”Will India be able to learn from the missteps of the West regarding ecology, energy and education?
Will they recognize earlier in their economic and social development that material resources are finite yet human resources (such as creativity, innovation and expression) are infinite?
Will India achieve a true global consciousness that recognizes the unique contribution of all cultures?”
Ask a person a question and you will get 100 different answers and they are all “right”. We can than imagine how big India is and how many different faces the country has.
Typical for western people that has to confront another culture is that we believe ourself like something more, something better.
I like to see it from the point that this is something new and be curious about that cause I don’t know nothing about this country and I want to see it with new eyes not searching for the bad things but looking from it on another point of view. Of cause I have some big skeptic issues and I am searching for the answer and of cause I do my own hypotheses on everything, but I still think it is important to remind yourself of the outsider you really are -first entering a new country.
I like the idea of not comparing with anything else, not my own country, not my own culture. I see what I see, but it is not certain I understand what I see. Maybe I don’t like what I see, but as long as I don’t know the background of what I see, I can not understand.
The psychological fact is that what you see is only confirming what you think you know, your missunderstandings and your phobias.
So what should India learn from us? This is not the same country, it does not have the exactly same problems, it function in a completely different way. I have my personal philosophy that “we can only learn from our own mistakes”. Let’s say that all the countries in the world are small babies and are playing together… We are curiously looking at each other and watching the other ones taking new steps. And by looking we can learn, but each of us needs to do it ourselves, the first steps, by our own.
Our world is getting smaller and smaller, more globalized. And we should look at each other and learn. But I still believe all of us small babies need to do our own mistakes to learn from it, to understand that this is serious. That will be a big “cost” for the world in a long term situation, but that is the way it has been until now and I am wondering if it’s just a human fact, that the problems needs to be so close to us before we react…
Look at the recycling problem in Europe. For instance recently in south Italy there was a overloading with garbage in the streets. People were just throwing all their garbage without any system. And in the end it was so overloaded that helicopters from the army had to come and transport all the shit as the rats started to come and the illnesses started to spread. The same thing is happening in India. But they are now facing the problem and I think the solution will come.
So how globalized are we actually and what’s makes the world globalized? Is Mc Donalds, Media, tourism, fashion, technique, exports and imports a proof of globalization? That is other questions.
About the materialistic world… A note from the Internet: “Environmental destruction in the Third World countries is mainly because people are forced to exploit natural resources on a massive scale in order to try to raise their living standards quickly”. Though I am born and brought up in a materialistic country I think materialism damage a lot more than the environment.
I remember in South Africa working with the street kids and there was a lady telling me; “These are the survivals. If the world will collapse it is these kids who’s gonna’ know how to survive, just observe how creative they are”. I like to see creativity as a survival tool. And I mean, often creativity comes with the poverty, if you don’t have that specific thing you need, you will come up with a solution, because there is always a solution. Just watching this kid in India making his own toy to have something to play with or this man in Dharavi fixing his electronic machine with something completely else than what he needed to make it work. And I think it will take India a long, long time to balance up the gap between the poor and the rich people witch also will make the creativity and innovation survive for a long time. I don’t mean that the innovation is dead if you have money, but I think the materialistic things have a tense to frame you “inside the box”. Maybe it sounds a bit bizarre, but I believe in it.
Let’s get back to the globalization and culture… I agree with Mr. Amrit Gangar, “India is already globalized when it comes to culture and has been for a long time”. India have been influenced by one of the oldest religions, been invaded by the muslims, Portuguese, Britt’s and today we can see that have been playing a big role in the Indian culture and religion. An example of a foot print of that is Dharavi, one of the biggest slums in the world. Might be that the slum is devided into different areas like the Muslim, Hindi and Tamil area. But still they integrate with each other and make business. That is a step. Though the word “globalization” is not really understandable in Dharavi I think that is happening unconscious with the Films, Radio, Tourism and Internet. Globalization comes with education, talking to people in Dharavi more and more people understand the importance of been educated, because that means success. I still think India has a long way to go when it come to modernization and what I see is that the religion is playing a big role in many situations. “But I believe the country India as a small baby has been reborn as in reincarnation, many more times than the western world. And I think we should watch it more closely.”
