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About East West Sharing
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Welcome to East West Sharing, a space where two great currents of human thought—Eastern and Western—meet not to clash, but to converse.
This blog was born from a simple conviction: that we are living in an age of disconnection, yet we are surrounded by overlooked sources of renewal. As global crises deepen, we must revisit the foundations of our values, our philosophies, and our ways of seeing the world.
Here, you’ll find reflections that draw from both the analytical clarity of the Western tradition and the holistic depth of the East. Thinkers like Heraclitus, Laozi, Confucius, Teilhard de Chardin, and Iain McGilchrist appear not as relics of the past, but as living companions in a necessary conversation.
What You Can Expect:
Dialogues between Western rationalism and Eastern harmony
Essays inspired by my book Fall or Rebirth of the West
A reimagining of humanism—global, relational, and deep-rooted
A quiet resistance to fragmentation, through reconnection
This blog is not about agreement. It’s about attentive disagreement, shared seeking, and the belief that wisdom grows where opposites listen to each other.
Whether you’re a philosopher, a teacher, a wanderer, or simply curious—thank you for being here. May we share the journey.
East West Sharing is a platform dedicated to bridging the wisdom of East and West. It is a space for reflection, dialogue, and rediscovery—where ancient insight meets modern urgency.
Through essays, excerpts, and meditations, this blog explores the deep roots and diverging paths of our cultural philosophies, asking how we might find common ground in a divided world. Drawing from history, spirituality, ethics, and the arts, East West Sharing seeks not to fuse opposites, but to let them speak to one another—openly, honestly, and humanely.
This is an invitation to reimagine the future by reconnecting with the past—and to share the journey.
In a time of ecological urgency, cultural fragmentation, and philosophical uncertainty, this blog was born out of a simple question: what have we missed by separating East and West? For too long, we’ve told one-sided stories about civilization, progress, and meaning. This blog seeks to restore dialogue—to open a space where difference becomes depth, and opposition becomes invitation.
From the teachings of Laozi to the paradoxes of Heraclitus, from Confucian ethics to Western humanism, East West Sharing will explore how ancient roots can inform a more grounded, relational, and ethical future.
Dialogues between Western rationalism and Eastern harmony
Essays inspired by my book Fall or Rebirth of the West
A reimagining of humanism—global, relational, and deep-rooted
A quiet resistance to fragmentation, through reconnection
This blog is not about agreement. It’s about attentive disagreement, shared seeking, and the belief that wisdom grows where opposites listen to each other.
Whether you’re a philosopher, a teacher, a wanderer, or simply curious—thank you for being here. May we share the journey.
East West Sharing is a platform dedicated to bridging the wisdom of East and West. It is a space for reflection, dialogue, and rediscovery—where ancient insight meets modern urgency.
Through essays, excerpts, and meditations, this blog explores the deep roots and diverging paths of our cultural philosophies, asking how we might find common ground in a divided world. Drawing from history, spirituality, ethics, and the arts, East West Sharing seeks not to fuse opposites, but to let them speak to one another—openly, honestly, and humanely.
This is an invitation to reimagine the future by reconnecting with the past—and to share the journey.
In a time of ecological urgency, cultural fragmentation, and philosophical uncertainty, this blog was born out of a simple question: what have we missed by separating East and West? For too long, we’ve told one-sided stories about civilization, progress, and meaning. This blog seeks to restore dialogue—to open a space where difference becomes depth, and opposition becomes invitation.
From the teachings of Laozi to the paradoxes of Heraclitus, from Confucian ethics to Western humanism, East West Sharing will explore how ancient roots can inform a more grounded, relational, and ethical future.
1. Core Identity: A Personal Intellectual Project
This is not a large institution or a well-known publication. It is essentially:
A Blog: eastwestsharing.blogspot.com is a personal blogging platform site.
A Self-Published Book: Fall or Rebirth of the West is published through Lulu and Kobo (print-on-demand and ebook platforms), not through a major academic or commercial publisher.
A One-Person Endeavour: Olivier Lichtenberg is the sole author, researcher, and promoter.
Such projects typically fly under the radar of major search engines unless they gain viral traction or significant backlinking from more established sites.
This is not a large institution or a well-known publication. It is essentially:
A Blog: eastwestsharing.blogspot.com is a personal blogging platform site.
A Self-Published Book: Fall or Rebirth of the West is published through Lulu and Kobo (print-on-demand and ebook platforms), not through a major academic or commercial publisher.
A One-Person Endeavour: Olivier Lichtenberg is the sole author, researcher, and promoter.
