Can you please point out to me where, exactly, he finishes on an acknowledgement of his own biases? His analysis is based on a 3-week excursion around various parts of the country, with little to no effort to understand any historical context for what he critiques.
How about even a cursory talk about the historical context? Colonialism, the politics of development, the political economy of tourism, anything for that matter.
Mark talks about how emotionally overwhelming travel is, he doesn't talk about how, if he had stayed there longer or even done some basic wikipedia research, perhaps he wouldn't jump to so many base conclusions. Instead, we are left with a poetic bog post laced with comments like this one:
"Indian culture itself is quite disorienting."
Or this little gem:
"There’s no single sentence for India. The place is a fucking mess."
This doesn't even make sense. How can there be no single sentence for India, and then GIVE A SINGLE SENTENCE FOR INDIA?
Yeah, it's a fucking mess for a well-off Internet blogger. It's a fucking mess because Mother Theresa can't save the Indians from themselves, "And it’s just as well, Mother Teresa couldn’t save this society from itself." Critical development studies has been fighting this kind of arrogance for a long time.
And to be fair, I respect this author's work a lot more than most lifestyle blogs. I just have a low tolerance for generalizations like this one.
Can you please explain how you jump to an understanding of how our brains our wired for 'private' issues and not 'public' ones? I know plenty of individuals whose minds operate in the context of society. Language isn't private. It's shared.
You certainly don't argue or write like you studied anything but Glenn Beck's wikipedia page.
Can you please explain to me how I am 'trashing' freedom, and human rights? Cultural rights ARE human rights.
And please explain to me how Karl Popper somehow supports your theory of 'objective value.' Popper's arguments concern the contingency of analyses. Contingency, not objectivity.
I only reserve the ad hom's for close-minded dipshits like yourself.
What constitutes a 'civilized' lifestyle? Your concepts of 'backwards' and 'civilized' are grounded in normative assumptions about what is right and wrong. I am not a post-structuralist, but I expect someone to acknowledge his or her normative stance before degrading a culture different than your own. What do you mean when you say 'There is nothing good?' What do you define as 'good?'