Culture Shock, Culture Attack or Culture Annoyance?

An expat friend of mine posted a link to an article recently that explained the difference between culture shock and culture attack as it relates to India.

The quick beginning to the article explains the differences as:

Culture shocks are actually a little bit fun. These are the experiences you tell your friends and family about when you go back home. It was like culture shock when everyone jammed into the train all at once! That was crazy! These are simple isolated experiences of cultural differences that leave an impression on us.

Culture attacks are hellish. They overtake your body and leave you feeling like the Incredible Hulk. You don’t tell people back home about these times. How do you tell your mother about the time when you got out your car and threatened to kill the motorcyclist who pulled out in front of you?

I was trying to explain the difference to some friends recently before I read this article and I wish I had read this first because it would have helped.  However, for me there is even a third characterization called Culture Annoyance.  Here is my definition:

Culture Annoyances: These experiences are no longer "shocks" because they are expected to happen, but are no less annoying or even infuriating and are typically handled with a shake of the head and a muttering of, "wow, things are different here" but, when they are experienced over and over in close succession they can also cause Culture Attacks.  They are different from culture shock because they are not at all fun.  

There are so many annoyances here that range from silly to infuriating - from the head waggle that doesn't mean yes or no but is somehow a suitable answer to any question, to the roads that are in such disrepair that motorists routinely suffer serious injuries and death because the motor bike they are riding on unexpectedly falls into a massive hole in the middle of the road, to the complete disregard of human safety in nearly all aspects of life such as the lack of safe drinking water or the lack of safety harnesses when working at the top of a tall building.

I have heard myself and many, many other people respond to these occurrences by saying, "we can't fix India." And it is true, the paradox of India is that it is a beautiful and ugly country at the same time.  The poorest of poor people are covered in dirt and also covered in fabrics of stunning color.  In one trip I'll pass slums and people urinating (or worse) on the side of the road and a second later I'll pass a gorgeous hotel that caters to the richest of the rich.  No one attempts to shoo away the unsavory aspects of life in India the way that a waiter of a fancy sidewalk restaurant will shoo away the homeless person asking for money in many countries.  It is just accepted that this is life here.

Most of the expats I meet here are doing as much as they can to help.  Volunteering in the orphanages and "adopting" villages to provide safe rice and personal hygiene products and teaching marketable skills to unemployed women so they can make a living sewing or making jewelry or cooking.  But the reality that is slowly creeping into my cultural annoyance state is that while those small acts of kindness truly help some individuals, India can't be fixed until the country decides it is going to be fixed.  

I know that I am greatly generalizing here and that international economics are a very complex and complicated system.  However, that does not change the fact that international companies come into India so they can drive down operating costs and keep investors happy at home.  And, they are doing a great service to the host country by providing good wages and tax revenue.   And even though I truly believe that these organizations are not engaging in any illicit or illegal behavior (think bribes which is a huge part of the culture here), I also believe they may be contributing to some of the madness.  These companies come in, set up shop and hire many, many employees - that is the great part (And, for the companies that I am familiar with in India, it appears that they are hiring adult workers at a decent salary and with very good working conditions).  But, the government takes legitimate tax money from the companies and uses it to line their individual pockets instead of improving roadways or providing clean drinking water or cleaning up the piles and piles of garbage that appear everywhere.  And no one cares because no one person can fix India.

I know there are people who would argue, at least in the case of US companies, that most of these jobs should stay in the US.  But I would play the devil's advocate and argue that if we truly believe that then we should put our collective money where our collective mouth is and start buying from companies that only produce in the US.  The reality is that in order to provide a good or service that the american population is willing to buy it needs to be less expensive than the other products.  And, the cost of doing business in the US is very high - what with our child labor laws and minimum wage laws and OSHA and other employment laws that make working in the US safe.  Therefore, there are corporations are either going overseas, or partnering with companies that already operate overseas, exploiting lower wage workers who are probably being put to work at young ages or forced to work long hours for little money or they are importing products without due diligence on the worker history to produce those goods.  When we shop at Homegoods (my personal favorite) or Old Navy or any computer provider or anywhere for that matter we should ask ourselves where the product comes from.  Without a doubt at least a part of it - the fabric or the stitching or the computer components or the entire product - is made in factories in Asia and elsewhere where working conditions are dire, buildings are crashing down and women and children are raped as a condition of keeping their miserable job.  

I don't have an answer.  We can't stop buying products from other countries because we would have to go naked for the lack of clothing available. - and honestly no one needs that!  But I love the people I meet in India and I love the opportunity my family has been given to live here and see the paradox of India.  I envision a country that rises up and demands better, demands a decent government that works for the good of the country and that creates safety nets so people can stop dying of diseases that something as seemingly simple as clean drinking water can eliminate.  I don't know how to fix it so I don't have any answers.  But I know that the cultural beliefs of India run very deep and turning a ship of 1.2 billion people is going to take many generations.