Für Elise, raga style

 

YouTube page: "...singing along to Tanmay’s beautiful raga adaptation of beethoven’s für elise in ragas Yaman, Shree and Shyam Kalyan." 

 H/t Tyler Cowen.

Joel Mokyr on China, India, and Europe; clans vs. corporations; the idea of progress.

A Conversation with Tyler: Joel Mokyr on Clans, Corporations, and a Culture of Growth (Ep. 282)

Joel Mokyr co-won the 2025 economics Nobel for exploring the question that traces back to the beginning of economics: how did sustained economic growth suddenly become normal? For nearly all of human history, cleverness didn’t compound. What changed, according to Mokyr, was twofold: first, you need to know why something works, so that one advance can seed the next; second, you need a culture willing to tolerate the disruption. His new book contrasts Europe with China, showing how Europeans learned to cooperate with people they weren’t related to, in guilds, monasteries, cities, and universities, while China organized itself around the extended clan. One path led to internal stability and peace; the other, more restless and outward-looking, was the one that decided the world could always be made better.

Tyler and Joel discuss European corporations vs. Chinese clans, why the Catholic Church became obsessed with cousin-marriage, how persistent cultural trends really are, why Chinese cities became so populous relative to Europe, why it took so long for European living standards to surpass China’s, why sinified invaders kept getting swallowed by the dynasties they conquered, how geography kept Europe fragmented and China unified, where India fits into the story, why the Romans never made spectacles, why British soldiers stood two inches taller than the French, what powered the sudden rise of 19th-century German science, how disruptive winning a Nobel is, and much more.

Clans vs. Corporations

COWEN: Start by telling us, in the book, your thesis about European corporations versus Chinese clans and the importance of that difference. How would you explain it?

MOKYR: Well, the difference is, basically, the kind of organizations that produce what we call local public goods, so things like food relief and education, religious services, things like that, I would think that if you look at the world, say, around 800, at the time of Charlemagne, the difference between Europe and China isn’t very large. At some point, during the Middle Ages, you can see this divergence getting started. What’s happening is that, in Europe, there is more and more of a decline in the extended family or the extended kinship group, we call it clan, and instead, people get together and cooperate with other people to whom they are not related and with whom they do not share an ancestor.

Whereas in China, it moves exactly in the other direction. In China, you get more and more people getting organized by their extended family. The reasons for that are fairly complex. In Europe, it’s particularly the Catholic Church that played a major role here. This was argued quite a while ago by a guy, an anthropologist called Jack Goody, but your own colleague Jonathan Schulz wrote, what I think is one of the best papers on the subject, who pointed this out in great length and actually provided a fair amount of systematic evidence for this.

In China, there is no Catholic Church. The imperial bureaucracy is more and more in cahoots with local clans to whom they actually outsource a fair amount of the things that they were supposed to do. As you move on out of this period of the Song dynasty into later dynasties, you see this thing growing. The problem in Europe is that the nuclear family, which became the fundamental building block of society, is too small to provide local public goods. You need to cooperate with others. What emerges in Europe, and quite spontaneously, is a bunch of things that provide these local public goods that you just don’t see in China.

For instance, we have something called universities. We have monasteries. We have autonomous cities. All of those things are what we call corporations. What it is, is people who are not related, but what they share is not an ancestor but an objective. Guilds have one kind of objective, universities have another one, and so on and so forth. That divergence in social organization turns out, in our view, to be one of the key components of the divergence between Europe and China.

COWEN: Do you take that change in policy from the Catholic Church as exogenous or that it is rooted in earlier features of Western society such as the ideology of Christianity itself or maybe earlier Roman times? What is causing what? What’s the most fundamental driver here in the West?

MOKYR: Well, there’s some debate about that. They don’t, of course, tell you. There are, I think, two components about this, and I would not know how to weight them. There are two things happening here. The first is that the Catholic Church really becomes quite obsessive about certain sins that they consider to be particularly egregious. One of those sins is incest. Every society in the world prohibits marriage between siblings, but other more remote relatives is more ambiguous. The Church becomes quite obsessive about this. At the end, there are places where they actually prohibit the marriage of fifth-degree cousins. Now, how anybody in the Middle Ages would know who is fifth-degree cousin is, is unclear. I don’t know who my fifth-degree cousins are. Maybe you do.

