Hi Selma, Devadutt Pattanaik [http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/devdutt_pattanaik.html] struck me as making some very important points.
His view didn't strike me as arguing that "India is better", but just different. Not just India, but a whole lot of societies which have a non-linear approach towards time. When viewed against the West-is-best, science-is-god, we-know-it-all approaches, the points being made struck me as something interesting. We could quibble about the examples he used to make his point, but what he said did ring a bell while I viewed it. FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490 On 15 October 2010 12:48, Carvalho <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear FN, > Rarely have I come across a talk as full of nothingness as this one. First of > all, he implicitly assumes the Indian way is superior but more damning that > that, he assumes that old stereotype, East is East and West is West and ne'vr > the twain shall meet. In my experience, I have never come across human beings > that are fundamentally different. We are cosmetically different but never > fundamentally, never in aspirations and hopes. And this is what unifies us. > The world is changing because it is challenging every bit of nonsence that has > been placed before us by way of religion. The choice before is not whether we > shed our Indianess, the question before us is whether we shed processes that > don't work. They haven't worked for centuries and they will not work in the > world that we have to live in, which calls for the most efficient use of > resource and concepts. And in the end, there always is a one best way of doing > things. When we discover it, we call that progress. We may do this in terms of > technological advancement or ideological advancement, but the evolution of > human > society necessarily calls for the culling of ways that don't work and > embracing > ways that do. > This "our standards are different from their standards" is in my opinion, a > lot > of brown stuff being shovelled around.
