Different Incentives for Different Cultures

Heard that story of how the native (Red) Indians sold the area known as New York today to the whites for a bunch of beads? Sounds crazy, until you realize that different cultures value different things. But if you thought all that was ancient history, think again.

Like take this example: in most parts of the world, a kid who wins an award gets a gold star, a certificate, a pat on the back or sometimes even cash. In others? Well, they win guns and bombs! No really, I mean it: A couple of weeks back, an Islamist insurgent-run radio station in Somalia said it was awarding guns, bombs and books to three children in a Koran recital contest.

I guess it’s stuff like this which led the Brits and Germans to announce that multiculturalism has failed in their countries. Because there is such a thing as too much tolerance.

Comments

  1. KumarOctober 8, 2011 at 3:05 PM

    It will always come to one fundamental in many issues I suppose: Going to extreme is never good for the health of the mind. Let's see its place in this point of multi-culturalism.

    I feel to conclude that "multi-cultural tolerance is incorrect" cannot be a balanced view. In actual reality, intolerance and superiority-complex is a natural outcome of any cultural identity, when contrasting or varying cultural ideas surface. Such attitudes has been repeatedly shown to be one-sided, self-centered and lacking in fairness. Cultures with fanatic clinging are so closed minded that they rarely come out of their well. How can that be good?

    While we may come forward more easily to blame the Western culture who showed willing to open towards multi-culturalism because "of the failure and unfair advantage a wrong doer gets", we cannot forget that today's Muslim world's very high inability towards multi-culturalism can hardly convince anyone that clinging and glorying one's own cultural identity can be good or right. Islam, in practical terms as asserted by that religion's fanatics (plus the near absence of voice within against their own wrongs) seems to have zero tolerance for the values of other cultures. Is it a great culture?

    If multi-culturalism is in low of values, then are we going to certify that Islam with its remarkably low level of multi-cultural tolerance is actually following the right direction for progress and goodness. Can this be correct? If Muslims are happy to gift guns to children for reciting the holy Koran correctly, it looks horrible and inhuman to me and possibly to many good humans may not think well of such actions.

    The solution for the sane world lies in the right balance of following one's own cultural background and its values, while being open and tolerant to other people's cultural ways. That some cultures refuse this concept is not any proof that the concept is bad.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain , the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird: “If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?” The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead? The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory: “In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winn
Read more

Handling of the Satyam Scam

The Satyam scam. How does that fit into Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s book on reforms in India, Backstage ? The reason is that, as both NASSCOM and the government of India felt: “(Satyam’s) collapse would create a great deal of disruption for clients worldwide and seriously damage India’s reputation as a reliable source of software services.”   Therefore, the government decided to work with the private sector to “organize a quick takeover by a reputable new buyer, who would quickly restart the company”. But that could not be done overnight. In the meantime, the new board would have to reach out to Satyam’s clients and “reassure them that the company would survive”.   For the new board to have credibility when it made that statement, it had to be staffed with people who understood the private sector, the IT sector in particular, and commanded respect and trust. Deepak Parikh from HDFC was made chairman, and other members of the board included a former NASSCOM chairman, CII member,
Read more