There is no such thing as what Muslims think

[cthulu2016]

The people who march around burning American flags and stoning embassies might be representative of 80% of the population or 1% of the population. There is not much to be discerned from watching them on TV.

We humans tend to think of distant populations as monoliths. We think in terms of "what Yemenis think."

But consider the fatuity of someone taking about what Americans think. We keep having national elections with roughly 50-50 results so we plainly do not all think the same things.

When someone overseas watches us go from Clinton to Bush to Obama they probably picture the nation swinging back and forth ideologically, but all that is really changing is merely the transient opinions of the least ideological 10% of the population.

Foreign comedians do their impression of an American and it's usually somebody in a cowboy hat. But we know that only a small percentage of Americans wear cowboy hats.

Back when I followed the stock market I would laugh at the daily market wrap because it always said why stocks did whatever they did even though the author had no idea why. You can see the hourly AP updates and sometimes at 10 AM it says, "The Dow was up 50 points buoyed by a good jobs report," and then at 2 PM it says, "The Dow is off 50 points weighed down by a disappointing jobs report."

A total circle jerk. The "why" is just some shit to say.

But when I read the Hong Kong and Japan updates, late at night, I credulously accepted that the Nikei did whatever it did because of whatever reason was stated. I didn't have any better information or personal sense of the thing.

But intellectually, of course the foreign market recaps were as vacant as the American ones.

So I must admit that I do not have the faintest idea what Egyptians think, except possibly as revealed by polling and elections. I know what the people who show up to be on TV think, but that may be wildly unrepresentative.

[Honeycombe8]

1. I do think that middle easterners/arabs ARE more alike in their thinking than the west...

because they are raised to think a certain way (brainwashing?) and believe certain things, and are more desensitized to war and violence. They are not monolithic, but a far larger percentage thinks alike, I would think, because of those things.

In America, Canada, Great Britain, and other western countries, we are more raised to be accepting of independent thought, and more focused on facts and individual and human rights. Not that those countries are perfect. But it IS different.

Addiitonally, there are universal truths that pretty much all humans would agree on, if only in theory, and always with exceptions.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. It is sometimes referred to as the "arab street"

I've lived there and it clearly exists.