I've never been to China or India, so I'm just going to talk through my hat here about the images of the two countries in the imagination of Stuff White People Like white people such as, well, me. In general, India seems to win hands down in a contest of stereotypical images in the heads of SWPLs:
- China is a dictatorship; India is a democracy.
- China is homogeneous; India is diverse.
- China is monocultural; India is multicultural.
- China is conformist; India is free-spirited.
- China is a nation; India is a subcontinent.
- China has factories where people work with their hands; India has call centers where people talk into headsets.
- China makes hardware; India does software.
- China bulldozes new freeways; Indians argue endlessly over whose backyard would have to go.
- China bulldozes new freeways; Indians argue endlessly over whose backyard would have to go.
- China is good at math; India is good at verbal.
- China has ugly air pollution; India has blue skies.
- China is modernizing; India is postmodernizing.
China looks at pictures of the old-fashioned Modern America that went to the Moon and says: "We want some of that."
But is India becoming more like postmodern America or is postmodern America becoming more like India? Maybe India is already at where postmodernism leads? That the future for the postmodernist U.S. is Indian-style inequality and ineffectuality?
Consider, for example, India's addiction to arranged marriages. A generation ago, that would have seemed appalling to Americans. But, now, at the upper reaches of American society, I sense an unspoken but growing sense suspicion that maybe the Indians have got it right about marriages.
But is India becoming more like postmodern America or is postmodern America becoming more like India? Maybe India is already at where postmodernism leads? That the future for the postmodernist U.S. is Indian-style inequality and ineffectuality?
Consider, for example, India's addiction to arranged marriages. A generation ago, that would have seemed appalling to Americans. But, now, at the upper reaches of American society, I sense an unspoken but growing sense suspicion that maybe the Indians have got it right about marriages.
The upper middle class spends much time and money stage-managing their children's lives to get them into the right institutions with the right sort of people for them to find the right sort of spouse, but then the ungrateful little scions fail to pull the trigger. So, why not take the next step and instead of just hiring tutors and consultants to get them into nice colleges and nice law schools, go all the way and hire matchmaking consultants to get them a nice husband or wife?
I'm not saying that any SWPL has yet even articulated this thought internally, but the logic of social trends is leading in that direction. And once that thought starts to pop up in the minds of the SWPLs as they age, what ideological barrier is there? Are they going to tell themselves, "We are Westerners! Oriental despotism is not for us." Yeah, right.
What about women's rights as an ideological impediment? Well, that's more plausible, but the SWPLs who are going to seriously consider hiring matchmakers for their children are going to be not patriarchal fathers, but instead mothers with high-powered careers. They hire consultants all the time on the job, so why not hire a consultant to help their children find a mate?
Here's an interesting betting proposition: What is the under-over line for the year of America's First Arranged Gay Marriage? 2022?
Compare and contract the risk/reward profile for a) choice of college b) choice of spouse.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it, it's hard to really screw up your life by choosing the wrong college. On the other hand, it's trivially easy to completely screw up your life by picking the wrong woman [man].
Flipping it around, the upside seems much higher in the college choice. But that just might be me.
I don't think SWPLs are terribly impressed by India. They admire its spiritual traditions (compared to the money-hungry striving in China), but then they go there (or hear from someone who has) and learn how shambolic it is (as Steve Jobs did). Then what? They can split the difference and focus on Tibet: spiritualism plus fresh mountain air, with an added frisson of perceived injustice (Chinese occupation), and its spiritual leader exiled to India.
ReplyDeleteYou've never heard of a dating coach?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/fashion/27dating.html?pagewanted=all
Gloria
China..India...Puh-lease; Brazil is the future.
ReplyDeleteSo, how is Citizenism supposed to work in this future America, in which the various classes and ethnic groups have nothing in common? Are wealthy SWPLs, poor Mestizos and Southern Whites really supposed to forge some common bond?
ReplyDeleteA couple of thoughts:
ReplyDelete1) About 1000 years of Chinese intellectual life seems to be summed up by the question "Um, excuse me, is that going to be on the exam?"
2) Multiculturalism seems to be about creating a sideways version of a caste system. In a regular caste system, castes are ranked, and a huge amount of cultural energy goes into obscuring the fact that there's actually a lot of overlap between castes: Rajiv the barber's son would make a better soldier than a lot of the guys born into the job and is smarter than the local brahmin, but let's have a lot of ritual, and a whole cosmology involving karma and reincarnation, to cover up the fact.
In an age of egalitarianism and mass politics, multiethnic societies generate sideways caste systems, where all segments are supposed to be equally represented in all positions that matter (or at least lower segments are not supposed to be underrepresented). A huge amount of cultural energy goes into obscuring the fact that there are group differences, and a whole cosmology is built up around this ("Race is only skin deep," "We are all Africans," etc.)
Some societies are bigger on this kind of thing than others: the Romans, the Mongols, the 18th C British weren't always the nicest people, but they don't seem to have gone in for the same level of mystification.
There's also Tibet which is a cause celebre for SWPLs and makes China's image worse with SWPLs.
ReplyDeleteAlso food gives India more SWPL appeal. India is associated with vegetarianism, while China is associated with greasy fried food, pork, meat, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnother example of this: pretty much everyone in America has heard of the Tibetans, China's oppressed minority up in the mountains who have been suffering under military rule since the 1950s. We have all heard of them because the Tibetans are media darlings. Not so coincidentally, the Tibetans are Buddhist, which is a very trendy religion among left-wing ex-Christians and non-believing Jews.
ReplyDeleteIndia also has an oppressed minority up in the mountains who have been under military rule for decades: the Nagas. They're Baptist, thanks to untrendy white people like Edwin W. Clark of Boston. They're so Baptist that even the revolutionary National Socialist Council of Nagaland uses the slogan "Nagaland for Christ" to rally their troops. Unsurprisingly, most people in America have never heard of the Nagas, because the media will not tell you anything.
Never, because arranged marriages are about producing offspring. Granted, you could borrow an egg from a sister or whatever, hire a surrogate, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut really the prospect of arranged marriages is about whether upperclass Americans, competing with Indians who arrange theirs, will need to borrow their methods to compete.
The American method is more efficient in some ways. The idea is to get your kid into the right college and present them with a horde of acceptable mates (to you), and get them to choose one also acceptable to them.
Also, I wonder if/when the aging wealthy will start tying inheritance to procreation and marrying the person.
I've never been to China or India, so I'm just going to talk through my hat here about the images of the two countries in the imagination of Stuff White People Like white people like myself. In general, India seems to win hands down in a contest of stereotypical images in the heads of SWPLs:
ReplyDeleteIndia is more alpha, China is more beta.
In terms of marriages and the like, SWPL beta males marry Chinese females.
While with India, it's more Indian males marrying SWPL females.
Beta males go to the more beta cultures for women. Thus China is more beta.
My wife's parents first met at their wedding. Their marriage truly was arranged for them, but it turned out to be a happy one. Nowadays in the middle and upper classes, parents "arrange" marriages for their children by introducing them to potential mates, but the children CAN say no. My wife and I were introduced in this way. We have been married for eleven years and have three children. I don't see anything wrong with this kind of arranged marriage.
ReplyDelete"So, why not take the next step and instead of just hiring tutors and consultants to get them into nice colleges and nice law schools, go all the way and hire matchmaking consultants to get them a nice husband or wife?"
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense. Marriage is kind of like college; it costs a lot of money and there is a lot less sex involved than you were led to believe.
I think that the reason why the powers that be portray China in a worse light than India is that China is stronger. The powers that be are scared of China. It's a potential competitor for them. India isn't.
ReplyDeleteI agree with some, not with others:
ReplyDelete"- China is a nation; India is a subcontinent."
I'd say they're both subcontinents, although the word is only used of India (maybe including all the countries that made up British India). Both are far more than mere nations. "Civilizations" captures one aspect of their sheer greatness; "subcontinent" might capture another. Greatness, BTW, doesn't exclude sheer crappiness.
"- China has factories where people work with their hands; India has call centers where people talk into headsets."
Cliche, most ppl recognize that India has lots of factories. Still, Indians have an easier time with English, a legacy of Raj.
"- China makes hardware; India does software."
Kinda.
"- China bulldozes new freeways; Indians argue endlessly over whose backyard would have to go."
You have a point.
"- China is good at math; India is good at verbal."
Pretty much, though Indians better at math than Chinese at (English-language) verbal.
"- China has ugly air pollution; India has blue skies."
Not really true
"- China is modernizing; India is postmodernizing."
Interesting, maybe true. Certainly it's more difficult to envision India's future than China's
Cennbeorc
The first arranged gay marriage will come before the first virgin gay marriage, but after the first polygamous gay marriage.
ReplyDeleteIn fact the only virgin gay marriages will be *mariages blanches*.
Cennbeorc
Have you ever seen an account of the ethnic/caste system in India? For the typical Indian family living in the US the choice of spouse for their daughter is a minefield of requirements. Class X from this region would not dream of mixing with even a higher class from the another region. It appears so complex to me, it makes three-D chess from Star Trek seem simple.
ReplyDeleteRead an account somewhere and it said, all this would never be explicitly stated anywhere but it is received truth in the families passed on sub Rosa. The rules are unbelievably complex.
This is not arranged marriage to ensure a quality mate from a good family. Its like the South in the US, not about what you do or make but entirely about who your parents are.
How about:
ReplyDeleteIndia: People defecate openly on the streets of major cities.
China: People do not.
"Arranged gay marriage" — This is why there is, and can be, only one Steve Sailer.
ReplyDeleteOrthodox Jews have always arranged marriages. One of the most powerful tools used against Orthodox dissidents is the threat that screwing up will destroy your children's or siblings' chances for marriage. It is the most powerful weapons in the Jewish rabbi arsenal to enforce conformity and blind obedience. Not sure upper class WASPs would Accept that much cultural domination and groveling.
ReplyDeleteSo, how is Citizenism supposed to work in this future America, in which the various classes and ethnic groups have nothing in common?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't! That's the whole idea - stick with citizenism now at the expense of increasing diversity and "racial justice" to prevent citizenism becoming ineffectual and obsolete.
China is a greasy smell; India is more BO.
ReplyDeleteI've often thought that Mira Nair movies say something vastly important (as artefacts) about the Soul of Woman Under PostColonialism or something like that.
ReplyDelete"Monsoon Wedding" and "Vanity Fair" may not be that popular, but their idleness as narratives, their loud sentimentality, and of course their faith in sensuosity as some kind of intellectual statement in itself, rather terrify me. These films don't own art house cinema yet-- but in the multicult gynocracy, they may someday.
Needless to say, China is vastly cooler than India, all those good democratic and whatnot reasons notwithstanding.
China has ugly air pollution; India has blue skies.
ReplyDeleteChina has industrial pollution; India has cow manure and human waste.
-China is light colored, India is brown
ReplyDelete-China eats dogs and monkeys, India won't even eat cows.
"China has ugly air pollution; India has blue skies."
ReplyDeleteIndia is dirtier and more littered than you can image. I blew black snot in my tissue after each excursion outdoors.
Chinese eat rice; Indians eat corn.
ReplyDeleteLots of my colleagues in engineering are married with kids. Many of them had arranged marriages. On occasions when we've discussed such things, most of the other Anglo engineers are pretty friendly to the whole arranged marriage concept. Granted, engineers are a pretty results-oriented lot (they see the very low levels of divorce and comparable levels of apparent happiness), but this does tend to argue in Steve's direction regarding arranged marriages in the US. They're already 'not unthinkable' to significant segments of the upper middle classes.
ReplyDelete-China have Hong Kong movies, India have Bollywood movie.
