Moral Ascendancy and the West

If travelling to a "better" country could make a human being more civilized, there would have been no oppressors, conquerors and colonialists. History stands testimony to the fact that a brute however much extolled for his achievements in a foreign land clings by his brutish roots to the very end. Ask the oppressed, the conquered.

I flew to the West six years ago. The motivation had not been to climb the hill of moral ascendancy. I did not believe then (and I do not believe now) that such a mythical high land exists. But, like many others before me I too was pleasantly surprised by the sensitivity, honesty, and integrity of the general public in this new land. A collective empathy toward goodness of a society in general. Prior theory learnt in school seemed now in sync with current practice. So I went about playing my part well as an alien component in a foreign culture. I stood in the lines patiently, and took care to wish every stranger; I kept the wrappers in  my pockets and the chewing gums in my mouth; I made way for the ladies and held the doors open for the through traffic. I muted my car horn and yielded to the pedestrians. I even tipped the waiter the same amount I paid my old maid back home every month for the past so many years. And then I think I overdid it. Yes, because as trivial and as expected the above human behavior may seem, in a flawed way it made me think more highly of myself.

When a person is in such a state, he is flawless; to himself i.e. In this state of mental apotheosis he looks up and finds a satisfying void. Rather than strengthening his conviction towards his own loosely-held social values he ends up seeking flaws in people (especially his own countrymen) all around. He spots them crossing streets without warning, licking the backs of their hands for the last morsel, yelling into their cellphones in public, posing with callous "V"s kneeling over someone's tombstone and what not. How uncouth, uncivilized and unsavoury they are, he ponders? Being a common man I know that this feeling cannot be uncommon, though I may be one of the few fortunate ones to realize how obnoxious such a mental state is. 

And then what happens when this self-anointed moral soul re-enter his homeland? One would think he returns a better citizen having seen the occidental light. The reality most often rips the curtain of dreams though. As soon as the rear wheels touch the airstrip he grabs his backpack and elbows through the "uncouth", "smelly" crowd, all the way running a finger across his nose to make obvious of the fact that the smell of sweat so "typical" of his countrymen cannot possibly emanate from him. The same man who so politely stood in the line for security check in a foreign land now raises a ruckus when asked to wait patiently at customs. Off course, here every customs official is a thief, every airport staff is a "coolie" (the term may be considered racially offensive in another land, but it is perfectly OK to use it on ones own countrymen), and every taxi-wallah at the airport-exit is a pimp. Just outside the airport he gets into an argument with the taxi-wallah (over one-tenth the money he used to tip the waiters in a foreign land); He mouths a few expletives with the same alacrity with which he would greet his "civilized" friends in another land, and then when he gets off the "cursed vehicle" in a huff, he conveniently forgets to give a word of thanks to the driver for steering him through the "horrid traffic". He then takes liberty to light a cigarette in the middle of a public bus stand, spits on the side wall and walks into the crowd worse than the man he ever was.   

We live in a generation where travelling to the "better" world is not a dream anymore. It is commonplace. Therefore experiencing a culture morally and socially more responsible than ours (despite the depth and riches of our own in practice there is still a lot we can learn) is also not uncommon. What is though is our ability to learn from that experience and hold on to it on returning back to the grind. To those who have seen the world outside and so vehemently extol the ways of a foreign culture we must first put in practice those "good values" when no one's watching and no one cares, because that is when it really matters.