A friend who is Indian told me that they reckon it’s linked to colonialism — now that I’m reflecting on it, I’m inclined to call it “post-colonialism” (a separate thing from neocolonialism, which exists alongside it). My friend described it as an especially toxic form of hustle culture. There’s a lot of pressure to be the best — not the best that you can be, but the best. It leads to a lot of burnout.
Indian culture also values seniority/age quite highly, which means that compared to places like the US, it can be less socially acceptable to disagree with your boss. Apparently this has led to India having a lot more assholish middle manager type bosses. I can imagine in that world that being the CEO of something that’s not real is basically just a fantasy of being out from the thumb of asshole managers. Plus if you feel very pressured to always be working and being Productive, then making your hobbies seem like businesses may serve to legitimise a hobby that you feel guilty to even have.
I think it’s less of a “cargo cult” capitalism, because that term implies people going through the motions with no understanding of the underlying mechanisms. I think that the Indian CEO types you describe probably understand capitalism pretty damn well, because it sort of feels like a 'roided up version of capitalism, so to speak. It makes sense when I consider the population density of India, and the hustle culture competitiveness. It’s probably useful to consider that profiles like this aren’t necessarily aimed at us, and and are likely just operating under different social conventions. There’s a lot of objectively silly stuff that I have to do as part of playing by societal expectations, so perhaps this is just something like that. It sounds like a rough experience though; Burnout due to the pressures of capitalism is definitely a worldwide phenomenon, but it sounds like Indian workers are having an especially rough time with it.
A friend who is Indian told me that they reckon it’s linked to colonialism — now that I’m reflecting on it, I’m inclined to call it “post-colonialism” (a separate thing from neocolonialism, which exists alongside it). My friend described it as an especially toxic form of hustle culture. There’s a lot of pressure to be the best — not the best that you can be, but the best. It leads to a lot of burnout.
Indian culture also values seniority/age quite highly, which means that compared to places like the US, it can be less socially acceptable to disagree with your boss. Apparently this has led to India having a lot more assholish middle manager type bosses. I can imagine in that world that being the CEO of something that’s not real is basically just a fantasy of being out from the thumb of asshole managers. Plus if you feel very pressured to always be working and being Productive, then making your hobbies seem like businesses may serve to legitimise a hobby that you feel guilty to even have.
I think it’s less of a “cargo cult” capitalism, because that term implies people going through the motions with no understanding of the underlying mechanisms. I think that the Indian CEO types you describe probably understand capitalism pretty damn well, because it sort of feels like a 'roided up version of capitalism, so to speak. It makes sense when I consider the population density of India, and the hustle culture competitiveness. It’s probably useful to consider that profiles like this aren’t necessarily aimed at us, and and are likely just operating under different social conventions. There’s a lot of objectively silly stuff that I have to do as part of playing by societal expectations, so perhaps this is just something like that. It sounds like a rough experience though; Burnout due to the pressures of capitalism is definitely a worldwide phenomenon, but it sounds like Indian workers are having an especially rough time with it.
This is explored pretty well in the novel White Tiger, which I highly recommend