The other thing, which is also sort of Goody’s argument, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that, is that the Church wants to weaken any kind of organizations that compete with it for power and control in the local communities. They also have figured out that if you organize society by nuclear families, then a certain proportion of people die without heirs. If they die interstate without heirs, that in many cases, the property that these people own reverted to the Church. Pure naked greed by the Church, which was not unknown in the Middle Ages, I think, was a driver here. Goody convinced me that that actually is a substantial factor.

There are other arguments that have been made in this context, but I think these are the two that are most striking. The other question is, why is it that the clan in China is so convenient for the imperial bureaucracy to rely on? Both of those things happen in parallel. I would think, maybe, if I may allow one observation, in both cases, this is history as historical outcomes, as the unintended and unanticipated consequence of very different actions. There’s no question that the Church never, I think, foresaw the emergence of corporations in Europe, nor do I think that the Chinese imperial service ever seriously considered the possibility how this would change life in China. That’s what happens. You try to follow one objective and then something very different emerges over time. That’s what history is all about.

European Growth

COWEN: Why does it take so long for the wealthiest parts of Western Europe to surpass Chinese living standards? Say that’s happened by 1700 or 1720, that’s many centuries after this medieval divergence. If it takes so many centuries, is the medieval divergence really the relevant factor? Why is it such a slow process?

MOKYR: Yes, I think it is. I think it’s a main factor. I think the idea of looking at standard of living, one thing, I’m very skeptical about how standards of living are actually measured. I know that this is what Pomeranz and other people have, and Jack Goldstone and other people have argued that the living standards in China were comparable to the West as late as 1750. I’m not 100 percent sure that that is true. Certainly, for my money, what really defines the divergence is that, technologically, the gap between the two countries starts to become visible at the time of the Renaissance, in terms of a whole bunch of things that you see growing in Europe and stagnant in China.

Now, keep in mind, of course, that part of the European growth is due to the fact that they borrowed ideas from China. Then the Industrial Revolution consists, to some extent, of imports institution by Europeans trying to mimic the goods that they were importing from China—not just from China, from India as well. Pottery is a good example. One of the things they really wanted from China was Chinaware. That’s why it’s called Chinaware. It took them a while to be able to match the Chinese capability in the ceramic industry, but they do so eventually. Then they stop importing this stuff from China. The same is true for, say, cotton and other products that we’re getting from the East.

European living standards, I think, should be measured, in part, by the fact that when the Europeans start their voyages across the globe in the late 15th and early 16th century, they are able to bring in a whole bunch of new crops and new techniques from other areas which they merely adopt. You’ll see Europeans very soon growing tobacco and potatoes and corn and other things like that. They are the agents of global change. Not only that they change their own diets, they change the Chinese diets because the Europeans bring from the New World things like peanuts and sweet potatoes and things like that. They change the Chinese diets, but the Chinese themselves are not agents here.

They are accepting the stuff that the Europeans did to some extent, and they’re rejecting others, but it’s the Europeans who are the agents of change here. They are the entrepreneurs. They are the people who bring about the changes, Tyler. My sense is that typifies the difference between Europeans and the Chinese. Europeans are more aggressive. They are more outward-looking. In the end, what you see by the 1830s and 1840s, you see that the technological gap is huge, in some ways much larger than the living standards gap. Even in the 19th century, in terms of food, the Chinese were capable of producing enough food. The number of famines in China is probably not a lot worse than in Europe.

When you see what happens during the First Opium War, one English ship is blowing all of this sort of mighty empire to pieces, and the Chinese have to accept this terribly humiliating peace, you can sort of see how the technological gap has grown between the two. For me, that is much more telling than the living standards. The other thing that I should like to point out is that, when you look at Europe in the 16th and 17th century, you can see that the capability of expanding the set of useful knowledge, including science, is just growing very rapidly. Whether there is a scientific revolution or not is a debate that I want to get into.

