wooden joinery is more developed in japan, mainly down to the comparative lack of metal and higher rate of earthquakes as compared to the west, as such wooden joints needed to be tough, vibration/earthquake resistant, long lasting, nail-free and sturdy, and they were alsao less able to use more masonry.
The lack of nails is important because it means the bits being connected need to be locked in place with wooden dowls increasing the complexity, similarly the earthquakes had a significant impact as it makede stone buildings far less sturdy and encouraged lighter building materials to withstand the earthquakes better while also necessitating tough joins.
Oh, just let’em be. Everything about Japan has gotta be unique and distinctive, fully original and uninfluenced by the lesser cultures outside of it, and yet at the same time somehow always supposed to be cited as being the most representative poster child of the East Asian culture.
Let’em continue living in their bubble.
“Place: Japan”
By the way, sarcasm aside, because Shinto itself has partial roots in ancient Central Asian shamanistic and animistic belief systems, it’s not like Shinto is uniquely unique to Japan either. Although true, those ancient shamanistic and animistic beliefs and/their descendants have pretty much died out in other places like Manchuria, Korea or Mongolia due to the introduction of more sophisticated and advanced (one might argue) systems such as Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity.
Therefore, even if, just for the sake of the discussion, the characteristics of the Japanese joinery can be attributed to the Shintoism in some way, it would still be true at a certain level that the fact that other East Asian countries have joineries like Japan’s indicates their deeper shared cultural connections, as opposed to being something that is unique to Japan.
As a joiner, i feel i should point out, wood on wood joints are typically stronger and more durable than nail or screw joints, as well as traditional wood glues (though modern PVA is stronger). Nails/screw may even lead to rotting as they damage the woods cellular structure by crushing it and leaching into it.
Intricate joinery is just as much a matter of durable design. Part of the reason wood joints have fallen out of western fashion is that furniture is now build as a semi-disposable product rather than something that'll be in your home for most of your life.
The joints shown aren't part of "culture" anyway. It was environmental pressure. Japan has earthquakes constantly. The joints they make allow for a bit of wobble and flex so they are not shattered by the earthquakes. the western style joints didn't need this because of the lack of earthquakes.
Saying those joints are "culture" is implying that a Japanese person would chose to build like that even if they knew it was completely pointless. Or like saying an Inuit would wear heavy furs in a tropical location because its their "culture".
@@renmcmanusmany practices of cultures came about because of practicality. Not everything is automatically about art
Yes, items are built cheaper and less long lasting because companies want people to buy more of them.
Just look at phones
As an employee of the #1 furniture manufacturer in the world I can assure you it's all made the same all over the world and it's all made with 10 years in mind the biggest difference is some furniture the arms bolt on to the cushion and back of the frame and ashley has developed blow molded foam arms bur those are in our 20 year designs the real problem is that styles and anesthetics change so quickly that there's no way to make a "timeless" couch itll look dated in a year cause there's a whole new style every year
It is also worth pointing out that traditional European joinery used similar wood on wood joints for the vast majority of history. Nails were rarely used for the reasons described above and in the video. Also, nails were extremely expensive historically, so wood-on-wood joints were used to minimize the number of nails needed. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that nails started to see widespread use in joinery. In early America it was relatively common that when moving to a new location a family would intentionally burn their old house down to salvage the nails. When nails are expensive enough to justify that, people don't want to use them.
1. Japan did nail wood together. People of the Pacific Northwest in North America had so many nails from Japanese derelict ships that they made iron tools out of them on a regular basis.
2. Wood on wood joins do not split the wood the way nails do. In many the resulting joint is stiffer, stronger, and longer lasting, and of course consumes no metal.
And we used to build houses without nails, using similar mortise and tenon or through hole joinery with splines or dowels
As a westerner and title graphic animator, I’ve ALWAYS design my light sweep glow that illuminate the text with a band of highlighting glow from left to right with a 30* angle, by default Affects Effect plugin starts with a -30* angle. I quickly realized from your video this is because westerners read left to right, top to bottom. Love it
I'm a painter and the opposite. When painting signs on glass it's from right to left. I'm also American.
I believe it has more to do with being right or left handed and less to do with country.
Funny as a musician I look for the shadows in the hexagons and de duced it was concave even though western design is supposed to be only Tomas Kincaid works... sad that such thinking exists in the DIM witted minds on the INTERCONNECTED web we call the internet.
I can't be the the only to see it either way at will?
If the light is coming from right to left it's convex, if you move the light to the left it's concave. I draw and am left handed so I usually put the "sun" in the top right. That's what I saw immediately, but it's easy to switch perspective. I don't see how it's related to a eastern or western culture. The sun in nature move east to west, right to left.
I think what is a bit missing in the historical analysis is how minimalism and functionalism are not consistently 'western' things, but rather a popular trend right now. In different time periods this was not always true.
I was just about to write this.
The baroque era was hardly very minimalist.
Yeah, people in 1920s loved extremely complex designs, but when I see a commie block I get bricked up.
The West plagiarised Minimalism from Japan 🇯🇵 and Zen philosophy. Just as Picasso plagiarised from abstract West African art and masks. The west is good at taking ideas and rebranding as our own creation. The west have the hubris of thinking our culture curtesy of the Ancient Greeks ( who by the way borrowed heavily from the far more ancient Egyptians) is responsible for everything that matters. 🤔
@@stuyvesantrockwell7070 But by that logic, Japan plagiarized Zen philosophy from the Chinese, who got it from Tibet, who got it from India.
@@myalt3019 The difference is that the Japanese acknowledge where they got it from. We in the west have a habit of not accrediting those we got the knowledge from, as we see ourselves as a superior culture and civilisation.
We went around the world empire building and renaming things after ourselves that already had names given to them by the indigenes of that country. If you walk into the British Museum 95% of the Antiquities and Artefacts are not British but another peoples stolen culture.
Many of the stolen Antiquities and Artefacts are being demanded back by these countries.
The rice cooker example is misleading.
If you look at the first electric rice cooker made by Mitsubishi in 1923, it looks remarkably similar to the "Western" rice cooker in the video. That's just the simplest way to make a rice cooker.
The reason the Japanese rice cooker is so much more complicated is that they've moved beyond that original design. With rice as a staple that you make every day, it becomes that much more important to be able to customize how you want your rice cooked, set a timer so it's done at exactly the right time, and hold the rice at the right temperature and humidity if you end up with leftovers. That's really why the Japanese design in the video is that much more complicated. Plus many decades of iteration and technology means they're able to make a rice cooker with a more rounded aesthetic.
The Western rice cooker retains the original design because steamed rice just doesn't factor as much in European cuisines. There's no need for all this complexity when a simpler machine is easier and cheaper to make.
But that was the very first point he made: culture creates your world view. Go watch an episide of the original Iron Chef cooking show, that came out of Japan. I watched the Eel episode, and the contestant was a restauranteur chef, who specialised in cooking rice. His was a respected and well-regarded chef in Japan, because he understood japanese rice to 11. Imagine a Western chef being proud that he specialised in potatoes? Yet, it takes skill and technical knowledge to prepare mashed potatoes. Even something simple as steaming rather than boiling makes a difference. And it was an Irish woman eho taught me that. There you go.
@@BigHenFor Right, I agree that culture influences worldview. But what I'm pointing out is that using the rice cooker as an example of Western vs Eastern design is problematic, because the "Western" design is just a continuation of the original Japanese design, so are we really just comparing Japanese Design ca 1920s vs Japanese Design ca 1980s? Sure the Japanese culture/worldview influenced the later design, but this is not really an instance that exemplifies Western design philosophy. They weren't designing in a vacuum.
It looks to me that the western rice cooker design is "stolen" old Japanese design. That is, people complain about intellectual property theft only if someone else "steals" from them, not when they do the stealing (either within the protected timeframe, or outside of it).
@@ianslai Exactly. The modern rice cooker used in the example could indeed be said to be more a product of its culture, but the Black and Decker he uses as the western example is of course a continuation of the original Japanese design, as you pointed out. As a westerner who spent half his childhood in Asia from the 1970s to the 1980s, that old rice-cooker design was the standard in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and just about every Asian country I visited when I was a kid. Other than the example of the rice cooker, though, I thought this was a very well-researched and presented analysis.
