Oriental and Occidental - East and West. Isn't it interesting that "to orient" is to align or position relative to the points of the compass or other specified positions. These come from the Latin word orient meaning "rising" and "east".
Very little is written about Occidental - Western world (really Europe). There's a town in California, an insurance company, petroleum company, even a constructed language Occidental language.
But what caused the lack of use of Occidental and the excessive use of Oriental in the past? It would be the orientation point - from Europe considered the West.
Roman maps from 300 AD show the Orient as a place. There was an Orient-Occident line - the Italian Peninsula's East Coast. It shifted to the City of Rome around 600 AD. Any area below the city of Rome was considered the Orient.
Over time "the Orient" shifted eastwards - it had to do so continually as Europeans travelled farther into Asia so had to name things the Near East and the Far East and so on.
The Eurocentric viewpoint focuses on itself to the exclusion of a wider view of the world - it implicitly considered European culture as preeminent. So the term Orient and Oriental became derogatory and racist.
Is it still allowed as an adjective? Looks like not - Oriental art retrieves beautiful, traditional cherry blossom and lotus images but under the titles Chinese art, Asian art, Japanese art.
So we are left with the verb "to orient" and thinking about the compass and navigation.
We have an abstract image of Toronto buildings - this is the metal fountain in the square off Adelaide Street at Yonge - it is a great reflector. I've spent lots of time taking pictures of its reflections. Toronto has hit the news again with the most tower cranes in North America. Toronto had 27 percent of them between January and March. I wonder if I were to take this picture today, would there be a crane in the sky?