ReplyDeleteJoseph D
ReplyDeleteNagaland is protected by Article 371 of the Indian constitution, which means that non-Nagas cant buy land in the state and they are demographically protected
India has recruited a Naga regmiment of 5000 soldiers for the last 50 years
There is a ceasefire in Nagaland with the Naga separatists for 15 years. There are 2 bands on Naga separatists who kill each other. The Naga separatists are given arms and training by China, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Not to mention moral support by US baptists. Too bad the US baptists dont tell everyone that their favorite separatists are armed and trained by China and Islamic Pakistan and Bangladesh
So how did the Nagas become Baptists. The Nagas had their own tribal religion , Heraka religion and their queen revolted against the british in 1930. She got 15 years in Jail.
The british realised that Indian xtians were loyal to the white man
In the meantime, baptist missionaries were let loose on the Naga. When their queen was released after 15 years, her people had been brainwashed by the baptists and she was shunned as a heathen
"China..India...Puh-lease; Brazil is the future."
ReplyDeleteTruth's funniest joke yet.
First arranged gay 'marriage'?
ReplyDeleteThere has not ever been any authentic marriage between two people of the same gender and there won't ever be.
The very notion that two people of the same gender can be married in actuality is as absurd and nonsensical to me as the day I first heard of it years ago.
If you see something without wheels and call it a car, shouting louder won't make it a car. When people are called haters for being accurate in their semantics I want to eat mor chikin.
Dear Indian Mom and Dad,
ReplyDeleteWhen arranging my marriage, please don't exclude Reshma Shetty from consideration.
Love,
Indian Son
"We have been married for eleven years and have three children. I don't see anything wrong with this kind of arranged marriage."
ReplyDeleteThere's not a lot of difference between that kind of arranged marriage and college.
However there's also the kind which is based on maintaining the tradition of a long-term alliance between families from the same ancestral village. I think this form of arranged marriage where the candidates are already related is what leads to a culture where people are only concerned about their extended family.
The American social landscape is dysfunctional - more than 50% of children live in single parent homes. The better class of Americans will naturally look at alternatives to assure their survival, and not risk that they fall into the ever-stagnant and culturally bankrupt Appalachian substrate.
ReplyDeleteDating in America is psy-ops and combat - never has a more complex mating system existed in the history of humanity, and it is rife with exploiters and pimps.
India is more attractive to SWPLs because it presents 3rd worlders the way SWPLs like to see them. And Indian culture has a lot in common with Western culture. The English loved the idea of the castles and the ancient noble families and the whole feudal way of life and so on and so forth. There was, and still is, a lot to romanticise about India, and through India, to romanticise what has been lost to the Western past. China, on the other hand, has been recognisably run as a modern bureaucratic state for over two thousand years, off and on. Augustus boasted that he found Rome built of brick, and he left Rome clad in marble. The First Emperor of China boasted that he had standardised orthography and established a uniform system of weights and measures.
ReplyDeleteThe Western democracies -- America above all -- already now resemble meritocratic, bureaucratic imperial China much more than they resemble the kind of local, ground-up society they had 200 years ago, in the early years of the Republic. We have the examination systems. We have a vast, unaccountable bureaucratic state, in which petty mandarins (who got their positions through exams) can exercise petty tyranny. We have a penal code (the Federal Sentencing Guidelines) which in its exceedingly fine calculations of criminal penalty more closely resembles the Great Code of the Qing than it does any Western historical antecedents (in much of the West until the early 19th century, basically everything from shoplifting on up was punishable by death). Just as the Confucian empire produced a surplus of unemployed and unemployable "scholars" who dreamed of bloody revolution and social upheaval, we have our overeducated layabouts in the Occupy movement. Just as Chinese spiritualists sought longevity and enlightenment through esoteric rituals and a obsession with their precious bodily fluids, we have yuppies doing cleanses, and fools dying in desert sweatboxes. The shape of American society is bending ever closer to the Chinese mold. It is thus foreign without being attractively exotic, except at the most superficial level.
And China has not, except for a the odd bit of Taoism or the occasional Buddhist extravagance, ever been a particularly romantic kind of place. Its history is full of dull, practical men. Confucianism is, itself, a dull practical religion-shaped thing. In its relentless emphasis on moderation, it is the antithesis of the kind of fanatic, passionate religious feeling we see in Christianity and Islam. Its rites and practices had, I assume, some religious content three thousand years ago, under the Zhou dynasty, but by the time of Confucius, they had already lost most of their religious meaning. Xunzi, in his commentaries, as much as says that the hoi polloi think the ancestor worship rites are there to placate ghosts, but gentlemen know the point of the rites is to teach correct behaviour and reinforce correct feeling. China's ancient dialogues lack the drama of Cicero's full-on supervillain rant to Catiline. Instead, it's a bunch of ancient bureaucrats discussing the effects on price and product quality of establishing government monopolies over the manufacture of ironware and salt, versus leaving it to private mercantile interests. Even China's popular art bears the mark of this unromantic tendency. While Shakespeare and his contemporaries were writing swashbuckling plays with climaxes full of murder and princes, the author of the Peony Pavilion -- roughly contemporary -- decided to end his play with a bang by having the protagonist get first place in the national examinations. The famous eighth century poet and minor official Du Fu -- possibly roughly contemporary with the author(s) of Beowulf -- wrote a poem in which he complains about how unpleasant is to be stuck in his office in the summer heat, reviewing official papers.
This becomes more complicated when we consider Chinese-American and Indian-American. More complicated when we consider East-Asian-American and South-Asian-American(including Pakis and Sikhs.
ReplyDeleteIndians may be more talkative than Chinese, but I'm not sure this is true of Chinese-Americans vs Indian-Americans. Everytime I order chop suey, there's some Chinese guy who won't ever shut up about anything.
Most SWPL guys prefer Chinese girls--though, as far as I can tell, Chinese are not very attractive(though there are exceptions like Gong Show Li). Japanese are better-looking in general(but then Japanese women tend to be midgetesses). Chinese faces tend to be more blunt: bigger cheekbones, slittier eyes, and etc. Some of them are as hard to look at as Woody Allen's mug.
Though all the stuff associated with India--diversity, multi-culturalism, etc--are more in tune with SWPL values, China is actually more in tune with SWPL practices. SWPL generally flock to white-majority towns. Indeed, SWPL is a form of implicit white identity thing. And though SWPL women may lust after some muscular Negroes--to sow their wild oatesses--, they eventually wanna settle down with some white guy who is more dependable.
Blacks have dark skin but it's wrapped around muscle. So, black skin had a certain edge to it. It's blackness as power, which is appealing--like SS uniforms of Nazis.
But Indians have dark skin without much muscle. All things being equal, SWPL prefers white skin(and 'yellow' skin which is essentially white, and in some cases, lighter than skins of southern Europeans).
Also, whatever SWPL say, they'd rather take a trip to Chinese-dominated places than to India. All said and done, SWPL prefer order to disorder.
Personally, I'd like to visit India in a dream to see its palaces and monuments. But I don't wanna go there and feel the heat and smell its people. AS for China and East ASia, I boycott all nations that are cruel to dogs and cats.
I think Steve was right when he predicted that the future of the "West" will be a mixture of Brazil with the Ottoman Empire.
ReplyDelete"China has factories where people work with their hands; India has call centers where people talk into headsets."
ReplyDeleteAn interesting fact that might somewhat be related to HBD.
In the last 5 years, the global Business Process Outsourcing industry has changed a lot. The voice segment of BPO (call centers) has migrated in droves to Manila which in now dominant in voice (despite higher wages). Indians in BPO now do paperwork and Excel.
The outsourcing sector still hasn't fully matured. There are just 3 million people employed in IT and BPO in India. If that were to double in 10 years, imagine the loss of jobs in American back offices.
America is becoming Indian in other ways. The percentage of Americans who believe that an exclusivist Christian path is the only way to God is declining as a direct result of exposure to Indian spirituality, which allows for multiples perspectives and paths to the divine (see Kipling's poem, The Blind Men of Indostan).
ReplyDeleteAlso, at least 20 million Americans are doing some form of yoga.
India punches way above way above its weight in soft power - not just ancient Indian wisdom but also modern pop culture, such as Bollywood, which is a hit in many non-Indian parts of the world, especially the Middle East.
post-mortem amerika
ReplyDeleteNever, because arranged marriages are about producing offspring. Granted, you could borrow an egg from a sister or whatever, hire a surrogate, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe higher cost of labor leads to increased mechanization.
Wait, which post am I commenting on?
"While with India, it's more Indian males marrying SWPL females."
ReplyDeleteThe fantasy world of the braggart Indian male. Chinese male-white female pairings are much more common than Indian male-white female pairings.
Data comes from UK gov statistics:
61.3% of British born Chinese men marry outside of the race.
13% of British born Indian men marry outside of the race.
The source is this survey http://www.apa.org.au/upload/2004-2E_Muttarak.pdf (go to page 24 for a chart)
Historically, the British got India, so American elites sort of went gaga for China, thinking they could convert the Chinese to Christianity/ capitalism and covert China into an ally, the same way the British used India as a capitive market and a source of manpower. You still get echoes of that today.
ReplyDeleteThere has been a consistent American fascination for China and dismissal of India, and I don't think it really goes deeper than what I said above.
But Anonyous 7:55 makes good points. I've commented before that the United States increasingly resembles China during the second half of one of its dynasties. You can probably learn more about the direction of the U.S. by reading about the end of the Han, Tang, Ming, or Qing dynasties than in any account of Indian history.
I'm not sure what this has to do with arranged marriage, which was the normal way that marriages were well, arranged, throughout history.
@Truth
ReplyDelete"China..India...Puh-lease; Brazil is the future."
Uh, no. If all Brazilians were like people from Santa Catarina, then yes. But as it is, most Brazilians are more like Guatemalans than Germans, and the only future Brazil has is as a commodities exporter, mainly to China. Brazil's economy was growing at close to 7% a year for 15 years and had doubled the GDP in the first decade of this century, but now it is tanking again. Brazilians have an unequaled ability for crashing&burning. Just watch and see. Until the time Brazilians learn to separate the private from public, and get serious about educational excellence both at the primary school and graduate level, it will remain a Third World country. A First World society in the 21st Century does not have illiterate people, or a state that does not recognize equality before the law but rather exists to benefit whoever is in power.
There are some very serious, probe, cultured and ethically correct people with great severitas in Brazil, but unfortunately they are the minority, and a country does not change FOR GOOD until such people achieve a critical mass.
Most SWPL guys prefer Chinese girls
ReplyDeleteI think this is as much a result of Chinese being willing to date/marry Whites as it is a result of Whites liking the appearance of Chinese girls. That said, the girls that Whites go after aren't always the most attractive girls, at least from the Asian perspective (the comment is sometimes that you see handsome Whites with plain girls). I suspect part of that is just that pretty girls have less reason to date Whites. But there are certainly exceptions, so it may be an actual preference on their part -- that they like the look of the plain ones.
Also, as far as East Asian feminine beauty, let me indulge in a bit of misplaced racial pride and point out that Korean women are easily the most beautiful. There is a reason Korea has always been forced to pay its tribute in women.
I think SWPL guys would go more for Indian chicks. Maybe not from all places in India, but that's the strength of diversity -- it has something to offer all sorts of foreigners.
ReplyDeleteThe more north and west you go in India, the more likely you are to find a girl who would look like a somewhat more dark, exotic version of Zooey Deschanel. Aside from light skin, Chinese just look too different from SWPLs to produce someone like that.
And of course SWPL women would have even less difficulty favoring India over China when it comes to imagining potential boyfriends or flings, though still more among the lighter skinned Indians.
I think the nose shape alone is a killer for China. SWPLs want to associate themselves with refinement, regardless of which sub-type. And noses with low bridges and wide bases just look too low-class.
Granted there are lots of Indians with those noses, but a good deal who have narrower and higher-bridged ones, particularly in the more Indo-European parts.
And Indians have bigger eyes, which SWPLs will like because it suggests openness, trustworthiness, etc. -- someone who wouldn't ruin the kickball game for personal gain. With those narrow-eyed Chinese, you never know...
