I think both philosophers and psychiatrists should have to 1) learn a foreign language and then 2) live in the culture and country where it is used. Philosophers no doubt get tossed into German and French, even these days, but I mean they must navigate and think their way through every day life - something that reading heidigger in the original has very little to do with. This is partly a response to Psychotic Episode's repeated attempts to pathologize beliefs he does not hold and the attendant believers. I think too many people think that reality can be divided up only one way and thus any other language dividing up that reality must be wrong. Further there is a general lack of understanding about how language and culture create experience and allow experience and disallow experience. I would also make both psychiatrists and philosophers - were I Dean of their program - intern with a foreign anthropologist studying whatever subculture the would be professionals are from. So a white suburban, middle class psychiatry student has to intern/research assistant with a Japanese person doing her dissertation on that very culture. And they should be able to defend the dissertation orally.this is why it never ceases to amaze me that there are people who inhabit worlds which sustain many cultures and subcultures in a relatively small geographic region (IOW they don't live in a small tribe literally removed from the rest of the world) who fail to recognize the degree to which reality is culturally constructed. all one has to do is step outside of one's "comfort zone" and try to inhabit a "foreign" culture, and this should be blatantly obvious.
My sense is temple grandin is primarily focused on others as ideas. She comes closest to empathy with animals, but here she is able to cut herself off completely from the context. Not unlike, I would say, the sympathy certain southern whites might have on occasion for 'that poor niggah ova there' without noticing the systemic abuse and their own role in that.and this is very much why temple grandin remains an enigma: one would think she would find it impossible to work in the industry she does--or at least, her "work" would be more about dismantling the industry altogether. (edit: i realize this is quite vague--well, beyond vague--but i figure you probably know what i mean anyways: the whole not seeing something for what it is, especially by a person who would seem to be quite capable for seeing it for what it is.)
I feel like it's a little harsh to speak of her that way and mainly I see her as fairly solipsistic. My harsh reaction is to the kind of dissociation her thinking represents. We all have it to varying degrees in varying contexts.
I moved to another country and of course went through (a fairly mild) culture shock. I realized after a while that a large portion of this was because I had chosen my subcultures carefully in the US, and so when I moved to a new culture I was not simply experiencing the culture, but experiencing the mainstream of that culture. IOW if I had moved to one part of the US to another and been thrown into assimilation programs, I would have had at least as much culture shock. I would have to remind myself - ah, but they are normal, on occasion.i often question why i am presently living in the u.s. when i am extremely uncomfortable around more than 99 percent of the populace; whereas with most of europe, asia, and central america, i am only extremely uncomfortable around perhaps 85 percent of the people (obviously, there is enormous variance between specific countries)--and this "discomfort" i experience elsewhere is far less deleterious to my mental health.
I get along very well with both Scandanavians and the Navaho, though I have more sustained experience of the former. But I would say I am more comfortable with more immediately expressive cultures. But there are a number of factors here. I think the caution that runs through both Scandanavia and the Navaho is not cold but rather based on feeling.the ways in which people read and misread other cultures, and impart their own values and interpretations upon them, is fascinating (and i'm hardly excluding myself from this practice). within the continental u.s. for instance, i find navajos to be amongst the friendliest and most hospitable of peoples. yet i've encountered countless individuals who are of the opinion that navajos tend to be cold, unfriendly, and even hostile. these people interpret the habits of not looking directly at the person you are talking to, saying very little, lacking overt enthusiasm and not spewing all the usual "niceties" as hostile and unfriendly.
by the same token, i vastly prefer scandinavians, germans, and the dutch to italians, portuguese, and spanish--and i'm inclined to interpret the mannerisms of the latter bunch as somewhat forced and insincere. though i actually think their behavior is very much genuine, it's difficult for me to perceive it that way because all that smiling and touching and hugging simply isn't my way.
The delusions about what will make one happy, what one cannot live without, what one must never do in front of others, what 'saves face', what money is, who one is, what one believes, what language is and doesreturning to the theme of the OP, and considering just one simple aspect (beliefs): apparently, while not a majority, still a substantial portion of americans believe that barack obama is muslim, foreign born, and the antichrist. (at least, according to a story i heard on NPR the other day) i think more than adequate evidence has been presented by various mainstream media agencies to counter the first two, and as to the last, well? honestly, one could spend hours--or even days--compiling a list of falsehoods which either a sizable percentage, or a majority, of americans believe--and this list could be comprised solely of very basic factual-type information. were one to expand the list to include delusions based upon a much broader ignorance--like the belief that obama (or obama care) is socialist, or that obama is doing "many of the things which hitler did" (also from the NPR story. quite vague, but i suspect they don't mean things like straightening out railway time tables.), one could probably spend a lifetime compiling such a list.
as some examples off the top of my head
seem pretty rampant.
I strongly dislike this the whole
theists, believers in ESP and UFO are mentally sick/delusional approach to dealing with what is a cultural tension. If the issue is delusion, then these delusion finders are being very selective, and I think the delusions finders are deluded about their own motivations.