“Your honor, Your Honor.” – Caddyshack
Indian roads have so many potholes you should request a trip advisor. (all memes except for the one directly above are as-found)
I hadn’t planned on doing more than one India post, but, with more and more information about the H-1B program coming out, I did a second one. I didn’t plan on doing a third post.
But yet, here we are.
The latest skirmishes on the “India versus the world” front have been illuminating. One of my biggest surprises was how Dinesh D’Souza had a meltdown on X®. It’s odd that a man who wrote a book called The End of Racism would start calling anyone who disagreed with him “whitey”.
To be clear, it’s not something that bothers me personally, since I wake up every morning, look at my hands, and realize I’m not Indian.
Whew! Damn, it feels great to be white!
But, after watching the reputation of my nation, one that white people created, being dragged through the mud, watching whites be discriminated against, and watching a never-ending toll of one-sided violence in the United States against white people, well, I’m done with political correctness.
But it doesn’t explain Dinesh. I’ve always thought of him as a bit of a grifter since the only thing he has ever produced for this world are his opinions and carbon dioxide to feed plants. One of the key takeaways I’ve seen from watching grifters is that “the first rule of grifting is that you don’t intentionally piss off the people you’re grifting”.
So, what is it that caused Dinesh to pop and get D’Souza all over the place?
Izzat.
What’s izzat? I know, it sounds like one of my stupid jokes. And when I first read about it, I was looking for a punchline. But, nope, it’s real. I read about it in a screencap from user GluttonousManSlob on kiwifarms®. It was posted on a thread on /pol/, but the file is too large for me to post here, but you can find it on X® because I posted it here (LINK).
There is no direct translation of izzat as far as I know, and I know a lot of words. It’s a weird (to a Westerner) concept of collective and individual honor and status. The reason it is so weird is that it is honor that is completely stripped from the concept of right and wrong. Izzat is all about winning and losing.
Dinesh didn’t want to reply, he had to reply. His izzat was at stake.
As I said, anything is justified to keep izzat, even murder. An example from India: an Indian rickshaw driver saw two other Indians peeing in the street. There was a public toilet right there. The rickshaw driver offered to pay for the toilet for the men.
The men, having lost izzat, came back with a mob and beat the rickshaw driver to death. The urinating Indians thus restored their lost izzat.
Dinesh saw mocking other Indians as something he simply could not put up with, and defended them as izzat demanded. But there’s more to it than that.
The other problem with izzat is that it doesn’t matter who is right or wrong, it’s just about winning, which is why izzat prevents Indians from admitting they were wrong. They will never take responsibility because being wrong entails a huge loss of izzat.
This leads to a complete breakdown in infrastructure. Reporting a pothole is an insult to the Supreme Director of Roadway Quality and Repair for Utter Pradesh and if you reported one, the Supreme Director will want to find a way to punish and humiliate you rather than, you know, fix the pothole. The mission of an organization or company isn’t as important as the izzat of the individuals at the organization.
Oh, and also why bribery is nearly a spectator sport: if you bribe, you can get what you need (win). But to require a bribe, well, that’s a lot of izzat.
Which is why scamming is great for Indians: izzat isn’t about morality, remember, it’s about winning and losing. But, it’s more than that.
The izzat from social status increases is amazing. If an Indian has a job at, say, Microsoft™ and manage to hire another Indian, they owe him. Izzat demands that their loyalty isn’t to Microsoft©, it’s first to that Indian that hired them, and second to all of the other Indians there.
It’s in-group preference on steroids. And it explains why Indians never hire non-Indians unless they have to. They don’t get izzat from Tom Tuttle from Tacoma, but they do get izzat from Kumar Krishnananana from Kashipur.
But if the hire Tom, they get a guy who wants to work for the organization, and get ahead to get raises, et cetera. Typical Western behavior. But if they hire Kumar, they get another person wo will want to increase his izzat by hiring in a bunch of other Indians, and, if possible a bunch of other Indians from his caste.
Best?
A bunch of Indians from his family.
In an Indian-dominated company, it’s no longer about the organization or the mission, or what is right and what is wrong.
It’s about izzat. It’s about winning. Each Indian is at war with every other Indian, yet they must support the other Indians against, well, you. Why do Indians with middle class jobs raid food banks in Canada? Because they can. Because if they do that, they win, and get izzat.
If the guy above is okay with taking food from poor people, stealing Grandma’s life savings is nothing. Probably, he thinks it’s moral.
The error that most people from the West make when dealing with other cultures is to think that other cultures have the same goals as those of the West, goals based on the honor of being a good man, of building for the future for our children, of doing what is right rather than what is easy, even when it means standing up to authority.
Western values, American values are in many ways the direct opposite of everything Indian culture produces.
Izzat, like the Indian Thugee cult is nothing but a destructive influence, one that, if the Indians like, they can keep.
And that’s all I have to say about izzat.