And as someone already mentioned, aside from looking too different, the Chinese just aren't that attractive.
Indians are also more decorative or ornamental than the drabber Chinese. Indeed a good deal of Indian ornament has been borrowed or re-imagined by SWPLs, at least the organic farmer's market, artisanal hand-crafted small batches crowd.
ReplyDeleteAs for Chinese design, most SWPLs probably see Feng Shui as more of a mainstream touristy wrong-white-people thing, hence tainted. Ditto for Chinese character tattoos on lower-class whites. You just don't see much enthusiasm for their look among SWPLs.
There's a split among SWPLs about decoration, though. There's the boho crowd but also the Puritanical crowd. Still, I think the latter would link their minimalist tastes to Japanese Zen Buddhism, not to anything identifiably Chinese.
Then there's the production process of all this stuff: in the SWPL mind, "Made in China" sounds carelessly mass-produced, while "Made in India" sounds more thoughtfully hand-crafted.
The reason the U.S. has some resemblance to China during the later periods of its dynasties is that the United States is a continental sized country with few or no serious external enemies. Same with China for most of its history. If the elite take it into their head to ass-rape the country, there is really nothing stopping them.
ReplyDeleteYou know what cures SWPLs of fetishizing India? Visiting India. Never fails. My hardcore feminist/vegan/activist sister came back from India saying she never knew how progressive mainstream American society was until she tried to walk through an Indian city alone.
ReplyDelete"I think SWPL guys would go more for Indian chicks. Maybe not from all places in India, but that's the strength of diversity -- it has something to offer all sorts of foreigners."
Northern Indian women can be quite beautiful, but tend toward rather extreme hairiness. Also, they don't age nearly as well as Asians.
"You know what cures SWPLs of fetishizing India? Visiting India. Never fails. My hardcore feminist/vegan/activist sister came back from India saying she never knew how progressive mainstream American society was until she tried to walk through an Indian city alone."
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine is Indian-American, born and raised here, MD, etc. He finally took a trip back to his ancestral homeland. Came back and refused to talk much about it. I imagine the sights and smells of cow manure, human waste, and overall filth all marinating in 100-degree heat took all the romance out of the experience.
The fantasy world of the braggart Indian male.
ReplyDelete+1
Kinda stupid of them considering that all their lies and delusions are easily exposed by statistical data, a few pictures, a visit to India.....
"So how did the Nagas become Baptists. The Nagas had their own tribal religion , Heraka religion and their queen revolted against the british in 1930. She got 15 years in Jail.
ReplyDeleteThe british realised that Indian xtians were loyal to the white man
In the meantime, baptist missionaries were let loose on the Naga. When their queen was released after 15 years, her people had been brainwashed by the baptists and she was shunned as a heathen"
Heraka is a gutter religion and the Nagas are better off as Christians. You sound really butthurt over it. And your grammar is terrible for a high IQ Brahmin.
For real traditional authenticity, these gay marriages would have to be arranged when the babies are born, or even beforehand. Perhaps, in this future postmodern culture, extended families will designate 10% of each generation as gay, and arrange their lives accordingly.
ReplyDelete"Now, Rajid, I know you claim to like girls, but you don't want to dishonor your parents, do you? Please, act respectably fabulous when our future in laws come over for tea. And be sweet to Virak. The two of you will be sharing a marriage bed and adopting Chinese babies in less than 6 years.It's your duty"
"India punches way above way above its weight in soft power - not just ancient Indian wisdom but also modern pop culture, such as Bollywood, which is a hit in many non-Indian parts of the world, especially the Middle East."
ReplyDeleteIndian wisdom? I don't think so. Aside from a handful of novelists, most people don't care much about Indian texts. The Upanishads may be required reading in universities but aside from your odd SWPL, nobody reads them in their spare time.
The Middle East is full of illiterate proles so it's not surprising they like Bollywood movies. If Bollywood movies become popular in France, Italy, or Japan then maybe they will have some relevance.
I think SWPL guys would go more for Indian chicks. Maybe not from all places in India, but that's the strength of diversity -- it has something to offer all sorts of foreigners.
ReplyDeleteMany SWPL guys are beta, and beta guys don't have much choice. Beta guys tend to turn to the relatively more beta culture for women, and China is more beta than India. India is more alpha than China and has greater control over its women.
I haven't seen any evidence for SWPLs being more into India and Indian things than China/Chinese things or vice versa.
ReplyDeleteIndian and Chinese food and things aren't that exotic for SWPLs.
SWPLs seem to be more into Thai food, vacationing in Thailand, etc., than in India or China. Thailand is also a Buddhist country, so there's that as well.
ReplyDeleteIndian wisdom? I don't think so. Aside from a handful of novelists, most people don't care much about Indian texts. The Upanishads may be required reading in universities but aside from your odd SWPL, nobody reads them in their spare time.
Most people in America don't read anything. Indian philosophy is diffused by diverse channels - everything from the Esalen Institute to Transcendental Meditation to Bikram Yoga to Star Wars (George Lucas studied Joseph Cambell extensively). In American intellectual history, notable examples of Indian-philosophy influenced figures include Emerson, Thoreau, William James and Robert Oppenheimer (who quoted the Bhagaved Gita when he saw the fruits of the Manhattan project blow up in front of him) and Steve Jobs
In contrast, Confucianism, always the regnant philosophical perspective in China, has had little influence in the US. Chinese Buddhism has had more of an impact, but that itself is an essentially Indian derivation, mediated by Taoist influences.
In fact, when looking historically at the two civilizations, India has had more influence on China than the other way around.
Places like Thailand, parts of Indonesia, etc. have more SWPL appeal since they're more unknown to non-SWPLs. India and China are too passe and known by non-SWPLs.
ReplyDelete"I think the nose shape alone is a killer for China. SWPLs want to associate themselves with refinement, regardless of which sub-type. And noses with low bridges and wide bases just look too low-class."
ReplyDeleteA lot of white guys would get a hard-on for a Siamese cat.
I think SWPL guys would go more for Indian chicks.
ReplyDeleteYou're more likely to see them Thai ladyboys than Indian chicks.
"And of course SWPL women would have even less difficulty favoring India over China when it comes to imagining potential boyfriends or flings, though still more among the lighter skinned Indians."
ReplyDelete"And as someone already mentioned, aside from looking too different, the Chinese just aren't that attractive." - Some Indian guy
----
I see the coping mechanisms for the Indian guy above are going crazy. The world is a cruel place for Indians, especially in the HBD world. Pisa tests, Olympics medals, UK gov stats on intermarriage...
Sorry buddy, white girls just don't find Indian men attractive. The on the ground picture for relations between SWPL women and Indian men looks like this: a group of Indian men staring at the girls in a bar (we've all seen this in Western countries)
Statistics show higher rates of out marriage for later generations of Chinese men and women versus Indian men and women. It's attributable in part to culture but also the reality that Indians just aren't attractive. Shouldn't the fact that your movies are filled with dancers from Iran and Afghanistan have clued you into that fact? An entire country programmed to worship the racial features of people of other countries.
It's a myth East Asian women are submissive. They definitely are not with white guys. For some reason this myth persists even though there are many more interactions among white and East Asian people to know better. Pushy is more like it. Passive-aggressiveness is a trait among both East Asian males and females. Status and money are top objectives among East Asians. White guys who partner with East Asian women are like white women who partner with black males; they both are looking to escape the expectations and responsibilites of their white counterpart. These white people are not about building futures, they are about gratification.
ReplyDeleteDespite radical plastic surgeries and various other things East Asians do to look white their natural features are black straight hair, brown eyes, slanty eyelids, broad flat face, small chin, yellow or pale black skin, small or no eyebrow ridge, high cheekbones, low bridge nose, and spread apart eyes.
"hiring matchmakers for their children are going to be not patriarchal fathers, but instead mothers with high-powered careers. "
ReplyDeleteFathers aren't the matchmakers in India either. The zeal for match-making is a very feminine trait undertaken with much gusto, and men only figure in giving a nominal approval to their wife's wishes.
China is a Panda Bear; India an Elephant.
ReplyDeleteHeraka is a gutter religion and the Nagas are better off as Christians. You sound really butthurt over it. And your grammar is terrible for a high IQ Brahmin."
ReplyDeleteLOL, a good sound reasoned argument -that is not.Do you have anything useful to contribute besides lame trolling?
I agree entirely. I see much money in the matchmaker biz in an ever more atomized Facebook social scene.
ReplyDelete- China is a dictatorship; India is a democracy.
ReplyDeleteIndia's democracy is really anarchy combined with squabbling ethnic and religious rivalries only tempered by an overbearing and overreaching central government! Remember SWPLs have a hard on for Cuba and other communist dictatorships for their order,egalitarianism and free healthcare..Aint happening in India!
- China is homogeneous; India is diverse.
There is considerable diversity in China but most minorities have "Hanized" over the last 100 years, there is no guarantee these won't revert to their previous ethnic groupings when the latest Han empire collapses.Note Russification under the Soviets was only partially successful and Iran comprises less than 50 % its ethnic Farsi core.We don't know what the true percentage of Hans in China as the Chinese governments stats are not really trustworthy!
- China is monocultural; India is multicultural.
See above.
- China is conformist; India is free-spirited.
LOL, I suppose thats a reference to Kamasutra and Bollywood but outside the major cities where a western style dating culture exists,much of Indias conservatism is very severe and honor killings and related vendettas are not uncommon.
- China is a nation; India is a subcontinent.
China is about 3 times larger than Indian and larger than U.S.Enough said.
- China has factories where people work with their hands; India has call centers where people talk into headsets.
Err not entirely.India always had factories but much for the products were never really good due to nationalization and a closed market which made manufacturers rather lax.
It does have some good engineering firms though.
Majors Car manufacturers such Hyundai have moved to areas around Chennai and Bangalore.
- China makes hardware; India does software.
True, India has constantly failed at making at a decent homegrown computer.At yet they have a super computer! Well thats India for you!
- China bulldozes new freeways; Indians argue endlessly over whose backyard would have to go.
Not entirely, there was a an article about the Golden Quadrilateral GQ highway a couple of years in National Geographic.The Indian government was very polite and empathetic in listening to the concerns of the farmers ,land owners and others who feared they would suffer due to the project.In the end the government went ahead with the project anyway.
- China is good at math; India is good at verbal.
PISA aside, India isn't bad at math either
- China has ugly air pollution; India has blue skies.
LOLLLLL, that would be news to my parents who moved to the suburbs, heck near a goddamn village, far from the amenities and conveniences of the city, just to get away from the horrid air.
- China is modernizing; India is postmodernizing.
LOLL, how the heck do you figure that?
You know what cures SWPLs of fetishizing India? Visiting India. Never fails.
ReplyDeleteThats exactly what happened to Steve Jobs. Under the influence of the Beatles and the Hippies, he traveled to India for spiritual enlightenment. He had prepared himself for the poverty but what he saw shocked and horrified him. He returned to America disgusted and disillusioned by India.
That probably explains why of all the giants of Silicon Valley Apple has the fewest Indians working for it, and the least to do with India.
I think the nose shape alone is a killer for China. SWPLs want to associate themselves with refinement, regardless of which sub-type. And noses with low bridges and wide bases just look too low-class
ReplyDeleteComplete nonsense. White people do not see indians or their noses as "refined". Far from it. Instead white men are far more attracted to chinese women. Everyone has heard of "yellow fever" and "asian fetish", but I have yet to hear of any widespread sexual fetish for indian women, or men.
India is more alpha than China and has greater control over its women.
ReplyDeleteIndian men only seem "alpha" to indian women.
Probably no culture treats women as cruelly as the hindu culture. Starting with female infanticide, to feeding the girl child less than the boy child, to child marriage and child prostitution, to treating women as beasts of burden carrying heavy loads on their heads, to treating them as pariahs when widowed.
