Didier:Your post was wonderful!
I've been interested in oriental culture since childhood. To the Western mind it is alien, however no less appropriate. We think as we think, often depending on where we are raised.
However I'm a firm believer in the axiom that travel broadens the mind (if we let it). By interacting with other cultures we see another way of "living", another way of viewing the world, albeit our attempts to do so are vicarious.
Before I visited the States (for example), I generally saw Americans as boorish. Now I understand that they have a different perspective which is no less valid for their nonhomogenous culture, but is wildly different from a huge proportion of the rest of the planet.
As for our religio-cultural identity, I believe it is nearly inseparable from the environment in which we are nurtured. Perhaps the way in which Christianity attempts to straddle the divide explains in some small measure why its adherents have proved so fractious?
Terry:Have you studied the structure of the Chinese language? It is logical par excellence, leading the people of China to have a mind that is structured in that logic to an almost excessive degree.
You cite an example of either/or/both, as a demonstration of logic failure. That would be a common failing with a Boolean structured mind. The state of "both" is common to the point of universality. They probably find the Western version of "logic" kind of primitive. The real point being that their mindset works for them.
Is the cup half full or half empty?