I have no morals

Or so I was told in a meeting yesterday when a consultant I am working with declared that “Americans have no morals”.  Now normally if I was sitting in NY I’d 100% agree and share anecdotes about my rage at the lack of virtue in America.  I’d rattle on and on about how we start unnecessary wars, torture the innocent, elect monkeys to the White House, and persecute the dark, gay, and disabled. 

But...fuck that. I’m in India now and feeling more American than ever and this was most definitely, NOT COOL. 

I’m so over the assumed sense of moral superiority that a certain segment and generation of Indians seem to believe in as gospel truth.  America isn't Finland, we have major issues and I’m a constant and unreasonable critic (ask Naiel).  That being said, America doesn’t (usually) let its deformed and old die in its streets, America doesn’t accept 40% of its population living without basic literacy, America doesn’t tolerate 3,000 children dying of malnutrition EVERY SINGLE DAY. 

Now it’s probably a fair counterargument to point out that America doesn’t have these problems because its unbelievably wealthy.  One could even (somewhat legitimately) argue that the US got to where it is via 200 years of imperialism and exploitation (slavery, anyone?). 

My take on it – bullshit!  I’ve seen and studied how things operate  (or rather don’t operate) in India and I’ve concluded that the problem here has little to do with a lack of resources or money.  It’s incompetence, greed, and corruption up and down and around “the system”.  Sure there are legacy issues left over from colonialism and sure plenty of companies and countries (including the US) have exploited and manipulated this country.  But at the end of the day the responsibility lies with society – and society here has chosen to not deliver a basic level of sustenance to an unacceptably large proportion of the population.  To me that  sounds like a very serious moral failure.  Maybe even a bigger failure then the fact that Americans freely wear shorts.

Now since I want to avoid repeating this consultant’s mistake in generalizing about an entire country based on a few select examples (his issue was that Americans seem to care only about profit maximization), I’ll make a disclaimer that I’m not arguing and nor do I believe that Americans are morally superior to Indians. After all we do have Rush Limbaugh.

What I DO think is that this strain of Indian nationalism (borderline fascism) that I keep spotting in the media and in otherwise rational individuals is very, very dangerous. I’m not just talking out of my ass here.  There was a study done by The Pew Research Center that revealed that 85% of Indians feel their culture is superior to others – the highest proportion among 43 nations surveyed.  That kind of arrogance bothers me. It’s the same nationalism that drove this country to develop nuclear weapons rather than manufacture vaccines and its the same nationalism that drove Hindu's to slaughter Muslims (as in “Darfur style” rip out their organs and set them on fire type of slaughter) in Gujrat in 2002 (exactly where in the Bhagavad-Gita is this required?).  So while this country seems to have done a great job of enforcing its adamant morals about wearing shorts in public (I'm clearly very bitter about this) I don’t think its ok for anyone here to yet claim any kind of right to moral judgment. 

Sorry about this rant that I’m directing at you rather than the consultant who should be hearing it.  I promise not to make a habit out of these angry posts.