Way overbroad generalization
Where the germans had black uniforms and swastikas we have brown shorts and
orange flags ..
Where we have swamijis and astrologers, the US has tele-evangelists
You can get just as drunk on single malt as on cheap booze
Self help books are popular on pavement bookstores BECAUSE THEY SELL .. they're
all in English, 99% of them, and they're picked up by people driving cars and
scooters down the road. As are pirated editions of bestsellers, shady porn etc.
In other words, there's no monopoly on charlatans and there's no crisis of
confidence here. Crisis of overconfidence, maybe.
Crisis of incompetence and "in the country of the blind, the one eyed man is
king" type half baked expertise, ditto.
But no crisis of confidence.
srs
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Srini
RamaKrishnan
Sent: 30 March 2011 14:06
To: [email protected]
Cc: ss
Subject: Re: [silk] A crisis of confidence
On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 4:47 AM, Thaths <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 6:41 PM, ss <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Well in my view the popularity of self help books does not translate to
>> Indians not being confident.
>
> I agree. The popularity of Mein Kampf and Dinesh D'Souza books does
> not translate to Indians being jackbooted, goose-stepping,
> black-shirt-wearing militarists.
First I've heard of Dinesh D'Souza, so I'll stick to the Mein Kampf example.
I've haven't read Mein Kampf, but I doubt it says anything about
wearing jackboots. Jack boots, shaven heads, leather jackets are all
cultural artifact that arise from the milieu of the times. In the
absence of ever being soaked in this cultural context Indian readers
of these books won't become neo-nazis - they see the book perhaps as a
voice that is very sure of itself, so too Ayn Rand. Nothing more.
Alcohol is the other parallel that comes to mind. The poor drunk who
washes up in the gutter after eclipsing his consciousness on a liter
of cheap arrack isn't in the same class as any of us seated in our
parlors swilling Single Malt.
Self help books are disproportionately more popular on the sidewalk
than at an upmarket bookstore like Landmark; this is poverty at play.
The greatest selling book of all time, the Bible is a self help book
at one level really. India's fascination with charms, swamis and
astrology is natural, they promise to tame an otherwise unpredictable
life.
Cheeni