You forgot to mention those cookers are expensive. Very expensive. If you go to a poorer household you’ll find the older looking cookers than the egg shape one.
Native Arabic speaker here who also grew up in America. My brain did a weird thing with the beginning example where it flashed from concave to convex.
I'm a Westerner and it looks very convex to me. Though I'm also left-handed and have often wondered what it would be like to write from right to left (and thus not smear what I've just written).
The thing with the bunny, cat and carrot, the categorical/functional relationship structure, is pretty interesting. I don't recall who/where I read about it but I recall hearing about a musician who used a system like that when writing lyrics - they'd make a list of things that are categorically related to a concept, and a list of things that are functionally related to it, and figure out how to proceed from there, which helped them write things that felt coherent.
Sounds like Jon Anderson of Yes
About the hexagon optical illusion from the beginning, I come from an Arabic-speaking country yet I also use English frequently. When looking at the illusion, interestingly enough, I found myself alternating quickly between both, with both feeling very natural with no two "default". Made me notice how when reading a sentence containing both Arabic and English, my brain is able to switch between both so naturally the same way, proving that it really shapes how our brain functions.
Lol I seen it as popping out 😅 so apparently I am more Arabic speaking minded than American also
i can switch when i use my hands to pretend thats where the light is coming from, it feels like i have the power to change the image ahaha
Nice observation. I spent my entire life in the east but speak mostly English. Also couldn't find a default - every time I blinked, it changed.
Born in Taiwan here. The whole "If you see this this way, you are " have largely been proven to be BS. I've heard these things all my life and they're all about as accurate as the phrase "Did you know that crisis and opportunity are the same in Chinese?" It's almost always some white dude that learned something about, and then misunderstood something about eastern culture, and decides to sell that idea (sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally) to westerners. Like, this is literally how snake oil started being a thing in the US. (For those that don't know, snake oil had limited uses Chinese medicine for treatment and/or prevention of certain types of ailments. Westerns saw this, took the idea, misapplied it to everything, and then sold it as a cure-all. This is how the phrase "snake oil salesman" came about in the US.) Culture does change a lot about how a person looks at things, but when it comes to things like carpentry, web design, etc. it has a lot to do with goals/intent, regulations, customer base, the goals of the customer, the society it's in and what it provides/not provides, etc.
As a former art student, these type of optical illusions are more to do with in what direction you're use to/expecting to see the light source from than what language you speak. And, often when I talk to my Chinese speaking peers, the results are often more 50-50 than a majority one way or another.
Take this Taiwan-born, ex-immigrant to the US's advice. If some westerner tells something on the border of mysticism about some eastern culture, like just ask a person from said culture first before believing it. Because often, it's BS and they're trying sell you on something which they "happen" to be an authority on.
And, just for fun, let me list some of the example of idolization/misunderstandings of eastern culture I've come across while in the US:
- In the Seattle region, I once visited a museum display eastern art works. There was a porcelain (aka "china") tea cup on display. The label next to it said the cup was ancient, dating back to 4 BCE. And the elegant words (in traditional Chinese), poetry-like complimented the artistry of the cup. Well, I can read the words because that's how long the Chinese language has been standardized and it said "Made in Shanghai".
- I once visited a friend's place while she was in college. She mentioned that her roommate loved Japanese things. Loved wearing kimonos, drinks tea, is learning Japanese, etc. So much so that she liked to display her Japanese tea set out on the coffee table. While my friend and I talked, I kept looking at it. I said, "That design looks Chinese. Like, Japanese and Chinese do share a lot in art style, so that's not surprising. Wouldn't it be funny if I picked up the cup and it said 'Made in China'?" I picked up the cup and it said "Made in China" at the bottom. My friend swore she's never going to let her roommate live this down.
- Once online, I was talking to someone and we were talking about Chinese culture. As per usual, this westerner is claiming that he knows more about my own culture than I do. He stated that kung-fu comes from Confucianism, that's where the "kung" in "kung-fu", Confucian. I had to point out that they 功夫(kung-fu) and 孔子(Confucius) are NOT related. Kung-fu came from Shaolin BUDDHIST monks that developed it as part of BUDDHISM. Also 功 (kung in kung-fu) is actually pronounced "gong" and 孔(Confucian) is pronounced "kong". They only sound some what alike. Tying them together is like saying "history" came from "hysterectomy" because they both sound the same starting out.
- In college, I had a teammate that was so proud that his friend taught him a Japanese insult (I know a fair amount of Japanese). He said "俺ちんちんがすき。" And I thought, that can't be right, so I asked, "What?" And then he repeated it again. I said what again thinking I heard it wrong. He then goes "It means you like p*nis." And then I had go to, "It means *I* like p*nis. 俺(ore) is 'I'." He had apparently been walking around, essentially, saying he likes c*ck.
- The famous tattoo of 麻毒性搖滾 you see people get. My wife (completely American) finally asked me if those tattoos are correct. And I said, "Technically, but not really." "麻毒" literally translates to "paralyzing poison". Closer to anesthesia than things like cocaine or heroine. "性" can be used for gender, but not usually sexual act. The word itself actually means something closer to categorization. As such, when filling out forms in Chinese, you'll see asking for 性, but it's not asking for gender, it's asking for your surname. "搖滾" is the only one that is pretty accurate. But the phrase is also used for shaking or rolling something. Without context of the genre of music, it's more often seen ask "shaking rolling" like a rock tumbler.
So my wife asks, "So it's closer to 'poison gender shaking' instead of 'drugs, sex and rock'n'roll'?" I answered "Yep."
Yeah anyone can switch how they view optical illusions on command you just gotta know what to look for. And that's not hard to find out.
The German word for butterfly 'Schmetterling' is derived from the ancient word 'Schmetten' meaning cream. People observed that some butterflies were attracted to cream and butter. That's why they are also called 'butterflies' in English. In Italian 'farfalla' is derived from the sound it makes when it flies. However, in German there are also words derived from sound as well such as 'klatschen' (clap), 'summen' (buzz) etc.
Thank you. Must add that I thought Schmetterling could easily be pronounced in a pleasant way
@@oystercatcher943 it is quite a pleasant word. a vid on lenses and biases purpetrating one. Overall interesting vid tho.
@@oystercatcher943 I agree with you. If you say Schmetterling in a normal voice and not in the exaggerated 'German is angry' voice it is no less cute than the English and Italian words.
@@kattkatt744 Pretty sure I never heard this angry version of Schmetterling in the vid. I mean, who does that? I'm German btw.
cream tastes so good but the word schmetterling reminds me of smegma 😝😆
Appreciate the pace of your delivery. It's musical, and there are pauses within which to reflect upon what's just been said.
Excellent video! I'm an interior design student, and, even though your channel mainly focusses about design in general, your videos have been very informative for me
26:12 I was taught that this theory has been debunked very easily long time ago. It's not that they have a hard time distinguishing blue from green, they simply call them the same name because to their culture it doesn't matter if it's one or the other, and their language has developed in a way that doesn't distinguish the two. While to their culture there's a need to differentiate between different shades of green so their language developed different names for each.
Just like in English you have separate words for red and pink, yet you don't have separate words for dark blue and light blue. For speakers of many languages like Italian and Russian, that sounds crazy because we have separate words for blue and light blue. But English speakers can still tell which is which, even though they group them together as just "blue".
I understood it as that they had a hard time differentiate it because they couldn't articulate it. It is different and they know it, but they do not know how to describe the difference with their personal dictionary and know that the person they say it too would instinctively be "yea that".
In English, 'blue' is presumed to be light by default, and you'd add the adjective 'dark' on to describe 'dark blue'. Whereas in Greek, 'blue' is presumed to be dark by default, adding on an adjective to describe a lighter shade. The closest alternative in English would probably be 'Navy'.
The theory has much truth to it, but the monolingual "theoretical linguists" in American ivory towers deny it. I know 12 languages and can testify that Whorf was right.
