There was a time when some countries were considered the ideal places to emigrate to for those seeking a better life. These included, mostly, the ‘developed’ countries of the West. In the present, however, it would be difficult to make such a claim. People do emigrate, even in larger numbers, but it is in the hope of obtaining employment and earning more. The initial sheen of a prosperous society soon wears away when the high cost of living hits in. The material comforts do not compensate for the loss of a healthy social co-existence. But there is mostly no coming back.
The structure of governance is also under challenge in societies facing increasing political polarisation and cultural disintegration. It is difficult to explain, for instance, that a ‘developed and prosperous’ country like the USA has so many incidents of school-shootings. It is not just that guns are easily available, the question is: why schools? What has happened to the human mind that such acts are perpetrated? Where there are no guns available, the use of knives has become the norm, as they are easily concealed and carried. Should that culture and lifestyle be replicated without proper consideration?
How then is the ‘quality’ of life to be determined? There are all kinds of organisations across the world that rate nations on this basis – each along a set of different criteria. They do, however, tend to rate materially advanced countries higher. These lead to the strangest anomalies. Can a nation (North Korea), for instance, where the leader can just decide on a whim to execute some thirty government officials for not being able to manage the impact of floods be considered in the same bracket as a functional democracy? Can a nation that is highly developed in every way (Japan) explain how over forty thousand people died alone at home in the past year? Are the so-called poor village folk of India that live as close-knit communities, celebrate and, when needed, mourn together, so badly off? Are just income levels the fundamental criterion for deciding who is better off? The less prosperous nations of Europe, for instance, have a better family support system as compared to the USA, where in sections such as the black community, almost fifty percent of families are being raised by single women. It is time, perhaps, that traditional values with deep civilisational roots are appreciated and given their place in a ‘woke’ world that today generates more psychological illnesses among individuals than ever before.
