Korean Job Discussion Forums

[KimchiNinja]

Westerners practice INTELLECTUAL DISPUTATION as their main verbal pastime.

What does this mean? Let us examine these two words using the dictionary while drinking our morning coffee...

* Intellectual -- "developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience"

* Disputation -- "an academic exercise in oral defense of a thesis by formal logic"

The two words put together mean -- an academic debate of what exists, often ignoring experience, intuition, and based on "what ought to be" or other crap which exists only in the human mind. Yet what exists continues to exist! Better to just observe what exists and skip the intellectual debate. Koreans, perhaps because of Eastern philosophy, are quite good at avoiding intellectual disputation.

[FriendlyDaegu]

[Stain]

Ninja, westerners are prone to opinions and opinions are based on emotions, and also experience, which influences them in that emotion. It is precisely this which prohibits a view of 'what is', of course not all the time but it does blurry the perception. And not only westerners, but the human race in general. Sure, instict comes into play, but we all know how faulty they can be.

[The Cosmic Hum]

[KimchiNinja]

[The Cosmic Hum]

[KimchiNinja]

[cabeza]

[yodanole]

It ultimately devolves into the mutually assured destruction that come of invoking "The Pompous Ass Fallacy of Logic ( informal ). "You do not agree with me so you (A) clearly do not understand all the issues (B) have not thought this through clearly or (C) are a bloomin' idiot.

I usually just assume the worst case ( and most likely ) scenario, and go directly to ( C ).

[metalhead]

AMERICA it's the same in AMERICA.

[KimchiNinja]

[joelove]

[Adam Carolla]

[KimchiNinja]

[KimchiNinja]

You guys know the history of intellectual argument right?

Let's start at the beginning. During the Paleolithic there is no use for intellectually disputing things. Things just are, you dispute with a spear if you dispute at all.

But 2500 years ago in the Iron Age there is an explosion of art/culture. It's quite interesting in that it happens simultaneously across the world. Philosophy is born...

* West -- Around 500BC the Greeks invent philosophy, but it quickly morphs into debate. Various forms evolve. One form is actually designed to take something which is not true, and by convincing argument, make people believe that it is true! A questionable use of intelligence. It is peculiar to me that philosophy and argument were linked as one in this culture.

* East -- Around 600BC in China we see philosophy, Lau Tsu with Taoism. This school of thought is focused on understanding the nature of things, wisdom. Not only is there no argument, but their philosophy is aggressively anti-argument, the thinking being that argument accomplishes nothing good.

Which is why you guys argue so much, you are decedents of Greek thinking!! And it's why Koreans don't argue, because they are decedents of a different way of thinking; they find intellectual argument pointless. Now you know and can use this to have better relations in the East!