Is “cultural appropriation” as a negative a purely American concept? Does it exist in other cultures?

Cultures have borrowed from each other since time immemorial. Cultures with political and economic power over others have also taken from them without permission (1). Naming and shaming of the latter practice as cultural appropriation is of recent vintage and of Canadian, not American origin, apparently having started from an impassioned debate about cultural appropriation from the First Nations during a 1989 resolution of the Writers' Union of Canada (see below from 2).

'In 1989, Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, an Anishnabe writer and Union member, effectively launched the Appropriation of Voice controversy at a Writers’ Union AGM in Kitchener, Ontario with her argument that the stories and cultures of the First Nations (and, by extension, other minorities) should not be appropriated by non-native writers. The debate about writers’ identities and writers’ responsibilities went far beyond the Union itself and generated extensive media comment, particularly over the Union-facilitated Writing Thru Race conference in Vancouver in 1994. The Union found itself attacked simultaneously for excessive political correctness and for representing only the white liberal mainstream of Canadian writing.'

During the heated discussions that followed on its heels, cultural appropriation came to be defined as (3)

'taking – from a culture that is not one's own – of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artifacts, history and ways of knowledge and profiting at the expense of the people of that culture'

Though named and defined fairly recently, the practice itself is likely as old as history. Today the broad waist-sash or Cummerbund is indelibly yoked to elite galas but was originally part of work attire for Indian soldiers. Obviously its appeal to the modern-day, typically Western cummerbund wearer lies in its aesthetics and more recent union with pomp courtesy the British Raj, and not in its subaltern origins.

Some might question, 'What's the harm in adopting someone else's cultural practices? Isn't it a sign of appreciation and respect?'. Akin to picking and choosing dishes from a free buffet table, cultural appropriation is scorned as painless gain when those from dominant cultures demonstrate their relative luxury of choice by exercising it to appropriate cultural attributes at their convenience from more marginalized cultures for whom such opportunities simply don't exist.

• A black's dreadlocks are appropriated all the more easily by a non-black given they don't come wedded to a black's much higher propensity to be pulled over by a cop.
• Hipsters wearing Keffiyeh in New York or London might do it to look cool or quirky, indisputably an entitlement since a middle eastern man wearing the same on those streets would likely be automatically labeled a terrorist or towelhead by some or even many, who knows.
• Consider the Bindi -sporting Madonna, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Gwen Stefani and other pop stars who can luxuriate in bindi-wearing
• Utterly dissociated from its traditionally sacred meaning in its original culture.
• Shorn of the many other, usually terrible fates and realities attendant to being a typical bindi-wearing Hindu woman in India. Fates such as dowry deaths, wife-beating, realities such as experiencing Eve teasing, a laughably imprecise term to describe men falling over and grinding themselves against hapless women traveling in India's notoriously over-crowded public transport system, to name just a few among the many inequities that are part and parcel of such women's lives.
• To look cool while a bindi-wearing Hindu immigrant in their countries would be assailed for failing to assimilate.

Writers like Lionel Shriver, who created a furore in 2016 by decrying cultural appropriation as something that hobbled fiction writers, show at best a glib obtuseness and at worst terrible want of imagination when they choose to gloss over such painful realities as so much piffle and instead seek to assert their right to talk in the voice of cultural minorities no matter what (4).

Constituting at least 16 to 18% of India's population, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes or Dalit have suffered generational privations and discrimination. While doubtless born into a privileged background and definitely not a tribal herself, in her short stories, novels and essays, Mahasweta Devi, a colossus of Bengali language literature, wrote sincerely and untiringly about the struggles and hardships of specific tribes in central and eastern India. Yet Devi can't be labeled a cultural appropriator because her well-deserved literary acclaim wasn't a painless gain at the expense of those she wrote about.

Rather than use stories about tribals as vehicles to further her own literary ambitions, Devi chose to live their struggles and that experience is the source of the authentic-sounding tribal voice in her work while her sincerity fuels her artistic power to speak credibly on behalf of those whom an indifferent state brutally renders voiceless. In contrast, at least by the tone and type of arguments she makes, Shriver comes across as a petulant child peeved at being denied a specific treat in a candy shop (4).

Though it can sometimes be damnably hard to discern, intent determines the difference.

