Is continuous social change and technological improvement "a Western thing"?

It's about the geography: Continental cultures in agriculturally rich places don't crave disruption, don't have the mischievous nature that finds it amazing and beautiful to constantly surprise the world. This is a mentality that mainly comes from peninsulas and quasi-peninsulas (large islands near continents, or strips of land within continents isolated by geography on both sides) with mediocre agricultural resources.

I don't think that "craves disruption" is a good description of the West. Maybe a few CEOs who think that a bit of "creative disruption" will give them an opportunity to sell more stuff, but even their love of disruption tends to have very strict limits. (Just look at the James Damore case, for example -- regardless of the merits or demerits of his arguments, I don't think that firing him for making them is really consistent with a "craving for disruption" or a feeling that it's "amazing and beautiful to constantly surprise the world".) And of course, a lot of the rise in populism at the moment is due to a sense that things have been getting too disruptive and out-of-control recently, and a desire for someone to come along and slow everything down for a bit.
 
"Craves disruption" is not a good description for any nation/civilization/culture group. Societies aren't anthropomorphized little kids; name a single nation that is "mischievous" and finds it amusing to "surprise the world." Unless of course by surprise you really mean rape and pillage and rob the world blind.
 
Holy crap, that chart is the dumbest thing I've seen all day. What self-congratulatory blowhard wrote that? It's like the 1980's version of those old racist maps where the world is carved into CIVILIZATION (synonymous with white protestantism) and BARBARISM.

I've worked with models not too dissimilar to this one before (Hall, Hofstede, Trompenaar) and they are not necessarily bad in themselves, as long as one keeps in mind that, as often/always in social sciences, they are not absolute. Used with caution in a research context, they can bring additional information. Used with self-serving ambition in consulting contexts, they can turn into rubbish corporate blabber pretty quickly.

The big problem with these models is that they mostly originate from "western" countries, sometimes even more specifically from Anglo Saxon culture countries, which will tend to take themselves as a point of reference and thus completely overlook some essential aspects of foreign cultures. So the argument gets pretty one-sided.

In that sense, the definition and criteria of "progress" are also hugely culture-dependent and as said earlier, are not a multilaterally agreed upon straight line directly inspired from Sid Meier's Civilization.
 
I don't think that "craves disruption" is a good description of the West. Maybe a few CEOs who think that a bit of "creative disruption" will give them an opportunity to sell more stuff, but even their love of disruption tends to have very strict limits. (Just look at the James Damore case, for example -- regardless of the merits or demerits of his arguments, I don't think that firing him for making them is really consistent with a "craving for disruption" or a feeling that it's "amazing and beautiful to constantly surprise the world".) And of course, a lot of the rise in populism at the moment is due to a sense that things have been getting too disruptive and out-of-control recently, and a desire for someone to come along and slow everything down for a bit.

"Disruption" is marketing bullshit at worst, at best describing the process of disaster capitalism. I wouldn't describe it as a positive feature of our society in any way, insofar as it largely is about finding ways to destroy the share of a market that middlemen and workers control while siphoning the "new" profit up to rich investors.
 
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How does the existence of peninsulas and islands spur on discovery and exploration? Yes, you can sail off and find a new island... but you could also walk off and find a new land.

Sea travel has always been more efficient than land travel. Until the invention of the train, car, plane, and other modern travel methods that has been the case. The sea is a highway, not a barrier. That is of course if you have sufficient technology and development to take advantage of it. This is a case of land travel having a low floor, low ceiling, while sea travel has higher floor and higher ceiling. The Native Americans lacked various easily domesticable animals and plants for labour and food. Natural harbours, inlets, and other coastal formations are vital to the development of an area
 
"Craves disruption" is not a good description for any nation/civilization/culture group. Societies aren't anthropomorphized little kids; name a single nation that is "mischievous" and finds it amusing to "surprise the world."

Yeah. Individuals can be more or less mischievous - but societies? Should we take an average of them, maybe a weighted one?

BTW: Don't forget to tell Humon. And that "Axis Powers Hetalia" guy.
 
Sea travel has always been more efficient than land travel. Until the invention of the train, car, plane, and other modern travel methods that has been the case. The sea is a highway, not a barrier. That is of course if you have sufficient technology and development to take advantage of it. This is a case of land travel having a low floor, low ceiling, while sea travel has higher floor and higher ceiling. The Native Americans lacked various easily domesticable animals and plants for labour and food. Natural harbours, inlets, and other coastal formations are vital to the development of an area

This explains a lot about world history.
 
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