Certainly, by 1700, Europe is on the verge of really changing our understanding of how creation works. That’s not just Newton and Galileo. There’s a whole body of work that is emerging. There’s really nothing parallel like that in China. China is a very sophisticated society in many ways. The literacy rates are high. They have a well-funded and well-organized system of education, but they don’t really continue their earlier forays into science and into new technology.

Somebody actually went out and looked at Joseph Needham’s many volumes on Chinese technology and science, or Science and Civilisation [in China], as he called it, and he discovered something—which I guess we all knew, but they put numbers on it—almost nothing that Needham pointed out as an innovation happens after 1400. There’s complete stagnation setting in and some of the things that they knew how to make in earlier times, like the sophisticated clocks that they built in the 11th century, they disappear. For me, that’s more telling than how many calories of carbohydrates were consumed on average, if we could ever calculate that correctly.

India rising in the world, the next 30 years

Ross Douthat interviews Amitav Acharya, NYTimes, Feb. 19, 2026.

Douthat's introduction:

Right now, 21st-century geopolitics seems like it’s defined by the struggle between America and China.

But the major power with the world’s fastest growing economy and largest population isn’t China. It’s India.

And right now, India has a unique role in global politics, doing deals with Europe one day and with Donald Trump the next, all while maintaining a strong partnership with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Its large and spreading diaspora gives it a unique cultural influence around the world, one that may only increase as other major powers grow old and people remain India’s most important export. My guest today is a prominent international relations scholar, Amitav Acharya, who’s written about what he calls a multiplex world order. A future where diverse powers compete to shape the world.

Between China and Pakistan:

Douthat: So let’s talk about, then, two concrete expressions of Indian power: The relationship with Pakistan, and the relationship with China.

Let’s say we’re living through a 15- to 20-year period where India’s influence and power are going to increase. What does success for India look like with its less powerful, but nuclear-armed rival Pakistan, and its more powerful neighbor, China?

Acharya: This depends on whom you ask. For foreign policy—

Douthat: I’m asking you.

Acharya: OK. My sense is that for India, if India can achieve the kind of growth and become the third-largest economy, not necessarily overtaking China, but maintaining political system openness and more diplomatic influence, I think that will be quite acceptable to India.

India is not a revisionist power. India is a status quo power. So I think that’s what success would mean. And domestically, at home, generate more employment. But you cannot have the third-largest economy without having a sustainable employment and industrial base.

With Pakistan, it’s terrorism. There is of course Kashmir and other issues, but it’s all linked, from the Indian perspective, to support for terrorism. And they see that. They see the West not really understanding India’s position. And then China’s support for Pakistan — China is the biggest, they say, ironclad relationship with Pakistan. They see that Pakistan will not be as adventurous or as assertive vis-à-vis India without Chinese help.

That’s what gets Indians angry about China. Otherwise, I don’t think there is any dimension that cannot be diplomatically addressed between India and China

Douthat: What changes the situation for the better for India? Is it just economic growth? Or is there a level of military power where India thinks that it could get Pakistan isolated and force China to be friendlier?

Acharya: I think nuclear weapons play a big role here. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. But China is also a much bigger nuclear power.

For a while, Indian foreign policy moved in the direction of ignoring Pakistan and engaging China. So it’s China they have to deal with. China is a true peer competitor rather than Pakistan.

Indian culture and the diaspora:

Douthat: The idea that Indian civilization is something that’s born in India and then spreads around the world is obviously relevant to an age when Indians have spread around the world. Modi has, I think, very explicitly talked about the Indian diaspora as a mode of Indian national influence.

But let’s talk about the diaspora. Let’s talk about America. You mentioned that in the United States, relations have been better than ever, up until very recently. Trump in particular spent a lot of time courting Indian American voters. He did an event with Modi in 2019 — “Howdy Modi” in Texas. It’s an amazing name.

But then, in the second Trump term, there’s been a swing. And it isn’t just a swing where Trump is imposing tariffs on Europe. It’s also a swing where there is this kind of anti-Indian backlash on the right.