Until the christian british to their credit finally outlawed the barbaric ancient hindu religious custom of Sati, the brahmins and kshatriyas used to tie widows to their dead husband's funeral pyre and burn them alive.
SWPL's despise Thailand because of the prostitution and the perception that it is low class (it is), because it's culture is perceived to be less interesting than that of Japan or China, and because it is seen as a place whose appeal is hedonistic, not intellectual. Try telling one you're taking a vacation to Thailand, and see the reaction. Which is a shame, because Thailand actually has a scruffy bohemian charm not present in China which would appeal greatly to SWPLs.
ReplyDeleteBut Thailand seems to have carved itself a niche in Western consciousness as a place strictly for low class trashy types, who go for the cheap beach vacation and the prostitutes.
India is CRAWLING with SWPLs - in fact, India gets some of the most interesting and intelligent travelers anywhere, especially the more remote corners, up in the mountains. I am always astounded by how many great people I meet there.
Thailand gets the trashiest travelers by far in the whole region. Move to neighboring Cambodia or Vietnam, perceived as much more challenging and tough, and the pleasure chasers tend to peter out, and the "cultural" travelers to predominate.
I think the nose shape alone is a killer for China. SWPLs want to associate themselves with refinement, regardless of which sub-type. And noses with low bridges and wide bases just look too low-class.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that most white guys are not attracted to Chinese features, but few realize that there are many Chinese/Asian types that have quasi-western noses and who look sort of Western overall. You see them all over the clubs in Asia. They are not the dominant type, but they are well represented, and would be attractive to white guys.
The whites who DO go for Asian girls tend to hook up with the less attractive ones, because people usually date out of their race only if they have trouble dating within it (i.e they are not attractive or have trouble socially). The handsome white with the plain Asian girl is almost always someone with poor social skills or who otherwise finds it hard to connect with people; this phenomena is not restricted to Asian/white couplings, many all white couples exhibit the same pattern (handsome guy, plain girl).
That being aid, I have spoken to lots of white guys in Asia who seem to genuinely prefer girls who are seen by the locals as less attractive, and in my opinion the locals are right - these girls are objectively less attractive.
One big reason for this is the "exotic" factor - Westerners fetishize the "exotic", so they come to Asia and often want a girl who is as far from what they are familiar with as possible. This usually means the girls with primitive features from a poor background. The refined, middle class girl with globalized style and tastes who might even have quasi-Western features, and who is pretty, is all too tame and familiar. She might be the girl next door. Nothing exotic about that. And Westerners often mistake the merely primitive for the exotic; the merely poor and without globalized tastes as exotic.
So the handsome white guy with poor social skills comes with this cultural baggage of romanticizing the prmitive and the exotic; et voila, you get a lot of white/Asian pairings.
A very knowing American said:
ReplyDelete"1) About 1000 years of Chinese intellectual life seems to be summed up by the question "Um, excuse me, is that going to be on the exam?"
That may be true, but to paraphrase a movie:
"I don't know if you are keeping up with current events, but we just got our asses kicked!"
I think you and a lot of other people tend to view asians as uncreative robots, incapable of true intellectual work. If you actually pay attention to news articles about science, quite often you find oriental names (usually chinese as nearly as I can tell) as one of the investigators.
Also, Anonymous said:
"Until the time Brazilians learn to separate the private from public, and get serious about educational excellence both at the primary school and graduate level, it will remain a Third World country. "
This rings awfully true about the US. And despite the rhetoric, Republicans are just as keen as Democrats for public/private sector collusion, although they do it in different ways. Both parties seem to cater equally to Wall Street. And I tend to think that when Obama is re-elected his course for the last four years will be pretty much what Romney would have done as regards the financial sector.
Though we will never know.
Lastly, this thing about arranged marriages. I doubt it will be based strictly on eugenic grounds. The British seemed to approach it like amateur gardeners.
But what happens if someone actually does this seriously for 100 years or so?
You can google up the Fionna Finn or something similar if you like.
I tend to think in the long run it is irrelevant, because eventually the singularity occurs. Whether in 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 years doesn't really matter in the bigger picture.
But it should be possible to greatly differentiate humans for certain traits. I mean 10 generations of breeding with dogs and you can do all sorts of things.
No natural law says you can't do it with humans. I've seen speculation about this prospect on Westhunter and a few other places.
Polite people don't speculate on this one, but it seems doable.
As I said, irrelevant in the long run though.
"China makes hardware; India does software."
ReplyDeletebecause india can't guarantee continuous power. There was some news of intel setting up shop in india, but israel got it instead.
"to feeding the girl child less than the boy child"
Singh a common surname means 'lion' in hindi. And lions see to it that lionesses don't get fat!
"ancient hindu religious custom of Sati,"
which happened to a miniscule number of women, and still happens in some remote places. Sometimes because the woman wants it.
gaytriarchy
ReplyDeleteI've never been to China, but I've been to Taiwan, and I've heard a few times that Taiwanese men think that Americans (of which I'm considered one, many foreigners prioritize US citizenship over race) tend to hook up with the ugly Taiwanese girls.
ReplyDeleteI pressed one guy about this and from what I got, it seems he meant "the non-anorexic ones with curly hair, who had taken a little sun on their skins."
- China makes hardware; India does software.
ReplyDeleteMade-in-China hardware is everywhere under the sun;
yet can anyone name 1 well-known Made-in-India software product/package (automatic answering machine software for call centers included) that we can find in the Western market?
Answer: none.
- China is good at math; India is good at verbal.
Translation: Chinese are good at Math; Indins are good at BS?
- China has ugly air pollution; India has blue skies.
You don't know what are beneath the blue sky...
- China is modernizing; India is postmodernizing.
So true! China wants to have a shot at Moon; onw-way ticket or no, India claims going to Mars... lol
Sorry buddy, white girls just don't find Indian men attractive. The on the ground picture for relations between SWPL women and Indian men looks like this: a group of Indian men staring at the girls in a bar (we've all seen this in Western countries)
ReplyDeleteTrue. I think Indians willfully delude themselves, and attempt to deceive others, to avoid facing the shameful truth.
Functionaly, Indians should be more akin to Western SWPLs:
ReplyDelete* More culturally Anglo-Saxon after 447yrs of British rule
* Native English speakers
* Heavily verbal
* Somewhat more Western appearance (bone structure and curvy women) although dusky, smaller, and thinner (skinny fat, less athletic than NE Asians)
* Most economically and educationally successful Asians in the US
But Chinese/NE Asians integrate much better with Western SWPL elites:
* NE Asians have a much higher intermarriage rates overall
* More equal interracial SES parings (typical Ashkenazi-NE Asian parings vs Indian MD-Euro RN). This is surprising given the higher levels of Indian educational and economic success, their caste-based culture and their more heavily influenced British culture/history/language.
* More interest in NE Asian modern culture (Art Film, Martial Art Sports, Anime, Hi-Tech, Gardening, Architecture, Food, Industrial and Commercial Design, etc) than Indian culture.
Aside from food and Yoga (as much a Western projection/invention as it is practiced by SWPLs), there is little modern Indian culture of interest to SWPLs.
* Aside from the extreme tourist who are often disappointed (like Jobs, the Beatles or SWLPs I've met), there is more Western travel to China than India with that imbalance likely to grow due to the increasing economic, health and cultural ties (US-China trade is 10x larger than US-India trade, US-China trade deficit is 20x larger than US-India deficit)
I recall a Seinfeld episode where the gang was visiting India to attend a wedding. An Indian friend of Jerry tried to discourage them from going. His memorable line: "If I were you, I would not go to the bathroom the entire time you are there."
ReplyDeleteThe Western democracies -- America above all -- already now resemble meritocratic, bureaucratic imperial China much more than they resemble the kind of local, ground-up society they had 200 years ago ... It is thus foreign without being attractively exotic, except at the most superficial level.
ReplyDeleteOne huge difference: China is extremely pro-intellect, America is anti-intellect. China always worshipped intelligence, and still does. America only did in the distant past.
The Western democracies -- America above all -- already now resemble meritocratic, bureaucratic imperial China much more than they resemble the kind of local, ground-up society they had 200 years ago ... It is thus foreign without being attractively exotic, except at the most superficial level.
ReplyDeleteOne huge difference: China is extremely pro-intellect, America is anti-intellect. China always worshipped intelligence, and still does. America only did in the distant past.
Having been in China, I can say definitively that people poop openly on the streets. It is a major problem, with people from the countryside never having even seen an outhouse, and Chinese toddlers having slits in their diapers so they can go wherever on the city streets.
ReplyDeleteAs far as arranged marriages go, never going to happen. Any more than the US will turn into Brazil or China or India.
You can't take individual autonomy back, what mechanism will SWPL mommies use to enforce an arranged marriage on their daughters who want single motherhood with some Alpha, government support direct or indirect like their mommas?
Are the sex police going to arrest wayward daughters for not marrying and monogamously screwing their husbands (beta to the core I might add) that their mommies picked out?
PLEASE. The whole POINT of SWPL-ism is for SWPL women to have as much sex with Alphas as possible, while justifying it. You can't put that toothepaste back in the tube.
And America will not end up like Brazil OR China because the masses of Mestizos and Blacks in the urban core WANT and DEMAND nice things too: flat screen TVs, $200 Air Jordans, Xboxen, nice cars, and more. Like extensive single motherhood, that is unsustainable.
Instead we are heading towards a war over (what else?) MONEY. MONEY! The NAM masses will vote themselves along with SWPL semi-hereditary elites the money of the Middle Class touching off a fight far more severe and brutal than the French Revolution.
America won't be China, because the Imperial State rested on a peasant class and middle class that was a part of the Imperial system. There was no independent wealth outside the Chinese state, and no demands for non-Chinese to form the subsidized peasant class, indeed the peasants were cruelly exploited.
Here in the US the State proposes to TAKE AWAY existing middle class wealth and give it to hereditary SWPL Brahmins who occupy useless pseudo-intellectual classes, and a seething mass of NAMs hungry for ever more. At BEST this produces Runnymead, at worst the tumbrils taking people to a horrific fate.
SWPL's despise Thailand because of the prostitution and the perception that it is low class (it is), because it's culture is perceived to be less interesting than that of Japan or China, and because it is seen as a place whose appeal is hedonistic, not intellectual. Try telling one you're taking a vacation to Thailand, and see the reaction. Which is a shame, because Thailand actually has a scruffy bohemian charm not present in China which would appeal greatly to SWPLs.
ReplyDeleteBut Thailand seems to have carved itself a niche in Western consciousness as a place strictly for low class trashy types, who go for the cheap beach vacation and the prostitutes.
You're behind the times. Thailand isn't only visited for trashy sex tourism anymore. Also, you don't understand SWPLs. They're not necessarily overly refined types, and things can have SWPL appeal initially for ironic reasons and then gradually in general. That's how Thailand gained SWPL appeal. It was originally ironic appeal because it was viewed as trashy.
>The world is a cruel place for Indians, especially in the HBD world. Pisa tests, Olympics medals, UK gov stats on intermarriage...
ReplyDeleteIt's actually worse for white guys - you can't even talk about your culture without being called a racist. Hey, you can't even talk about having a culture - thats even more racist!
>Sorry buddy, white girls just don't find Indian men attractive.
White women do not age well How many of us really want Barbara ush in our old age? I will take Punjabi any day of the week.
WTF is all this nose crap?
ReplyDeleteSeriously noses?
A lot of people here are full of something, or don't know what they are talking about.
Quite a few white people find asians attractive. Personally I'm neutral on it, but it is an observable fact.
Kind of like this thing with lesbians in porn for men. WTH is that all about? There has to be some theory, but I'm sure not getting it.
Indian women are as attractive as any others to my eyes. Some of them are beautiful. But to my thinking if you are going to have a cross culture marriage, you have better odds with an asian girl.
