Stop Apologizing

Last week I saw someone on Twitter explaining why Hinduism needed to "do better." The thread had maybe twenty likes. The person's bio listed pronouns and a podcast nobody listens to. And hundreds of replies were taking it seriously. Actually engaging & at times apologizing. I wanted to facepalm.

For thousands of years, Hindu society had a novel approach to ideas: it let them compete. Someone would show up with a new philosophy and instead of burning them or excommunicating them or reporting them to the authorities, people would just... debate them.

You had Buddhists arguing with Jains arguing with Vedantins arguing with Charvakas—who were straight-up atheists, by the way, and nobody killed them for it—all of them going at it in public forums. Winner got nothing except the satisfaction of making a good argument. Loser didn't get executed or exiled, they just had to refine their thinking.

It was intellectual Darwinism. Best ideas survived. Bad ideas died out. The whole system ran on the assumption that truth could handle interrogation. And it worked. Reforms happened constantly.

Someone would point out an injustice and if they made a solid case, society would bend. Not overnight, but it would bend. Because the whole cultural operating system was designed for iteration. But somewhere along the way, the society that invented debate learned to be more afraid of causing offense.

Picture this: Your house is on fire. You're standing on the lawn watching flames consume the roof. A passerby stops to tell you your lawn needs mowing. And instead of ignoring them, you apologize and promise to do better.

The ideologies taking shots at Hindu society have track records that make horror movies look tame. We're talking hundreds of millions dead from holy wars. Ideologies that make police states look good and walls built to trap people inside because apparently paradise required armed guards to prevent escape. And they're lecturing about tolerance?

The correct response to this isn't a counterargument. It's laughter. Loud, sustained, "are you serious right now?" laughter.

Does confidence meant having all the answers? It doesn't. Confidence is knowing which questions deserve your time.

Hindu society has this weird habit of treating every criticism as legitimate. Someone says "you did X wrong" and instead of asking "compared to what?" or "according to whom?", the response is immediate introspection and apology.

Some think it's humility or openness. It's not. It's simply a failure of pattern recognition. Because here's what actually happens: Such a critic isn't interested in improvement. They're interested in establishing superiority.

They've got nothing to offer except complaints with no solutions and attacks with no accountability. They're like the Yelp reviewer who's never cooked or the film critic who's never picked up a camera. And yet they're treated like experts.

You want to know what Hindu civilization actually was? It was chaos. Glorious, creative chaos.

You had materialists saying consciousness is just brain chemistry and idealists saying matter is just a projection of consciousness. You had dualists saying both are real and separate, non-dualists saying everything is one and separation is illusion and you had ritual-focused practitioners and meditation-focused mystics and devotion-focused poets and logic-focused philosophers.

All of them debating each other, convinced they were right but none of them trying to shut the others down. That was not confusion. That was confidence. Real confidence. The kind that says "I don't need to silence you because I'm not threatened by your existence."

Contrast that with ideologies that require absolute obedience. That execute apostates, ban questions and treat any doubt as heresy. Those aren't confident systems but terrified systems barely held together through force.

Unfortunately, today's Hindu society has forgotten that it came from chaos. That chaos was the point.

Next time someone starts lecturing, ask them one question: "What's your alternative?" An actual, implemented, tested-in-reality alternative. If their answer is an ideology built on slavish obedience that requires armed enforcers to keep believers from leaving, laugh and move on.

If their answer is "well, theoretically..." stop them right there. Theory is cheap. We need results.

If they reply "I don't need an alternative to point out problems," they're not a critic. They're a tourist. And tourists don't get voting rights.

Then—and this is the important part—stop talking and get back to building. Because societies are judged by what they create, not what they apologize for. Hindu civilization created universities, created mathematics and philosophical frameworks so sophisticated that modern philosophy is still trying to catch up.

That's a legacy and not what matters. Not whether some dogmatic ideology's spokesperson approves.

Stop engaging with bad-faith criticism. Just stop. It's not noble or open-minded or intellectually honest. It's a waste of time.

When someone attacks, ask yourself: Do they want us to improve, or do they want us to fail? Do they have credentials worth respecting, or are they tourists with opinions? Do they have skin in the game, or are they just passing through?

If the answers are wrong, the response is simple: "Thanks, we'll take that under consideration." Then ignore them completely.

Save your energy for the actual critics. The ones who care and who might offer solutions instead of just complaints.

For everyone else, the answer is: "Who are you again?"

Say it out loud. Practice until it feels natural. Then stop apologizing for being imperfect. They're still talking? Let them. They're talking to your back now.

In a hundred years, nobody will remember the critics. They'll only remember what you created or did not.