We all know the stereotypes. The Asian girl is quiet, smart, shy, well-behaved. The Asian boy is good in math and science, maybe he plays violin, and he loves baseball. Both children are obedient, loyal to their relations, respectful of their elders. Contrast this with the stereotype of the western child. He, or she, is wearing torn ill-fitting shirts and dirty jeans. They hang out in the mall. They are emo. They are goth. They are punk, or they are jocks, and/or cowboys. They are rebelling against: “What have you got?”

They take drugs and ditch school. They suck at math and science. They are shiftless and selfish. The Asian parents expect a lot from their kids. They are tigers and dragons. The western parents are overweight, love cars and sports. They are cougars and cowboys. The Asians eat a lot of noodles and rice. The westerners eat a lot of corn, corn syrup (HFCS) and corn transformed into cows, pigs, and chickens, on factory farms.

Asian women are stereotyped as being non liberated, exotic, and exploited. Western women are seen as loose, liberated, shallow and spoiled. They can’t all be accurate, given the soon to expire shelf-life of misogyny.

In the west, people use vast quantities of time and energy, in both body and machine, to fill up lives with gadgets, stuff, fashion, junk food, and entitlements that show rugged independence, even rebelliousness. In the east, beginning with India and moving further across the Middle East to the orient, people are much more connected to family, tribe, nation, community, and in some cases nature itself.

Religion is approached differently as well. For most of the last 100,000 years, people lived in nature and so worshipped with reverence the earth, moon, and stars and a wide range of deities. In the west Christian-Judeo cultures brought monotheism. Although there are good and practical reasons to honor and appreciate the living earth, monotheism gradually led to abandonment of most pagan ideas. Now the three biggest monotheisms continue to fight and spill blood because there are three different names for the guy in the sky: Yahweh, Allah, and God.

It brings to mind the famous scene in Life of Brian, where no group can agree upon what to call their movement. Is it the Judean People’s Front, or the People’s Front of Judea?

Television and movies added entire new dimensions to the assimilations and shared knowledge of all cultures, but it also engrains some stereotypes even deeper.

One need only to look at our imports and exports to see what is valued most by those on both sides of the globe. The west exports pop culture, Hollywood, music, fashion, and a great number of addictive cigarettes. The East exports University students, eastern spirituality, electronics, cheap plastic goods, shoes, and clothes, and martial arts.

It is also being said recently that we in the west have exported all tech support and manufacturing jobs, and that what the east is exporting here for a better education, is their best and their brightest people.

The greatest source of all our differences is focus on what a person actually is. In the West the self is always put first. In the East, a person is a member of a larger community. This extends all the way from core of the family to belonging to the earth itself, and therefore valuing the bounty of the earth, rather than merely exploiting it for personal gain.

Is one culture right, and one wrong? Yes. And no. Both need to be open to sharing, assimilating and progressing to an understanding of fairness, governance, and culture that is determined not by individuality alone, and also not by monolithic Borg-like mentality.

The east has given the west much to be desired in theologies that realize it is our similarities that matter more than our differences. We belong among those eco-systems we responsibly maintain. And the west is slowly spreading the notion of democracy, freedom, rule of law, and tolerance of every kind. It is vital that humanity learn that 20% of the world population, in the west, consumes more than half (50%) of all the worlds fuel, food, and energy. China is growing, however, and demand is ever increasing all over earth.

Which is more important? The synergy of all is most important.