It is a debunked theory. It originates with German philologist Lazarus Geiger. But biology and etymology are the main ways to demonstrate that its an issue of language more than an issue of perception.
English has tons of words for shades of color. Cerulean, periwinkle, aqua, savoy, royal, navy, and dark are all terms for specific shades of blue. Yes, dark was a shade of blue before it refered to absence of light. They're just not common in colloquial speech.
It's fascinating how you didn't mention the architecture of Northern Europe, where joinery has been used for thousands of years for building homes, particularly with regards to log cabins. If you look at traditional wooden boxes from these areas, joins are common. There are large trees in Northern Europe and Northern Japan, making it relatively easy to create long straight boards which can be thick and easy to make thick joins from. If you go to the more arid areas of Southern Europe you have smaller trees in general, with a very different climate. It is a lot harder to create a long thick plank out of a palm tree or a tree which curves a lot, makin wood from taller and thicker trees naturally more expensive, so the relative cost of nails will be lower compared to the valuable thick woods which give a carpenter a lot of room to build a complex join seen in more northern climates. This is just a theory of course.
A GAME THEORY.
In Northern Europe and Russia you can find old wooden churches built without a single nail or any metal fastening. Complex architecture, intricate and very strong joints and all this was built by lowly peasants using very simple tools, mainly axes and chisels.
I keep getting the impression that the point here is to compare US and China, with Japan thrown in cz people are actually more interested in Japanese craftsmanship than Chinese design. Or maybe he just wanted more people to click on it than American and Chinese citizens.
Oh BTW,I wouldn't put too much stock in the cousin marriage bit from the Harvard researcher cz they seem to have a lot of academic fraud and work backwards from conclusions. See: Dan Ariely.
Thank you.
He kept mentioning "east" and "asia" about the culture, and I'm like "uuuuhh sounds normal on almost every point, and I'm nowhere near Asia."
@@Olivia-Wyeah i am both eastern and european, one may even call me eastern-european!
and since i wasn't immediately searching for the signs of the dichotomies present in the video, all the reasoning did seem post-hoc and quite shaky
i had no daoism or protestantism to point towards, maybe through the years of socialism i can point to me thinking in a 'collectivist' manner but i was born more than a decade after the change in government
the wood joints was clearly just trying to ease us into the argument so it can be a weak example, but nothing really made me feel like they understand why i think 'eastern' or 'western' about some things
ironically it made me think about social perspective, but more about the american protestant 'dual' spirit, trying to fit all evidence into a dichotomy
the terms used for the two styles of thinking also quickly branched into their distant semantic families
holistic? functional relationships? collectivist? wholesome? i just feel like if a few elements were switched, you could find different sophism to back this video
This is one of the best YT videos I have ever watched. Truly remarkable awareness. You, kind sir, are a gem.
"The beauty and imperfection of aging." That's me at 80; imperfectly beautiful ! I was looking for a description !
I suggest you take a closer look at traditional Western woodwork methods. As the industrial revolution started in Western countries before spreading to other parts of the world, this is where such skills were discarded or it's used diminished first. I occasionally watched my grandfather, a mere part time carpenter, using a variety of notches and grooves when joining pieces of wood. His joints of choice depended on type of wood, required angles and strengths of joints and in which directions forces went. He often used pegs instead of nails or screws, and only glued when the assembly was intended to be permanent, like a table top or a cabinet side or door.
i feel like that exemplifies the whole of the video being about 'western' v. 'eastern' and it seems to be mainstream american vs mainstream japanese
if i think of a western painting, i'll likely think of a landscape, which isn't uncommon or unseen in western europe
in fact you may find at least a few of those
does the *invention* of the pocketwatch have anything to do with personal fancy or the need for accurate time on ships?
none of these things feel like they build together to make a different attitude, and neither do all of them feel like they spring from the same source
in a strange way, i had felt more convinced of the premise before the video
@@aiocafea Yeah, it was pretty convincing in the beginning, but then started undermining itself with some poorly chosen examples. For me the "Schmetterling" example threw me off quite much, this is such a cliche, and it's so obviously... fake? Oversold? I don't even know how to call it.
@@McFrax yeah you opened my eyes to what i actually don't like about the video, maybe it's my 'western attitude' but i feel like the volume of poor examples is just too large
the video of that girl trying to make a cultural argument for web design convinced me way more because it stayed in the realm of art and design and only afterwards tried to pose the further cognitive argument
everything that i know even a lick about i feel is misconstrued, like the exaggeration of the sapir-whorf hypothesis
everything that i am supposed to just *see* like the composition of children's art, a phone with a misspelt and unreadable slogan didn't so much as push me towards the direction of the argument
it made me question things that i might have been convinced of from the video, like design or philosophical trends
the phone still bugs me so much because i kinda like its design! and a lesson in design is what i wanted but the only issues i have with that phone are things that a Chinese Anglophone would 100% get:
we don't read the text vertically, it's misspelled, it's small, the font is boring, the slogan is boring
also how is it not subject central? unlike the apple logo, this subject just looks bad to an eye that's used to roman lettering
I used to walk whit my grandfather in the forest and he chosed the tree that he will use for a specific object. Asked the forester for permision to harvest-in and he will cut it in winter at specific moment. But i-m form east Europe, i dobt the vestern people hawe this tipe of memories
@@adiborza4131
I'm from Western Europe. I fix when required.
Just want to say there are also complex western joints that involve no metal hardware. Drawbore mortises and tenons, breadboard ends, half-blind dovetails to name a few. I agree that Japanese wood joinery is on a whole other level, but I just felt it necessary to mention there is some counterpart in European cultures.
There is, but the differences in culture meant the West went its own way, and we lost a lot of that kind of detailed joinery, as we di not see craftsmanship as a spiritual practice. Its a craft, but nothing more. So, complexity in design, especially in wooden buildings was devolved, as the important buildings were more stone and marble than wood. And even more so when the split between Craft and Art became dominant in the western cultural treatment and narrative. The dichotomy is cultural more than anything, because they are both creative endeavours that share more norms than not. Culture shapes your world view to such an extent that your creative work is the material expression of the reality tunnels your culture has built in your mind. So, value statements come from that, rather than any objective measure. Indeed, perhaps what we find attractive in other cultures reflects the elements our own culture doesnt draw on as much, and so stimulate taste buds we might not experience as much. Human beings are teabags. They reflect much of the world they are immersed in, and are shaped by it. So, there will always be differences. And we evolved to appreciate novelty and variety. So, there's no need to defend our culture, especially as in design we hunger for newness. And new influences will flow in and out.
Iceland has churches that were built without nails
It's as he stated - in some (not all) asian countries, manufacturing techniques (or martial arts) survived not because of necessity, but because of things like spiritual attribution. In other countries like in most western countries, they got lost because they were inefficient. No use in using intricate details when you're not getting paid for it or training a martial art if you're going up against firearms.
@@BigHenFor The reason why japanese focussed on complex joints is because they had a metal shortage, nails just were too expensive.
There are all sorts of joints from all over the world that have joints that don’t use metal.
This was amazing. I've been trying to articulate this concept to friends for a couple of years now. But your exploration of it was incredible. Thank you!
I TOTALLY matched the rabbit with the carrot--I can't believe anyone would do differently! So strange! PS: your content is absolutely fantastic. It's evident by the exceptional quality that these take quite a chunk of time to write/make. Just excellent!
bro rabbits don't eat carrots. It's a myth perpetuated by looney tunes.
same, tho i got the more typical western things on all the others.
@@moonshot3159 whaaat you mean rabbits don't naturally grow and tend a garden of carrots to feed themselves? obviously, tho they will happily eat them if offered. The association is nonetheless still v strongly there.
@@felixhenson9926 u tryna be funny guy? Root vegetables are not healthy for rabbits. A lil googling skill would do you good.
I do know cat's that eat rabbits though
Before there was a Black and Decker rice cooker, there were a number of Asian rice cookers of the same design. The complicated Zojirushi rice cooker came much later with the development of fuzzy logic. My mom’s ancient decades old Asian rice cooker is very much like the Black and Decker.
