Thursday, August 27, 2009

Once, on my flight back from Singapore, as we stood in queue for 'immigration' a young smart well dressed lady jumped the queue....I shouted across at her:
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? you have just returned from Singapore! Would you do it there? Why the change of behaviour in 5 short hours?

There was a stunned silence and a nod of approval from other passengers...

I got the following on the Internet by Aakar Patel...I found some parts interesting...so giving you some excerpts:

Christianity and Islam are about how to enter heaven; Hinduism is about how not to return to earth...

Hinduism recognizes that the world is irredeemable: It is what it is. Perhaps this is where the Hindu gets his world view -- which is zero-sum -- from.

Our opportunism necessarily means that we do not understand collective good. Indians will litter if they are not policed. Someone else will always pick up the rubbish we throw. Thailand's toilets are used by as many people as India's toilets are, but they are likely to be not just clean but spotless. This is because that's how the users leave them, not the cleaners.

We show the pattern of what is called a Hobbesian society: one in which there is low trust between people. This instinct of me-versus-the-world leads to irrational behaviour, demonstrated when Indians board flights. We form a mob at the entrance, and as the flight is announced, scramble for the plane even though all tickets are numbered. Airlines modify their boarding announcements for Indians taking international flights.

What explains the behaviour of Indians? What explains the anarchy of our cities? To find out, we must ask how our behaviour is different.

Some characteristics unite Indians. The most visible is our opportunism. One good way to judge a society is to see it in motion. On the road, we observe the opportunism in the behaviour of the Indian driver. Where traffic halts on one side of the road in India, motorists will encroach the oncoming side because there is space available there. If that leads to both sides being blocked, that is fine, as long as we maintain our advantage over people behind us or next to us. This is because the other man cannot be trusted to stay in his place.


To return to the question we started with: Why is Brahma not worshipped? The answer is obvious: He has nothing to offer us. What he could do for us, create the universe, he already has. There is no gain in petitioning him now!

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