I will say I've seen some of the old illustrations from things like the kama sutra. Those big boobs, long hair, and coffee skin are kinda of a turn on. Of course I don't base big decisions on things like that.
Indian culture has a pile of stuff associated with it. Dealing with inlaws if you marry an Indian is something I would not want to go through. The people I've seen married to asians seem to have a much easier time.
It's not like it's life threatening, but it sure seems like a pita to be married to an Indian.
And personally, in the end it all comes down to eating and crapping. And I like Chinese food much more than Indian.
Some of the Indian women are very hot, but let's face it, the odds of having a happy marriage are higher with an asian woman to my mind.
My 2 cents.
"Chinese eat rice; Indians eat corn."
ReplyDeleteWe call it maize.
"Most people in America don't read anything. Indian philosophy is diffused by diverse channels - everything from the Esalen Institute to Transcendental Meditation to Bikram Yoga to Star Wars (George Lucas studied Joseph Cambell extensively). In American intellectual history, notable examples of Indian-philosophy influenced figures include Emerson, Thoreau, William James and Robert Oppenheimer (who quoted the Bhagaved Gita when he saw the fruits of the Manhattan project blow up in front of him) and Steve Jobs"
ReplyDeleteI'm the same anon from 8/21/12 10:48 PM. Indian philosophy has influenced America only through second hand accounts and fads. And even this is very slight. I doubt most Americans could name an Indian philosopher or give a very short synopsis of the Ramayana. Even an illiterate, low caste Indian would be able to manage that. Your average, college educated American may be familiar with the Gita or an excerpt from the Upanishads but it's unlikely they they would understand the context and even more unlikely that they would be influenced by such a foreign philosophy.
"In contrast, Confucianism, always the regnant philosophical perspective in China, has had little influence in the US."
Confucianism has only influenced Sinic cultures like Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. It takes a certain mind-set to appreciate Confucian philosophy and the foundational Confucian texts are quite dull to read in English translation.
"Chinese Buddhism has had more of an impact, but that itself is an essentially Indian derivation, mediated by Taoist influences."
You are not giving the Chinese enough credit for shaping Buddhism. Intellectually, the Chinese and the Japanese scholars made Buddhism far more complex than it's Indian variants. The cosmology alone is quite possibly the most complex we've seen in any religion. To say that Chinese Buddhism is an Indian offshoot with Taoist influences is like saying Christianity is a Jewish offshoot with pagan Greek influences. While technically true, you end up glossing over how philosophically advanced Chinese Buddhism is compared to Indian Buddhism and how philosophically advanced Christianity is compared to Judaism.
"In fact, when looking historically at the two civilizations, India has had more influence on China than the other way around."
Chinese religions are more particularistic than Indian ones. Hinduism was able to spread as far as Indonesia whereas Chinese Buddhism only spread to civilizations that were the most similar to the Chinese (Korea, Vietnam, Japan).
"Thailand gets the trashiest travelers by far in the whole region. Move to neighboring Cambodia or Vietnam, perceived as much more challenging and tough, and the pleasure chasers tend to peter out, and the "cultural" travelers to predominate."
ReplyDeleteI agree with this. I think Vietnam is probably one of the best places to travel in South East Asia. It's a happy medium between rural and urban Asia. The food is just as good as Thai food and the country is not as a seedy. The Vietnamese are also not savages like the locals in Malaysia and Indonesia.
"I think the nose shape alone is a killer for China. SWPLs want to associate themselves with refinement, regardless of which sub-type. And noses with low bridges and wide bases just look too low-class"
ReplyDeleteSpergy bullshit which should be expected coming from agnostic. White men who tend to go for Asian women are men who typically like their women to look young and stay young for a long time. Your entire post deserves a goonsay.
"You know what cures SWPLs of fetishizing India? Visiting India."
ReplyDeleteOne of the best parts of the show The Amazing Race (is that still on?) was the reactions of the racers to India. These were people (for the most part) who liked experiencing other cultures, who had been to a variety of countries already, and who had seen other racers react badly to India. Yet, every season, someone would arrive in Calcutta or somewhere else in India and say, "Oh my God, how can they stand to live like this?" Then the PC fans of the show would excoriate them for their insensitivity, but after enough people react that way, it's pretty obvious that anyone would.
Whiskey said:
ReplyDelete"America won't be China, because the Imperial State rested on a peasant class and middle class that was a part of the Imperial system. There was no independent wealth outside the Chinese state, and no demands for non-Chinese to form the subsidized peasant class, indeed the peasants were cruelly exploited."
On the contrary, under the Ming dynasty, the mercantile classes rose in wealth, if not prestige, and amassed huge fortunes. They sent their sons to the academies to sit for the civil service examinations, and bought political influence in the usual way. I believe there were similar developments during the earlier wave of urbanization under the Song dynasty. The question is not wealth but power. And increasingly, we are trending to the old Chinese model there as well. Wealth leads to power not just in and of itself, but through the political system.
"One huge difference: China is extremely pro-intellect, America is anti-intellect. China always worshipped intelligence, and still does. America only did in the distant past."
ReplyDeleteChina is pro-exams, not pro-intellect. The Chinese only like pragmatic knowledge related to technology. They care very little for culture and theory and that is why they will always be imitators, not innovators.
India is CRAWLING with SWPLs
ReplyDeleteMore disinformation from "John".
India is the least desirable of the major regions of the world to international tourists. Even subsaharan Africa gets more tourists than India:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings
The Chinese only like pragmatic knowledge related to technology. They care very little for culture....
ReplyDeleteAnd yet it's China that has taken up Western classical music with genuine fervor (last year saw the creation of six new professional symphony orchestras in China) while it's rapidly dying off in the West itself. In a few more generations, the few talented white classical musicians the West manages to produce will have to go to China to receive proper training and find gainful employment.
Are you guys seriously comparing intermarriage rates to see whose more sexually desirable? Indians have low intermarriage rates. Hell, they have low intermarriage rates even with other Indians. The pressure is very strong to marry someone from your own state, your own religion, your own caste. Dating in general is frowned upon.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, any assimilated Indian guy/girl in the States who wants to date/marry a white girl/boy is able to do so.
"Chinese eat rice; Indians eat corn."
ReplyDeletewas going to say wheat, but china produces more of it. Indians are also voracious rice-eaters, especially in the south.
Thing to remember when talking about Buddhism:
ReplyDeleteBuddha rejected Hinduism outright. He rejected its holy scripture the Vedas, he rejected the caste system, he rejected the barbaric Vedic sacrifices, he rejected the Hindu belief in gods etc etc
China is boring; India is vibrant.
ReplyDelete>>One of the best parts of the show The Amazing Race (is that still on?) was the reactions of the racers to India. These were people (for the most part) who liked experiencing other cultures, who had been to a variety of countries already, and who had seen other racers react badly to India.
ReplyDeleteMy observations as an expat:
There are tons of white people in India - especially in the ashrams seeking spiritual solace, corporate executives, but also missionaries and unfortunately, pederasts looking for young boys. This last category motivated many British colonials to come as well, as VS Naipaul ha noted
There are some corporate executives as well, but far more Koreans and Japanese - I think this is a function of Americans not having much to sell that Indians want, like white goods, cars and cell phones.
If you are lucky enough to get a gig in India, you will get a car with driver, household help, and other amenities unheard of elsewhere. Koreans and Japanese used to living in cubbyhole apartments with stacked, space saving bento-boxes are astonished at the living space they can command. This also why Delhi is the most coveted assignment in Asia for US diplomats.
Also, poverty, filth,malnourishment - all true. But India is also a very colorful place, with tons of public festivals - there is always some kind of celebration going on. In contrast, America is a cold, dry, and staid place, with no public life at all. England outside of London is worse, the very definition of a cultural dystopia.
I suspect North American whites are too used to order to enjoy India, an order they've imposed on the environment that they now take for granted (killing stray dogs, locking up people who are insane, as Foucault has noted) - I bet Brazilians would do just fine.
Agnostic,
ReplyDeleteDon't ever change. Your Chinese eyes comment made me laugh so hard because it is so utterly you.
I'm surprised at the flak Agnostic is getting. Steve's is where one goes for a more reductionist take on things; Agnostic is one of the most original and brighter minds here.
"England outside of London is worse, the very definition of a cultural dystopia."
ReplyDeleteEngland outside of London is a wonderful country. A generalization, sure, but a better one than yours.
Cennbeorc
China is modernizing; India is postmodernizing.
ReplyDeleteSo true! China wants to have a shot at Moon; onw-way ticket or no, India claims going to Mars... lol
China: space travel, rockets, moon landers.
India: soul travel, astral projection, Eckankar.
"Buddha rejected Hinduism outright. He rejected its holy scripture the Vedas, he rejected the caste system, he rejected the barbaric Vedic sacrifices, he rejected the Hindu belief in gods etc etc"
ReplyDeleteHindus accept Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu but they believe that Buddha was sent to preach false teachings.
You forgot a comparison, Steve:
ReplyDeleteIndian movies attack whites for their race, Chinese movies attack white nations.
"China..India...Puh-lease; Brazil is the future."
ReplyDelete- Was your mom making calls to Dionne Warwick again?
ReplyDelete"I think the nose shape alone is a killer for China. SWPLs want to associate themselves with refinement, regardless of which sub-type. And noses with low bridges and wide bases just look too low-class."
The low-bridge wide-base nose is more of a Cantonese thing than anything else - they interbred with a ton of the negritos and indigenous tribes in their tropical homeland. I'd say girls from Sichuan or the north have some of the finest and delicate noses I've ever seen. Another poster made a comment about Chinese being unattractive generally but Gong Li being an exception - girls of the Gong Li type are a dime a dozen north of the Yangtze River.
"Still, I think the latter would link their minimalist tastes to Japanese Zen Buddhism, not to anything identifiably Chinese."
Zen Buddhism is most of the most characteristically Chinese forms of Buddhism in existence.
Agree with Dahlia's comments that the narrow-eyes remark was funny. Problem is, I suspect poor ol' aspergy Agnostic did not intend for it to be.
Agnostic, if you ever find work which is reasonably well remunerated and acquire means to move out of your mother's basement, you might learn a few things about the world that will surprise you.
ReplyDelete>>You are not giving the Chinese enough credit for shaping Buddhism. Intellectually, the Chinese and the Japanese scholars made Buddhism far more complex than it's Indian variants.
Baloney. Name one Chinese, Japanese or Tibetan Buddhist philospher to compare with Nagarjuna or Vasubandhu? If anything - the Chinese found the Mahayana too intricate and sophsiticated and ultimately not useful - Zen is a simplification.
The influence of Indian thought in America is pervasive.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/08/14/we-are-all-hindus-now.html
The world is a cruel place for Indians
ReplyDeleteMost of the cruelty comes from fellow Indians. Where else is so much human suffering tolerated? Who else has come up with spiritual concepts to avoid lifting a finger to help those in need?
It's their karma; do not interfere
ReplyDelete"Baloney. Name one Chinese, Japanese or Tibetan Buddhist philospher to compare with Nagarjuna or Vasubandhu? If anything - the Chinese found the Mahayana too intricate and sophsiticated and ultimately not useful - Zen is a simplification."
Challenge accepted:
In Huayan Buddhism of the Tang Dynasty:
Dushun, Zhiyan and Zongmi.
Chan Buddhism is the most reinfed expression of Mahayana Buddhism - a weeding out of superfluous superstition and dialectical philosophy.
The great genius of the Chinese Buddhists was shake out the useless chaff from the baroque edifice of Mahayana Buddhism.
The very idea of a meritocracy, based on competitive testing, was borrowed from China by the European Enlightenment and changed the West forever. The diametrically opposite hindu concept of hereditary casteism on the other hand has found no takers, except in the wet dreams of nazis.
