Our Piñata: The Western Culture

The other day I was talking to a friend who has recently migrated to Canada with his family. Most of the conversation was about how terrible things are in Pakistan, the infrastructure, the politics, and the law & order. Then I asked how his kids have adjusted in Toronto. Oh the kids have settled very well in their school, he said. The only problem is this Western culture; we don’t want our children to get influenced by this decadent lifestyle so we are hammering in the notion that all these are Kaafirs and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. We do not allow them to interact with Canadian children outside of school, and I have told them that we should never dress or behave like these westerners.

I was dumbfounded. What sort of personalities these children are going to develop. As far as they are concerned, their native country is a terrible mess and their adopted country is unsuitable for social interactions. Talk about serious lack of roots. How can, otherwise, loving parents deliberately mess up the minds of their own kids.

Bashing the West is our favorite pastime these days, whether we live in Pakistan or in the West. We start off by blaming them for all our political and economic woes and then eventually all the social woes as well. Haven’t we all heard how western media is responsible for degeneration of the society and so on? We are so willing to benefit from all the scientific inventions in which our own contribution is nil, but keep on harping about their moral decadence. There are reams of articles and books by our learned men about how morally superior Eastern culture is, and how West is going to the dogs. These people gleefully wait for the devastation of western nations while our own people are barely surviving.

In a xenophobic mindset it is very difficult to realize and acknowledge that while the two living styles may be very different, one is not necessarily better than the other. Unfortunately the westernized Pakistanis are not much help either. These are those who visibly look down upon their more desi countrymen, and their air of superiority is very concrete. Existence of these people actually strengthens the xenophobic elements in the society, as they are upheld as examples of hateful conduct.

The problem is that Pakistani middle class observes the West through the lens of middle class moral values of a Muslim society. It ignores the ground reality that right in this country there is a very large population which do not care about these moral values. So if teenage drug addiction is a problem in US, similar situation exist on the streets of Pakistan as well. Since the middle class dominate media and the overall educated class, it is their point of view that is projected across the country.

Let us examine some hot spots we love to bash without really examining our own society:

Abandonment of children: We have all heard the stories, how mothers and fathers in the west abandon their children and pursue their own so called selfish goals. Both parents work so these children are left all alone and in many cases at least the father just leave permanently also. How mentally disturb these children have become. Even if all this is true, what is ignored in this argument is that children in our society are not treated very well either. I am not talking about upper middle class highly protected children. A very large percentage of children in rural area and low income urban areas practically grow up on the streets, without a responsible adult around for majority of the day. And what has our society’s response to such children? Complete disregard. While in west the local schools plays a very supportive role in providing after school activities, and city councils setting up of facilities of sports etc for children.

Besides has anyone ever heard of laws against child endangerment in Pakistan? Well in most advanced countries, the legal system has provided for protection of children, and while crimes against children still occur there, the likelihood of culprit being punished by law is much higher than here. At least the victim gets a day in court. We on the other hand do not provide for the protection of our children as a society. All kinds of crimes are perpetuated against them but these children have no recourse. How can we point fingers at west while we have multitude of child beggars, child prostitutes, and child laborers.

Open sexual norms: Nothing infuriates the moral brigade more than the sexual openness of the western culture. If you ask one thing about their visit to the west, it will be their disgust (inner glee I think) about the skimpy clothes of the western women. It is all they observe when they are abroad, not the universities, the museums, or the well maintained cities, just the shortness of skirts.

Watching porn has also given our desi boys some really warped ideas about the western culture. They think that western people are ready to jump into bed with just about anyone randomly. They secretly yearn for the blond women and keep telling themselves that once they are in the western land, they will have a bevy of blonds vying to become their Girlfriend.

Then there are those who keep warning everyone at home that the west will die a horrible death because of sexual excesses, they are overjoyed to learn of spread of Aids and love to recite sexual crime statistics of New York and DC. What these people ignore completely is that sexual excesses are not confined to the west. All kings, maharajas, Nawabs and anybody else with access to wealth routinely kept large number of concubines. Some had over two hundred concubines; I suppose this will qualify as sexual excesses. This culture prevailed for hundreds of years from Japan to Europe and thrived quite well in the subcontinent.

In more recent times and long before the big bad wolf of western media came into our living rooms, the red light areas of our cities have flourished. It was not the gora sahib who brought the courtesan into eastern culture.

The point is that Western culture is not worse than Eastern one on account of sexual excesses. Even the crimes are very similar, rape of minors, rape with murder etc are all present in both cultures, the only thing is that statistics are meticulously collected in the west and reported widely, while in Pakistan nobody collects the numbers, and incidents could be much higher than reported.

However I suspect that what does bother our moral middle class is not the fact that western men have multiple sexual partners (the east had that all along) but the fact that women can also assert themselves in this aspect. The western woman is on her own when it comes to her sexuality, she can be as prude or as promiscuous as she wants, and that is really the crux of the unacceptability the moral middle class has for the western culture.

There are other hot spots also, and again if we examine them closely we will see that similar problems exist in our culture also but there manifestations are different. I would say that over adulation of West is not justified but neither is constant bashing. But at times bashing the west gives political advantage, and even when no political advantage exists, it makes us feel better about ourselves. We can blame all the social ills on western influences, and then yearn if only we all start living in 1000 AD everyone will have such pious and peaceful existence. By the way check history to find out how tranquil those times were in reality. Western culture is our piñata, we eagerly bash it as hard as we can and then wait for the goodies to fall in our lap.