Human fundamentals

 

Subject: Human fundamentals



As we enter ever more chaotic conditions regarding the condition of national economies across the world, we see on our television screens the growing disparity between these nations. From the simple tribal village in Africa to the millions living in India under conditions unacceptable in the west, from the medieval grassed roof hovel serviced by the horse and trap in rural areas of Moldova and Romania and other areas in eastern and Central Europe. The disparity is wide and yet we continue to make assumptions about the similarities between people. Undoubtedly we  grow, through the different and varied  associations in our respective childhoods and view these conditions around normal, given we know no different and can't judge if we are better off than someone living in another country. It is my contention that the metaphorical standard on human rights is merely a yardstick with little meaning because of this wide discrepancy in the condition people live under. The characteristics we assume as normal are aspects of the surrounding culture which we absorb as we grow and travel is with us in what we might call our makeup whereverI we go. If that surrounding culture is made artificial such as for the British in the colonial times in India or the current religious communes in this country then we have to consider the long term consequences of cultural disharmony.

That's not to say our similarities don't far out weigh our differences and just as the character is different in different people, even within the same family, fundamentals are hatched at birth and learnt by cultural osmosis's to be at odds with the majority.

Men, women, boys and girls learn the tricks of their gender by observation and so it is through observation that we form who we are. If I grow up on a street in Mumbai then my mental assumptions will be formed by that experience. If my parents from Mumbai emigrate to Nottingham and settle in a close knit Indian/Muslim neighbourhood which practices  the habits of Mumbai, then the trend is to enforce separatism rather than consolidation. Our English penchant for individualism, of leaving behind family and friends to seek our fortune elsewhere is the same as our Mumbai family with the one important difference, the collective influence of religion carries the cohort with it and forms a separate entity in an alien field in the way an individual cannot. If this gives one group a tremendous advantage over time, especially if it begins to displace the existing traditions which initially make a country recognisable then we should be aware of it and not be frightened to disagree.