| This seems like the old lumpers vs splitters issue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters There's definitely something different in Berlin vs New York culture, and me, a person that sees commonalities everywhere, i.e. a lumper, definitely sees a common/dominant culture in each of these places. On the other side you have splitters that always find a reason to differentiate more. There's no right and wrong on this discussion, it's subjective in essence, you can always lump or split by your own rules. That is a classification problem. Darwin talked about it at length, because he was annoyed by splitters denying any kind of classification, making it really hard to make a taxonomy. If you split too much, every human is an individual, you can't say anything about anything anymore. If you lump too much, all humans are the same, you can't say anything about anything either. The sweet spot is somewhere in between, where you can speak about Moscow, vs Berlin, vs New York culture. Because there's definitely something different about these places. And neither say they're all the same, or that you have to look at each individual before making a judgment. But most people can't agree where exactly this sweet spot is. |