Surprised this hasn't been pointed out by people more in the comments. That Zojirushi is a far, far more complicated piece of cooking equipment than the American one he used. Many, many, many Asians in Asia have very simple rice cookers like the one he deems Western. I have a Cuckoo Induction Pressure rice cooker, and before buying it I learned quite a bit about the different technologies because I hated the rice made with the basic cooker as a kid. He should have compared it to something like the Instant Pot, which shows the difference much better since the devices are far more similar in function, while having very different design languages (like the zojirushi isn't a pressure model, but they do exist).
Yes, the Black and Decker model is literally just an updated version of the first rice cooker designed by Shogo Yamada for Toshiba.
Also, rice is usually a simple dish in the West. On the other hand, take a look at some bread-making machines.
I love our Zojirushi rice cooker. Some even have settings for baking bread.
Hmm what is this fuzzy logic? Feels like it’s spreading haha
I’m a multidisciplinary designer from India, it was really hard for me to design clean minimal products or interiors, even in brand design it was really hard for me to subject to the minimalist trend throughout the years, as coming from a culture rich bg, I always felt something was missing in minimalism, intricacies and details always attracted me
Design is like a spiritual practice for me, until and unless I embed my designs with a soul and a philosophy I’m not satisfied with my work
Hey can you provide some examples to help me better understand this. Thanks in advance
@@jatinprasath5840 Examples as in?
Minimalism is the product of cultural bankruptcy it’s a really depressing reflection of the way westerners see the world
I think the details come in when choosing materials, manufacturers, the quality of work, origins and philosophies. Minimalism can still have texture and movement and symbolism, it’s just more restrained and distinct.
You are doing a great job and I really appreciate it. Retired... In NYC, I was a Creative Director and later established Young & Rubicam/Dentsu operation in Greater China.
I would like to thank the algorithm for pointing me to this video. Your effort is most appreciated, kind sir.
21:10 The hole in the building is designed to prevent wind / airflow blockage. Common for places like Hong Kong where lots of tall building are placed together.
As a local Hong Konger I dont see many buildings advertise their "fung shui" designs. Older generations take it into consideration doing interior designs, but most younger generations just don't care about it.
Every tradition has a practical reason behind it. Every so often someone will discover this fact by accidentally reinventing the result of a tradition.
Dragons = wind. Both are right
As a person from Asia, I can confirm that I come from a western culture.
The westest west
singaporean much?? or just hong kong?
@@PrograError anywhere the brits, dutch, spanish, french or portugese set foot
I found this video because it was in my recommended videos on the right. Absolutely fantastic video Design Theory guy.
Your videos are extremely information dense. I'd prefer a slower video talking about these many ideas, but may be it's just me.
Probably the most informationally deep videos I watch.
as an indian who has just been introduced to studio ghibli, i cannot appreciate your point more. it was such a welcome change over the overly 'me' centered disney animations i have watched now and then over the years. it is such a relief to watch people walking up the stairs, changing into slippers to enter homes, cutting vegetables carefully while conversing...all these background actions woven into the main story naturally. not to mention the evocative, beautiful background sceneries - the trees, fields, ponds and weeds . the original stories on which the disney movies were based may also have had a community element to them - the princess and prince were public functionaries more than individuals that needed to seek their fulfillment. but the movie industry made them something else
Ghibli is the best!
Weeb. Have some respect for yourself as an Indian and make your own animations instead of judging either one which is superior to yours -__- love from Russia
@@hollister2320 what are you yapping about
"judging either one which is superior to yours" where did he judge indian animation? he's literally only comparing between studio ghibli and disney, neither of which are at all 'indian'. This is literally a strawman argument, maybe you learnt strawman arguments from your dear leader -__-
You would prolly like movies like Dune or Sicario.
Dune is basically what you said personified.
Its not "me" centered at all imo. It focuses more on the whole vibe of the movie which makes it sick.
Whats that gotta do with you being an Indian
I have my doubts about your examples being an Eastern-Western thing, I think it's more a difference in development.
Like the rice cookers you used as an example, both seem to be available in Japan, it's just that having more rice consumers there is enough demand for a more feature complete cooker.
It's like if you were to compare grills. American grills can get extensive with it's features, while Japanese ones tend to be way simpler.
For the joinery example... Germany and Schwarzwald.
Schwarzwald is in Germany, they speak German and are taught German history. They are part of German culture.
But Schwarzwald is famous for it's woodworking and wood architecture. This won't be because their culture values nature more than Germany, as they are also German.
It's because they have easier access to wood, and kept using it, getting better at it.
Simply put, they have more complex wood joinery, because they're better at it. It is a mark of quality that you can make joinery without screws or nails.
One could add, regarding the web site examples, that Google's start page was completely counter-stream in its simplicity when it was first put up: the start pages of the competitors (yahoo etc) which Google aimed to displace were every bit as complex iirc as the Eastern examples shown in the video...!
@@QuadraticPerplexity Yeah, up until the mid to late 00s, clutter was the norm on the web.
I have to call out the optical illusion at the immediate beginning of the video. There's no way the "center" hexagon could be convex because of its lighting. The light source is coming from the left side; however, the left side of the "center" hexagon is _dark,_ unlike the right side of it. This suggests that the "center" hexagon is concave. It looks more like a set of six hexagonal tiles arranged around a center point, with a hexagonal hole between them.
The only way I can see it as convex is by covering up the rest of the image, in which case it could actually be interpreted either way; but with the edges of the surrounding hexagons, it defeats the illusion.
When the center hexagon is convex the others around it are concave and the light is coming from the right.
I loooove this video and this channel !!! So many interesting theories, enjoyed every minute of it !
Regarding the eastern vs western joinery at the start - a nailed together rabbet joint is considered a *very* simple piece of joinery, which I'm fairly certain could not be said of the eastern joinery example. If you were to compare more difficult western joinery, you'd probably pick a dovetail joint. Which is still very different, but is a much more significant demonstration of skill (at least, if you do it by hand - a router with the right bit can vastly simplify that process).
Yeah, tbh the entire woodworking part of this video is pretty obviously under-researched. It goes a long way towards invalidating the whole thing tbh
1:33 This joint is called "kane tsugi". I use it to make picture frames because of its mechanical advantage over the common miter joint. The reasons behind this joint ARE a part of the philosophy BUT ALSO, Japan is an island nation with LIMITED metal resources (as you mentioned) and the metals they DID have were reserved more for tools and weapons...both often considered sacred in their culture. They were also very self-isolated and refused to even trade with other nations compounding this issue. This placed restrictions on the wood working (sashimono) trades and they had to innovate clever ways to join one thing to another. I believe that THIS was the driving force behind the complexity of Japanese wood working joinery and that the impermanence that it yields was merely "positioned" as philosophical reason rather than material. MHO
Fantastic topic and you did a great job pursuing it.
Fantastic analysis! As a westerner, I often get frustrated with our culture’s black-and-white style of thinking, which often leaves little room for nuance or complexity. People here tend to think that if one thing is true, the opposite cannot also be true-but that’s rarely the case in such a complicated world. The closer you look, the more you’ll find that seemingly contradictory ideas can and do coexist.
Ironically, this video is pretty black-and-white itself. It had the opportunity to expand our understanding in a holistic manner but ended up compartmentalizing and contradicting western culture with cherry-picked arguments.
I am a European, but I spent a large portion of my childhood and teen years in India and Asia. These tests were fun for me, reflecting my overall approach to life being shaped by both these cultures and the three languages I learned as a child. I also find learning more languages gives me a broadening perspective each time. I think differently in Hindi as well, I noticed my moral stance changing automatically unless I stopped myself. And in more subtle ways I think different in English (more casual, extroverted) and German (more formal, hierarchical and introverted). I personally do not like lumping Europe and the Americas together as "The West", since Europe has many differences with the US especially and in social structure is often somewhere between the US and Asia.