Such projects typically fly under the radar of major search engines unless they gain viral traction or significant backlinking from more established sites.
2. The Central Thesis: A Synthesis of East-West Thought
Lichtenberg's work is ambitious, attempting to diagnose modern Western crises and propose solutions through Eastern philosophy. The key argument, drawn from the "Key Themes," is:
The Problem: The Western mind and society suffer from a harmful "schizophrenic split"—a fragmentation rooted in philosophical dualism (traceable to figures like Parmenides), amplified by fear and power structures, and neurologically hinted at by Iain McGilchrist's hemispheric brain research.
The Contrast: Eastern (particularly Chinese) thought, with its practical, contextual, and holistic approaches (like Laozi's Dao or Confucian ethics), offers a corrective.
The Historical Angle: The book traces how material conditions, economics, and colonial history created and entrenched this East-West epistemological divide.
The Goal: To move beyond colonial attitudes and fragmentation toward a "new global humanism" or "ethossphere" that synthesizes the strengths of both traditions.
Lichtenberg's work is ambitious, attempting to diagnose modern Western crises and propose solutions through Eastern philosophy. The key argument, drawn from the "Key Themes," is:
The Problem: The Western mind and society suffer from a harmful "schizophrenic split"—a fragmentation rooted in philosophical dualism (traceable to figures like Parmenides), amplified by fear and power structures, and neurologically hinted at by Iain McGilchrist's hemispheric brain research.
The Contrast: Eastern (particularly Chinese) thought, with its practical, contextual, and holistic approaches (like Laozi's Dao or Confucian ethics), offers a corrective.
The Historical Angle: The book traces how material conditions, economics, and colonial history created and entrenched this East-West epistemological divide.
The Goal: To move beyond colonial attitudes and fragmentation toward a "new global humanism" or "ethossphere" that synthesizes the strengths of both traditions.
3. Who is Olivier Lichtenberg?
His biography is crucial to understanding the project's perspective:
A Cultural Hybrid: European education (Strasbourg, Berlin) coupled with over a decade of living and teaching in Asia (Beijing, Hanoi, Manila, Kuala Lumpur).
Career Shift: From marketing in Europe to teaching and then to nine years of private, interdisciplinary research. This is a classic autodidact or independent scholar path.
Key Influences: His synthesis relies heavily on:
Iain McGilchrist: For the neuroscience of hemispheric differences.
Paul Mus & Tran Duc Thao: French-Vietnamese scholars bridging Eastern and Western thought.
Heraclitus & Laozi: As early philosophical counterparts representing a philosophy of change and flow.
His biography is crucial to understanding the project's perspective:
A Cultural Hybrid: European education (Strasbourg, Berlin) coupled with over a decade of living and teaching in Asia (Beijing, Hanoi, Manila, Kuala Lumpur).
Career Shift: From marketing in Europe to teaching and then to nine years of private, interdisciplinary research. This is a classic autodidact or independent scholar path.
Key Influences: His synthesis relies heavily on:
Iain McGilchrist: For the neuroscience of hemispheric differences.
Paul Mus & Tran Duc Thao: French-Vietnamese scholars bridging Eastern and Western thought.
Heraclitus & Laozi: As early philosophical counterparts representing a philosophy of change and flow.
About the Author
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Olivier Lichtenberg, born at the intersection of borders, languages, and cultures, studied German language and culture, specializing in both linguistics and economics at universities in Strasbourg, Berlin, and Lille.
After an initial career in marketing for the luxury hospitality sector in Brussels and London, he developed an academic career as a German language instructor and IB Diploma Programme teacher of German and French at international schools across Asia—in Beijing, Hanoi, Manila, and Kuala Lumpur. This was followed by nine years of private research across diverse fields, culminating in the production of books.
Olivier has been fascinated his whole life by the Far East and the contrasting philosophical intuitions it evokes. His focus gradually shifted from language and culture to the deeper mechanisms of epistemology. During his years in Asia, he encountered Eastern thought, which prompted him to intensively investigate the structural differences in how civilizations perceive knowledge, value, and reality.
His research was informed by thinkers such as Heraclitus, Laozi, Leibniz, Iain McGilchrist, Paul Mus, and Tran Duc Thao, whose insights paved the way for an innovative synthesis. Iain McGilchrist's hypothesis of hemispheric asymmetry, in particular, offered the final key to unlocking an epistemological impasse that had fascinated him for decades. His work represents both a culmination and a continuation of this age-old dialogue.
He also shares his ideas on his own website, East West Sharing: https://eastwestsharing.blogspot.com
