Sunday, May 18, 2014

Twitter for your thoughts

Indians have not yet reached the affluence to realise that the new elite counter culture in the West for the past 2 generations is to turn back on gross Americanisation & opt for exotic authenticity (hipster culture, Seattle-Portland-Oregon).

The rise of the far right in Indo-Israel is different to the rise of the European far-right. The Indo-Israeli far-right want to become Westerners with a thin Hindu or Hebrew overlay. The European far-rightward want to stay Westerner with a strong local colouring (even down to the provincial level; Catalonians, Basque & Scots). The local cultures (Mizrahi, Indian provincial) are fading out in this consolidation of India and Israel as far-right superpower islands in the Christian-Muslim Ocean.

It's interesting while it's possible to make these terms:

Hinjew
Judeo-Islamic
judeo-Christian
Indo-Christian
Indo-Muslim

Now think how odd these terms are

Christian-Islamic
Islamic-Christian

The dominant paradigms of Western Eurasian (west of Himalayas + Africa) have been the giant Christian & Islamic traditions. They are in rivalry across the space and in almost every regions. As cultural supper-powers stemming from the same Jewish-Abrahamic tradition (Islam is seen as a continuation of Christianity but in fact early Islamic history almost exclusively focuses on contact with Jewish populations, the Holy Quran is far more focused on the Old Testament than the New, though oddly Sunnism awaits the return of Christ as the Mahdi).

Christianity and Islam are the civilisational superpowers with a strong religious-ideological overlay. Different variants of Middle Eastern religion traditions (the pre-Bedouin J2 classical Middle East that migrated to Mediterranean Europe before being consumed by the 5-9th century Bedouin incursions that caught up the MENA region). It's interesting to see how this globalised world reacts to this good cop-bad cop duo act by the Middle Eastern behemoths; perhaps a third newer Middle Eastern tradition will unite them all?

1 comment:

  1. I think your views (in the tweets) suffer from availability bias. Your point regarding Americanization may be true for young voters (non-voters ?) in metros and big cities but for the bulk of the youth, the concerns are more basic (electricity, jobs, roads, housing). The gratuitous materialism of American culture is still a long way off and the BJP is much more conservative than Congress culturally (consider gay rights, view on Valentines Day).

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