a greater whole—whether family, corporation, or community—and place tremendous value on harmony within their group. They often subordinate their own desires to the group's interests, accepting their place in its hierarchy.

Western culture, by contrast, is organized around the individual. We see ourselves as self-contained units; our destiny is to express ourselves, to follow our bliss, to be free of undue restraint, to achieve the one thing that we, and we alone, were brought into this world to do. We may be gregarious, but we don't submit to group will, or at least we don't like to think we do. We love and respect our parents, but bridle at notions like filial piety, with their implications of subordination and restraint. When we get together with others, we do so"It is only those from an explicit tradition who would label [the Asian] mode of discourse 'self-effacement.' Within this indirect tradition it might be labeled 'relationship honouring.' " And relationship honoring leads to social dynamics that can seem remarkable from a Western perspective.

It's because of relationship honoring, for example, that social anxiety disorder in Japan, known as _taijin kyofusho_ , takes the form not of excessive worry about embarrassing oneself, as it does in the United States, but of embarrassing _others_. It's because of relationship-honoring that Tibetan Buddhist monks find inner peace (and off-the-chart happiness levels, as measured in brain scans) by meditating quietly on compassion. And it's because of relationship-honoring that Hiroshima victims apologized to each other for surviving. "Their civility has been well documented but still