Nisbett Collectivism Vs Individualism

Nisbett introduces the differences amongst the two areas of the world in an historical form. Nisbett reveals how westerners tend to focus on exact rules and categories, whereas Easterners focus on the context. He does this by analyzing each school of thought. Western schools of thought stem from ancient Greece. In ancient Greece, the great philosophers of the West lived, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The Western philosophy focused mainly on individual freedom and responsibility. Every individual was always looking out for themselves. This focus on self leads constant competitiveness to emerge amongst the ancients. This concept explains the ruthless wars and how democracy came about. If every place was ruled by a single individual,
Interestingly, Nisbett reveals these differences by redefining what community is in each culture. In individualistic cultures, the community is defined more as a society. This is reflected best through the urban areas of America, such as Atlanta and Manhattan. In these places, people look out for themselves. Granted, due to the size of these areas, many understand why because a million people cannot seemingly be dependent on one another. However, in societies, personal freedom is encouraged and solidarity is not a priority. The focus on personal freedom has probably been the downfall of American Society. Even though democracy is supposed to represent everyone in government, politicians tend to look out mainly for themselves and thus all opinions are not heard. Thus, many people would unify and their collective opinions would then be heard. Given that, collectivism has its value. Under collectivism, cultures have actual communities. The actual definition of communities is upheld. Therefore, solidarity is valued over personal freedom. This collectivistic thought is reflected best in many of the casue-based groups in America such as Black Lives Matter and recent reigniting of the Feminist Movement. Nisbett then goes into many examples of the differences between collectivism and
Remember, Westerners believe everything is because of the object itself and Easterners define objects per the context of the object. Thus, causality is easily explained. As seen in medicine, Westerners focus on how changes to the body are caused by the body itself. For instance, many doctors will explain a disease or disorder because of the individual’s actions. The person is sick because their body did not do something correctly. With infections, the body could not fight hard enough to fend it off. This is especially prevalent in mental health. People are stigmatized because the uneducated assume that people are crazy because of something being wrong with their brain. Those this is partially true, with mental health, there is an outward trigger that activates the condition, whether at birth or due to an experience. With easterners, causality is due to various external factors acting on the object. For instance, people are sick due to an imbalance with nature. Thus, many medical procedures are aimed towards restoring that balance. Cupping, for example, is a process used to restore the blood flow to certain areas of the body to relieve pain and strain. With language, the difference not in how the languages are used but in the words, themselves. Western languages, romantic and Germanic, have many different nouns and categories. In these languages, the