Ex Pat Groups

One suspects that any ex pat group in a country, when gathered in some collective form, can be rather difficult for others. In Auroville, the largest group is the native Tamil community. At times they have managed to dominate the Auroville governing council which has apparently thrown the community out of kilter. Auroville apparently works best when there is a reasonably balanced voice from the various groups that make up the community. The next biggest groups are French, German and Italian. There are 23 Canadians here. We met one last night - from Vancouver - who has been here for over 20 years.

The most visible ex-pat or Western group (both as residents and visitors) are the French. They are quite delightful as individuals but quite arrogant and overbearing when in collective groups. I don't mean to pick on the French (although it could be easin in the circumstance). It doesn't matter whether we are talking Americans, Brits, Canadians, Germans or French. As humans, we seem to revert to some kind of overbearing behavior when we get together within our national collectives.

I don't think that we realize how obnoxious to others we can be in such circumstances.

Simply some food for thought.