Fatalism

I'm watching Sri Lanka play cricket on TV. They seem to have given up.

I wonder if that's because Sri Lankans are Buddhist fatalists? When I was there in 2001 I was driven around for a few days by an amusing man called Lal, who tried to fill me in on as much of Sri Lankan culture as is possible as you get driven jet lagged along the pot-holed highways of central Serendib.

He warned me, as yet another truck swung dangerously into the path of our tiny vehicle, that Sri Lanka had a fairly poor traffic record. I was much more likely to die on the roads - he said helpfully as I sat stuck in a car on a road - than I was at the hands of the Tamil Tigers and their terrorist campaign.

Apparently this is because they are fatalists. Rather than servicing their cars and paying careful attention on the roads, many of them choose to believe that whether they make it alive to the end of their journey is entirely in the hands of fate and not, say, having your eyes open and not driving into a tree.

Clearly they don't all think this. Possibly not even that many. But as any teacher will tell you, it only takes a few to ruin it for the rest of us.

entry 9 May 2010