Can't write any long essays (absolutely crap at essay-writing - or do I just need to work harder?
), but I'd say there's no such thing as a universal way of thinking. That's based on a total of 6 years living in Japan - the majority of my adult life (eek! hadn't thought of it in those terms before). One's thinking is inevitably informed by the culture and education system in which one is raised, and we all know that those differ from country to country. Hell, ways of thinking vary from region to region within a country, as well as from person to person. But I've lost count of the number of times that I've said "God, that's
so Japanese!"