Basics – Belief Systems in Contrast: The Guilt vs. The Shame in Dying vs. Reincarnation

Based on my previous post I can affirm Eastern and Western civilisations has a completelly different, even opposite approach to discover the ultimate truth about the world.

Stanislaw Lem, in his genuine & genial work “His Master’s Voice” talks about the religion as the fundamental basis of civilisations.

Photo by: bekon

Until now religion was the most fundamental belief system governing the world, the most complex canon humans ever built to rule upon masses. Since the era of the free access to the information (internet) and due to the new belief systems propagated to masses (“more is not enough”) via mass media (TV and newspapers, tabloids) the religion, as is, started to decline and sink back to the chaos. It has no more spirit to rule upon the world.

Back to Lem, his theory is the following:

Western civilisations are born upon — all their Belief Systems are governed by — the religions of Judaism and Christianism, whose basic axiom or dogma is the guilt. This is the basic principle governing our world, defining all of our other belief systems. According to this rule we were born guilty, we are nothing but sinners suffering from the primal sin of Adam and Eve, therefore our entire identity is trapped into redressing this nasty situation.
Eastern civilisations, on the other hand are governed by the shame, which is totally different, is in major contrast with the guilt. In West everybody is guilty by nature, in East the worst can happen to a human is just a social manner.

Since in West a guilty person must to do penance and it is punished — even to death, in East shamed persons must meditate upon their wrongdoings and present by acts — good-doings — their appologies towards the society.

These completelly different approaches towards the basic Belief System marks two different societies. In West it is accepted to get a punishment — to die, over all. In East you can always have a second chance — by reincarnation.

Western society accepts a Supreme Punisher (God, Evil, technology singularity) when the Eastern society believes things can become cool.

Photo by: ~Aphrodite.

However, the common hidden pattern in these basic Belief Systems is the perception of time. Since in West the Final Punishment is unavoidable so time becomes the Ultimate Value, in East time has no effect on your soul spanning over multiple lives.

Westeners take part in games where time plays a role, Easterns are neglecting the notion of time through reincarnation. And, yet another Western scientific theorem proves time is deadly serious. In the next post …