People growing up in the western world are educated and trained according to the greek/roman philosophy, logic and science. We take it for granted that all people in the world are using this foundation in their thinking. However, this is certainly not true for the majority of the world population. It is already helpful if we accept the fact that not all people share our very basic beliefs and ways of thinking. This can be illustrated very nicely with an experience from the arab world.
I was traveling as young man in the Iran from Isfahan to Teheran in a bus. The bus was jammed with local people and a couple of friendly English speaking locals tried their English and were asking how I liked the country and gave tips what places I should visit. Then the bus slowed down at a place where one of the accidents typical for the desert road must have happened. A driver of a pretty old car had fallen to sleep and had hit a large rock. A small group of mourning people stood next to the wrecked car. Suddenly these people started to throw stones toward the bus. The bus driver accelerated sharply and we escaped.
Now I asked my new friends what happened. They explained to me that the people had seen a stranger (me) in the bus and thought I would be responsible for the accident. Certainly I could not be responsible for the accident because I arrived at least one hour after the accident. That’s what I thought. But my new friends explained to me that they do not share our basic western belief of causality that the cause of an effect must be in the past and not in the future. If you think about it (and a little bit about Einstein) you may also consider that Aristotle is not always right.
I guess the first step to understand the people in the Eastern countries is to realize that they do not share our western “basic beliefs”. This does not solve all communication problems between West and East. However, I found this knowledge very helpful when meeting people in the East. By the way there are also a lot of people in the Western world which do not trust the Aristotele principles and have constructed their own weird views of the world.
