It is a hard problem in general: how much of "good indifference" is too much. Living as a Cosmopolitan Citizen in post-national Western Europe, I appreciate indifference very much, but that attitude leaves you in a lonely place after a while. That is why the liberal parties here never get more than 5-6% of the vote.
Better than indifference would be an educated differentiation, that would avoid generalisation by nation, class, identity group.... But this is an impossible goal, our brains are too small to process all the data (even if we had it), and our will is too weak. It helps to understand that popular prejudice does not necessarily mean the people are evil, but rather lazy.
«appreciate indifference very much, but that attitude leaves you in a lonely place after a while. That is why the liberal parties here never get more than 5-6% of the vote.»
Loneliness is not why liberal parties do not get more than 5-6%: it is because they are economically conservative but socially radical, and most people who are economically conservative are also socially conservative (those who want to defend their wealth also usually also want to defend the social order in which they get to keep it) and vice-versa.
Thank you for this wonderful expression of bourgeois angst. How unpleasant it is to talk to the lesser people. You know the ones who don't know where Botswana is and can't remember why great uncle Bob died in the Vietnam War or even why there was a war because it may have mattered to great uncle Bob but it doesn't matter to them. Most of what the powerful and rich do and the petty bourgeois intellectuals, mostly liberals, do to justify their every fart just escapes the interest of ordinary people. They probably find you a drag. As to the Moslems who politely or not so politely mention the bombs the US supplies Israel coming from possibly the country you live in and pay taxes to, well you might point out to them that you have as little power over your ruling class as they do over theirs.
«How unpleasant it is to talk to the lesser people.»
To me this smear is ridiculous because the last two sentences of this post are:
“Surely, I appreciated as individuals more people who disagreed with me than those who were totally indifferent. Perhaps we can live nice lives in total indifference of the rest of the world but if everybody does it, in what kind of a world shall we live?”
“ … a pleasant time with people who ignored anything of history and of present-day politics … “ -- reminds one of the aphorism (likely incorrectly attributed to Trotsky): “You may not be interested in a war, but war is interested in you”. Your post here was in an odd way wonderful. Wonderful insofar as there are many parts of the world where disagreement, the political and the serious are increasingly shunned.
Thank you for a great question! I think that a lot of disinterested people have no mental resources left to take much interest beyond their immediate families and friends - they need to sort out how to survive, to move on, etc. This doesn't leave much space to think about global affairs. And another reason of indifference is lack of education that precludes them from seeing the importance of the bigger picture to their own lives.
Loved this thanks. I agree. It’s always better to be confronted and uncomfortable and find a path to mutually acceptable harmony than live in blandness and superficial vanilla agreement.
Nice reflections on the difficulties inherent to life among people with different values and beliefs. And i note the implicit assertion that different values and beliefs don’t imply loss of humanity. A proposition little liked in the west. Regarding your last question Branko I believe the answer is :in a world who is indifferent to atrocities in Gaza and the true reasons for the war in Ukraine.
Trust me it is the same. Their President now, was a Minister when the genocide happened and still denies the genocide and even pursues a revisionist history where they are "the victim" despite doing the most killing. Imagine an Israeli saying that he was criticized on the Palestinian genocide, and he writes that did not agree with all points, and that it was more convenient to meet people that did not care about the crimes his state committed. Branko could at least distance himself from the actions of his state like many Serbs did, but he does not. He barely mentions what the malay people said to him and makes sure to mention he did not agree with them.
I didn’t know Malaysia had issues with Serbia. You should talk to PM Anwar if you have a chance, to see if he can get Malaysia to move on from the past. I am sure Anwar would want to restore relations with Serbia, but he may have to spend some political capital. If Serbia could speak up for the Palestinians, I am sure that would help.
Anyway, glad you found Malaysia to your liking. Hope you visit again soon.
Malaysians had issue with Serbia demonizing and vilifying Muslims in the Balkan region and committing genocide and ethnic cleansing campaigns against them. This was not mentioned in the article at all. Of what these Malaysians said and what he said in return.