• Seeking to write while recognizing an inherent comradeship and common humanity in another's struggle as Devi did prioritizes we, not I, and makes for powerful, unforgettable literature.
• Seeking to use or exploit 'others' as props for one's own aggrandizement or pleasure or to 'escape the confines of' of one's own head (4) prioritizes I, not we, and makes for tawdry cultural appropriation.

And so we're back to where we started. No matter America or anywhere else, if both parties gain, a win-win, it's probably more accurately characterized as cultural exchange. If the parties are inherently unequal and the dominant one gains at the expense of the weaker, a win-lose or a punch down, it's more likely cultural appropriation.

Bibliography

1. LU12, H. A. R. T. M. U. T. "Cultural appropriation as a process of displacing peoples and history." The Canadian Journal of Native Studies 10.2 (1990): 167-182. http://www.learningandviolence.n...

2. The Writers' Union of Canada

3. Ziff, Bruce H., and Pratima V. Rao, eds. Borrowed power: Essays on cultural appropriation. Rutgers University Press, 1997.

4. Lionel Shriver's full speech: 'I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad'

https://www.quora.com/Is-%E2%80%9Ccultural-appropriation%E2%80%9D-as-a-negative-a-purely-American-concept-Does-it-exist-in-other-cultures/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

Why have fentanyl deaths and seizures climbed so steeply (540%) in the last three years? Fentanyl is now the number one cause of drug overdoses in the US.

What are Fentanyls

~100 times a more potent analgesic than morphine (1) and ~40 times more so than heroin, Fentanyl is a powerful opioid used for pain treatment, first in the 1990s as a patch and now as a spray. An example of its potency, David Juurlink an opioid researcher at the University of Toronto says he'd give a hospital patient 10mg of morphine but only 0.1mg of fentanyl (2).

Widely considered too dangerous for humans, carefentanil is fentanyl's much more potent analog (similar chemical structure) and used as an elephant tranquilizer. So potent is carfentanil some countries including the US have even considered its use as a chemical weapon in war (3).

Fentanyls are so dangerous in overdoses because they can even negate Naloxone - Wikipedia, which is usually used to reverse heroin overdoses.

For example, where typically just one naloxone dose can reverse painkiller or heroin overdose, fentanyl overdose requires several naloxone doses. This is because of fentanyl's much higher affinity for the mu opioid receptor in the brain, which it accesses much more easily than morphine or heroin, given its much higher fat solubility (4).

Fentanyls can be so deadly (see photo below from 4), first responders need to be trained to protect themselves from accidental overdoses themselves (5).

Why Fentanyls have become a new front in the current US opioid crisis

Recent steep climbs in US fentanyl overdose deaths and seizures personify the Balloon effect - Wikipedia (2). How to optimally deal with drug abuse? Need strategies to deal with both supply and demand.

US history shows it tends to crack down hard on the supply side while doing little to tamp down demand. Arguably, tamping down hard on the supply side would reduce future demand but what happens to current demand if it isn't a priority of drug control policy? Just as air in a half-inflated balloon moves to another part of the balloon when it's pressed, when supply's squeezed without equivalent effort to reduce demand, users and traffickers figure out other means for getting high (2).

How opioid demand was created. Starting in the late 1990s, US doctors began handing out opioids like candy. Apparently both they and the FDA were taken in by opioid manufacturers' false claims these opioids weren't addictive. This practice both created and nurtured the growth for opioid demand. Supply wasn't a problem either for many years. However, starting in the early 2010s, people started dying in unprecedented numbers from opioid abuse overdose. Law enforcement started cracking down on prescribing doctors and pill mills, though interestingly not the pharmas making these opioids. As supply started drying up, users and traffickers diversified, first to heroin then to heroin laced with fentanyls.

Rationale for fentanyls. Given its easy access, drug traffickers started adding fentanyl to heroin to juice it up. Economic argument for fentanyl made itself. Fentanyl and carfentanil are just two of many fentanyls, all relatively easy to make in a lab, a far more simpler and cheaper approach than growing the opium poppy plant, extracting from it morphine and converting that to heroin. They also give a better and cheaper high than even heroin. Dealers can make more money from fentanyl-laced heroin (2). Dealers add fentanyl of questionable purity to the heroin they sell using scales and balances of questionable accuracy (3). Problem is users are unaware when their heroin is laced with fentanyl so injecting a usual heroin dose can lead to fentanyl overdose. The ensuing tragedy writes itself.

