Westernisation is not modernisation

I have often come across times when people tell me, ‘Oh, you need to be modern to understand this,’ and I always wonder what being modern means. Most of the time when we start copying things from Western countries, we term them as ‘modern.’

But is it necessary that whatever Western countries are doing right now is the correct way of living? And from where has this idea come that whatever we are doing, we have to learn the better way from Westerners? Why can’t our way of living be better than theirs?

However, we do understand that Western countries are doing better than us financially, but that doesn’t give them the certificate that the way they live their life is better than ours.

Western countries believe in the idea or I would rather say they sell the idea of ‘individuality,’ which means that every single person is not liable for any other person. You have to be completely independent in terms of finances, emotions, etc. To achieve these things, they make sure kids sleep in their own rooms from a very early age, as that increases the kid’s emotional stability. They generally prefer not to cry and show their emotions in front of their kids, as it makes children more emotional in nature, which will lead to difficulty when it’s time for the child to leave home for education and work. They sell the idea of individualism, which makes them believe that every person has to have their own house, car, and everything. You can’t live in your parents’ house, even if your parents worked hard to build that house, because society will laugh and make fun of you.

The story doesn’t end here. If you want to make your parents live in your house when they are old and need help during their old age, that case is also not possible in most cases. This makes me think, ‘Is the idea of individualism the best idea?’ Every single person is being told to start from zero and is forced to pay home loan EMIs to the bank for the rest of his life just because he can’t live with parents after a certain age. He can’t take care of his parents and bring them into his own house with his wife and kids because of ‘individualism.’

In Asian countries, water flows in the opposite direction than in Western countries. We believe in togetherness and living a life with our loved ones by taking privacy in the back seat, because for us, maybe living with our loved ones and larger families is better than the sham idea of individualism and being so independent that you have to take appointments with your parents to meet them.

However, the way Asian countries are starting to adapt the culture of Western countries, it will just be a matter of time when we start facing the problems which Western countries are currently facing, like depression, loneliness, etc. The biggest reason why we start following Western culture and term it as modern is that we have an inferiority complex where we think of ourselves as less than people in the West. One example of that is we started accepting our own parts of culture like ‘yog’ when Western countries approved yoga and made it a trend. We started believing in the concept of ‘karm’ when Western teens made it cool to use words like ‘karma.’

Everything termed as cool today only if you follow Western countries. If you disagree with some Western concepts, people will start labeling you as ‘Not Cool.’

In the end, adopting good habits from anyone is a very good idea, but make sure why we are adopting those habits and whether those habits are genuinely good, or are we just copying them because of our inferiority complex.”