Even if Serbia did demonise and vilify Muslims in the Balkan region, Serbia today is no longer like Serbia of so many years ago. It's time for Malaysia to restore relations with Serbia.
(I assume Serbia isn't supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza. I doubt Malaysians would support restoring relations if Serbia supports the genocide.)
Dr Branko, I live in post colonial nation - India. I don't know what outsiders have read about India. Reality is that India is a failed state, a thoroughly dysfunctional and Potemkin democracy. Poverty, hunger, unemployment and social backwardness is rampant. The society is overwhelmingly ignorant and intolerant. You cannot share your views openly. For you don't know the reaction. The government employees, students, businesses and journalists are most scared about expressing their opinions because they can easily face the long end of the government stick.
Sign of a bankrupt society is when it reinvents as a religious nation. Such has been happening in India since last 3 decades.
I live two lives. One is social life where I just walk among the crowd silently. Other is internet where i explore the world and write my thoughts freely.
Maybe a bit of indifference isn't such a bad thing given that the lack of it can mean avoiding looking at one's own problems? There's perhaps a kind of fake respectability that is associated with the well-traveled and supposedly well-informed person.
So, I think there's another category in addition to your two: the well-meaning person who follows world news, tries different cuisines, meets a few people outside the bubble of the hotel lobby- neither indifferent nor particularly well-informed.
To a person like myself, this is confusing. Were the relations good or were they not? And who cares anyways, what Branko's "relations" were (I know: when you were with the bank) or the world bank's "relations" were? They used to say "the white man he speak with forked tongue," know what I mean? Is every problem split in two to create a bi-level situation? Is this some kind of general method, where you consider everything from two viewpoints? So, standard method. Is that it?
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" we got all the data we wanted and the relations became quite good. But on that—on the problem of income distribution in Malaysia—I could write an entirely different essay. "
It is a hard problem in general: how much of "good indifference" is too much. Living as a Cosmopolitan Citizen in post-national Western Europe, I appreciate indifference very much, but that attitude leaves you in a lonely place after a while. That is why the liberal parties here never get more than 5-6% of the vote.
Better than indifference would be an educated differentiation, that would avoid generalisation by nation, class, identity group.... But this is an impossible goal, our brains are too small to process all the data (even if we had it), and our will is too weak. It helps to understand that popular prejudice does not necessarily mean the people are evil, but rather lazy.
«appreciate indifference very much, but that attitude leaves you in a lonely place after a while. That is why the liberal parties here never get more than 5-6% of the vote.»
Loneliness is not why liberal parties do not get more than 5-6%: it is because they are economically conservative but socially radical, and most people who are economically conservative are also socially conservative (those who want to defend their wealth also usually also want to defend the social order in which they get to keep it) and vice-versa.
Freedom is the most radical concept. And total idiference (even Rawls‘ ignorance) is more frightenung than terror of a dictatorship
.
Thank you for this wonderful expression of bourgeois angst. How unpleasant it is to talk to the lesser people. You know the ones who don't know where Botswana is and can't remember why great uncle Bob died in the Vietnam War or even why there was a war because it may have mattered to great uncle Bob but it doesn't matter to them. Most of what the powerful and rich do and the petty bourgeois intellectuals, mostly liberals, do to justify their every fart just escapes the interest of ordinary people. They probably find you a drag. As to the Moslems who politely or not so politely mention the bombs the US supplies Israel coming from possibly the country you live in and pay taxes to, well you might point out to them that you have as little power over your ruling class as they do over theirs.
«How unpleasant it is to talk to the lesser people.»
To me this smear is ridiculous because the last two sentences of this post are:
“Surely, I appreciated as individuals more people who disagreed with me than those who were totally indifferent. Perhaps we can live nice lives in total indifference of the rest of the world but if everybody does it, in what kind of a world shall we live?”
“ … a pleasant time with people who ignored anything of history and of present-day politics … “ -- reminds one of the aphorism (likely incorrectly attributed to Trotsky): “You may not be interested in a war, but war is interested in you”. Your post here was in an odd way wonderful. Wonderful insofar as there are many parts of the world where disagreement, the political and the serious are increasingly shunned.
