Can we understand other cultures through animal psychology?

The reality is, we don't know that much about what they think, because they don't tell us. Behaviorists tend to believe that they "think" in their own way—in sensory images involving their finely honed instincts. They love routine: Nothing seems to make them more comfortable than doing the same thing at the same time in the familiar way, day after day: We snack here, we poop there, we play over here. I am astonished at how little it takes to please them, how simple their lives can be if we don't complicate them.

Jon Kalz

What insight again, Nova Teacher !
What you suggested sugggested me to look at all this effort to make a froeign culture intelligible from a totally new angle of non-interference, or minimum interference. Perhaps the question to ask ourselves is not, "Why is this not translatable ?" or "Why does it become meaningless after translataion ?" but rather, "Why is it that even one thing makes sense after tranlsation ?"

It might begin to make so much more sense if we stop trying to talk to them, and try to make "human sense" out of them just because 1) we think we are human 2) we think they are human 3) what they do has to make sense to us in what we believe is human reason.

What can we learn about nihonjinron once we adopt the "watch but not touch" approach of general psychology

I also think this non-interference viewpoint will help us understand any aliens who com to observe only, but not interfere. What can we learn about the aliens in our midst or in earth's orbit ?

NovaTeacher said:

Behaviorists tend to believe that they "think" in their own wayﾂ―in sensory images involving their finely honed instincts. They love routine: Nothing seems to make them more comfortable than doing the same thing at the same time in the familiar way, day after day: We snack here, we poop there, we play over here. I am astonished at how little it takes to please them, how simple their lives can be if we don't complicate them.

Jon Kalz

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I don't think what you are talking about is behaviourism per se, but perhaps a modern interpretation or modification of it? It would not make sense to say that an animal "loves" something, or that they can be "pleased", when talking in terms of the behaviourist paradigm, because behaviourism does not allow for consciousness or self awareness, which is at best disregarded as a side-effect or irrelevant illusion.