I recently arrived in USA for pursuing a Ph.D. . For people who know me and haven't been in touch :P , that might be a shock, but I believe my self from one year back would feel the same way. Anyways, I decided to enjoy some time before joining the course, and am staying for some time with my brother in New Jersey.
USA in general is very different from India, almost diametrically opposite actually. The first time I landed here, the scale of infrastructure is beyond anything ever seen in India. I once heard a slogan, "Everything is bigger in Texas", as compared to India, I feel the statement is fitting for the whole of USA. Everywhere you see, things are bigger, people are bigger ( :P ), and buy in bigger quantities. It really makes me wonder why George Bush thought that India and China are causing food shortages! no one there ever eats on this scale. The effects of having many magnitudes of land more, and a similar fraction smaller population is plainly visible. There's greenery everywhere, and things can be built to a larger scale. There are hundreds of small cities compared to a few huge ones. I feel the biggest difference is that people are, atleast on the surface, more polite and warmer. Strangers greet each other, cars stop for pedestrians, generally stuff that you would never expect in India.
All in all, people live very different lives than in India. That's probably why they like people from India, who focus on their work mostly, and pay very little attention to other things. A trip to the Indian dominated part of New Jersey quickly illustrates the difference. Cars suddenly don't stop for pedestrains as easily. A different odor hangs in the air, a smell distinctly indian, but from an unidentified source. The people, obviously look different. You can actually see people from every part of India in one place, something very difficult to see even in India. Once I entered an Indian store outlet and turned my back to the entrance, it was difficult to see that I was not in India. For most of my time, I was smiling and close to laughing, why? dunno, maybe it was that the sight of familiar faces brought back some sense of assurance. More so, it was the understanding that nowhere you go, indians will remain the same. I believe that throughout our childhood we learn to interpret emotions from facial expressions, and a lot more. Moving to another place with different people probably sets this instinct off, you no longer know what's the right custom, what people mean when they say the most common of things (apart from the obvious meanings of course) etc. etc. That probably is the source of culture shock, something that been "right" is not right anymore. You've suddenly been returned to the stage where u were as an infant, plus you don't learn as fast anymore. It's quite easy why it's unsettling for people, and the reason some need help.
The fact that Indians mostly overcome greater problems, fighting for everything against others and the system, is probably the reason why they are successful. They can battle anything, succeed in spite of all odds. That is the difference with China as well, China is an example of how, a system perfectly optmized for attaining certain goals can work. On the other hand, India is more of a game theory playground, how even when everyone selfishly thinks for himself, a country can progress at such a pace. In spite of apathy from the government, other people, the people still have created a wonderful example for success. Usually at this point, people say how if there was a better "system" and "governance", India could so so much more, but what they miss out is that the bad system has made the people this way so that they can tackle anything. It's a simple give and take, adversity shows the best or worst in people, but it always shows the extreme, and optimized response, which ensures the maximum possible results, good or bad.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Political correctness
Today I was reading an article on how the USA's negotiator with Brazil for the upcoming WTO trade negotiations, Susan Schwab was hurt by the Brazilian counterpart's remarks. He had apparently compared the tactics employed by negotiators from developed countries to Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, and Schwab is descendant from Jewish holocaust survivors. His exact statement? as quoted by Yahoo, "Goebbels used to say if you repeat a lie several times it becomes a truth," and "I am reminded of Goebbels", quoting certain parts. Though I know that forming an opinion on the basis of incomplete comments is dangerous, my point is not entirely based on this.
Recently Britain's schools have changed the nursery rhymes taught in schools (see here). Britain, or the United Kingdom to be more correct, has almost been at the forefront of political correctness, replacing black with rainbow, etc. etc. Some of the changes are actually quite hilarious. Before you start raising fingers at me, let me point out that I'm also a "coloured" person. But the simple fact is that when you say baa baa black sheep, I can't see any semblance of racial discrimination. In a contorted way, possibily yes, but then you can see innuendos in just about any statement. Language, any language is an approximate representation of what we wish to express. In algebra, we call this dimensionality reduction. One of the most common ways of doing this is PCA or Principal Component Analysis, which is that you try to gauge the common thread in the data, to put it very crudely. This is done with almost rampant disdain in computer vision to remove noise in data collected from natural sources (:D no offense, I know it's necesary). Which is why it's quite beyond my comprehension, why we haul up someone based on some part of a statement. Isn't it relevant as to what thread was being followed and the context in which the statement was made? I always find that the media, press in particular, tends to highlight such things to gain TRPs, taking out small sections of statements and contorting them. Problem is that these sections are used by a majority of people to form opinions even without knowing the full fact.
