Breaking the Habits of Western Thinking: Cause and Effect is Not a Thing

There are a lot of patterns of thought which seem to us universal and just the way things are. One of these is "cause and effect." But there is another way to see the world, older, more powerful.

34. Breaking the Habits of Western Thinking: Cause and Effect is Not a Thing

For most of us, we are so deeply immersed in our own culture that it is hard for us to distance ourselves enough from our own situation to assess all the ways in which the west influences us.  In some ways, this is a good thing.  Detachment from one’s own culture has its price.  It is necessary, though, when we begin to make attempts at understanding our time, trying to figure out what is happening within our society.  For the most part we are largely unaware of the cultural software, so to speak (which is a very modern western way of talking about culture for what it’s worth), that our society runs on.  The deeper you bore down, to the myths and symbols that drive us as a society, we often find that they are so much a part of the way we think and act that we are blind to the idea that the things we take so for granted are not really the way things are for everyone, everywhere in all times and places. Things we think of as “universals” (like the idea of “universals” for instance) are …