> In August 2018, in the last month of my three-month sabbatical, I arrived at the Hamta village in Himachal Pradesh. I rented a one-room cottage, and my caretakers were Dolma Aunty and Kalzang Uncle, a couple well into their 70’s.
I got to this part and realized: I've read this article before in some form.
It's a really common trope to head out to some remote area of Asia and admire how happy people are. There's often a spiritual component to it. I will write the guy a bit of a pass, because he himself is (I think) Indian.
But westerners have been doing stuff like this for ages and prattling on about it - it's kind of a cornerstone of Orientalism. This was actually a plot point in the recent White Lotus season. People rarely go to Appalachia to have these experiences, but you certainly can find people living simple happy lives there. (At least, if they do, nobody publishes those articles - it doesn't fit our preconceived notions of who gets to be enlightened, which is to say it has to be some place far away and people very different than your average Americans)
Not to say there's no value in this article (there is), and it was a fun read at that.
I got to this part and realized: I've read this article before in some form.
It's a really common trope to head out to some remote area of Asia and admire how happy people are. There's often a spiritual component to it. I will write the guy a bit of a pass, because he himself is (I think) Indian.
But westerners have been doing stuff like this for ages and prattling on about it - it's kind of a cornerstone of Orientalism. This was actually a plot point in the recent White Lotus season. People rarely go to Appalachia to have these experiences, but you certainly can find people living simple happy lives there. (At least, if they do, nobody publishes those articles - it doesn't fit our preconceived notions of who gets to be enlightened, which is to say it has to be some place far away and people very different than your average Americans)
Not to say there's no value in this article (there is), and it was a fun read at that.