One takes for granted the system one grew up with
and thinks it is the default system, often even when one does not like it or it
hurts. When it neither hurts nor presents any immediate discrepancy of thought
one does not give it a thought until one is presented with a living example to
the contrary. Than it is up to the moment and oneself how one faces the
contradiction - when there has been a strong social prejudice provided against
the contradiction it is more comfortable and less of an effort to correct it,
and most people don't bother, heaping more abuse on the counterexample instead
as an easy way out. Few think it through logically and see the fallacy, and
fewer accept it, much fewer admit it. But as long as those few do exist there
is hope for humanity - though it would be much faster evolution if there were
more of those and less of the first.
Sometimes
two people being from a different perspective brings about some interesting
encounters - sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, sometimes illuminating.
There
was that one time I was with a group of students in U.S. when we went off for a
weekend, trekking, mountaineering and camping. Most of the participants were
either foreign students or liberal thinking - and I mean both epithets
individually (- and some of course must have been both, that is, foreign
students as well as liberal thinking). During one trek at lunch break one of
them talked about how they were always told as children that theirs was the
best country in the world, and one had to grow up before one knows better. I
reassured him that since that was a normal practice all over the world in every
country he need not feel ridiculous about it, and we were brought up with
exactly the same idea - and he couldn't get it. So I further went on to say we
were taught that India is the best country in the world, of course, when we
were in elementary school; and we had received no official contradiction of
that - and he was quite shocked, but was well mannered enough not to
argue.
Another
time - in Germany - we were with another couple at one of the series of
unofficial intimate dinners with colleagues arranged for our official welcome
(Germans can do this very well - neighbours or friends or colleagues being
officially arranged to be friendly and welcoming; some people do go on to
become real though, and those are truly gems), this being one of the more
intimate ones. The guy was for some reason talking about colour characteristic,
I forget why, and I told him colour was not new or foreign or strange to us.
This was new to him.
Most
people of European ancestry assume that they are not only special but unique -
and therefore proven superior - by fact of being light skinned and colourful
hair and eyes. This is of course not obvious or even known to us - and rarely
comes up in any civil encounter in a conversation.
Also,
they are unaware that not only lighter shades of skin but colourful hair or
eyes are not new or strange to many other countries and cultures, and this is
so in India. That shocks them more than any other - I don't know why. But it is
true that not only light eyes are far from unknown to us in our own people, we
have indigenous instances of light hair too - and this is apart from the severe
albinos who exist too (while it is another story that they - the last - look
not quite healthy).
I
grew up in various localities, different towns, with a few light eyed people
around. Some of our relatives are light eyed, grey - often almost white - being
common in the community. There was an uncle with very blue eyes. Grandparents'
neighbourhood group of my playmates around our age of between three to ten (we
were all the same age, but I did not meet many of them after ten) included a
little girl neighbour who had very long, very golden hair - and I mean golden,
not pale shade of yellow or nondescript sort. Another schoolmate in another
town had hair colour of biscuits, and yet another was a fiancée of a friend
with striking red-gold hair streaming down to well below her knees.
The
guy listening to this - I related a few, not all - said, perhaps they had
painted their hair.
I
was very perplexed and said, that would have no value at all, we do not think
of light hair as beauty.
At
this he was visibly shocked - and his reaction of shock told me, for the first
time, more than all the years of living and interacting with people in U.S.,
more than all the reading, that for them it was more than an equation, that
between light eyes and hair on one hand and beauty and all other desirable
qualities on the other; and they assumed everyone in the world not only would
understand and see it that way but also be naturally brought up with the same
way of thinking.
I
have found it difficult to explain the world that we live in and as we see it
to such people - mostly because the subject is not generally straightforward in
coming up.
Some
people bring it up obliquely, as Bob did, describing how his orange haired son
was made much of by the villagers who had never seen anything like it, when
they went for a drive around the city and stopped at a few places. I found it
natural that they would be surprised humans could look like that if they have
only seen light haired dolls, and remarked that not only children of European
ancestry but also those of oriental races look like dolls - I don't know if he
got the full meaning of that - and said further that all children look
adorable, that being necessary for the very survival of the little helpless
things. He was not pleased at his scheme of getting his racial superiority
established go scattered in shreds over landscapes of facts with winds of sharp
edged thoughts in so casual a way, but there wasn't much he could say except to
agree that oriental children indeed look like dolls.
I
have thought about how to make it easier to comprehend - and perhaps this might
be a possibility. If people of European ancestry happened to come across people
who had red faces, green hair and white or almost white eyes - then such people
might look strange but not much to those of European ancestry; yet the new
people might not have encountered the variety in Europe and might have the
mistaken notion that they were looked at as gods and were superior by virtue of
their difference, intrinsically.
Often
I have come across the story that when European sailors and missionaries landed
in South America they were seen as gods by the locals who looked up to them.
That was due to historical memories of an earlier encounter the local Americans
had had with people who looked like that, logically; and were they in for a
shock this time - for these new people destroyed all they could find, robbed
and enslaved the people and pillaged on a major scale - and yet they thought
and continue to think they appeared as gods.
Some
delusions, particularly those based on little or no facts, survive only because
those that hold them need to survive and have no other means. Racial
superiority is what people assume post victory due to weapons and
manipulations, and cling on to when a particular culture is no longer in
ascendance.
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