In most of the texts from Eastern Literature there is an understanding and an assumption that is often hard to explain to any person that is used to Western culture and literature. In Eastern literature there is an assumption that every man has entirely moralistic values and a great amount of virtue. Two extremely different cultures such as the Chinese culture during the time of Confucius and the Indians during the writing of the Gita can have very similar views on the value of a virtuous man. In the Gita, the characters continue to define who a wise man is and what a wise man does. And in the Analects of Confucius, Confucius defines what a gentleman is. These two terms are extremely similar and mean similar things so it is easy to explain these terms to anyone in an Eastern culture but we do not have the right words to translate to our culture what these terms actually mean.
Today in United States society, we do not have as common views on what a virtuous man looks like. The closest we have to a universal value system is the framework of our governments and the laws they pass. This means that the values we uphold are dictated to us in a much broader environment as it is the duty of a man to be virtuous for the government’s sake, whereas in Eastern culture it is the duty of a man to be virtuous for society’s sake. In a classroom environment, I as a teacher can ask about students’ virtue and compare it to the laws that we have today in the United States. While we let the Constitution dictate our lives and the lives of our students, we let great philosophers dictate the lives of the people in the Eastern parts of the world.
Perks of the Job 