this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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It may be universal, I’m not sure. I’ve not read any information able to establish that. There are indigenous tribes of people who are not integrated into the global world - we can’t know their psychology as we can’t study them.
Right. For the service to work it would be enough if people who live in cities have comparable mental structures.
Sure, but someone who lives in Addis Ababa probably doesn’t have the cultural knowledge to give adequate therapy to someone in Pyongyang, despite them both being located in cities.
Could someone in London counsel someone in New York? Probably, because the cultures are quite similar and share a root ethnicity and language. But that Londonian probably won’t have as much luck counselling someone in Ho Chi Minh.
I am out of my depth to add anything meaningful. I personally believe that the human experience is universal. E. g. soldiers suffer on both sides of all wars. For sure it is more difficult to gain trust and openness if there are cultural differences. But the emotional conflicts that come with war will be the same.
Will the experience of war victims resonate with the victors of that war? Will the victors understand the oppressed and be able to prove their position with adequate psychology? Does the psychology of an occupied people differ from the psychology from the oppressors? Does a person whose culture has been stripped from them require the same counsel as those who believes that illegally occupied territories are their’s?
Many confounding variables exist here that may interact with being militarily oppressed, and therefore comparisons between the two sides are incomparable. I don’t have the answers to these questions. I wish I did, because then I’d be able to secure facts. In this situation the only secure facts are that both sides have committed atrocities and crimes against humanity.
Most countries win a war and lose a war, so experiences can be shared. But among all the countries it could also be possible to pair the winners with the winners and the losers with the losers. But I would expect that it would only be needed to avoid direct conflicting parties.