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I’m ‘stolen valoring’ a post from the Sunday thread and reposting it here for higher exposure (ht @odd_primes):
Recently there was a viral explosion on Kiwifarms > Twitter about a nebulous low trust Indian cultural behavioural trait. This honor culture trait isn’t something that is unique to India. There has however been a huge influx of Indians into the West both through immigration and through internet presence that has left cultural ripples. The memetic word is called ‘Izzat’ even though this is an Urdu word that only vaguely venn diagrams against the concept.
I’m beating around the bush, but I’m pretty much talking about scam culture, being the winner, getting one up on the people that are outsiders to ‘my group’, and getting status points for exploiting my outgroup.
I’d like to reiterate that this isn’t an Indian only issue, but it’s a culture clash between high and low trust cultures and is worthy of discussion.
Edit: Don't drunkpost. This is a culture war issue that should have been given better care in an OP.
2nd edit: Actually quoted the post.
Lack of izzat is a massive problem among westerners if you ask me. The level of disrespect they show towards not only other people but also other things means a lot of the time I'm interacting with (especially lower class) people I'm subconsiously thinking "didn't your parents teach you any better?". Same with how westerners send their own flesh and blood parents off to a care home when they start becoming too much of a burden on them. The lack of respect here is galling: your parents took care of you when you were nothing more than a little shit machine and this is how you repay them???
The kiwifarms post is a half truth (well actually more like a quarter truth), which makes it worse than a total lie. Some elements of it are correct, but others (like how you can rape and murder with impunity if you have enough izzat) are totally 100% false (rape and murder are the number 1 way you an destroy your whole extended family's izzat in a very short space of time for generations).
As in their lack of immediate obsequious submission for the better person (for he has money for he gets to armwrestle in the zero-sum Finance fields, unlike those peasants)? I wouldn't consider Indian culture especially defined by inter-class respect, at least going downwards, but if the Western culture didn't have a peculiar glitch in which lower classes were afforded a minimum of respect and voice and given an opportunity it'd be hard to imagine modern immigration existing as it does.
I do agree with the parenting thing, but I'd argue a confluence of factors (Small family sizes, Westerners tend to be more mobile both for work and for Florida in their dotage, housing is brutally expensive, modern medicine allows for stupefyingly long armwrestles against mortality by people with massive care requirements) means that the equation's a bit different than in a more-settled setting where labor is absurdly cheap and families are large.
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