In other words, your mind might be structured in such a way it would naturally be directed in certain tortuous directions, while in the mean time, it would be just busy focusing about those ones.

For instance, concretely, I have always wondered about the true meaning of pornography’s censorship in Europe… are we just focusing our attention to this debate (completely worthwhile in certain areas), so we unconsciously avoid topics that could enrich ours ? Do we have the opportunity to think about something else, when it is just wrapping our share of mind from any side ? Thinking, going outside the offered context requires an effort.

Hereunder are examples of books you would have never imagined. Don’t try to find them, you won’t (click on the pics for other examples).

Artwork visible at the Van Abbe Museum (Eindhoven - NL)
what if Ruhnama was a Bible ?

Frankly speaking if you manage to get an above-average score… congratulations !
Previously, when I was expat in this fantastic world, I was able to differentiate Asian nationals (even between a Korean and a Japanese - without of course looking at the scripts of their travel books or listening at them, just through the attitude) and believe me this is pretty tough.

For the face section, I underperformed (sighh, did I forget everything or maybe wait, there is some moral…), but for the art one, I got the “you are pretty talented (yes, I still managed to grasp a “cultural specificity something”:-)…

Whatever, spend some time in the alllooksame.com “philosophy” section as well, the point of view worth the reading.

By the way, where do we use chopsticks ?
in Japan, Korea or China (that’s easy) ?

Humour sometimes breaks the ice, saying loud what you might think as well. Even if hereunder this is pretty much cumbersome (stupid?) and unnecessarily (re-)opens wounds. You might believe this sequence was mostly oriented to a “white” viewer, who wouldn’t put himself into question… I could understand.

When these complex ethnic questions have not been much considered, humour and diversity can easily lead to racism, performing a totally different goal from the initial one. Without going to a witch hunt where every cross-cultural jokes could be considered as “racist” ones, we could easily state such situation being mostly due to ignorance, a lack of interest and an inner sense of condescension.

(Curious about other similar Loca Lingo materials ? go for Loca Lingo maps according to Google, according to America, selon les français. Have a look as well to the UN joke. Enjoy.)

FEUDALISM
You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you a glass of milk.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM
Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.

BUREAUCRACY
You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE COMMUNISM
You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the most “need”. Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.

FASCISM
You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

DICTATORSHIP
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

TOTALITARIANISM
You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

PURE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

CAPITALISM
You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.

MILITARIANISM
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

ENVIRONMENTALISM
You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
You are associated with (the concept of “ownership”is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

COUNTER CULTURE
Wow, dude, there’s like… these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk. Far out! Awesome!

FEMINISM
You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

PURE ANARCHY
You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

ANARCHO-CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take drum lessons.

OLYMPICS-ISM
You have two cows, one American, one Chinese. With the help of trilling violins and state-of-the-art montage photography, John Tesh narrates the moving tale of how the American cow overcame the agony of growing up in a suburb with (gasp) divorced parents, then mentions in passing that the Chinese cow was beaten every day by a tyrannical farmer and watched its parents butchered before its eyes. The American cow wins the competition, severely spraining an udder in a gritty performance, and gets a multi-million dollar contract to endorse Wheaties. The Chinese cow is led out of the arena and shot by Chinese government officials, though no one ever hears about it. McDonald’s buys the meat and serves it hot and fast at its Beijing restaurant.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.

PERESTROIKA
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM
You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

SINGAPORE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed animals in an apartment.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair “Cowgate”.

BRITISH DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. You feed them sheep’s brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.

HONG KONG CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows’ milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the Feng Shui is bad.

EASTERN EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. You sell the milk (diluted with some water) at a high price to the neighbors or to anyone at the open-air market. If somebody asks for receipt, you charge for a two times higher price, so nobody will request an invoice. For concerned families with small babies you claim that the milk is “bio”, though you collect the grass for feeding at the side of the highway and you keep the milk in plastic barrels used previously as containers of dangerous chemicals. Later, your neighbor or anybody from town will steal the cows and will buy their meat for a high price, and if you ask for a receipt, you will be charged for a two times higher price.

EUROPEAN FEDERALISM
You have two cows which cost too much money to care for because everybody is buying milk imported from some cheap east-European country and would never pay the fortune you’d have to ask for your cows’ milk. So you apply for financial aid from the European Union to subsidise your cows and are granted enough subsidies. You then sell your milk at the former elevated price to some government-owned distributor which then dumps your milk onto the market at east-European prices to make Europe competitive. You spend the money you got as a subsidy on two new cows and then go on a demonstration to Brussels complaining that the European farm-policy is going drive you out of your job.

SCANDINAVIAN SOCIALISM
You have two cows. Soon you have to kill one of them because in the Netherlands there is an overproduction of milk and the European Union rules say so. When you do so, you realize that it was not necessary, only the system was too slow in getting you the up-to-date news. From the stress, you get an ulcer in your stomach so you go to a doctor. The doctor realizes that this ulcer is a serious one, so you need an urgent treatment. Therefore, you soon get a call to the local hospital. The call’s date is for 3 months later, because there is a queue with more urgent cases. Then your ulcer becomes even more serious because you remember that 40 percent of your income is taken for social tax.

If you are interested in the US American “black-white” relationships, have a look at our related Loca Lingo articles.