I am not a designer, but it got me thinking what an Indian design philosophy would be. It seems to be one of the underdogs, having had a lot of influence in the 60s and 70s and in British design in the early 1800s. As a non-design student I see two things: decoration over quality and a faible for intricate patterns and a lot of colour. As a society, the focus is very much on community and relationships, within large family structures with strict hierarchies and within the stiff hierarchy of society at large and it reflects in the design of houses (with minimalist rooms when only the family sees, and lavishly decorated sitting rooms for visitors and very shoddy rooms for servants, all in the same house.) Often you get a sense of decoration matters more than substance, clothing, houses, cars etc. may not be designed well or be of good, lasting quality with good materials, but even people living in huts will make sure their homes are beautiful and colourful on the outside. Overall, there seems to be a sense of impermanence, in their mentality and in their designs.
(Anyhow, these are just the ramblings of a casual observer, would love it if you picked the topic up and proved me wrong or right... Thankyou for coming to my TED talk.)
It sounds like you understand several languages, (not just speak/write them. Probably good at math, as well)...But flitting between tongues?,.. is impressive.
Interesting. I've heard a phrase from India that someone is 'painting (decorating) the ox cart' when they should be getting on with essential jobs but are faffing around on pet projects and self indulgences.
There's a bit of that hierarchy in old fashioned British homes eg from 1900. There would be a fancy room kept just for entertaining special guests, and the kitchen pretty grim and basic as it was used by a servant if the family could afford one, and domestic work wasn't respected / prestigious.
How does speaking hindi change your moral position? I'm interested.
@@tumultoustortellini Hindi has a deeper vocabulary than English in terms of spirituality and morality, from my limited understanding
interesting observation on indian design philosophy. true, even i, living here, can see that in the last couple of centuries indians may have been too busy buying items sold by the british, or to copy their design, to have any design sense. regarding the decoration fixations, at one time they intensively produced products that were decoration based - textiles, dyes, weaves. In these areas, they still stand tall.yarn, fabrid, weaves, colours, patterns - they own them. regarding architecture, true, there is hardly any indigenous architecture. the lime mortar structures were part of the moghul architecture. used only for large public buildings or homes of the very rich. stone architecture was very mature, but reserved only for major projects like temples (as expected). both beauty and structural elements dominate in temple building..but, these activities came to a halt for a long time now. ordinary dwellings were haphazardly built....the lack of severe winters allowed them to use low quality materials..
Regarding language shaping how we see the world: Vietnamese uses classifiers for nouns, and from discussing this with a lot of local friends, they generally see the world through the filter of these classifiers. Classifiers range from types of objects to shapes of objects to applications of objects to types of immaterial categories (feelings, mental states, events, actions), and even more past that. The worldview filter focuses on types before specifics. Indeed, the specific noun word is referred to as a "private" name.
Interestingly and somewhat surprisingly, this can also result in them not recognising a superclass of things if those things are common enough to be named without a classifier: just try discussing with a Viet how the different types of noodles (different shapes, thicknesses, ingredients and intended dishes) are all still of the category "noodle"! The cultural importance of distinction between these noodle types means that it is beyond basic comprehension that all of these are actually of the type "noodle". I am not kidding. The lens of culture combined with linguistics is incredibly powerful.
Spend a little time observing objects around you in terms of shape (e.g. spherical "quả"), general appearance (e.g. flatness "tấm"), purpose (e.g. machine "máy", vehicle "xe"), ability (e.g. effector upon reality such as animalia "con"), contents (e.g. imagery "bức", tabulation "bảng", information "liệu"), etc.
We actually have this in Indo-European languages too, but it is encoded in word pieces, most of which have been warped over millennia through changes in accent, spelling & pronunciation and transferred between different language families via trade, invasion, colonialism and union. It is more apparent in a monosyllabically-based language like Vietnamese because the syllable boundaries and function of each word remain more visible and apparent, both in writing and speech.
As a Vietnamese, I was surprised and thankful that someone could see through and analyze the way we see the world, since it's something that we're unable to do cause it is akin to taking of "the pink glass". I've always admired the incredible flexibility of English language and how it seamlessly adopts, merges and creates new words as easy as it goes, results in words with greatly condensed meaning, unpredictable and sometimes appear more convoluted than it is by being so separated from the original vocabulary. This effect is most transparent when reading English scientific journal. With Vietnamese you'd force to categorized any words beforehand and break any high concepts down to its most basic elements. This would explain the pragmatic and grounded way that we live compares to how frustrating idealistic Western thoughts appeared to me (throwing all the "-ism" and call it a day)
Same with Chinese. Well, the Vietnamese got the classifier system & noodles from centuries of Han political & cultural colonialism.
In some languages classifiers are needed because of the large number of homophones, requiring a way to differentiate between them.
Outstanding!!! One of the few UA-cam offerings worth listening to (and watching) again.... This is more important than it seems.
Wow, thank you!
Love your channel and the fact you cite your sources
Very interesting video. As a westerner who lives in Korea, I totally concur about how language changes how people think. As an example, when we talk about stress in western countries we talk about how someone is BECOMING stressed, in a way that adds stress as an attribute to that person - essentially they are turning into stress being a part of themselves. Korea looks at stress completely differently. In Korea stress is RECEIVED, not a new characteristic that describes a person. That's a MASSIVE change in how we view just one aspect of life right there. If you view someone as having stress as a new inherent thing, you are seeing the stress as a part of the person, almost a part of their nature or personality, rather than a separate thing that has HAPPENED to that person. However, if you view stress the Korean way, you see stress as a separate thing on it's own that someone has RECEIVED - it's not a part of that person or them inherently - it's something that they have received and carry. That's a HUGE difference in how one aspect of life out of millions of aspects of life is viewed. If you view stress as being a part of a person, you are a LOT more likely to blame that person for how they are and what they do in response to that stress If you view stress as something that person had no choice in receiving, as a separate thing to the person themselves, you are a lot LESS likely to blame that person for how they deal with and behave with respect to stress.
Now think about how many other things are thought of differently - and that's almost everything in the language. Korean in many respects is almost the opposite of English. Korean is a fascinating language for these reasons. Think about how, if millions of different aspects of life is thought about with a different lens, how that might lead to people thinking in a totally different way. We of the west can learn a LOT from Asian cultures that we would benefit from that, first and foremost, directly affect how we treat other people.
Thats pure fucking cap lmfao.
Westerners love to see mental stuff as some sort of seperate "foreign illness" that they somehow magically got from their environment.
Meanwhile easterners see mental stuff as something someone just becomes. Its a problem within the person itself. You end up being depressed/stressed. Its entirely within your head.
Im Bhuddist. Thats like a core part of our ideology.
If your mad, sad, or unhappy at some shit, thats on you. You CHOSE to feel that way about it.
Its all in your head. Theres people in Syria getting blown up that are just as happy as you are. Its all purely based on your perspective of the material world, not the material world itself.
Theres also sumn to be said abt how you define how u "feel".
Cus some people define "feeling" as just a base feeling of dopamine. Popping a perc would make you feel "happy", just temporarily.
Other people define feeling as some general feeling of satisfaction with how shits going.
In the east, people generally dont categorize their feelings into being happy, sad, or anything.
Like they know if their feeling intensely sad or angry, but they dont know when their happy or joyous or having fun.
Like me personally, i cant really tell you if I feel happy or sad at this moment. Regardless how I feel, il just be doing shit.
Its too complex to break it down and categorize it like that yk?
Ha ja mi seyo,, how is my spelling ? I've only heard it said. I believe language itself is a huge part of what molds the culture. Greek I heard is the best to form pictures in out mind of that something is by words, and why it's used as the root for plant species. I think each language channels specific brain patterns to form.
@@wes9053 Haha! I need to read Korean in the Korean writing, lol! Korean writing is VERY easy to learn - you can learn to read and write anything in Korean it in less than half an hour. I think Ha ja mi seyo, 하자미세요, probably means something like "Let's do it!" 하자 means Let's do! and 세요 is kind of a polite ending, very roughly similar to 'please' in English.
Linguistic Relativism in action. Loved the educational content about stress. Thanks for sharing!