ReplyDelete"Zen Buddhism is most of the most characteristically Chinese forms of Buddhism in existence."
ReplyDeleteIt was Chan Buddhism in China, the Japanese made great changes. Attributing Zen to the Japanese is like attributing Rock-and-Roll born again Christianity to Martin Luther.
Beauty, order, cleanliness, good health, physical activity, casual mingling with the opposite sex etc are important to SWPLs. Indian culture creates a world that is the exact opposite: ugly, chaotic, filthy, unhealthy, lazy, segregated etc. In both color and culture the indians are just way too different from white westerners.
ReplyDeleteEven the sacred places of hindus, such as their holy city of Varanasi, make whites, or any non-hindu for that matter, recoil in horror. Take a look at this temple city of orthodox north indian brahmins:
http://www.chinasmack.com/2010/pictures/filthy-india-photos-chinese-netizen-reactions.html/comment-page-2#comments
A well-traveled young SWPL tourist writes about his visit to India:
ReplyDeletehttp://postmasculine.com/a-dust-over-india
I have been to 40 different countries. Yet India made the most indelible impression of any of them. And not for all of the right reasons. Frankly, it’s not a pleasant place to be. Anyone who tells you otherwise lacks perspective.......
The first thing that strikes you about India is how dirty it is. In a word, the place is disgusting. All of it. The entire country......
I’ve been to Hong Kong. I’ve been to Manhattan and Beijing. I’ve been to Mexico City. And the swarm of humanity crawling through India’s cities is unparalleled. There’s no comparison. ..........
And that is the second thing to strike you about India. The poverty. It is legitimate take-your-breath-away poverty. Like the kind you see on TV charity ads but far worse. And far more real. Limbless men stewing about in their own feces. Emaciated children playing on a piles of garbage. A man with his leg literally rotting off to the bone, maggots and all, laying on the curb. It’s everywhere. The amount of suffering is indescribable. And it is unceasing........
My initial reaction the first few days was pure shock. But it quickly evolved into anger. How could a place like this be allowed to exist? How could normal people walk around with a clear conscience with so much shit and squalor festering about them? I felt indignant. Where was the social accountability? Where was the charity? Where the fuck was the government?.........
Chan Buddhism is the most reinfed expression of Mahayana Buddhism
ReplyDeleteThe philosophical basis of Chan is first and foremost Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka - the individuals you mention are absolutely and utterly derivative. You eithet know nothing about Buddhism or you are a Chinese Buddhist chauvinist playing games.
Though all the stuff associated with India--diversity, multi-culturalism, etc--are more in tune with SWPL values, China is actually more in tune with SWPL practices. SWPL generally flock to white-majority towns. Indeed, SWPL is a form of implicit white identity thing. And though SWPL women may lust after some muscular Negroes--to sow their wild oatesses--, they eventually wanna settle down with some white guy who is more dependable.
ReplyDeleteLol, SWPL males are pathetic
India is pretty keen on space too. They have their (on paper) Mars programme and they did a rather neat experiment - crashing a probe on the Moon and spectroscoping the flash - which proved there is water there.
ReplyDeleteThis has been a significant niggle in Britain where it is complained that we are giving aid to an ex-colony that so doesn't know its place as to have a space programme when we, effectively, don't. The obvious solution to that is not obvious to our political classes.
Actually, the guys with Asian wives tend to associate into two groups:
ReplyDeleteAchievers (example Murdock, Gandolfini, Zuckerburg, Vivi Nevo, numerous upper and upper-middle class whites and Jews) if they go outside the race tend to marry East Asian women - Chinese, Korean, Japanese- usually more attractive women than average for their race, though of course not all will be. Hard to say these guys are losers under any objective standard. Only the current PC up is down, left is right standard where being bright and hard working, achieving more are bad things.
Lower middle class and lower class whites tend to marry Filipino girls. These are more likely the 'losers with the ugly women' you report seeing.
LOL, the comments about India are amusing.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's pretty shocking at first. I know people who could not handle it for more than a day or two and simply had to get out. It's not really as bad as some of the quoted comments above - a man with a rotting leg full of maggots would not be unheard of in India, but that's rare. Something like that is hardly EVERYWHERE - but to the average cosseted Westerner it's quite bad enough.
Thing is, it's also the most intensely colorful place in existence. Every day you see the most picturesque people walking about, as if they stepped off a movie set. And it's not just a matter of costume, something about the living conditions - the harshness, the poverty - combines to produce people who you might expect to see in ancient Babylon, not any part of the modern world.
And part of the pleasure of the experience is it's very extremeness. You are taken out of a world of modernity which, while wonderful, can also be a source of ennui, and thrust into a Medieval world of intensity, where the comfort, safety, and organization that have always bounded your universe are terrifyingly absent. But here's the thing - stick it out, and the terrifying becomes the exhilirating. Even the horrifying bits force you to confront a human reality you have always been sheltered from.
And the dirt and the noise and the hassle and all that, that only bothers you for about 2 weeks. After that, for the intrepid who stick it out, it starts to get fun :)
India is infectious. I never thought I would return after my first trip. Been back 5 times, always for months. It gets in your blood. I think it was Mark Twain in Following the Equator who said the only country he would revisit, after having been to so many, was the most glorious - India.
Oh, and Dharamsala can be considered a SWPL suburb.
Also, poverty, filth, malnourishment - all true. But India is also a very colorful place, with tons of public festivals - there is always some kind of celebration going on. In contrast, America is a cold, dry, and staid place, with no public life at all.
ReplyDeleteI suspect North American whites are too used to order to enjoy India, an order they've imposed on the environment that they now take for granted (killing stray dogs, locking up people who are insane, as Foucault has noted) - I bet Brazilians would do just fine.
As someone who lives in the rural Midwest, now you're making India sound appealing. My dog runs free day and night, and the neighbors' dogs roam through my place now and then. Poke around the back roads for a while, and you'll find an old farmer who's as likely to shoot at visitors as welcome them, who would probably be locked up or herded into a shelter if he didn't own his own home in the middle of nowhere. We've even managed to stave off zoning so far (though the city people who move out for the view are always pushing for it), so you can build whatever kind of shanty you want and do whatever you like with your place, with some exceptions regarding things like polluting the groundwater. Every weekend, there's some sort of fair or town festival or pancake and sausage dinner going on -- several a week in the summer. We've got public life out the hoo-hah.
The main difference between your description and my neighborhood is that the eye-wateringly bad odors here are concentrated around the livestock farms, while those in India seem to be in the cities where visitors can't avoid them. My impression, as someone who's never traveled outside the US, is that the biggest problem in many countries is that the people are so concentrated in the cities that even a fully modern sewage system and other infrastructure wouldn't be able to keep up, let alone the kind of system they're likely to build for themselves.
My uneducated guess is that that has something to do with property rights. Can an Indian buy 40 acres in the country and do whatever he wants with it? Is there a market for him to sell his goods, and a system of contract laws to protect him in trade? I don't know the answers to those questions, but I think those things have had a lot to do with the speed and efficiency with which Americans spread out and take advantage of resources, while vast natural resources sit stagnant in so many other countries.
"white men are far more attracted to chinese women...I have yet to hear of any widespread sexual fetish for indian women, or men."
ReplyDeleteThere may be a number of reasons but i think some of this stems from things like Vietnam and the profusion of US naval bases in the Pacific.
.
"I felt indignant. Where was the social accountability? Where was the charity? Where the fuck was the government?........."
It's diversity in another form.
If you have a homogenous population where the marriage culture revolves around marrying near cousins - which is / was the norm around the world outside of europe until very recently - then what effectively happens is that homogenous population divides itself into myriad micro-nations of closely related extended families who are only loyal to and only trust each other.
The result is exactly the same as the result of diversity revealed by Putnam's research in bowling alone.
Whatever the average IQ is in India it's not directed at what is good for India as a whole but what is good for each individual's extended family (and associated allies e.g. caste).
The West was uniquely different in this regard but is being made the same through the malicious betrayal of its borders.
Let's be honest - SWPLs are the world's biggest hypocrites and will find a way to justify anything they do.
ReplyDeleteIndian children face pressure from parents to marry spouses from within the community. From my experience in California, quite a few Indian american men would date white, latino and asian girls in high school but ended up marrying a wife from the community after college. The same was true of Iranian american men.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"The philosophical basis of Chan is first and foremost Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka - the individuals you mention are absolutely and utterly derivative. You eithet know nothing about Buddhism or you are a Chinese Buddhist chauvinist playing games."
I would levy the same accusation of ignorance at yourself. Chan Buddhism is not philosophical it's empirical - please provide me with a list of quotes of Nagarjuna's works in extant Chan Buddhist texts.
If anything, the core texts for the Chan Buddhists were the Lankavatara Sutra, the Diamond Cutter Sutra and the Heart Sutra. So much for my ignorance.
White guys who partner with East Asian women are like white women who partner with black males; they both are looking to escape the expectations and responsibilites of their white counterpart.
ReplyDeleteWhat responsibilities and expectations are those?
ReplyDeleteThe influence of Indian thought in America is pervasive.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/08/14/we-are-all-hindus-now.html
That article proves no such thing. Many of the religious features discussed in that article (multiple paths, reincarnation, cremation) are not exclusive to Hinduism and can be found in many eastern religions and the New Age movement.
"Nagaland is protected by Article 371 of the Indian constitution, which means that non-Nagas cant buy land in the state and they are demographically protected"
ReplyDeleteDoes not matter, the Mongoloid populations of the North East of India were never meant to be part of India and most people there wanted independence from the time the British Raj ended. But india itself acting like a colonial power would not have it. Most Indians do not consider them Indians and most of the people of the North Eastern states (Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim) and at least half of the people in Assam do not consider themselves Indians as well. It’s strange how the Indians talk about the evils of British colonialism but ignore their own brutality in these places. The Indian army has been very brutal in keeping down independence movements of these places. And besides leftists in the west do not want to hear about brown colonialists and there are lots of them (bangladeshis in the Chitagong Hill tracts, indonesians in irian jaya, Indians in the N.E. part of India). The state of Sikkim was a semi independent kingdom which the Indians invaded and conquered with the help of the local Hindus (The native Sikkimese are Buddhists). How many of you have heard about that?
Name one Chinese, Japanese or Tibetan Buddhist philospher to compare with Nagarjuna or Vasubandhu? If anything - the Chinese found the Mahayana too intricate and sophsiticated and ultimately not useful - Zen is a simplification.
ReplyDeleteIt's already been answered by a poster but if you are looking for great Chinese Buddhist philosophers from China and Japan, just look at the patriarchs of many of the various schools such as Huineng from the Chan school. Tibetan Buddhism is not really known for philosophers. It's quite possibly the least innovative major branch of Buddhism. It should not be compared to Chinese or Japanese Buddhism.
The Chinese have viewed Buddhism as suspect for much of their history. They didn't take to it as much as the Japanese did. In a sense the Japanese needed Buddhism for funeral practices because there are no Shinto style funerals since death = kegare. The Chinese seemed to have been fine with Confucianism, Taoism, and the various local religions. Taoism already offered salvation and even deification so Buddhism wasn't as necessary to China as it was to Japan.
Chan Buddhism is the most reinfed expression of Mahayana Buddhism
That's debatable.
The philosophical basis of Chan is first and foremost Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka - the individuals you mention are absolutely and utterly derivative.
Not really. Nagarjuna's Two Truth doctrine is very important but The Flower Sermon is the heart of Chan and that has nothing to do with Nagarjuna. Dushun, Zhiyan and Zongmi are Huayan and they are dependent on Nagarjuna's Flower Garland sutra, that much is true. I don't know much about the first two but Zongmi is definitely not derivative of Nagarjuna. Zongmi's scholarship was not restricted to Buddhism but he also wrote about Confucianism and Taoism and he tried to harmonize all of them. Almost all of the Buddhist scriptures in China and Japan have a Sanskrit or Pali source but it's not as the Chinese and Japanese merely accepted the documents without any debate. They wrote volumes of commentary on the Indian texts and elevated Buddhism to a thinking man's religion.
