The division between "East" and "West" is from European cultural history. There is a difference between European Christendom and the alien cultures beyond it to the East. With the European colonization of the Americas the East/West distinction became global. The idea of an Eastern, "Indian" (Indies) or "Oriental" sphere was made stronger by ideas of racial as well as religious and cultural differences. Such differences were shown by Westerners in the scholarly tradition known as Orientalism and Indology. People from the East are known by certain regions in the West as "Oriental". During the Cold War, the term "Eastern world" was sometimes used to mean the Eastern Bloc, which was the Soviet Union, China and their communist allies. The term "Western world" often meant the United States and its NATO allies such as the United Kingdom. The idea is often another term for the Far East—a region that bears considerable cultural and religious sameness. Eastern philosophy, art, literature, and other traditions, are often found throughout the region in places of high importance, such as popular culture, architecture and traditional literature. The spread of Buddhism and HinduYoga is partly responsible for this.
Eastern culture
An image of the "Eastern world" defined as the "Far East", consisting of three overlapping cultural blocks: East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.The distribution of the two major families of world religion, Dharmic religion and Abrahamic religion, highlights the religious difference between the Far East and the rest of the world.
Eastern culture has created many themes and traditions. Some important ones are:
Confucianism — the belief that human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavour especially including self-cultivation and self-creation.
Sikhism — A religion that developed in the warring plains of Punjab in an atmosphere of ideological clash between Islam and Hinduism. Its followers keep spiritual as well as martial qualities.