@@erickpalacios8904 You're welcome. I live in South Korea because I'm a teacher, so I thank you for the compliment. 🙂 The Korean language has a lot more interesting perspectives. This is only one word out of thousands that alters perceptions of how people think. It doesn't even scratch the surface of examples. Learning Korean is like a meditation of enlightenment in many ways.
As a Westerner who has often been a misfit and wished for people around me to take context and nuance more into account when assessing events or conditions, I found this enlightening. I've known for decades that our culture affects how we perceive everything and how hard it can be to recognize culture's influence ("fish only recognizes water once it is out of it"), and I had no idea about these impacts you highlighted from the ban on intrafamily marriage and the Protestant Reformation and such. I'm sure I will be doing a lot of contemplating on what I learned from you today. Thank you.
Nerd
This is certainly important, but I'm fairly sure ignorance for nuance and context isn't that big, they very well can recognise context and nuance.
Some people learn pretty early that they wear pink glasses when everyone around them wears blue glasses. For one it makes communication extremely difficult, but it also just leads to thinking about these kinds of things far sooner than most. When there's only one person with pink glasses, the people with blue glasses seem to be more likely to dismiss that one person as an anomaly rather than actually acknowledge the different color glasses.
@@Cecilia-ky3uw do you think so? Because I often find that the people I interact with prefer the simplest, most straightforward explanation of all sorts of things and are happy to disregard the relevance of anything that didn't obviously affect them personally or that happened more than a few years ago. Maybe the people you come across are different.
@@notashroom I've noticed some are like this too, but they can also recognise nuance. But even so, you can find nuance in say economic thought, yes, quite a few sweeping statements are often made but economic thought is fairly diverse and there's a bunch of caveats you can find to statements, conventional economic thought for example suggests interest rake hikes decrease inflation. One guy said it could increase inflation under certain situations, how? I forgot, but he had a full explanation for it. And mathematicians sure do not think there's only one way to solve any and every problem.
The point in here being that western made ideas certainly do not lack nuance.
Brilliant information. You've got a new subscriber. Congratulations and regards from México.
that was the most valuble 36 min for a while! thank you
I am an Indian and I saw concave. But the most interesting thing is during my one year I spent in Chicago, US, a part of me felt so much at home than I ever did during my 27 years in India prior to that. Sadly Americans didn't share the same sentiment and the feeling of being an "other" eventually made me take the hasty decision of quitting my job and returning to India. I am always stressed by the "chaotic" people around me in India.
Well, you are a foreigner. Americans hate foreigners. Why they don't hate themselves is a mystery because basically they are all immigrants.
I bet your views have changed a lot after having been there.
I’m American and saw convex - very interesting.
look at the shadows and highlights . the left of the outer hexagons are lit and the right of the central hexagon is lit - this means it must be concaved. if it was convex the protruding left side of the central hexagon would block the light from hitting the right side of it and it would too be lit on the left . its not a n illusion he was just wrong.
@@DocBree13
look at the shadows and highlights . the left of the outer hexagons are lit and the right of the central hexagon is lit - this means it must be concaved. if it was convex the protruding left side of the central hexagon would block the light from hitting the right side of it and it would too be lit on the left . its not a n illusion he was just wrong.
Come to New York City!
Philosophy of Language was the craziest course I ever took for your exact point about processing the outside world. The language you use crafts your interpretation of everything. When you realize other cultures have words for thing you've felt or seen is amazing.
What if we flip it around ? What came first this culture or the language ? My guess is both influenced each other a lot and culture probably came before language.
@@autohmae I imagine it’s like a flywheel where subjects of focus get deeper vocabularies and then those vocabularies influence future thought
I actually discovered this on my own & as a small-time entrepreneur I saw that these special words/vocabulary can also help you in making products especially cause you understand the human pain-point & describe it & thus have a problem to work on.
I actually admire the fact that you were able to take history into context and still allow some theory and changes to advancement in cultures and and how they industrialized and improved. The nuances is great with this one.
Dude, expertly accomplished segway and overall excellent video. You have a new follower
That’s a nice topic, as Ukrainian who lives in the US, I can say that sentences in English build kinda backwards from Slavic languages. The meaning is the same but it feel like you using Mac OS instead of Windows OS. However, the UX and the way how both cultures interact and absorb information is very similar. Probably it is because last couple generations grow up on Hollywood movies and western entertainment. Anyway, thank you for this content! Very unique and helpful not only for the designers, hope your channel succeeds!🤜🤛
In Slavic languages, sentences are not structured backward compared to English; that's nonsense. For example, in Russian and Ukrainian, declensions are used, so the word order in sentences is flexible but not reversed! Sentences in Russian and Ukrainian can be structured in the same sequence as in English.
@@zuowa linguistically, Ukrainian (I won’t speak on Russian since I didn’t study its philology) and English have different theme/rheme placement in the sentence. Thus, the original commenter is partially correct. As a translator, I can really confirm that sometimes a grammatically correct word order just doesn’t sound right
Omg yes. In our family (east asian) we don't like using iOS because it feels suffocating, while android feels like we can breathe. Thought it was interesting to see someone else make a similar comparison!
English is only SVO. Ukrainian - an other Slavic languages - are flexible: SVO, SOV, OVS, OSV, VSO, VOS are all good.
@@amjan Only SVO? Not if like Yoda, you speak. The best order, OSV is.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the invention of the alphabet as being part of the divide. Until the Canaanites invented the first alphabet every letter reflected a whole word. By breaking the symbol down to a single sound, it simplified writing so more people could read, as it only required a few dozen characters rather than the hundreds required in hieroglyphics. This quickly spread to Greece and Rome, which would have had a strong influence on their cultures.
In contrast, China still has a written language that consists of thousands of pictographs, which spread into Korea, Vietnam, and Japan to give them a written language. The alphabet didn't reach east Asia until the 15th century when europeans started showing up trying to trade with China and the spice islands.
I'm pretty sure the introduction of the alphabet into a culture also had something to do with design sensibilities.
We still use pictures to describe entire words and ideas. Let me give some examples. ⛔ No entry.☣ Biohazard. 🚹🚺 Men's and women's toilets. ❤Love.
It is often faster to read these symbols rather than phonetic words. Our culture is not quite so binary as you might think.
Korea switched from Chinese characters to a phonetic script a few centuries ago, did they change their culture to match?
@@ChrisSmith-bh2hgand music for emotions
Good point. I didn't know about the Canaanites. Kudos to them.
Y'all be out here re-inventing astrology
Great video, I love the dive into the cultural and metaphysical aspects of cultural approaches to design.
This is my top 3 youtube channel right now. Enlightening
This is one of your best videos. There are these 3-5 Videos on your channel, that are just phenomenal, and this is definetly one of them
Interesting that British Sign Language builds sentences the same way that the East views the fish tank; describing the scene first, then the objects, then the action. Completely opposite to how English sentences are constructed. Western Deaf people are able to process more visual information than hearing people, so might prefer Eastern designs! Generally Deaf culture is very specific and crafted by sign language. Great video!
Super interesting and very thought provoking. I’m going to try and be mindful of how I perceive these things now and see if I can achieve a different perspective.
Thanks for doing this! Very interesting! I've come across the role of culture on thought so many places lately, I thought I'd add this to my list of influences. No regrets
This really really make me realize how hybridized of a way of thought I have compared to many of my peers. I'm from Canada, got in trouble for drawing things without any kind of focus because there was "too much going on", not only paired animals together side by side but placed carrots underneath the rabbit when doing an eerily similar test in early grade school.
BRO SAME HERE.
Whats with us Canadians thinking like this??? Theres so many comments from other Canadians here saying the EXACT same shit.
Like it might just be the fact that alot of us are from Eastern Europe and Asia.
Bro litterally, my discrete math profs are either American or from Western Europe.
Meanwhile my calculus/physics profs are either Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, or Vietnamese.
That's funny, cos I'm Canadian and I said something similar in my own comment. I went the Eastern way in about half the tests he gave. I described the background of the fish tank first, prefer the crazy phone designs, and put the rabbit and the carrot together. I'll be honest, too, I didn't actually see a really pronounced difference in the pictures drawn by the Canadian and Japanese kids. If anything, I thought the Canadian ones had more or less the same stuff, but the Canadian ones were a little less dense. I did notice the difference a little more in the more professional art, though.