Tell me where you think that comes from, but also just talk about how you think Americans see India — or see Indians, I think, is the better way to put it.

Acharya: By the way, don’t forget that Modi had one of the biggest rallies right next to Madison Square Garden.

Douthat: New York as well as Texas. All the centers — yeah.

Acharya: So I think, generally, Modi has used that as a foreign policy tool. It’s partly genuine, but it’s also partly a significant foreign policy asset.

So how about the American perception of India? First of all, Americans don’t know much about India. I’m sorry to say this. India doesn’t strike American imagination the way the Chinese do, and also, in some ways actually, the way the Soviet Union did, because it was a threat for a different reason.

There are many more universities with centers for China studies, Americans going to study in China, getting trained in the language — this goes back to the Cold War period. There’s nothing like that. As a professor, I can tell you that India studies is nothing comparable. American students and American academic institutions, and to some extent, think tanks too, are catching up now. But nothing like China.

As you know, the United States is not a country where there’s a lot of interest in foreign cultures. I can tell you that I have a son who just graduated from school and they studied China, Europe, Rome, Greece. Not much about India. So that’s part of the problem.

Americans don’t go to India as large numbers as tourists. So because of that, we have had this relative ignorance about India and neglect of India. We talk about democracy, but the U.S. and India, the largest democracies in the world — that’s rhetoric. It doesn’t really translate into endearment of India in the American public imagination.

Now you did mention the Indian diaspora, which is quite influential politically, although smaller than China, but more successful economically.

The Kama Sutra and Pleasure

In thinking about the Kama Sutra the first thing to keep in mind is that, in traditional Hindu philosophy, kama is one of the four aims of life, the other being dharma (moral order), artha (material success), and moksha (liberation). Depending on context, kama means love or pleasure, and can include sexual pleasure. Think about that, we’re dealing with a culture that made pleasure one of the aims of life. That’s quite different from Western cultures, which have espoused more austere virtues.

So, yes, as you’ve heard, the Kama Sutra is that sexual positions book, but it is much more than that. It is a guide to living a life in which pleasure, in the broadest sense, is a central goal. I found this conversation with Seema Anand interesting in that respect:

I found it fascinating, and decided to buy Anand’s book, The Arts of Seduction (2018). Anand takes the aspects of the Kama Sutra which seem most applicable to modern life and expresses them in modern English.

In this video Anad describes the love festivals of ancient India:

The “Kama Utsavas” or Love Festivals of Ancient India were not just social gatherings; they were ecological wonders designed to bring communities together to rejuvenate nature's pleasure. These festivals were based on the belief that the whole of creation thrives when nature is filled with joy.

While other ancient cultures viewed natural disasters as punishments from the gods, Ancient India saw them as a consequence of Mother Earth losing her own joy.

As Dean Ornish aptly puts it, “Punishment is not a sustainable motivator - pleasure is!” Our romantic and interpersonal relationships are deeply intertwined with, and reliant upon, the natural world and the balance of the universe.

These festivals served as a reminder of the importance of happiness in both nature and our personal well-being.

They featured unique practices like 'Nameru dohad' (singing to trees) and 'Ashoka dohad' (touching trees with a red-painted foot), emphasizing the profound connection between human joy and the health of nature. Seema Anand (FRSA) is a London based mythologist, award winning author and corporate soft power guru specializing in women's narratives with a focus on the erotic literatures of Ancient India. Seema’s research on ancient Indian folklore is affiliated to the UNESCO initiative for preserving endangered oral traditions. She is currently heading a project for the revival of the Kaavad storytelling traditions of Rajasthan in partnership with the Essex Cultural Diversity Project.

* * * * *

Here’s a conversation I had with ChatGPT about the Kama Sutra.

Kamasutra and sexuality in India

 

I’ve been reading the “Kama Sutra”, but also “The Arts of Seduction,” by Seema Anand, which is a recasting of ideas from the “Kama Sutra” for the 21^st century. I’m curious.

