We are all similar (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 4: Society
Prelims level: Cultural neuroscience
Mains level: Effects on the Cultural neuroscience

Context

• We are living in an increasingly polarised world. When we draw lines in the sand to demarcate our socio-cultural and religious identities, the consequences are violent.
• This is visible in the threats to liberal institutions, in mob lynchings, in suicide bombings, and in the building of walls that would put ancient Chinese engineering to shame.\
• However, our self-identity has been scientifically proven to have a strong biological basis and that contradicts the notion that, as human beings, we voluntarily choose certain behaviours over others.

Effects of the cultural neuroscience

• The cultural neuroscience is a cutting-edge area of scientific exploration, using highly sophisticated brain-imaging tools such as fMRIs, which examine the neurobiological underpinnings of self-identity and how the culture we live in affects the neural pathways that dictate behaviour.
• For example, when solving simple arithmetic problems, native English speakers engage the left perisylvian cortices — areas that are typically involved in linguistic processing.
• However, native Chinese speakers show very little activation in this area.
• Instead, they show marked activation in a pre-motor association area.
• This demonstrates that the same behavioural outcome is accomplished by different brain pathways, depending on their cultural backgrounds.

Conclusion

• The notion that we are more similar than different whether Hindu, Muslim, Christian, forward or backward caste, rich or poor, local or from the diaspora may elicit ire in some people.
• But where do socio-cultural assertions by an insular few stand in the face of larger forces biologically-proven phenomena that, in a beautifully Socratic irony, have partial bases in the very cultures they stem from?

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General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With respect to GDP deflator, consider the following statements:

1. It reflects the impact of increase in prices on GDP as a measure of inflation.\
2. It includes value of all goods and services produced during a year in an economy.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: C

Mains Questions:
Q.1) The neuroscience of Indianness and a case for unity. Comment.