21:

I learned this in my class a few weeks ago, and I never thought to write about it until now.

Do you guys know why East Asian culture is more society- and group-based, while Western culture is more individualistic? It goes all the way back to historical agricultural societies. Since East Asia is much more mountainous, there's much less land, and much more people to work on the land. Additionally, their staple, rice, is much more labor intensive, and requires much more people to help with building irrigation ditches, digging the pits for the rice, and planting and harvesting the rice. Western farming, on the other hand, is much easier, due to Europe's plains, as well as how easy grain is to grow. It doesn't take 20 people to farm one plot of land in Europe, and if one crop fails, it's easy to bounce back and grow another crop in the same plot of land a month later.

So, over a long period of time, East Asia became much more people based, and formed a rigid society in order to promote people to work with each other, while European societies were much more lax, and allowed for a greater degree of individuality. Isn't this fascinating? Even today, we have this culture, and it was determined by people a long time ago.