 

The “Kama Sutra” has a perspective on sexuality that is quite unlike anything in the West.  In the West, it was assumed the sex was nature and people would figure out how to do it more or less naturally and intuitively. The “Kama Sutra” is quite different. It gives care and attention to sexual activity which is unlike anything in the West until quite recently. One must work at and cultivate it. Further, the assumption seems to be that a good sexual relationship was central to marriage, which is not the operative assumption in the West (until quite recently).

 

Is this so?

Yes, you're quite right—and your observation gets at a deep and important cultural contrast.

1. Sexuality as a learned art vs. natural instinct

In classical Indian thought, as represented in texts like the Kama Sutra, sexuality is not just an instinct to be followed but a domain of knowledge and skill, akin to music, poetry, or cuisine. It's something to be studied, practiced, refined. The Kama Sutra belongs to a wider genre known as śāstra—treatises or systematic teachings—indicating that sexual pleasure was a legitimate and even elevated area of human inquiry.

By contrast, in Western traditions, especially under the influence of Christianity, sex has been treated in one of two ways:

• as a natural instinct, not requiring much cultivation (an Enlightenment or modern view),
• or as a moral danger, something to be controlled or repressed (a premodern and religious view).

Even in the secular modern West, sex was not treated as a skill or aesthetic domain until very recently—with the rise of sexology (Kinsey, Masters & Johnson), popular sex manuals, and now modern Tantra and relationship education.

2. Sex and Marriage

You're also right that in the Kama Sutra, sexual compatibility is seen as essential to marital harmony. This doesn’t mean endless sexual passion is expected—but there’s a recognition that erotic connection is one of the foundations of a good relationship, and it needs conscious attention.

In the Western Christian tradition, however, marriage was for centuries framed more in terms of: 

• property and lineage
• social order
• religious duty

Sex within marriage was tolerated, even encouraged, but primarily for procreation. Pleasure was often viewed with suspicion—something to be endured, not cultivated. As a result, the idea that sex could be central to a good marriage is a relatively recent idea in the West, gaining traction mainly in the 20th century.

3. Seema Anand’s Work

Seema Anand’s Arts of Seduction is part of a modern revival and reframing of these classical Indian ideas, making them accessible and relevant to contemporary audiences. Her approach, like that of some modern Western sex educators, treats sexuality as a complex, joyful, spiritual, and relational art, not just a biological act or social obligation. This is closer to the classical Indian attitude than to older Western norms.

What Kind of Great Power Will India Be?

Nirupama Rao; Dhruva Jaishankar; Lisa Curtis; Ashley J. Tellis, What Kind of Great Power Will India Be?, Foreign Affairs, July 30, 2025.

The article consists of four pieces, one by each listed author, in response to an earlier aricle: Ashley J. Tellis, India’s Great-Power Delusions. I offer snippets from each piece.

Nirupama Rao, The Liminal Power:

Ashley Tellis’s recent essay, “India’s Great-Power Delusions” (July/August 2025), offers a searing critique of the country’s strategic posture. Tellis argues that India overestimates its influence on the world stage while lacking the economic heft, military capacity, and alliances to back its great-power ambitions. He warns that India’s attachment to strategic autonomy and multipolarity risks making the country irrelevant in an era of intensifying bipolarity, when the competition between China and the United States will shape geopolitics.

This thesis is well supported by observable gaps in India’s capabilities, but it flattens the rationale behind New Delhi’s foreign policy orientation. A more nuanced critique would require understanding India not as a delusional power but as a liminal one—a state standing on a geopolitical threshold, deliberately navigating ambiguity to preserve flexibility and autonomy in a global order that is not simply cleaving in two but fracturing in more complicated ways.

India’s foreign policy is best understood through the lens of liminality, the condition of existing between worlds rather than in a fixed role or within a bloc. India is not a classic great power, but neither is it merely a regional actor. It is a titan in chrysalis, whose $4.1 trillion economy, rapidly expanding defense capacity, and influence among many countries of the so-called global South signal not delusion, but a conscious avoidance of rigid alignments. Tellis sees India’s pursuit of multipolarity as a strategic liability. Instead, it is a form of adaptive realism, an intentional pivoting strategy necessitated by geography, history, and structural constraints in the international system.

