visual rhetoric and the study of circular and linear perception

About a year ago, I visited Europe. I went on a

wonderful cross country journey from Poland to Germany to Austria and finally to Rome and back to Poland. The trip was spectacular. Of all the wonderful scenic sites and architecture that I saw, I noticed that the architecture and the mindset of most European people does not stray far away from the farther western cousins in North America. If we look at the so called "civilized societies" in the west and some specific societies of the south and the east, some interesting differences in fundamental perspective begin to emerge. The first picture to the top left is a picture of my kitchen. Looking at this picture, ignore all the prevalent decorations and exotic motifs that give my kitchen a semblance of a tropical theme. Fundamentally, the building blocks of my kitchen, the main interior design - cabinets, chairs, fridge, other appliances, and in fact my entire house - has one predominant shape: the quadrilateral that is composed of lines. The second picture is a picture of a rug on my living room floor. My floor is linear, while the rug adds a bit of "exotic" panache to the room with its concentric circles, arcs, and curves. This is just a micro-theme of a greater cultural comparison between the modern west and some parts of traditional east. Look at western society, 90 of our architecture, which is an underestimate, has some linear or quadrilateral semblance. Must I not mention the suburbs or city blocks, which have their share of linear formation and quadrilateral organization. Not only so, look at western philosophy and religion, it's linear. Their is a beginning and an end. We organize our history in linear time lines. Western society as a tendency to experience changes in life quite radically, almost like the 90 degree corners on a quadrilateral. For example, western society groups age groups into boxes or ten years each: birth, preschool, elementary school, junior high, high school, collage, work, retirement, death. Or in another case: birth, infant, toddler, child, teenager, young adult, adult, senior, death. Western society groups things linearly, and the changes between individual groups are radical. Now let's look at eastern society. In Africa people live in dome shaped homes and villages are organized recursively. Recursive organization has an internal spiral shape to it, which has circular semblance. Fashion in most eastern cultures enjoys the beauty of  colorful circles and curves unlike western fashion that is bland and rectangular like a suit. Eastern society also has a different perspective on life. There are no age groups. Life simply flows and people mature, not age. Such steady progression is similar to the changes of degrees on a circle. Finally, look at some eastern religions, they don't see life as a linear progression but rather as a circular reincarnation. Death is only a recursive spiral into further forms of life, and the only way to escape it is to be blown out and detached from its circular reiteration. These two perspectives are noticeable only through a conscious realization of a mathematical perspective on the world. Its not about who is better or worse but about the way we think and the beauty of the algorithms that shape the way we think 

Below is  TED talk that explains the applied mathematics to cultural and societal thought.