Sunday, March 6, 2011

Writing this out of sheer frustration

We all say that the world is becoming a smaller place to live in. well,i often wonder how true that is with the times we live in :the era of globalisation, digital media, space travel and more avenues that are still in its nascent stages of booming the world..yet we still have a few borders to cross. a few mountains to climb.But who or what are we as individuals or societies??
Take for example in India there are so many different states with different cultural and religious traditions and unique in own way ...yet indian society is still bound together by collectivism..
I was recently at a ceremony of a muslim sufi friend ( a great childhood friend of mine )and asked by a non indian who i am ?,what i am , etc etc.. well so i came out with the usual (being an art of living volunteer )i said i am a human being above all well she was literally like what the hell?because apparently all the other indians had some or the other idientity aprt from being human...(i simply laughed ) and so then i started explaining out to her how actually india is the cradle of humane values it all originated here infact and that its better to be a human being first rather than being a hindu,sikh,atheist ,punjabi , indian ,etc etc... she was so confused that belonging one nation people has so many different ethinicities or rather mini nationalities..while in her country sweden, the emphasis was more on individualism and humanity but having lived in a place like australia for over two years and at the peak of racism against indian students i felt it was quite weird that the caucasian race spoke of humanity.. look at the violence theyve created in the world: the crusades, the conquering and inquisition of their mannerisms and religious beliefs on many nations like india, the recent brutal wars on afghanisatn and hanging an innocent saddam hussein for oil?the spanish inquisition, the portugese inquisition in goa ,india where millions and millions of hindus were burnt alive or forced to convert, the decline of a mildly mystic religion of paganism in their own lands, todays issues of global warming , environmental damage, overconsumption,the economic recession(well it definitely didnt start in asia), the creation of islamic terrorism(it was america who first funded bin laden to fight the u.s.s.r )which has backfired on them, the great talk of being non racist and big wild dreams of world peace...my my the western civilisation may be good but its still not all that great...they talk of indias huge support systems, joint families of japan and fake godmen in india they really have to get their heads set and decide what they want because even with all the problems asian countries have far lower co2 emissions and amongst the worlds largest recycling facilities( the largest being india), we may not be that monetarily rich like the west but we were also under invasion rule for over 2000 years and british rule for 150 before that we were the most advanced countries on the planet mathematics originated here , spirituality, family system, business management (infact in all gr8 management schools people study the bhagvad gita that definitely says a lot about our modernity of 5000 years ago)we shelterd the sufi's, parsi's, syrian christians and jews when they were banished from their own countries doesn't that say a lot about our humane values??asian countries religiously and culturally dominated each other for 20 centuries without ever going to a single war... we believe in non violence maybe thats why today egypt has taken inspiration from our non violent means to topple its corrupt government...we as asians exist as an individualistic yet collective society and we are much happier than those nations where individualism has almost failed...in asian countries like india one can find a hindu, muslim,sikh, jain, christian , buddhist , atheist all socialising together and many religions like hinduism and sikhism often being part of the same family... there is no restrition on anything only we have great support systems as we are collectivist in nature .. we have more friends huge family supports and less divorces we need fewer psychologists because we can share with many and get advice from others experiences, another example is japan where the grandchildren are sent to live with and learn from the experiences of the older generation... we have our spirtual values and yet we as individuals are different from each other...we may have higher stress levels as you sometimes but what the hell as a race we are happy we have lower levels of depression in our society :25% of american population above the age of 18 suffers from depression and 35% of europe according to the u.n report .. well in india only abot 8-10% of the pop. given that we are the 2nd largest pop so we ahve very small numbers...we must look at the positives our culture has instead of aping the westerners blindly :for chrissake we had to have the west endorse our ancient practices of yoga and ayurveda before we could revive them we had to have the western celebrities endorse our graceful and elegant sarees as cool and high fashion before we brought them out of our vast catacombs of clothes...we had to have the brits make chicken tikka masala their national dish and bhangra their music before we could make them cool in india, it took some one like richard gere to make indians sit up and take notice of the plight of the docile,demure and harmless tibetans...why cant we for once turn the tables?? why for once we as a collective society who whine whine and whine about our government do something? vote yes..).Then we whine when our relatives say dont do this and that do it this way or these clothes would suit your figure better or ur talented at this and yet when we are in trouble, a vast majority of us either go running to those relatives whom we winge and whine about or expect them to come 2 our aid... in india we have even strangers from the same community who will come out to support us.. isnt that a strange brotherhood then???so i ask isnt it better to be a human being, an individual, and yet live in a collective society??

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