RE: The arrogance of Western society
October 14, 2012 at 1:18 pm
(This post was last modified: October 14, 2012 at 1:24 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(October 11, 2012 at 7:29 pm)Hughsie Wrote: Does anyone else find the breath-taking arrogance of the average Westerner scary sometimes? I admit that I'm probably nearly as guilty as anyone, most of us here probably are.
The examples of this are everywhere.
We probably all know someone who claims that if they were in charge they could end the current economic issue. Think about what these people are saying, they are saying that they know better than every economist out there, that they could single handedly solve a problem affecting most of the globe.
I know someone who went to the doctors and got what sounded like an unusual diagnoses. Most of our mutual friends talked at length about how incompetent the doctor must be. A few even said she shouldn't take the medication she was prescribed as it was clearly the wrong diagnoses. This is a bunch of people with no medical knowledge or experience suddenly claiming to know more about medicine than a fucking GP! Claiming to be able to make a better diagnoses of a patient without any sort of examination than a GP who has looked into the issue at length.
We probably all know someone who's claimed that defence policy isn't as good as it should be, or maybe they claim that the approach in Afghanistan and Iraq was completely wrong and they could have handled it much better. They honestly believe that without any military training or experience, or even access to the documents on the issue, that they could do a better job than someone with 40 years of experience and access to all the documents pertaining to the conflict!
Sports come into this as well. We've all heard sports fans rant on about how their particular team's manager has got all the tactical decisions wrong in a match. That they know better than the guy who is paid six-figures a week to do his job. They don't even realise how ludicrous it sounds.
Anyone else find this sort of thing scary (and down fight frustrating)? And does anyone have any ideas as to what may cause such an overly inflated ego in practically entire populations?
It's only because of your western ethnocentrism, and lack of appreciation for the hubris has been shown by other cultures in other times, that you would so vaingloriously exaggerate the relative arrogance of your culture in relationship to those of others.
