The Gulf War, though having one of the best armies in the middle east Iraq lost, and it lost badly. It did to USA the second time, and once again it lost very badly. The Arabs tried to conquer Israel, a tiny nation that had nothing and they lost, and they lost it bad. Long ago in Tamilnadu, despite being brave and having a disciplined military, the Maruthu bothers lost to the British. China lost to western powers during the Opium wars.

The question here is why? Why do people who are in the East loose to people who are in the West? One reason I can think of is that there is an element of mistrust in the east. Sadam does not trust his generals for the fear that he will be ousted by them. The Arab countries though they are all Islamic nations, they are deeply divided into Wahabi, Shia Islam and so on. During the Maruthu era in Tamilnadu, the Paalayam rulers were in a power struggle and deeply mistrusted each others. All this aided enemy victory.

I did find it recently in the people I opposed, I expected a logical good fight, a debate of ideas, but the other side crumbled. They then I found out deeply mistrusted the people who in-fact came to their aid. They did not respect fellow humans. I, filled with western ideas had an open mind, and they could not deal with it.

We might think of Tamil villages a good place to live, may be it is, but people over there mistrust their neighbors and envy them. A neighbor will go into deep state of depression, hate and envy if one has converted a thatched roof house to one with tiles. He, the neighbor, will do all he can to spread a bad word about him, how that one earned in an illegal way and so on.

Not just in Tamils, I find this deep sense of mistrust in Kerala people too. For a Keralite family is important. If a family is headed by a fool, then all the people in family are foolish too. Let’s say that a girl is a Hindu and she falls in love with a muslim, or say she is a feminist and wants to goto Aiyappan temple, that’s it, if the family head is offended, like goats almost all people in the family will be offended and mistrust the girl. Her life is finished. Or she must listen to the family head and mistrust a muslim boy proposing to her. This type of stupidity I find, makes Malayali’s deeply divided and unprogressive.

I think we in East must be open to ideas, listen to others and try starting to trust people. Yes some trust might fail, some might betray you, but unless one knows that you trust him and have given the full freedom to work, he or she cannot work for you 100% and be productive.