How opioid supply keeps creating new products to stay ahead of crackdowns. US law enforcement believes most fentanyl comes from labs in China (3), easily made there in bulk quantities without US regulatory or law enforcement supervision and then shipped into US via Latin America. On March 1, 2017, China banned manufacture and sale of fentanyl and some of its analogs including carfentanil (6), adding more analogs to the ban a couple of months later (7), making restrictions on a total of 138 compounds. However, chemists keep coming up with newer fentanyl analogs (see below from 6), making their control by regulators and law enforcement a case of Whac-A-Mole - Wikipedia.

Bibliography

1. https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.g...

2. Vox, German Lopez, May 16, 2017. How an elephant tranquilizer became the latest deadly drug in the opioid epidemic

3. Associated Press, Erika Kinetz, Desmond Butler, October 1, 2016. Chemical weapon for sale: China's unregulated narcotic

4. STAT news, Allison Bond, September 29, 2016. Why fentanyl is deadlier than heroin, in a single photo

5. The Atlantic, Sarah Zhang, May 15, 2017. Fentanyl Is So Deadly That It's Changing How First Responders Do Their Jobs

6. Science, Kathleen McLaughlin, March 29, 2017. Underground labs in China are devising potent new opiates faster than authorities can respond

7. Associated Press, June 19, 2017. China bans more synthetic opioids blamed for U.S. drug deaths

https://www.quora.com/Why-have-fentanyl-deaths-and-seizures-climbed-so-steeply-540-in-the-last-three-years-Fentanyl-is-now-the-number-one-cause-of-drug-overdoses-in-the-US/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

Is India's perception of the caste system similar to America's perception of racism?

Dissimilarities between perceptions of caste system among Indians & of racism among Americans

My experience suggests perceptions of the caste system among Indians and of racism among Americans have two key differences, one of degree and the other of kind.

The one of degree is longevity. Thousands of years older, India's caste system has had that much more time to get thoroughly marinated in people's psyche. Inequities that should rightfully horrify any decent mind have thus become part of daily life, meaning people display a shocking degree of acceptance about the whole kit and caboodle of caste. Such wholesale acceptance of structural inequities is somewhat less visible except to discerning eyes in the frantic churn of huge, bustling metros, but much more so going down to smaller towns, becoming especially visible in the hamlets and villages of rural India.

The one of kind is the diabolically clever manner by which the Indian caste system was kept in place through history, by ascribing actions of the past life, one's past life's karmas, as the arbiter for present life caste.

‘Born low caste or worse yet, casteless Dalit in this life? Too bad, only means you committed awful sins in your past life so you're fated in this one to beg, be a cobbler, dispose of dead bodies or clean other people's toilets.

Born a high caste in this life? Excellent, earning it by your past life good deeds, you merit all the advantages bestowed upon you in this life by the mere accident of birth.’

The Indian caste system evolved to maintain social order by distributing power hierarchically and hereditarily. Its in-built advantage was a permanent and permanently oppressed under-class of casteless Dalits serving as the pressure release valve to mitigate inherent power distribution differences among caste Hindus. As for the Dalits? Conveniently self-serving answer in the form of 'Too bad, they're fated to carry in this life the burden of their past life karma'. Maintaining such a spurious charade for so long took a seriously devious level of con-artistry. After all, one can't petition for better equity in this life by summoning one's past life in court to provide evidence under oath of past life virtues, can one?

Similarities between perceptions of caste system among Indians & of racism among Americans

Segregation. Both American racism and Indian casteism malevolently twist the notions of purity and pollution to foster and maintain untenable levels of structural social and cultural inequity. Forceful black segregation followed by white self-segregation to affluent neighborhoods and better endowed school systems are eerily similar to how Dalits were kept segregated in India.

‘No, not among us, your community needs to live leeward down where the effluents flow out to from our pure caste habitations and no, you aren't welcome in our temples either. Stay away from us, you dushtas! Even your shadow must not cross us.’

What could breed more easily than suspicion and mistrust when population segments are kept or keep themselves separate? That makes it easier to filter and dole out privileges based on caste or race. After all, there's no law that a black man caught with marijuana should spend years in jail while a similarly culpable white man either pays a small fine or goes free. One can have any number of laws on the books but selective interpretation and application, which can be sub-conscious and therefore that much harder to pin down, thus end up actively shaping common perceptions, the easiest among them making a self-fulfilling prophecy out of the demonizing trope of excessive criminality among blacks.

