East and West

I have a pet theory about the East and West being like the earth's right and left brain hemispheres. I started thinking along these lines after noticing that languages like Mandarin and Japanese are pictorial. It was the West's role to conquer and subdue the earth, so we have favored a more left-brain paradigm; Western religion has emphasized belief and worship, in contrast to the East, where experience or enlightenment is the goal. The left brain/right brain idea fell out of favor, but has returned in modified form, particularly in the work of Iain McGilchrist. 

Our intellectual paradigm has been distorted by colonialism, particularly the Civilizing Mission of British colonialism. This has resulted in a false dichotomy between the "rational" West and the "superstitious, backward" East. It's interesting to note that the tools which enabled the West to conquer the earth, gunpowder, moveable type, and the magnetic compass, were actually invented earlier in China. In the East, enlightenment is seen in spiritual terms, but this is how Immanuel Kant defined it:​

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use your own understanding!”—that is the motto of enlightenment.
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