The old world, with its failures, weaknesses, and poverty, has at least a proper estimation of the limits of human action, says writer Pankaj Mishra in an oped in the New York Times, last August:

“India may have been passive after the Mumbai attacks. But India has not launched wars against either abstract nouns or actual countries that it has no hope of winning or even disengaging from. Another major terrorist assault on our large and chaotic cities is very probable, but it is unlikely to have the sort of effect that 9/11 had on America.

This is largely because many Indians still live with a sense of permanent crisis, of a world out of joint, where violence can be contained but never fully prevented, and where human action quickly reveals its tragic limits. The fatalism I sense in my village may be the consolation of the weak, of those powerless to shape the world to their ends. But it also provides a built-in check against the arrogance of power — and the hubris that has made America’s response to 9/11 so disastrously counterproductive.”

And here is an interview with Mishra, which touches on a different kind of power – the power of writers.

Mishra sees dangers in the “pampered” (his words) life of the intellectual in the West. MFA programs, endowments, grants, and advances are part of a cushioning that effectively prevents you from sharing or understanding the mundane struggles common to most human beings.

Couldn’t agree more.

Insulation from reality is dangerous for anyone, let alone people who form a mandarin class that shapes policies for the whole country.