FWIW, India has a very matriarchal society. At least that's what I was told when I visited Meghalaya a couple of years ago. I wonder how much of a difference that has made in India's development.
ReplyDeleteMost of the cruelty comes from fellow Indians. Where else is so much human suffering tolerated? Who else has come up with spiritual concepts to avoid lifting a finger to help those in need?
ReplyDeleteIt's their karma; do not interfere
What is sad is that there are Indian fascists in this thread who make the most ridiculous excuses for the Indian government and proclaim the unconventional greatness of South Indian Brahmins but they are unable to empathize with the dying poor on their front steps. Yet, there are non-Indian Christians who are willing to live in that hellhole known as India in order to help the poor. Of course this wounds the pride of the Indian fascist and he calls the Christian many names such as imperialist and exploiter. It never occurs to the Indian fascist that some people want to help the less fortunate out of the goodness of their hearts. Such a thought is completely alien to the Indian fascist.
Dharamsala can be considered a SWPL suburb.
ReplyDeleteAnd earlier you claimed that "India is CRAWLING" with SWPLs".
Let's get real John.
Does not matter,"
ReplyDeleteWell I guess that settles that!
the Mongoloid populations of the North East of India were never meant to be part of India "
Good to see clumsy Chinese propagandists here again!
and most people there wanted independence from the time the British Raj ended."
Newsflash,lots of people wanted indepedence since the British Raj including Tamils,Hyderabadis,Sikhs,Kashmiris etc etc.Just because you want something it doesnt mean you are gonna get it and if you do get it-there is very little guarantee that youll like it.
Your people have a proverb-be careful what you wish for,it may come true...Think about it!
But india itself acting like a colonial power would not have it."
Yes, China has been so accepting and understanding of its own dissident populations.Something India would do good to emulate!
Most Indians do not consider them Indians and most of the people of the North Eastern states (Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim)
That would be news to good many of these people who have names like Singh and many claim Rajput and other North Indian royal origin.They have been mentioned and respected since the age of Mahabharata as great devotees of Shiva.
and at least half of the people in Assam do not consider themselves Indians as well."
LOL, yes thats because they are Bangladeshi "immigrants"!
It’s strange how the Indians talk about the evils of British colonialism but ignore their own brutality in these places."
Name one major third world country which hasnt engaged in some brutality against one of its own since gaining independence.
The Indian army has been very brutal in keeping down independence movements of these places. And besides leftists in the west do not want to hear about brown colonialists and there are lots of them (bangladeshis in the Chitagong Hill tracts, indonesians in irian jaya, Indians in the N.E. part of India)."
LOL neither the left nor right in the U.S or Europe care too much about India.Currently they are viewed as a useful bulwark against Islamic and Chinese imperialism.
The state of Sikkim was a semi independent kingdom which the Indians invaded and conquered with the help of the local Hindus (The native Sikkimese are Buddhists). How many of you have heard about that?"
I doubt not as many as those who heard of the brutal annexation and genocide of Tibet.Sorry about that!Now back to shedding crocodile tears for Buddhists you go!
Achievers (example Murdock, Gandolfini, Zuckerburg, Vivi Nevo, numerous upper and upper-middle class whites and Jews) if they go outside the race tend to marry East Asian women - Chinese, Korean, Japanese- usually more attractive women than average for their race, though of course not all will be.
ReplyDeleteI'm one of the commenters who remarked on the White with homely girl trend. Sorry, but you're simply mistaken. I barely even think of Filipinos as Asian. Among Japanese and Koreans, Whites often -- usually? -- get plain to homely women. Maybe that doesn't apply to the super-achievers at the top of their fields, but it does apply up through the upper middle classes. I'm not sure about Chinese, but I suspect the trend continues there too.
I'd been dimly aware of the phenomenon before, but it wasn't until I read this that I realized this really is a common thing, and the Japanese think so too:
米国で生活していると時々米国人はアジア人の美醜がわからないのかなぁと思うことがある。多分そう感じるアジア人は私だけではないと思う。
Living in America, I sometimes think Americans just can't differentiate beauty and ugliness in Asians. I suspect I'm not the only Asian to think so.
日本で平凡なルックスとされる女性がとてもかっこいい白人男性とカップルになっていることがある。
There's cases where girls who would be considered plain in Japan are couples with very cool White men.
アジア人は立体感のない顔立ちなので、アジア人の間では少しでも鼻が高くて堀の深い顔が良いとされるが、少なくとも米国では必ずしもそうではないのだ。
Asians have faces lacking in three-dimensionality, so among Asians, faces with even a somewhat high nose and deep features are considered attractive, but in any event, that is not necessarily the case in America.
アジア人ののっぺりした顔が意外と人気だったりする。
Maybe Asians' flat faces are unexpectedly popular.
The flip side of it, though, is that Whites who, to me, seem rather homely (moreso than the average for them) sometimes get praised as incredibly beautiful or handsome when they're in Korea and Japan. Although I'm probably just a terrible judge of White attractiveness, since there are lots of actors and actresses who are supposed to be "beautiful" or "handsome" in the US whom I find somewhat unattractive.
Re: Anonymous at 11:10:
ReplyDelete"In a sense the Japanese needed Buddhism for funeral practices because there are no Shinto style funerals since death = kegare."
Not sure I agree with that. Look at the Japanese funeral practices. They practice the three years mourning -- funeral, isshuuki and sankaiki. This isn't a Buddhist practice. And think about the family altars, the butsudan. Does that make sense in Buddhism? Making small sacrifices and burning incense for your deceased ancestors for years and years? Shouldn't they have been reincarnated already? Japanese funerary practices are Confucian rites that have been subsumed into something called "Buddhism."
More India-China comparison. Here are two links for people who are interested. The second is a podcast. Fascinating stuff. Don't miss it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gregoryclark.net/redif.html
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/podcasts/India_China_Border.mp3
I am confused here. I thought the comments section of this blog was all about some white people claiming their natural superiority.
ReplyDeleteNo Kumar, you are just pretending to be confused. This blog has also always welcomed loads of "Internet Hindus" like you, rec1man, John, Van Nostrand et al whose entire agenda seems to be to extol the superiority, and when presented with humiliating facts deny the inferiority, of Hindus; more specifically Brahmins, and even more specifically south indian Brahmins.
It's highly unfortunate for your ilk that all the data and world rankings contradict your boasts of Indian superiority and success.
ReplyDeleteseems to be to extol the superiority
Can you give examples where such extoling has taken place? Can you cite specific comments that any of these folks have made that illustrates your point, or are you just pulling it out of your a*s?
And regarding
contradict your boasts of Indian superiority and success
can you point out where such boasts have occurred, in either my posts or those of these other "Internet Hindus"?
Can you give examples where such extoling has taken place? Can you cite specific comments that any of these folks have made that illustrates your point, or are you just pulling it out of your a*s?
ReplyDeleteAgain you are lying and pretending, stupidly and illogically, like a typical Internet Hindu cyber-warrior. Why do you think Indian posters have developed a reputation here, as they have everywhere else, for being delusional braggarts?
Speaking of "pulling it out of your a*s" just take a look at the hundreds of posts by rec1man for a good example of that, as he untiringly tries to convince this forum that the IQ of Brahmins is actually the highest in the entire world!
With the Asian/White couple thing, I think there's some arbitrage going on with both sides. Certain things that Asian consider absolutely essential to attractiveness either barely register with whites (when was the last time you heard a white woman wish she had a smaller face?) or are interpreted in a different manner (Westerners tend to think a healthy tan is attractive and shows physical fitness and athleticism while Asians tend to think it shows low class and a background of manual labor). Many Asians who would be considered attractively curvy in the west would be considered fat in Asia. Also note that while white women tend to get surgery to make their noses smaller, Asian women get surgery to make their noses bigger (well, "taller" actually, which isn't quite the same thing.)
ReplyDeleteIf you show a white guy a picture of an Asian woman and ask him to describe her, he will do so very differently from how an Asian man would: he likely wouldn't comment on whether she had double or single eyelids, he'd describe her nose as big or small rather than tall or short, and as long as her skin color wasn't well outside the norm, likely wouldn't mention it.
Asian actresses who are popular in the US are largely considered unattractive in Asia. Sandra Oh is considered to be hideous by Asians (I happen to agree with them on this), Lucy Liu is considered to be rather plain looking too (she has single eyelids and freckles, both negatives in Asian eyes). Oh, and for all the people extolling Gong Li's attractiveness, my (Chinese) wife describes her looks as "very rural".
Also, in response to the commentator who cited the Japanese article. When my sister was doing an exchange in Japan, some friends of her mentioned that they had previously had an exchange student living with them and mentioned that she was very attractive. It was clear from the description they gave that this girl looked very stereotypically Jewish (big, tall nose and very curly hair, both of which they consider attractive.)
The guy posting the poverty porn is obviously a Dravidian chauvinist - you can tell by his visceral reaction to South Indian Brahmins. Its funny how these sub-regional chauvinsims from a backward and filthy sub-continet are staged here. Even fnnier is that these may wind up being American problems as Indian-Americans learn to play the lobbying game.
ReplyDeleteThat article proves no such thing. Many of the religious features discussed in that article (multiple paths, reincarnation, cremation) are not exclusive to Hinduism and can be found in many eastern religions and the New Age movement.
ReplyDeleteThe other seminal source of these doctrines is Buddhism, another Indian religion. The New Age movement is essentially Indian (though obviously twisted in fantastical and ludicrous ways). Read up on Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy. Where did all this come from. Do you belive SWPLs came up with this themselves?
poverty porn
ReplyDeletePictures of the brahmin holy city of Varanasi is poverty porn?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aErNiP_V4RLc&refer=news
ReplyDeleteEvery day, 1,000 children younger than 5 years old die in India from diarrhea, hepatitis- causing pathogens and other sanitation-related diseases, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
“India cannot reach its full economic potential unless they do something about this sanitation crisis,” says Clarissa Brocklehurst, Unicef’s New York-based chief of water, sanitation and hygiene
India has the greatest proportion of people in Asia behind Nepal without access to improved sanitation, according to Unicef. Some 665 million Indians practice open defecation, more than half the global total.
India has the highest childhood malnutrition rates in the world: 44 percent of children younger than 5 are underweight, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
“Malnourished children are more susceptible to diarrheal disease, and with more diarrheal disease they become more malnourished,” says Jamie Bartram, head of the World Health Organization’s water, sanitation, hygiene and health group.
“If you’ve got feces all around you, it will find its way into your mouth,” Bartram says. “Cholera and typhoid are always dramatic because they come through as outbreaks, and outbreaks catch the news. The real burden is this long, remorseless drain of straightforward, simple diarrheal disease.”
I'm white, and I agree, white guys simply cannot tell beauty when it comes to Asians. It's quite astonishing.
ReplyDeleteMy only explanation is the "exotic" factor mentioned above - where simple ugliness is mistaken for "exotic". Beautiful Asians tend to look "Western" - the more Western a girl is (round eyes, small face, high nose), the more beautiful she is likely to be to Asians - and objectively, in my view.
I personally have always found Caucasian features the epitome of beauty - and Asians evidently agree - so never bought into the whole "exotic" thing when it comes to Asians. The more Asian a face is, the less attractive it is to me, simply. I'm a first generation immigrant from Eastern Europe, and come from a cultural background that was spared the whole fetishization of the foreign and non-Western as the "exotic", and the romanticization of the primitive that are both such features of late-Western culture.
But it goes deeper than the "exotic" thing where the more Asian and the more "primitive" a face is the more exotic it is considered, even in this category of girl white guys often overlook the prettier ones. It is almost as if the objection is to beauty and pleasantness of appearance as such. I wonder what the psychology of it is.