I note that that's the role for Japan that Osamu Tezuka imagined in Nextworld, the last manga in his so-called SF Trilogy, see my essay Dr. Tezuka’s Ontology Laboratory and the Discovery of Japan.

Dhruva Jaishankar, The Nimble Power:

Tellis argues that India’s grand strategy misreads the international environment, that New Delhi is misguided in striving for multipolarity, and that it is short-sighted in its aversion to an alliance with the United States and its preference for strategic autonomy. These assertions mischaracterize India’s objectives and priorities and neglect to mention efforts by successive Indian governments that more accurately reflect India’s approach to international affairs. More surprisingly, Tellis sidesteps the fact that it is the United States that is today reluctant to engage in alliance-like commitments, not just with India but with most of its long-standing treaty allies. Washington is reconsidering the terms of its security guarantees in Europe, troop levels in South Korea, defense contributions to Japan, and the transfer of submarine technologies to Australia. Unlike many other partners in Asia or the Middle East, India does not seek aid, bases, or troops from the United States. Indeed, as U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby wrote last September, “India is an ally in the old sense—to be regarded as an independent and autonomous partner. We need more of that kind of [ally], rather than dependencies.”

In many respects, Tellis is harking back to a world that no longer exists. The era of the United States overseeing a unipolar order is over. To be sure, the United States remains the world’s preeminent power, with its share of the global economy remaining steady at around 26 percent from 1991 to today. But Washington is now keen on resetting the terms of globalization and renegotiating its commitments in Europe and Asia. China, which now accounts for 17 percent of the global economy, has become a near peer competitor to the United States, and the two countries’ competition is playing out in virtually every domain. Despite noteworthy defense production increases in Europe, most advanced industrial economies are struggling with aging and declining populations, discord over immigration, strains to welfare systems, slowing innovation, and military dependence on the United States. Apart from the United States, the six other members of the G-7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom) have seen their share of the global economy contract from 42 percent to 18 percent since 1991. Russia’s robust military operations in Ukraine and war-propelled economy belie the country’s frailties and a growing dependence on China. The world is witnessing a more contested Indo-Pacific, a more violent Middle East with several capable regional powers, and a multitude of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America coming into their own.

Lisa Curtis, The Quad Power:

As Tellis makes clear, India’s long-held strategy of promoting a multipolar world order has become counterproductive for New Delhi. The concept of a multipolar order is seductive to Indian policymakers, who think India would have more influence if global power were dispersed. Such calculations may have made sense 25 years ago, when India, with its rapid economic growth, seemed poised to challenge China’s influence in Asia. In the last two decades, however, China has widened the power gap with India considerably, in economic as well as military terms. That deficit means that India’s vision of a multipolar order, in which power is evenly distributed among a handful of countries, is no longer realistic. Worse, seeking such an order now plays directly into China’s hands. China and Russia both push for a multipolar world to overturn international norms and institutions that have largely kept the peace in the Indo-Pacific for the last 50 years. Far from aiding India’s rise, multipolarity would only confirm Chinese hegemony in Asia and make India more vulnerable to Chinese aggression.

A shrewder policy would have India reaffirm the importance of the U.S.-led rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region. Despite the growing economic gap between India and China, New Delhi can still play an important role in shaping geopolitical trends and acting as a counterweight to Beijing. The principal way India can both fend off China and ensure stability in its neighborhood is through the existing Indo-Pacific partnership known as the Quad.

Finally, Tellis replies to each:

It should be consoling to New Delhi that a special relationship with Washington does not require an alliance centered on collective defense. Curtis emphasizes that a sturdy commitment to the Quad is itself a worthwhile first step. Yet India continues to object to what it calls the “securitization” of this coalition even though the United States and its partners are struggling to balance China militarily. It may well be that a long-term solution lies in constructing “a collective defense pact in Asia,” as Ely Ratner has argued recently in these pages. After all, if military balancing fails, little else that the Quad and others do matters very much.

