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Notes -
The very obvious rebuttal to this is India's murder rate. If the subcontinent is truly a hellish honour culture where maintaining face is prioritized above everything and pursued with fatal resolve, it's odd that its murder rate slots it in between Kazakhstan and Turkey. Obviously one could maintain that there's some massaging going on, but it's fundamentally tough to hide bodies and I can't believe that the official rate is that far off the actual rate.
I might be inclined to accept that there is a nugget of truth the post has been built around, this kind of petty zero-sum honour culture is not exactly uncommon in developing nations. But it seems greatly exaggerated.
But a conventional honor culture(like in America’s black ghettos or parts of the Balkans or the rural south) is not exactly what’s being described- the idea is that Indians find scamming and lying admirable as long as you aren’t hurting your buddies. The really rough parts of New Orleans or rural Albania don’t work that way, going back on your word is worse than murder.
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