While I do accede that little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the press may claim that it is the responsibility of the people to find the truth, but the press are most people's only source for such information. Even more so, we must allow some leeway for people's inherent stupidity. You may not notice it, but everyday you'll make many insensitive comments to a multitude of people. But, being part of everyday occurence, people ignore them, as part of the lost art of common sense. If you feel that you're not part of such a group, try and listen to what you said, you'll be shocked.
Every statement can be taken in atleast 2 ways, so don't try to create a context out of a statement. Like my favourite PCA, gauge the common thread. And though I concede I've never as yet been a victim of discrimination on the basis of colour or the other common things, I still feel some judgement call should be made the statements that are held as discriminatory. Though it's probably a better thing for people not to say stupid things, but that's quite a thing to ask, don't you think? I mean, in India, being a general category male is like a curse. People have a tendancy to blame this category for all evils that plague society. And being part of this category implies that you have to slog for everything a little more than everyone else, meaning people having reservations, even though I myself didn't do anything against them, nor have anything against them. Without digressing, let me just say that reverse discrimination is as prevalent as discrimination.
To conclude, I just want to say, that it's been more than 50 years since the Nazi's were overthrown. Give them germans and others a break. Referring to a person of that group doesn't mean that you condone their actions, you're simply using them as an example. They did terrible things, and it can cause a lot of hurt to be reminded of them, but they're still the past. A new generation has now emerged who don't grasp the brutalities of the actions done in the past century, as well as people of the developing world who didn't have anything to do with it. These people are already paying some price or another for what happened, even though they were direct or indirect victims, and not the perpetrators. Political correctness can seriously stifle free communication, and lead to more problems that it can solve. In my opinion, though people should be educated to be more careful about what they say, they should also be educated to be more tolerant. Being all prickly and quick to get insulted is probably not the best way to go about things. In that spirit, I apologize to anyone who finds this article insulting in any way.
Recently Britain's schools have changed the nursery rhymes taught in schools (see here). Britain, or the United Kingdom to be more correct, has almost been at the forefront of political correctness, replacing black with rainbow, etc. etc. Some of the changes are actually quite hilarious. Before you start raising fingers at me, let me point out that I'm also a "coloured" person. But the simple fact is that when you say baa baa black sheep, I can't see any semblance of racial discrimination. In a contorted way, possibily yes, but then you can see innuendos in just about any statement. Language, any language is an approximate representation of what we wish to express. In algebra, we call this dimensionality reduction. One of the most common ways of doing this is PCA or Principal Component Analysis, which is that you try to gauge the common thread in the data, to put it very crudely. This is done with almost rampant disdain in computer vision to remove noise in data collected from natural sources (:D no offense, I know it's necesary). Which is why it's quite beyond my comprehension, why we haul up someone based on some part of a statement. Isn't it relevant as to what thread was being followed and the context in which the statement was made? I always find that the media, press in particular, tends to highlight such things to gain TRPs, taking out small sections of statements and contorting them. Problem is that these sections are used by a majority of people to form opinions even without knowing the full fact.
While I do accede that little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the press may claim that it is the responsibility of the people to find the truth, but the press are most people's only source for such information. Even more so, we must allow some leeway for people's inherent stupidity. You may not notice it, but everyday you'll make many insensitive comments to a multitude of people. But, being part of everyday occurence, people ignore them, as part of the lost art of common sense. If you feel that you're not part of such a group, try and listen to what you said, you'll be shocked.
Every statement can be taken in atleast 2 ways, so don't try to create a context out of a statement. Like my favourite PCA, gauge the common thread. And though I concede I've never as yet been a victim of discrimination on the basis of colour or the other common things, I still feel some judgement call should be made the statements that are held as discriminatory. Though it's probably a better thing for people not to say stupid things, but that's quite a thing to ask, don't you think? I mean, in India, being a general category male is like a curse. People have a tendancy to blame this category for all evils that plague society. And being part of this category implies that you have to slog for everything a little more than everyone else, meaning people having reservations, even though I myself didn't do anything against them, nor have anything against them. Without digressing, let me just say that reverse discrimination is as prevalent as discrimination.
To conclude, I just want to say, that it's been more than 50 years since the Nazi's were overthrown. Give them germans and others a break. Referring to a person of that group doesn't mean that you condone their actions, you're simply using them as an example. They did terrible things, and it can cause a lot of hurt to be reminded of them, but they're still the past. A new generation has now emerged who don't grasp the brutalities of the actions done in the past century, as well as people of the developing world who didn't have anything to do with it. These people are already paying some price or another for what happened, even though they were direct or indirect victims, and not the perpetrators. Political correctness can seriously stifle free communication, and lead to more problems that it can solve. In my opinion, though people should be educated to be more careful about what they say, they should also be educated to be more tolerant. Being all prickly and quick to get insulted is probably not the best way to go about things. In that spirit, I apologize to anyone who finds this article insulting in any way.
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