Yeah, my parents are European and I'm in the same boat. My dad is Polish, though, while my mum is Dutch. I dunno if lots of people from Eastern Europe makes that much of a difference though... Like, there are big communities of immigrants from those areas in the US as well, aren't there? Less so in Australia it seems; I dunno about the UK. It'd be interesting to compare Western countries with each other.
Great video, being aware of the subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways we can be influenced by our culture is vital to the formation of an objective view of ones own reality. You've brought up a lot of good points that I'll probably spend the next few hours thinking about so, thanks for that.
"The formation of an objective view of ones own reality"
That sounds pretty contradictory because "ones own reality" is your own subjective wiew of reality.
so you would form a objective view on your subjective view of reality?
Nevermind, that actually makes sense.
Never have I thought cultural difference would designs, products and such that drastically!
Thanks for the video!
Extremely insightful video, I’ve never thought of language this way
The Eastern Joinery is clearly better, but at the expense of MASSIVE amounts of time. This was probably due to time being more abundant than resources, like iron nails or timber.
It's literally not. There are many examples of "Japanese" style joinery techniques documented in Roubo's L'Art du Menuisier. Just because you don't know anything about Western woodworking practices does not mean Eastern joinery is "better." People have been woodworking since the ancient Egyptians. We figured most of this out a long time ago.
The west didn't use nails very often either. Before the Industrial Revolution nails were reserved for important pieces, decorations, or the occasional crucifixion. Older nails weren't even that much more worth the time saved considering they were much larger and heavily tapered. If you were a medieval peasant of any pre-industrial society you wouldn't be using nails for your home or furniture.
@@PixelBytesPixelArtist The Eastern joinery requires no fastners or glue, but is a very strong joint, relying just on the skill of the carpenter.
@@blurglide All good joinery is like that. This is not at all exclusive to traditional east asian joinery. Joints that cannot hold without glue or fasteners never enter common usage in any culture. Honestly like 99% of joints used in the east are also used in the west, mortise and tenons, finger, dovetails, and laps are common everywhere and were likely invented multiple times independently. The other 1% are the joints you see in youtube videos that a sensible craftsman would only use for high-value pieces (though i would make an exception for the eastern mortised scarf joint that does seems unique to china and japan and not uncommon).
the oldest company on earth is a japanese shrine-building company, and most of the oldest wooden structures on earth are in japan. Clearly their joinery is different, even if it is a result of relative resource scarcity of things like metals
Great and very well explained video.
As industrial Designer from Europe working in China there are some things that might be also very interesting and related to this topic:
- How size of the market pushed the west to innovate, differentiate and compete while China was focused on manufacturing efficiency, low cost and low quality solutions
- How complexity of details and colors in Asia had always been more associated with premium products and craftsmanship
- how Chinese characters and the way they are written influence their perception of the world (and how ancient that perception often is)
- how much Asian perception relies only on visual perception and how that made fake products widely accepted on the market
- how brands define social status in China and why many are buying products just to get, display and maintain their social status 😊
Mind-blowing and highly enjoyable.Good work. 😊
I am amazed by the amount of high quality content you just shared. Super rich, well structured and valuable. Please continue I will be happy to support you as a Patreon!
In regards to Feng Shui, there is also a western tradition of geomancy that was practiced in ancient times. It began with things like the placement of megalithic standing stones, so they were situated over underground energy vortexes. The practiced evolved all the way up to the sophisticated temple construction that utilized geometry to reflect the relationship of the Earth, Sun and the cosmos. This was a precise science of how to create sacred space. While western geomancy was lost for a long time, it is being rediscovered again.
It would be tragic, if anyone built anything according to geomantic ideas, ever again.
There are no "underground energy vortexes". Get a grip, of powerful antipsychotics.
@@bikerfirefarter7280 it is airy wording for real things. Places that just have that "feel". Mostly it has been tracked down to sound dynamics below normal human hearing ranges. But it has a very real effect on human brains.
But there are still unkowns; remeber we all are brains in jars that is what a skull is; and everything we experince is real for us, but there could be a very phycial objective cause.
But. back to the o.p.'s "energy vortexs" Imagine almost un-nervingly silent as the hills dampen all distant noises, finding peace and inner refelction with nothing but those silent thoughts you never knew where there.
or deep ingressing channels that allow the ground to rumble as wind blows miles away causing an very unerving sensation even though *How* humans are even capable of perciving it is a mystery.
The latter actually causes hallucinations in people, one common hallucination comes because the soundwaves get so wide they litterally resonate with eyeballs creating a deformation in a tall narrow shape, that the brain interpets as a person. What better place to reflect on those youve lost then a place that magnifies that effect on purpose?
We have a better understanding of the world thanks to centuries of study and writtings to study from and advance. But that does not mean the ancents where not observing something real, just that we can better understand it; sometimes.
Now imagine what the future will look like when we fully underatand the workings of our brains? Intentional sound caused spectors moving through your vision while never being there every halloween, finding peace that you never could experience if we did not look into ghosts and energy vortexes?
This stuff might be coming out soon, we have a solid understanding of sound.
@@AnonymousAnarchist2 I refer you to my previous comment.
To be fair to the Himba people, the color blue is the youngest color to enter the vocabulary of western languages. If you look back to the Illiad or Odyssey, blue is referenced as green too. Likewise in Japanese, the word "ao" can be both blue or green.
Also, the BBC took... extensive license in reporting the study on that. I'm about to post a top-level comment that says more. Short version: they can tell blue, they're just slightly slower about it.
Orange is even newer.
@@HrHaakon linguistically? Hmm. Looking it up, it seems at least in Berlin & Kay's model, that's accurate. That doesn't match my recollection of what I'd heard...... _somewhere_ ... now I wonder!
This channel is so underrated, i'm subscribing.
ive thought about some of the things youve said here but never been able to articulate them. good video, good research.
Wow, what a good UA-cam video! Perfect for my sunday morning.
But from my unprofessional point of view, there are some things I would like to add:
- The butterfly example is underestimated. I speak German and when I see Italians using the word “Farfalla” and English speakers using their word, I literally feel trapped in my culture.
- The Greeks were not like that, they became like that. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus returns from the war (which ended thanks to the Trojan Horse). One could say that Odysseus is forced by his personal fate to adopt the new Greek epistomology.
- It's said Japanese children learn verbs first, while Westerners should pronounce nouns first. When babies start using words, I always feel like Western parents who hear "mama" or "dad" are misunderstanding their babies. When they say "Mama" it means to me "pick me up"... (said with a grain of salt).
- The ban on cousin marriage and the invention of protestantism were at the same time, it's called the end of the Middle Ages in Europe.
- For centuries, clocks were works of art (for nobles) and not mass-produced goods. I have always seen clocks as a byproduct of competition to speed up sea voyages in the 18th century. The British Board of Longitude offered prize money for better clocks. It was in the end of the 18th century that Swiss watchmakers began producing them on an industrial scale. Maybe it was for most consumers back then mainly a matter of keeping up with the spirit of the times (e.g. the Protestant church), more a matter of "seize the day" and using your gifts than showing off.
This is very interesting, thanks for providing additional context. The only very small correction I want to make is that cousin marriage bans by the church started at least 900 years before Protestantism became a thing.
It's interesting how even in art classes in western culture (Canada), I was taught to "use the background to draw the viewer's eyes to the focal point", very much like how you said in the video that when looking at an image westerners would usually focus on the focal point much more than the background. It's a really interesting difference, since it's almost like we were taught that the background doesn't matter for anything other than drawing the eye to the focal point in a sense.
Yes! I’ve noticed it in places I didn’t expect like animal crossing. American youtubers often make distinct focal points called builds and anything in between is called filler. Which doesn’t get as much attention, it’s just to fill in space like it sounds!! The connecting areas are often intentionally very uniform to make the builds stand out. It drives me a bit crazy because even though I’m a westerner that’s not my thought process at all 😂 I just can’t comprehend why the rest (usually paths, plants, cliffs, or water) is less important. I don’t know how it started but people sometimes design things to be seen from designated viewing points, which actually reminds me of some Japanese gardens now that I think of it
Thank you for a great presentation that in its way helped to explain some of my own observations without my understanding of why I had come to them.
