Truth and Asian societies

I came across this post from a Japanese friend of Fransicso's about how she perceived the Venezulean referendum results. I shook my head because the Japanese friend is egregiously mistaken about Western civ's commitment to the truth comes from its monothesism. Actually, it was the ancient Greeks, whose society was polytheistic, that interested itself with investigating what is truth.

In fact, the best Greek minds- the Ionian philosophers- aka the pre-Socratics, Pythagoras, Socrates, Xenopheon, Aristotle, Plato and others scorned traditional Greek religion as puerile and ridiculous; hence they developed philosophy to investigate what truth is and how to know it.

However, I was sufficently curious about this outlook, that I contacted Joshua and asked him if this moral relativism was also pervalent in Korea. He wrote back stating that Koreans also share a similar view. That evil depends on the relationship. He even referred me to a book entitled:Think No Evil: Korean Values in the Age of Globalization Joshua's response also corroborated a working hypothesis of mine: Asian societies favour harmony- Joshua calls it compromise; whereas Western society favours liberty.

A liberty to raise uncomfortable about life, truth and the unreflectd societal consensus, etc. Questions that for Asian societies would unsettle, if not disrupt, the vegetative statis of life and society that are held as the highest ideals.
We can cite many episodes in Asian history: In Japan, by the late 1600s the shogun expelled the foreigners, banned Christanity and ferociously persecuted the Japanese converts to death or hiding. They and the foreigners represented an unsettling threat to traditional Japanese society and his power. In China, there was the 1900 Boxer rebellion where the Dowager empress stoked a heightened sense of humilation among the Chinese, encouraged xenophobic groups like the Boxers and then unleashed them on the foreign concessions in orgy of killings.

Plato espoused a similar view in the The Republic. He regarded change as evil and stability as good. However, at the end of his life, he grudgingly conceded in the The Laws that change wasn't completely evil as long as legislation
regulated its scope and pace. Western philospohers have always accepted a certain inevitability about change and have incorporated this dynamic by asking if it affects the truth and in what manner.
In the end, I found Francisco's Japanese friend's analysis to be unhelpful, uninsightful and totally useless because it spout the turgid, regurgitated clichés that encourage both apathy and spritual paralysis.

L'horaire commerciale étendue: le cabinet se divise aussi

Aucune surprise qu'au sien du cabient québécois on aperçoit la même division entre les ministres que les citoyens à l'égard de l'extension de l'horaire commerciale. Le Minsitre de l'industrie l'appuie tandis que son homologue de la famille s'y oppose. Le deuxième ministre craint que étendre ces horaires-là nuiriait la concilation famille-travail qu'est l'une de les planchers importantes de la plataforme électorale du Parti libéral.

Tous le monde connaît ma position à l'égard de cette proposition faite par Cadillac Fairview. Je ne vois aucune logique commercial d'étendre l'horaire commercial pendant 12 heures. Selon moi, cette décision expose encore un fois de plus, la crise démographique québécoise. Puisque les couples n'ont pas d'enfants ou peu comme jadis; or, les commerçants ne font pas des chiffre d'affaires comme auparavant.

Donc, ils doivent trouver un nouveau moyen pour que leurs commerces restent rentables et fleurissent. Cependant, on ne doit pas cacher l'aspect du conflit de classes. N'est-il pas interéssant à noter que la plupart des employés du commerce en détail sont de femmes monoparaentales? Elles sont, en conséquence, plus vulnerables pusiqu'elles doivent travailler pour soutenir leurs familles. Elles sont donc trop désorganisées pour revendiquer leur opposition à cette extension. On peut facilement conclure que si ces employées-là s'organiseraient dans un group d'intérêt commun, les carrefours/grands espaces commerciaux n'auront osé à la proposer...à moins sans calculer les compensations de temps supplémentaire à payer ou les coûts d'embauchages des nouveaux salariés. C'est à dire que l'argent aurait décider contre les commerçants. En tout cas cette controverse vient de commencer et on doit être attentif de comment elle évoluera dans le futur prochain.