For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.
Interpretation
Critiquing one's own culture requires an understanding of its benefits and complexities.
In this quote, Neal Stephenson emphasizes the importance of recognizing and appreciating the nuances of one's own culture, even when it may have flaws. By comparing Western culture to the atmosphere necessary for life, he illustrates that it is easy to overlook its advantages when one is not in a position to experience alternatives that are less hospitable or suitable.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about cultural appreciation in a philosophy class.
Like any place in Reality, the Street is subject to development. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. They can build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light shows and special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored.
Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying.
Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code.
It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.
Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?
I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there." There might as well be, "Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.
For in that universal call,_x000D_ _x000D_ Few bankers will to heaven be mounters;_x000D_ _x000D_ They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall!_x000D_ _x000D_ Conceal and cover us, ye counters!_x000D_ _x000D_ When other hands the scales shall hold,_x000D_ _x000D_ And they, in men's and angels' sight_x000D_ _x000D_ Produced with all their bills and gold,_x000D_ _x000D_ 'Weigh'd in the balance and found light!'
Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.
The right to bear arms? What about the right to live?
A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.
And though all streams flow from a single course to cleanse the blood from polluted hand, they hasten on their course in vain.
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