I have spoken to loads of white guys with Asian girls throughout my Asian trips - it fascinates me - and what I have found is that most genuinely think the girls they are with are "beautiful". Part of what skews the numbers it the large numbers of "losers" who hook up with Asian girls - these guys will cheerfully admit they have no standards, they don't "judge", women in their late 30s are still "attractive", etc, etc. This is a large contingent, and skews the numbers. Then you have the more normal dudes who just fetishize the exotic and the primitive.
Finally, there is a small percentage that seem to have a good head on their shoulders and who are normal, and who prefer, and get, the genuinely cute girls - who are perfectly available for white guys, if they only wanted them.
Does anyone know of any adaptive mutations that Indians have evolved to deal with such a high disease load environment?
ReplyDeleteI remember reading that some of the unique adaptations Ashkenazim Jews possess were not specifically intelligence affecting, but rather disease resistant ones.
A sizable fraction of them have been city dwellers for a long time.
Anyone have any input on this? It's exactly what you would expect to see evolution wise. And genes like this seem to spread rapidly, take for example the incidence of celiac disease among the Irish, and that is a negative adaption as far as I understand. The point being it is very recent (past potato introduction) and very common now.
My sense is that India has been putting up with these conditions a LONG time.
So what little oddities have cropped up in that gene pool?
My only explanation is the "exotic" factor mentioned above - where simple ugliness is mistaken for "exotic". Beautiful Asians tend to look "Western" - the more Western a girl is (round eyes, small face, high nose), the more beautiful she is likely to be to Asians - and objectively, in my view.
ReplyDeleteInteresting question for you then. Are half-Asians/half-Euro better looking than full-Asians in general to you? To most Euro men?
Are half-NE Asians better/worse looking than half-Indian? Men and/or women?
What about half-Black/half-White? Half-Black/Half-Asian?
My only explanation is the "exotic" factor mentioned above - where simple ugliness is mistaken for "exotic".
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of when I showed a colleague who liked Indian women a picture of an Indian woman I dated.
I thought she was more attractive than the majority of Indian women but he thought she was no so much. I thought the reverse about his choices. I think I weighted her more outgoing, positive and emotional character more highly.
When it comes to NE Asians, my aesthetics matched up pretty well with the locals. In a world where Sarah Jessica Parker and Ellen Degeneres can be models and cover girls, it just seemed Sandra Oh and Lucy Liu were following the Ugly/Plain in the new Beautiful meme.
There is just no accounting for tastes.
What is sad is that there are Indian fascists in this thread who make the most ridiculous excuses for the Indian government and proclaim the unconventional greatness of South Indian Brahmins but they are unable to empathize with the dying poor on their front steps. Yet, there are non-Indian Christians who are willing to live in that hellhole known as India in order to help the poor. Of course this wounds the pride of the Indian fascist and he calls the Christian many names such as imperialist and exploiter. It never occurs to the Indian fascist that some people want to help the less fortunate out of the goodness of their hearts. Such a thought is completely alien to the Indian fascist.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely spot on. Charity and compassion are alien concepts to the Brahmins. The end result of this callous Hindu culture is there for all to see and be horrified by.
India is awesome - the things you take for granted - oh, like traffic laws, are non-existent here. Yet people seem to get on. There is far mor road rage in the US. I asked a driver how he merges into traffic with no signals, and his answer was "you just do, don't look."
ReplyDeleteThere is a festival of some sort every week, and an annoying number of holidays.
The worse thing about India is the conspicuous consumption of the newly wealthy, at least around Delhi. Delhi appears to be better off than the rest of India, but the poverty is still very visible. Shantytowns come up in front of gated communites with million dolllar apartments and around the office towers in Gurgaon where Oracle and Cisco have their presence. No compunctions about throwing a kids birthday party in a five star hotel, or giving a 100K Audi SUV to a teenager. One is simply trying to outdo the other in display. I have not seen a caste pecking order at work, but certainly Punjabis seem to be the dominant group with a lot of the welath. The servant classes come from Bihar, Bangladesh, and Nepal. People from the Northeast (so called Mongoloids) are very visible in the corporate sector, mainly because they were taught English well in Chrstian schools and speak the language better on average than other Indians.
In contrast to the posters here, Indians in India seem very insecure about China and know they are at least two decades behind in development. The papers routinely blast the poverty levels and malnutrition, so there is definitely awarness of the challenges the country faces, despite its long span of growth.
One interesting observation: At company parties, when the dancing starts, 90% of people stay on the floor the entire night, with only about 10% at the bar. In the US, the ratio is just the opposite.
Despite the caste strictures, there seem to be a lot of hush-hush relationships between sexes -probably getting their fun in before being a good little kid and finding a suitable caste mate.
Here's another comparison:
ReplyDeleteBuddhism - ethics
Hinduism - tribal customs
The worse thing about India is the conspicuous consumption of the newly wealthy
ReplyDeleteThat's the worst thing about India? Really?
Not the abject malnutrition and poverty, casteism and chaos, stench and squalor, human degradation and suffering etc?
Buddhism - ethics
ReplyDeleteHinduism - tribal customs
Buddhism - self-reliant
Hinduism- reliant on a hereditary priestly caste
Buddhism - meditation
ReplyDeleteHinduism - rituals (sacrifice, idol worship)
Buddhism - atheism/pantheism
ReplyDeleteHinduism - polytheism
>>Japanese funerary practices are Confucian rites that have been subsumed into something called "Buddhism."
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese chauvinism on this thread is laughable. Buddhism is so deeply imbricated in Japan that even the indigenous religion - Shinto - accomdotes the worship of Hindu gods.
From wiki:
Though Hinduism is a little-practiced religion in Japan, it has still had a significant, but indirect role in the formation of Japanese culture. This is mostly because many Buddhist beliefs and traditions (which share a common Dharmic root with Hinduism) spread to Japan from China via Korean peninsula in the 6th Century. One indication of this is the Japanese "Seven Gods of Fortune", of which three originated as Hindu deities, including Benzaiten (Sarasvati), Bishamon (Vaiśravaṇa or Kubera), and Daikoku (Shiva). Benzaiten arrived in Japan during the 6th through 8th centuries, mainly via the Chinese translations of the Sutra of Golden Light (金光明経), which has a section devoted to her. She is also mentioned in the Lotus Sutra. In Japan, the lokapālas take the Buddhist form of the Four Heavenly Kings (四天王). The Sutra of Golden Light became one of the most important sutras in Japan because of its fundamental message, which teaches that the Four Heavenly Kings protect the ruler who governs his country in the proper manner. The Hindu god of death, Yama, is known in his Buddhist form as Enma. Garuda, the mount (vahana) of Vishnu, is known as the Karura (迦楼羅), an enormous, fire-breathing creature in Japan. It has the body of a human and the face or beak of an eagle. Tennin originated from the apsaras. The Hindu Ganesha is displayed more than Buddha in a temple in Futako Tamagawa, Tokyo. Other examples of Hindu influence on Japan include the belief of "six schools" or "six doctrines" as well as use of Yoga and pagodas.
Despite the westerners coming with the Bible and guns, they could have no such fundamental impact on Japanese religious thought.
Malnutrition in India is vastly overstated.
ReplyDeletehttp://iserp.columbia.edu/content/panagariya-child-malnutrition-myth
In the early 2000s, when the 55th (1999-2000) round of the expenditure survey showed a surprisingly sharp decline in poverty over its predecessor survey, the reform critics descended on the finding like a ton of bricks. Their critique eventually led to a healthy debate, important new research and eventual downward revision in poverty reduction numbers by the reform advocates themselves.
In total contrast, almost no objections have been raised to the absurdly high estimates of malnutrition in India trumpeted by journalists, NGOs, politicians and international institutions within and outside India. Not a day goes by without some TV channel or newspaper running the headline that the world's fastest growing economy suffers worse malnutrition than sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
In terms of vital statistics such as life expectancy at birth, infant mortality and maternal mortality, India fares better than all except one or two of the SSA countries with comparable or lower per capita incomes. So it is puzzling that, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics, it suffers from higher proportion of underweight children than every one of the 48 SSA countries and higher rate of stunting than all but seven of them. Such countries as the Central African Republic, Chad and Lesotho, which have life expectancy at birth of just 48 years compared with India's 65, have lower rates of stunting and underweight.
If you still do not believe the absurdity of these malnutrition numbers, compare Kerala and Senegal. Kerala exhibits vital statistics edging towards those in the developed countries: life expec-tancy of 74 years, infant mortality rate of 12 per 1,000 live births and maternal mortality rate of 95 per 1,00,000 live births. The corresponding figures for Senegal are far worse at 62, 51 and 410, respectively. But nutrition statistics say that Kerala has 25% stunted children compared to 20% of Senegal and 23% underweight children relative to 14.5% of the latter. In Punjab, which has a life expec-tancy of 70 years and is the breadbasket and milk dairy of India, 37% of children are stunted and 25% underweight.
To make sense of this nonsense, we must look at how the stunting (and underweight) rates are calculated. To classify a child of a given age and sex as stunted, we must compare his height to a pre-specified standard. The WHO sets this standard. In the early 2000s, it collected a sample of 8,440 children representing a population of healthy breastfed infants and young children in Brazil, Ghana, India, Norway, Oman and the United States. This "reference" population provided the basis for setting the standards.
Despite the westerners coming with the Bible and guns, they could have no such fundamental impact on Japanese religious thought.
ReplyDeleteThis is chavanistic stupidity on display here.
You couldn't have picked an Asian country more influenced by the West than Japan.
One of the reasons Japan rapidly became a world power after 1868 is that it quickly abandoned much of their old traditions and aggressively copied and transfered much of modern Western technologies and customs.
The most popular sport in Japan: US Baseball and UK soccer
The most popular music styles: European classical and US/Euro modern rock, hip-hop, etc
The most popular movies in Japan: Japanese and US movies
Their military, government, law, educational system, etc were virtually all imported and copied directly from the US and Europe (esp Prussia/Germany and England) by foreign advisors and Japanese elites sent abroad.
Even in regards to Japan's extensive social welfare, sizable foreign aid/NGO, etc - much of that comes from Christianity's "I am my brother's keeper" not Hinduism's appaling indifference to the plight of their fellow man.
Given that 84% of Japanese claim no personal religion and are only perfunctionally affiliated via family lineages, your 6th century citation of 3 of 7 fortune Gods seems a laughably miniscule influence on Japan.
>Despite the westerners coming with the Bible and guns, they could have no such fundamental impact on Japanese religious thought.
ReplyDelete>This is chavanistic stupidity on display here.
>You couldn't have picked an Asian country more influenced by the West than Japan.
There is no question whatsoever - not even by Japanese nationalists - that India has had far more influence on Japan than the West.
http://www.sangam.org/2012/04/Hinduism_Japan.php?uid=4683
>>Even in regards to Japan's extensive social welfare, sizable foreign aid/NGO, etc - much of that comes from Christianity's "I am my brother's keeper" not Hinduism's appaling indifference to the plight of their fellow man.
This is the most laughabe thing I've ever read on this blog.
“When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
― Jomo Kenyatta
Steve Sailer has never been to China and India? He needs to hit the road, seriously. Then perhaps he’ll understand what 105 and 81 actually mean at the ground zero reality. It will open his eyes and mind on the future of both countries, and the world at large.
ReplyDeleteA young American couple has been travelling more than 50 countries in the world and arrived in China and India recently. Here are their many blog entries (with numerous photos and detail explanations) on both, a random yet typical taste of "China v. India in SWPL Appeal" (Warning: readers may find some of the graphics uncomfortable or outright shocking, for the India leg, of course):
http://www.awaygowe.com/?p=1729
Another American couple confirmed the finding on China vs India in their recent journey entry there: http://www.livingif.com/he-said-she-said-traveling-india-vs-china/