Differences

 Don't mistake cultural differences, habits and differences in conditioning due to childhood upbringing with values misalignment; don't let it detract from judging the underlying character and goodness of people different from you.

Biggest psyop

 The biggest psyop if you were a young girl growing up in India and similar cultures until the1990s was that the pinnacle of womanhood was to absorb and shoulder as much as you could without complaint and with a smile on your face. The more you could absorb silently without making any demands, the more virtuous you felt. The goal was to give as much and take as little as you could, making your existence not just a net positive, but pretty much a gross positive for everyone around.

There is no good outcome of this kind of cultural upbringing. The women went one of two ways. They would either dim, or erupt.

For the older generations, without any financial or social safety nets, and thus much of a sense of self and confidence, there would be a gradual, corrosive dimming of their soul's light over time, until, eyes vacant, they'd become a shell of a person. Motherhood and family obligations consumed them, and left behind a diminished self, with growing bitterness, resentment, fear and dullness building over time.

With the more recent and current generations, educated, often financially independent, and empowered girls have access to conflicting messages of what it means to be a woman. Without great role models in real life around them though, they absorb and suffer until the cognitive dissonance becomes too much to bear. Just like a glacier that keeps absorbing heat until it breaks off and creates a veritable tsunami that ravages everything in its path, or like a volcano that keeps simmering for years until it erupts, and like Sita, who was the epitome of quiet, dignified strength until she got fed up and ended her life by asking the Earth to swallow her whole.

Very few women were able to buck these trends.

To be clear, men don't want either of these outcomes. The preferred outcome by any rational bystander would be, in descending order of preference:

1. Have the absorbing mechanism work without any dimming or eruption. If this is not possible,
2. Have the absorbing mechanism work with frequent breaks to reverse the dimming, and smaller, frequent, and thus relatively benign outbursts to release the tension and prevent the big lethal eruption

Those are still suboptimal outcomes that don't challenge the underlying archetype of women as the silent sufferers. In reality, the pinnacle of womanhood is to ask for and get what you need to be a thriving, confident, loving, joyful, brilliant person. From that fountain of abundance flows forth the love and laughter that nourishes her loved ones and everyone else in her orbit. There will always be some level of give and take and overseeing of minor transgressions in any relationship, but the women need not shoulder any more of this burden than the men. It gladdens me to see this role modeled around me today, and gives me hope for this and future generations.

Immigrant guilt

 You've heard of survivor guilt. Immigrant guilt is the equivalent felt by immigrants who leave their home country for a better life.

The Beginning of Infinity

David Deustsch argues in "The Beginning of Infinity", published in 2011, that human progress is boundless and driven by the endless pursuit of good explanations through critical thinking and creativity. In order to pursue good explanations, you need a tradition of open criticism rather than blind obedience to authority. This was seen in the Enlightenment culture, and the dynamic, open societies it created in the West.

Deutsch (pronounced Doych) divides human cultures based on how they handle ideas and traditions:

- Static cultures: These societies rely on stable, unchanging memes. They forbid questioning authority or changing core rules. They reject error correction.

- Rational/Enlightenment cultures: These dynamic societies expect traditions to be criticized and improved. They view problems as normal and solvable through better ideas.

Two comments on this -

1. Indian culture used to be the most advanced civilization on the planet thousands of years ago. It's GDP was highest in the world as a share of the global total until and during the 1st millennium (1st to 10th century) and again for a bit around 1700 AD during the late Mughal empire. The Age of Enlightenment occurred in Europe primarily between 1680s - 1789. By the 1700s, India was more of a static culture. The caste system was entrenched, making meritocracy and social mobility non-existent. Even when there was merit in the ideas and the legacy knowledge left behind by ancestors that lived through the peak of Indian civilization (yoga, Ayurveda, astrology, vastu shastra), they were passed on as "stable, unchanging memes" and rejected error correction. The "source of truth" was the original text, and these traditions were not to be criticized and improved upon. 

2. In comparison, the Enlightenment culture in the West, and AI today embrace error correction. There is no "source of truth" with texts that were a product of the Enlightenment culture, only hypotheses and theories that were continuously to be improved upon. Copernicus replaced the geocentric model with the heliocentric model in the 16th century --> Kepler proved that planetary paths are ellipses, not circles, in the 17th century --> Einstein showed in the 20th century that the universe has no true center --> and Einstein's work has been corrected, improved and expanded upon in the years since. 

AI, and certainly AI in collaboration with human intelligence is going to be capable of even better critical thinking and creativity, and thus better explanations than humans alone. AI cultures will supersede non-AI cultures, just like the Enlightenment culture superseded static cultures.