https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/17oxi03/the_most_common_dream_in_every_country_mapped/

According to this map "The Most Common Dream in Every Country" the West spends a lot of time dreaming about their teeth falling out.

It feels odd that people wouldn't understand their own traditions, but it obviously happens. Information overload can obviously heavily afflict societies toward forgetting their traditions and the formation of new traditions, particularly in non-oral traditions which focus more on written texts which can more easily be ignored (not read) and then later replaced with seemingly newer traditions.

Take for example the resurgence of note taking ideas circa 2014-2020 which completely disregarded the prior histories, particularly in lieu of new technologies for doing them.

As a means of focusing on Western Culture, the editors here have highlighted some of the most important thoughts for encapsulating and influencing their current and future cultures.

How do oral traditions embrace the idea of the "Great Conversation"?

I love this acronym!

Inequalities in income and wealth decreased markedly in the West from 1914 to 1980 due to a number of factors including:<br /> - Two World Wars and the Great Depression dramatically overturned the power relationships between labor and capital<br /> - A progressive tax on income and inheritance reduced the concentration of wealth and helped increase mobility<br /> - Liquidation of foreign and colonial assets as well as dissolution of public debt

Modeling annotation and note taking can allow students to see that their voices matter in conversation with the "greats" of knowledge. We can and should question authority. Even if one's internal voice questions as one reads, that might be enough, but modeling active reading and note taking can better underline and empower these modes of thought.

There are certainly currents within American culture that we can and should question authority.

Sadly some parts of conservative American culture are reverting back to paternalized power structures of "do as I say and not as I do" which leads to hypocrisy and erosion of society.

Education can be used as a means of overcoming this, though it requires preventing the conservative right from eroding this away from the inside by removing books and certain thought from the education process that prevents this. Extreme examples of this are Warren Jeff's control of religion, education, and social life within his Mormon sect.

Link to: - Lawrence Principe examples of the power establishment in Western classical education being questioned. Aristotle wasn't always right. The entire history of Western science is about questioning the status quo. (How can we center this practice not only in science, but within the humanities?)

My evolving definition of active reading now explicitly includes the ideas of annotating the text, having a direct written conversation with it, questioning it, and expanding upon it. I'm not sure I may have included some or all of these in it before. This is what "reading with a pen in hand" (or digital annotation tool) should entail. What other pieces am I missing here which might also be included?

If it's true that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized instead of the more commonly capitalized "you", does this help to underline some of the self-centeredness show by most of the English speaking West?

Based on some beyond the average knowledge of Indigenous cultures, I'm reading some additional context into this statement that is unlikely to be seen or understood by those with Western-only cultural backgrounds who view things from an ownership and capitalistic perspective.

There's a stronger sense of identity and ownership of language and knowledge within oral traditions than can be understood by Westerners who didn't grow up with it.

He obviously feels like we're stealing from him all over again. We need better rules and shared definitions between Indigenous peoples and non before embarking on these sorts of projects.

Oral cultures treat information dramatically different than literate cultures, and particularly Western literate cultures within capitalism-based economies.

Given the predominantly non-literate civilizations that comprised the ancient Near East, I've been wondering about how they may have actually been closer to Indigenous cultures than they are to more modern, literate Western culture.

Perhaps he shouldn't dismiss them so readily here, but rather tie them more directly into his broader thesis.

A primary difference between Indigenous science and Western science is the first is intimately connected to the practitioners while the second is wholly separate.

Would Western science be in a healthier space currently if its practice were more tightly bound to the people who need to use it (everyone)? By not being bound to the everyday practice and knowledge of our science, increasingly larger portions of Western society don't believe in science or its value.

This is a great pull quote for the book, particularly for Westerners.

However, these ideas are not being introduced to the "world" for the first time, they've long lived in indigenous cultures. We should be more pointed in underlining that they're being introduced to the "Western World" for the first time. These ideas should take up their own space in the pantheon of intellectual history.

Nationalistic, racial, and cultural blinders have led us to posit broadly accepted (positive) ideas like democracy as having developed and grown out of Western ideas rather than attributing them to historical cultures and societies all over the world.

Is it possible that the delivery of the ten commandments was a moral and ethical ill brought upon Western culture? Was the fact of one person (or God, in this case) creating a hierarchical structure of one commanding another that began the idea of inequality in Western culture?

Courtney, D. S., & Bliuc, A.-M. (2021). Antecedents of Vaccine Hesitancy in WEIRD and East Asian Contexts. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 5873. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.747721

Book review (and cultural commentary) on Alex Beam's A Great Idea at the Time, (Public Affairs, 2008).

Xie, W., Campbell, S., & Zhang, W. (2020, May 5). Working Memory Capacity Predicts Individual Differences in Social Distancing Compliance during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the U.S. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/3j69f

Majima, Y., Walker, A. C., Turpin, M. H., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2020). Culture and Epistemically Suspect Beliefs [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qmtn6

Is this another reference to Western culture influence on the rest of the world?