Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Philosophies seen in Spirited Away vs. Western philosophies
Something I've found interesting about Asian philosophy in contrast with Western philosophy is the interconnectedness of humans with the spirit world. Consider, at least, Japanese culture and its indigenous Shinto religion- here we find that the spirit world and human world interact constantly, and that spirits are very real beings that play a part in human livelihoods. In Spirited Away we saw this same thing. This contrasts sharply with much of Western philosophy, where the metaphysical/spiritual world is irrational nonsense; the majority of Western philosophy effectively says there is only a physical/touchable/study-able world while for the Japanese it is both physical and mystical and that this is not irrational at all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I've often thought it strange that Western philosophy finds spirituality so irrational. Perhaps we should wonder how science became the measure of all things rational. Therefore, since science cannot prove/test a spirit component it cannot exist in Western thought? Somehow this seems narrow-minded.
ReplyDeleteI agree. We often demand to know "who says" about what Truth is, but we don't really hear people demanding to know "Who says spirituality is irrational? Who says science is the answer for everything?"
ReplyDeleteI think that the western approach to spirituality is somewhat centered around fear ... the completely rational way that the religions are structured ... the need to 'die' to get to the spirit world ... the seemingly inherent violence ... and the clear delineation of a small number of rules to live by ... these all speak of fear to me. People seek to clarify and control those things they fear. They tend to destroy opposition when understanding isn't easy enough. Maybe it's just indicative that we haven't had as long to 'get comfortable' with our belief systems yet ... the Eastern cultures are generally older than ours. This could apply to things like yoga and the kama sutra as well ... Western culture has few (if any) parallels to these wildly popular oriental concepts. It may just be a maturity issue ... maybe we're just religious adolescents.
ReplyDelete