Denial. American racism and Indian casteism also have in my opinion similar degree and vehemence in hand-waving away benefits one accrues from accident of birth. Both have instituted various forms of welfare subsidies and affirmative action programs as attempts to expiate past inequities, eliciting immediate incessant howls of 'foul, foul, unfair' from some of the generationally privileged. Why? Apparently life is zero-sum. Government attempts to tilt the scale away from generational inequity to benefit one apparently do so at the expense of another, who as a result is directly deprived.

As these efforts visibly benefit their poorest, Dalits in India and blacks in America, recriminations against them are usually barely restrained and easily provoked into full bloom. For example in America, Ronald Reagan needed but one example, that of career grifter Linda Taylor - Wikipedia, to excoriate legions of welfare recipients as Cadillac-driving welfare cheats and use as an excuse to start gutting the American social welfare system, a process that each successive administration has only added to to different degrees but not reversed, at least not substantially until the ACA Medicaid expansions.

Growing up in India, the arguments against affirmative action were variations of, 'What do you mean? I was born dirt poor and look how successful I've been. I'm a self-made person. I didn't depend on government hand-outs.'. At least materially, those who spoke thus were indeed born relatively poor and ended up firmly within the ranks of the relatively affluent middle-class. So what benefits were they hand-waving away?

How about a long lineage of literacy? Literacy is a priceless advantage, a generational privilege so easily taken for granted, it can be and indeed is entirely glossed over. Everyone in my family could read and write, even my great grandmother. Even today how many middle-aged Indians could claim even their great grandparents were literate? When I started to learn to read and write, I had not just access to all the necessary materials but indeed birth advantage meant just about everyone in my formative environment was able to help me along every step of the way.

Mind you, even those within my circle who grew up poor and claimed to be self-made somehow managed to attain multi-lingual fluency, being fluent in not just several Indian languages but also English, clear evidence if such were even necessary that even the so-called dirt poor aren't homogenous, with some endowed by caste (or race in America) with structural advantages of support networks and connections that rote political discourses choose to conveniently overlook.

Resentment. Another standard trope common to Indian casteism and American racism is the lowering of so-called standards and norms. Well, maybe the first few generations of literates among the generationally fettered would fluently deploy better vocabulary, syntax, grammar and spelling if they'd also been so lucky as to have their formative environment be staffed and stuffed with those capable of helping them every step of the way day in, day out but they just didn't.

For the most part, in both India and America they've merely had difficult and unstable access to poor schools in poor neighborhoods, staffed by poorly paid, poorly trained and likely poorly motivated teachers, access to few or none after-school resources, and certainly little access to knowledge and learning within their own families, communities and neighborhoods, not from any lack of moral fiber but simply as the reality of how structural social and cultural inequity plays out.

Rather than individual merit alone, intergenerational wealth and resource transfer greatly influence one's own success in life. Disproportionate numbers among Indian Dalits and American Blacks lack the resources to help finance their children's college education, help them make down payments on their houses or leave behind a bequest or inheritance, advantages the rest take for granted, and which help them both build and retain wealth across generations.

However, admitting such essential truths means letting the proverbial cat out of the bag, that such inequities exist not by accident but on purpose, to keep a permanent underclass of cheap and desperate labor available at the ready to do the bidding of the rest of society comprised of relative winners by birth. In that respect, not just perception but also purpose of caste in India and of racism in America are entirely yoked.

https://www.quora.com/Is-Indias-perception-of-the-caste-system-similar-to-Americas-perception-of-racism/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

I am an Indian in US. I want my kid to become a doctor but he shows undue interest in arts. Initially it was just scribbling but now it’s like IT. How do I discourage my 6 year old kid from arts, paintings, and dinosaurs?

Someone who plans ahead to such an extent may find it well worth their while to mull through to the end possible outcomes from forcing a child away from art and into a medical school without regard to the child's wish. Let's consider a few such plausible future scenarios.

Scenario 1

Whoo! Glad to be done with the day. Great to lean back and enjoy some of this fine scotch. What's that? Yet another poor report card from Sanjeev? Apparently he's been lollygagging again, even after we confiscated all his art supplies. Honestly, I just don't know what to do about this boy. I'm at my wit's end. Why can't he appreciate how fortunate he is? I too was miserable at his age. Wanted to do nothing but play with paints and brushes. Look at me now. I hunkered down, gritted my way through medical school even though I hated every minute of it. That's what it takes to be a man, make the best of a bad situation and become responsible. Would he have so many advantages without all my sacrifice? Ungrateful little sniffler. Why should he get his own way when I couldn't? He's going to have to learn to be miserable just like me and roll with the punches. If I could do it, so can he.

