Having spent most of my life outside the United States, I’ve always been curious to explore the cultural and societal differences around me.

Our diversity tends to manifest itself in the most basic of things  — how we greet people, the way we share a meal (ever ordered family style at an Indian restaurant?), whether we leave our shoes outside the door before entering a house, and even the way we sit.

I enjoy sitting cross-legged on the floor. It is something I have done for as long as I can remember. Where I grew up in India and Kuwait, we often sat on the floor when we ate together or watched TV, and it was not because we don’t have dining tables or sofas. (I did go to school on a camel, though.)

But when I actually think about it I can’t figure out any particular reason for this way of sitting. Maybe it’s just a nice way to take in your surroundings from a different perspective. I find sitting on the floor is calming and peaceful  — maybe the lower center of gravity and decrease in potential energy actually translate into a slight physiological equilibrium  — probably also why sitting cross-legged on the floor is the universal posture for meditation.

But once I came to the University, I experienced what seemed to me then a uniquely absurd reaction to me sitting on the floor  — particularly from my friends, who had grown up mostly in Western cultures. They thought it odd that I chose to sit on the floor versus in a chair.

I always imagine they were thinking: “Wait, what is he doing? Why is he doing this?”

And though initially, their responses baffled me, I later questioned the deeper cultural significance of this.

As opposed to Western cultures, in several Asian cultures, sitting on the floor is a common aspect of daily life. In Japan, homes traditionally have low tables and thin mattresses or rugs to sit on, and meals are mostly consumed on the floor. The same is true in Middle-Eastern cultures, where the most common seating apparatus for traditional living rooms and hookah lounges is a Diwaniya (an assortment of floor sofas arranged against walls). It is also by far the most comfortable thing my derriere has ever had the privilege of resting on.

Another stark cultural difference concerns the places of worship in the two opposite hemispheres. Temples and mosques don’t really have any seating. Many ceremonies, even weddings, happen while seated on the floor, in contrast to churches or synagogues where chairs and pews are used. What’s the reason for this difference between the two hemispheres? Maybe we must look deeper to find the root of this divergence.

Bear with me.

We didn’t always have chairs, right? Somehow we went from caveman sitting around a fire to using Barcaloungers. Could there be any anthropological or evolutionary significance to the subject? Genealogically speaking, we start at pre-historic man, sitting in his cave, unaware of the rich comforts a lounge chair could provide. To be fair, he probably had more important things to worry about, like fire and that bear outside his cave waiting to devour him.

So, I don’t think the need to have something to sit on arose until much later, nor do I think was it born out of the need to be more comfortable. It is, I hypothesize, when we started living in small tribes that the chair became an object of our mental faculties. Every tribe had a leader, and the leader had to stand out from the rest. Hence came the crown and the throne. The throne became the symbol of the leader’s dominance and higher position.

Similarly, I guess we invented the chair not for luxury, but out of a need to differentiate. A literal expression of one’s higher stature. In light of that, cultural associations and attitudes today toward sitting down on the floor make sense.

In places of worship, sitting down is a part of humbling oneself before a higher power. It is also logical to look down upon sitting on the floor because, well, we’re better than that now. We live in a world designed to maximize luxury while eliminating all laborious effort. So as I write this, cross-legged from my futon, I realize one important thing about sitting on the floor is that it humbles you — a humility born out of a deeper animal instinct, a humility that makes us human but that we sometimes forego for comfort.

Shivam is a senior in Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected].