I shall discuss two events from the past. I must point out that the conclusions I draw from these events is completely personal.
Long time back, when I was doing my undergraduate studies, I had a friend who came from a very poor background. Well, those were the days before liberalisation in India. Most of us were were from lower middle class families. We all could be tagged as pretty poor! But this friend was so poor that he could not even afford to pay for his monthly food bills. Some of our friends decided that we should pull some money and support this friend. We did that. One day, I asked this friend a personal question. We were very close. So, I could ask something this personal. I asked, given that you are getting supported by others during your bad times, would you support other such poor students when you become relatively rich? I can note here that we were studying in one of the best universities of India and we all were deemed to become successful in our future lives. However, my friend remained silent. I was quite shocked. But, I suppressed my shock. I could not understand it. How can someone who gets help in his time of need not think of giving back when he can?
The second incident happened in 2019. I was visiting my home town. During that time the government of India had taken an interesting approach to help the people of Syria. India, itself struggling with over-population, could not exactly give asylum to many. Instead, Indian government decided to start a fellowship through which quite a number of Syrian students with undergraduate degrees can come to India and study towards their postgraduate degrees for free. The government directly paid the respective universities the tuition fees and also paid a decent amount (by Indian standard) of living allowance to the students. I was visiting one such host universities. I happened to meet some of these students from Syria. After a while the discussion went to the topic of their life in India. I was surprised to note that they had so many complains! They did not like the fact that they were not given Syrian or European food in the mess. They did not like the fact that many of their accommodation rooms did not have air conditioning. They did not like the fact that two students had to share a room. The reason I was surprised was because they were actually getting a much better living condition due to the fact that their host university was a private university. They were getting better hostel and better food than most top class universities in India (because they are government universities and run on very low budget). I was shocked. They were being hosted in a country where most of the citizens do not get four meals a day and most do not get an AC in their rooms. How can they be so obtuse?
Recently, I was discussing these incidents with a friend of mine who is also a therapist. I could find a common thread. In both the cases, the subjects have gone through a lot of hardships. My hypothesis is that going through so much hardship can affect one in two ways. One can end up becoming extremely kind and develop tremendous amount of empathy. The other effect is the one I witnessed in the above two incidents. In that, the person has gone through so much hardship and pain that they thinks that they are psychologically primed to think that now the universe or God needs to pay back. And whatever kindness they may receive from others they feel that, given their past extreme sorrows, they deserve it anyway. They do not see the need to be thankful.
I must be clear here that this is a hypothesis about a psychological issue. I am not blaming anyone. Like any other psychological challenge, this also needs psychological help. However, before that, we need to accept that this might be a valid explanation and validate it.
Again, I am not blaming anyone. Blaming someone for being ungrateful for suffering from FUUNTU would be like blaming someone for having depression.
Without delving too much into politics, I believe, that a study to validate FUUNTU phenomena can also help some of the troubles that asylum giving nations are facing from certain refugees. Like in any other psychological challenge, the first step is to acknowledge the challenge, validate it and develop a long term therapy modus operandi.
