Everything is Relative ...
My boss recently came back from a business trip to China. He was amazed at the growth there in the last few years (He was there in 2000). China is in the process of building 12 brand-new cities, each of which would have the infrastructure to house and employ upwards of five million people.
I found that amazing. But thats not the subject of this post.
Once he had described all of the good things happening in China, he regressed into his more familiar mode of complacent Western supremacy. He started recounting an incident that he had witnessed while in China.
Apparently, while he was walking down a street, he saw a speeding bus hit a pedestrian. And he said that very few people bothered to try to help the poor guy. He then went on to compare and contrast this with the US, and talked about how everyone would have stopped to help over here.
True, but not completely.
I dont believe that its a fair comparison.
If Americans lived in the same conditions as most Chinese do - Working 12 hours a day in a factory, making little money, staying in overcrowded cities, riding an overloaded subway system, with no air conditioning to protect them from the elements, etc .... Would they be the same ?
Which begs the question - Are people from different countries really "different" or are they just the combined result of their country/region's economic/historical/political situation ?
If Indians and Americans exchanged countries, would Indians remain as superstitious, fiscally conservative, tradition-bound as they currently are ? Or would they start resembling Americans ?
And would the Americans remain as innocent, naive, jolly and insular as they currently are ?
(Pardon me for the use of these stereotypes)
We are all human beings.
We all share 100% of our genetic makeup.
I think we arent as different/diverse as is made out to be.
Our environments/history/politics are, but not us.
I found that amazing. But thats not the subject of this post.
Once he had described all of the good things happening in China, he regressed into his more familiar mode of complacent Western supremacy. He started recounting an incident that he had witnessed while in China.
Apparently, while he was walking down a street, he saw a speeding bus hit a pedestrian. And he said that very few people bothered to try to help the poor guy. He then went on to compare and contrast this with the US, and talked about how everyone would have stopped to help over here.
True, but not completely.
I dont believe that its a fair comparison.
If Americans lived in the same conditions as most Chinese do - Working 12 hours a day in a factory, making little money, staying in overcrowded cities, riding an overloaded subway system, with no air conditioning to protect them from the elements, etc .... Would they be the same ?
Which begs the question - Are people from different countries really "different" or are they just the combined result of their country/region's economic/historical/political situation ?
If Indians and Americans exchanged countries, would Indians remain as superstitious, fiscally conservative, tradition-bound as they currently are ? Or would they start resembling Americans ?
And would the Americans remain as innocent, naive, jolly and insular as they currently are ?
(Pardon me for the use of these stereotypes)
We are all human beings.
We all share 100% of our genetic makeup.
I think we arent as different/diverse as is made out to be.
Our environments/history/politics are, but not us.
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