Monday 16 September 2013

Some questions about Anglo-Indians and Americans

(1) Would these photos of the "fast dwindling" Anglo-Indian community in Calcutta (as the BBC calls it) have the same elegiac quality if they were in colour?

(2) Talking of links between England and India, has anyone ever heard of someone who autumned in Harrogate? These people did. Sir Dhunjibhoy and Lady Bomanji also summered in Windsor and wintered in Poona (Daily Mail's spelling this time). The article does not say where they springed (sprung?).

(3) These may be the five cognitive distortions of people who get things done (link here):

1. Personal exceptionalism
2. Dichotomous thinking
3. Correct overgeneralization
4. Blank canvas thinking
5. Schumpeterianism (i.e. seeing creative destruction as natural, necessary, and one's vocation)

Are these not also five cognitive distortions often considered (by non-Americans) to be stereotypically American traits? (And perhaps Americans agree: American exceptionalism seems to be regarded as a pretty uncontroversial thesis even among Americans, for example.) Do Americans tend to "get things done"? Or are these perhaps traits that allow one to get things done in America (I can't tell from here whether the research is only about Americans)? 

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