What an awesome and well researched video!
Im from germany, and I get german can sound a bit rough, but NO ONE actually speaks like this.
The way ‚Schmetterling‘ is actually pronounced, also has a nice ring to it, actually kind of similar like in other languages.
Also ‚Schmettern‘ means to launch something with huge force, while ‚ling‘ is actually the diminutive, so its actual meaning is a little someone that launches air with extreme force.
i hate that example so much, wonder if the other arguments are bs as well.
Some are and some aren't/ The video includes a lot of conjecture. Take it with a grain of salt. Like most pop philosophy, it's for entertainment more than education.@@danel1922
....and the Schmetter- in Schmetterling isnt derived from schmettern but from a different word for Schmand, which is... A type of cream I guess? The word actually translates to "Little guy that likes dairy cream"
_"Also ‚Schmettern‘ means to launch something with huge force...."_
Me: Imagining a butterfly being catapulted into space in full anime style; all dramatic.
_"...while ‚ling‘ is actually the diminutive,..."_
Me: But the catapult is actually tiny.
_"...so its actual meaning is a little someone that launches air with extreme force."_
Me: Ok, that's kind of poetic. But doesn't that kind of describe a frog as well?
@@ayior schmand, cream, dairy, like butter in butterfly? which even sounds similar: butter and schmetter
Nice video.
Looking at those children's drawings with the focus being completely different from West vs East I am reminded of my childhood.
Drawing things within the context of a whole was my default way of thinking which turned into my approach to writing and history.
I excelled in school and was placed in advanced classes with higher grade students and the 2 asian kids in my school. This continued up until I was about 13 or 14, when I found myself increasingly discouraged from thinking this way by both my peers and my teachers. There was no reward for thinking different; I'd end up with the same result as people putting in a lot less effort.
I've seen many people talk about 'gifted kid burnout' but it never felt apt to my situation. This also coincided with when I started taking science classes in school, which I continued even into my undergrad. Despite managing with the work just fine, I didn't excel like I once did. Even philosophically I wrestle with the idea of the extent of too much value placed in individualism, while still recognizing the importance. This video has given me a lot to think about, thank you for making it.
Thanks for the nuances in this presentation.
Brilliant video mate fantastic analysis. 👍
Great video ! I would like to point out that saying that the "taijitu symbol describe the duality in all things" is a very western interpretation. I am a westener but i have been interested in taoism and zen for some time now. I would say that taijitu describe the NON duality of all things. Opposites are one because they have to be part of the one and same concept in order to be consider opposites in the first place. For exemple, you can not describe something as cold without knowing what hot is. In order to use one you need the other so they are non-dual. Which in my opinion makes much more sense in the interconnected/holistic vision of the eastern culture you describe here.
Your explanation and his are two sides of the same coin.
😁
"In order to use one you need the other so they are non-dual." I feel like this is the exact opposite of what 'dual' means. More accurate to say, "In order to use one, you need the other, so they are dual."
7:23 The first phone here is a Nokia 7280, so not a Japanese phone, but a Finnish one. A little googling tells me the lead designer for the phone was Tej Chauhan, so not a Finn, but still a western person. Nokia had a lot of other weird, flipping and/or rotating designs, and some phones with pretty... unique button layouts as well.
Just an observation, the overall point still definitely stands.
tej chauhan is indian probably from rajasthan
@@jeffinjoseph8916 I'm not going to argue his heritage, since I couldn't find info on his parents, but at the very least he was born in London and graduated from Central St Martins School of Art and Design in London according to his website. In any case, my comment was a minor nitpick, mostly about Nokia, and not all that relevant to the topic of the video.
wonderful video! I found the concept of a word 'speaking something into existence' to be very powerful.
Awesome video! I couldn’t help but thinking as I watched it that there were sooo many opportunities to talk about Marxism, which arose from and simultaneously contradicted the Greek and Enlightenment views of reality.
How culture is molded by material conditions, the holistic interconnectedness of all things, an emphasis on relationships over distinct categories, a focus on internal and external contradictions as opposed to an outright rejection of contradiction in understanding phenomena, and on and on. There are so many opportunities to draw parallels! Dialectics feel like “Eastern thinking” applied to a “Western scientific method”.
Dialects is BS. It's nothing more than semantics sorcery.
I was just blown away by this video. I am from the UK and have lived in Japan and Asia for 30 years, and the insight here gave me so many Aha moments, i could not believe I had not come across msot of them before. Thank you for this John! I will be sharing widely!
Cool thing is learning another language (and actually using it as a primary communication tool, not just doing Duolingo in your free time) can also shift your perspective. I am a native English speaker who became proficient enough at Japanese to use it as a language of communication at work and the primary language of communication with friends in my daily life while I lived in Japan. While watching the video he references of the pond and fish, I actually saw the green first then the fish, then the snail and the seaweed. So my brain almost warred between my now-conflicting world views. It has actually helped me to become more empathetic because I can see both sides of the coin now and can switch between them. My native worldview is still the dominant one but the experience of living and assimilating into the opposite society has definitely broadened the variety of ideas I can access and understand.
Great eye opening video. Thank you
fantastic video! Absolutely loved the references and the insights!
i wish i had this video a couple of weeks ago, when i was explaining the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to some friends of mine.
this video did an amazing job trying to probe a little bit into the differences between west and eastern way of thinking.
thanks for all the research and work put into it, and congrats for a video well done.
Videos like this make me really proud and happy to be an industrial designer
Once I purchased a handmade rice bowl from an artisan by the beach. I loved that bowl, I cried when it broke. Mass produced bowls are to be thrown against the wall when you're angry. Lol
I am so impressed I learned so much today
Very good video, thank you! Will definitely subscribe
"Language isn't just a tool for communication; it's a lens through which we interpret and shape our reality." Oof, i'm so using this one.
Like the demonetizatiion and blocking of videos turned the suicides and murders into something less impactful because the change of wording in social media took away the aggression of the acts? Yeah, language totally changes how you perceive the world.
This is very interesting. I’m colorblind. Every color I’ve learned over my life requires context otherwise I’m just guessing. If my context changes, like a stop light that is horizontal instead of vertical, the colors change and I become incapable of telling the colors apart. I’d imagine natural processes take more credit for our perception than culture. 🤷♂️
absolutely fascinating video, learnt a lot watching this
Deep and fascinating, enjoyed the whole video!
This is incredible. Something me and my Asian American friends and family mused over while growing up. It’s incredible the amount of thought and care you put into this video. I think you captured my sentiments while adding a lot of historical facts and context. I really appreciate all your caveats, and all the comments on this video that provide more context. You’ve kicked off a complex but fascinating conversation with such open mindedness.
I watched alot of machine learning, environmental and economics videos as a kid.
I always got the sense that there are things in life that are too complex to break down analytically.
Tell your friends to go back to Asia
I'm just glad that somebody was talking about how culture shapes anything. Years ago, I was thinking that language influenced culture and that culture influenced language. I am also happy to learn that there are humans that can hold opposing things in their head and that both can be true. I enjoyed this talk, it would be good if peoples from different cultures and beliefs could learn more about- and from, each other.
I see this very clearly between generations of a culture let alone different cultures. Sometimes the differences are beneficial and sometimes they drive you mad.
Amazing video my man!
Jesus... I thought I was coming to peep some cool Japanese joinery and got hit with the whole history of the world.
Wow! as a Western artist, I find that introduction of the video incredibly useful to further develop a design language that tries to break away from design traditions that I'm used to.
I don't really see a need to break away from Western design traditions, in what ways may it benefit one?
@@locinolacolino1302 try to make your art fundamentallyt different so that it in an abstract kind of way stands out. however, breaking away doesn't mean I'm abandoning them, rather hybridize or not be only constrained to western design traditions.
Thank you for your great videos