Individualism has a surprisingly high LD50.

Which is why it is so convenient that the East needs to learn only one value from the west to see prosperity beyond anything they achieved even in history:

Individualism .

a.k.a the ability and willingness to leave others the alone, to admire ambition and achievement, to venture to frontiers, to separate class from jobs, & the subsequent appreciation for the value of weirdness and trial-and-error.

Certain western intellectuals love to aggrandize “Judeo-Christian religion” being the reason for their success. This is cope for not having to admit that uncomfortable, ugly, *beautiful* individualism was one of their greatest inventions & the reason for their utter dominance.

And yes, there are big trade-offs to individualism.

But these trade-offs are far, far better than the suffocating patriarchal panopticon of places like India. It is probably true that we potentially have a superior culture in many ways, just like the trads say. But:

You can froth derangedly about being “300000 years old” all you like (add another zero if you want, no one will notice!), but a huge number of smart Indians are still going abroad to live, work, prosper and build things–

.. and most of all they will be far happier and *safer* there than here. And they will never come back. You have lost them forever, and your pathetic cope is to say your country never needed them anyway.

All while you depend on *one* capable guy at the top to clean up the mafia sludge that is our institutions (and rant with no understanding of first principles when they try anything either too bold or too slow or flawed, because <insert asian dad A+ meme>)

There are only two types of people who get into politics:

a) crazy, weird, evil people much more street smart than you
b) crazy, weird, good people, crazy enough to do good.

But (b) have left, and will keep leaving. Or will go into careers forced by circumstances or society.

.. or are forced to hang out with (a) for so long you can’t even identify (b), your instincts about people now a dull, bent weapon from spending a lifetime wildly swinging it in every direction from the characteristic frustration & fear of a pawn fighting someone else’s wars.

..and the saddest part is that individualism is the perfect fit in the Indic framework. We already have the safeguards and the values needed to both fuel it and counteract its worst effects.

We just don’t have the actual thing, the *one* thing, that would make our 4000 year old civilization click with a loud bang.