Thank you for a great question! I think that a lot of disinterested people have no mental resources left to take much interest beyond their immediate families and friends - they need to sort out how to survive, to move on, etc. This doesn't leave much space to think about global affairs. And another reason of indifference is lack of education that precludes them from seeing the importance of the bigger picture to their own lives.
Loved this thanks. I agree. It’s always better to be confronted and uncomfortable and find a path to mutually acceptable harmony than live in blandness and superficial vanilla agreement.
Nice reflections on the difficulties inherent to life among people with different values and beliefs. And i note the implicit assertion that different values and beliefs don’t imply loss of humanity. A proposition little liked in the west. Regarding your last question Branko I believe the answer is :in a world who is indifferent to atrocities in Gaza and the true reasons for the war in Ukraine.
Trust me it is the same. Their President now, was a Minister when the genocide happened and still denies the genocide and even pursues a revisionist history where they are "the victim" despite doing the most killing. Imagine an Israeli saying that he was criticized on the Palestinian genocide, and he writes that did not agree with all points, and that it was more convenient to meet people that did not care about the crimes his state committed. Branko could at least distance himself from the actions of his state like many Serbs did, but he does not. He barely mentions what the malay people said to him and makes sure to mention he did not agree with them.
I didn’t know Malaysia had issues with Serbia. You should talk to PM Anwar if you have a chance, to see if he can get Malaysia to move on from the past. I am sure Anwar would want to restore relations with Serbia, but he may have to spend some political capital. If Serbia could speak up for the Palestinians, I am sure that would help.
Anyway, glad you found Malaysia to your liking. Hope you visit again soon.
Malaysians had issue with Serbia demonizing and vilifying Muslims in the Balkan region and committing genocide and ethnic cleansing campaigns against them. This was not mentioned in the article at all. Of what these Malaysians said and what he said in return.
Even if Serbia did demonise and vilify Muslims in the Balkan region, Serbia today is no longer like Serbia of so many years ago. It's time for Malaysia to restore relations with Serbia.
(I assume Serbia isn't supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza. I doubt Malaysians would support restoring relations if Serbia supports the genocide.)
Just my view.
<3
Dr Branko, I live in post colonial nation - India. I don't know what outsiders have read about India. Reality is that India is a failed state, a thoroughly dysfunctional and Potemkin democracy. Poverty, hunger, unemployment and social backwardness is rampant. The society is overwhelmingly ignorant and intolerant. You cannot share your views openly. For you don't know the reaction. The government employees, students, businesses and journalists are most scared about expressing their opinions because they can easily face the long end of the government stick.
Sign of a bankrupt society is when it reinvents as a religious nation. Such has been happening in India since last 3 decades.
I live two lives. One is social life where I just walk among the crowd silently. Other is internet where i explore the world and write my thoughts freely.
Maybe a bit of indifference isn't such a bad thing given that the lack of it can mean avoiding looking at one's own problems? There's perhaps a kind of fake respectability that is associated with the well-traveled and supposedly well-informed person.
So, I think there's another category in addition to your two: the well-meaning person who follows world news, tries different cuisines, meets a few people outside the bubble of the hotel lobby- neither indifferent nor particularly well-informed.
"I did not agree with them on all points". Just wondering whether one of the points of disagreement had to do with genocide denial.
To a person like myself, this is confusing. Were the relations good or were they not? And who cares anyways, what Branko's "relations" were (I know: when you were with the bank) or the world bank's "relations" were? They used to say "the white man he speak with forked tongue," know what I mean? Is every problem split in two to create a bi-level situation? Is this some kind of general method, where you consider everything from two viewpoints? So, standard method. Is that it?
-
" we got all the data we wanted and the relations became quite good. But on that—on the problem of income distribution in Malaysia—I could write an entirely different essay. "
Thanks Branko! I will share this with my many wonderful. Malaysian students -- many sponsored ny the Bank of Malaysia