But until such an Asian mutual assistance system can be institutionalized, India can work seriously with the United States to implement a strategy focused on cooperative defense aimed at checking Chinese aggression, dealing with crises, and preventing wars. Unfortunately, today, for all the transformations in the bilateral relationship during the last few decades, India is still reluctant to embark on such a course, leaving itself highly vulnerable to China.

Parent-child co-sleeping is common in Asia [East and West]

Mike Ives, Sharing a Bed With Your Kid? It’s Totally Normal in Asia. NYTimes, July 22, 2025.

In the United States and some other Western countries, many parents wince at the idea of sharing a bed with their young child on a regular basis.

But in other places, long-term bed sharing through infancy, toddlerhood and beyond is seen as totally normal. For many families in Asia, in particular, the question is not whether to do it, but when to stop.

How and where young children sleep is a big deal for the whole family. It can have implications for an infant’s safety and a child’s development. It can also affect parental sleep, intimacy and mental health, and can influence how families configure their homes.

Western practice:

In the West, and especially in the United States, bed sharing tends to be unpopular and contentious. That is partly because the American Academy of Pediatrics and other experts warn that it can be unsafe for infants 6 months of age or younger.

Many Western parents put infants to sleep in cribs or beds in a separate room — often using a practice known as “sleep training,” in which infants are taught to sleep independently. Modern ideas about separating mothers and babies at night have their roots in campaigns by “Victorian-era influencers” in Britain and the United States, according to “How Babies Sleep,” a book published this year by the anthropologist Helen Ball.

Even though there isn’t much scientific literature on bed sharing, studies generally show that the practice is far more common in Asia than in the West. [...]

One multicountry survey of parents of infants and toddlers from 2010 found that bed-sharing rates were over 60 percent in China, Japan and South Korea, and over 70 percent in India and parts of Southeast Asia. The rates in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States ranged from 5 to 15 percent.

Priorities:

In some Asian societies, many couples prioritize the mother-child bond over their own sleep health and marital relationships, said Heejung Park, a professor of psychology at Scripps College in California who has studied bed sharing in the region. [...]

In India, the cultural attachment to bed sharing is so deep that it tends to persist even among urban elites who are exposed to “Western sleep training culture,” said Himani Dalmia, a sleep specialist in New Delhi who runs a support group for parents and shares a bed with her children, 7 and 9.

Singapore is an exception:

One apparent exception in the region is Singapore, a wealthy city-state where reported bed sharing rates are lower than in other East and Southeast Asian countries. Sleep training seems to be increasingly popular there, and some Singaporean parents are reluctant to admit to bed sharing, said Elaine Chow, the president of a local breastfeeding support group.

Ah, those “intimacy” issues:

Some of Ms. Kim’s friends have children who stayed in the family bed until age 12, even at the expense of their parents’ sleep quality and sex lives. That would be too much for her, she said. So she and her husband have decided that their girls will move into what is now their playroom in about two years.

There's more at the link.

On the streets of Mumbai [Desi beats]

YouTube page:

We put together a DJ set, shot in a moving auto rickshaw, winding through the lively streets of Mumbai!

Auto rickshaws in our city are like mobile party units, with drivers blasting everything from Bollywood hits to retro classics, turning a short ride into a mini club on wheels. This video pays an ode to all the rickshaw drivers, working hard to make our rides not only pleasant, but a bit more entertaining!

Behind the decks, is the talented singer-DJ-producer from Mumbai - Suggahunny aka Desiree Saldanha. She describes her sound as equal parts playful and psychoactive, all with one goal - to get you moving. Join her on an exciting musical joyride spinning the block while dishing out a high-energy mix of delicious desi-leaning tunes and then some.

At Gently Altered, our effort is to design and produce experiences (and from today, content) that is right ahead of the curve. We have some great things in store for you, stay peeled!

West meets East Heavy metal meets konnakol

From YouTube page:

If Meshuggah were from India.

V Shivapriya and BR Somashekar Jois perform rhythmic phrases set to Mishrachaapu Tala. Remixed by Andre Antunes

I've seen the video on the right side of the screen. The guitarist listened and figured out how to follow. Amazing. I don't follow heavy metal at all, but I do know the music is into odd meters. But this goes way beyond that.

There's more!

And more!