Scenario 2

Dead at 28. How could I have known he was so miserable? Relatives buzzing around and yet everyone's so careful to keep their distance from me. Obviously too scared to ask why. Why did he jump? Why didn't he come to me if he was so miserable? Why did I do it? Why did I push him into medical school when he was just so miserable about it? All those times of 'Dad, can I...no, nothing, it's nothing'. It was all right there in front of me, his misery but I just didn't want to see it.

Scenario 3

Look at me. I look 50+ and I'm not even 40 yet. Wife walks by, yelling at me to take my feet off the coffee table. So what's new? Nag, nag, nag, can this woman even do anything else? Why is she even my wife? Ah, yes, dad, did everything dad told me to do including marry this woman and I can't even stand her. What? Now I can't even drink in my own house? I'll do as I damn well please in my own house. It's my house, dammit, paid for with my sweat and blood. Literal blood in the hospital. Hate the sight of blood, heh, and I'm a doctor. Ah, that sure hits the spot. Best medicine to take the edge off of her infernal nagging and that miserable hospital. Hate hospitals and oh, how I hate the patients, smelly, complaining, always complaining. Why did I even become a doctor? Dad again.

Nag's back. Sister's on the phone. Apparently it's about dad. Don't know why she went to visit him in the nursing home. Says something about bed sores. Thinks they're neglecting him. What the hell do I care about his effing bed sores? They can neglect him to death as far as I'm concerned. My life's a misery and he's to blame for all of it. Depressing old tyrant, he can rot in that nursing home for all I care. Ah, the latest brochure from the Museum of ***. Have been looking forward to their fall exhibition. Let's see, mmm...

Though being a considerate parent who doesn't force their agenda onto their children is no guarantee a child wouldn't grow up resentful and uncaring anyway, the men in these scenarios seem bitter or anguished, even contemptible, with no mystery as to how they got that way.

Why choose to inflict misery? And that's what a parent does when they force their kid to become a doctor or anything else regardless of what they themselves want. Such parents should then also wholeheartedly accept the outcome however that might play itself out, whether that means their children simply learn to perpetuate that misery by foisting it onto the next hapless generation or take drastic actions to end their misery or the parents themselves are neglected in old age by their children, three all too plausible scenarios. As the saying goes, misery loves company.

https://www.quora.com/I-am-an-Indian-in-US-I-want-my-kid-to-become-a-doctor-but-he-shows-undue-interest-in-arts-Initially-it-was-just-scribbling-but-now-it%E2%80%99s-like-IT-How-do-I-discourage-my-6-year-old-kid-from-arts-paintings-and-dinosaurs/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

There are two types of men in this world… What are they?

A renowned psychologist, Viktor Frankl - Wikipedia was the founder of Logotherapy - Wikipedia, a theory of psychology that holds that a person's primary motivation is to find meaning in life.

Frankl developed his theory during his years in a series of Nazi concentration camps. In his acclaimed memoir of this period, Man's Search for Meaning - Wikipedia, Frankl pretty much settled the question about the two types of men, two types of humans really, decent and indecent (see below from Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor E. Frankl, 1946, emphasis mine). ‘Pretty much settled’ because life experience in general seems to bear out the essential truth as Frankl perceived it, albeit most of the rest of us are much more fortunate and never experience such hellish, exigent circumstances.

Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils. Certainly, it was a considerable achievement for a guard or foreman to be kind to the prisoners in spite of all the camp's influences, and, on the other hand, the baseness of a prisoner who treated his own companions badly was exceptionally contemptible. Obviously the prisoners found the lack of character in such men especially upsetting, while they were profoundly moved by the smallest kindness received from any of the guards. I remember how one day a foreman secretly gave me a piece of bread which I knew he must have saved from his breakfast ration. It was far more than the small piece of bread which moved me to tears at that time. It was the human "something" which this man also gave to me - the word and look which accompanied the gift.

From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two - the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people.

https://www.quora.com/There-are-two-types-of-men-in-this-world-What-are-they/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala