Have you ever wondered if there is a quick and easy way for identifying the weak points and deficits of any given society? Well.. here is one.
Any given society will always lack whichever qualities, resources or attributes it constantly claims to have in abundance.
Confused? Perhaps a few examples would help you understand my point.
Let us start with USA as our first example. For some reasons, more than a few people in this country will never tire of telling you that it is full of happy, hardworking and honest individualists. However, as many of you know, reality is rather different. Even the casual visitor quickly notices that USA is full of joyless, greedy and fat drones who will prefer to work in some 'safe' job selling their soul for a few bucks so that they can buy stuff to fit in with a 'cool' crowd of people they don’t know. Or take their much publicized "best healthcare system in the world" which is supposedly patronized by people from other developed countries. Oddly enough, it provides markedly inferior outcomes when compared to much less expensive systems in 'socialistic' countries. The American justice system, which is supposed to be fair and governed by 'laws not men', somehow manages to incarcerate more people than China and Russia- both in sheer numbers and percentage. Did I mention that most criminal cases in the USA never go to trial and are settled by onerous plea bargains and mandatory sentences-like they are supposed to do in those 'bad communist’ countries.
However such massive cognitive dissonance is not uniquely American. Let us take a look at India as another example. Most people from that country will claim that it is a functional democracy. While that country is a democracy, it is not quite functional. Or take the claim that most Indians are vegetarians because they are compassionate and spiritual people. The reality is that vegetarianism in India has historically been linked to caste status. As far as compassion and spirituality.. let's just say that those qualities are no more common in Indians than people from other countries. The average Indian is just as greedy, dishonest, money and status obsessed as the average American. Most Indians claim to be keepers of a rich five thousand-year tradition. The only problem with that claim is that most people in India also cannot read the ancient languages in which those traditions were written and passed down.
East-Asians are also full of shit. They talk a lot about their willingness to work hard, study boring crap, be financially frugal and progress in life based on their merit and competence. But they somehow avoid any discussions about the reasons behind their approximately 4,000 years of cultural, social and technological stagnation. Surely all of those wonderful and wise Confucius-based attributes should have resulted in at least long periods of peace and relative prosperity, if not continuous progress- but did it? They also like to talk about how their system places the interest of group above the individual as an example of selflessness. So did this prevent their social, cultural and technological stagnation or cause any endogenous improvement in their general level of prosperity until they decided to first copy and then sell stuff to western countries. The reality is that the average behavioral profile of east-Asians is not that different from people in other parts of the world- maybe they are a bit more greedier and more into group think, but that is all.
People from European countries are no less delusional. They keep on trying to live in a bygone era when they used to the center of the world. Reality, has however, moved on. Their self-image of themselves as civilized is at considerable odds with their own history- especially the parts about numerous wars between themselves and looting of other countries. They pretend to be be more evolved when any objective reading of history will tell you that the median lifestyle and mentality of the average European in the last century was not that different from a slum dweller in Nigeria today. They somehow like to brush over the fact that, even a century ago, their social institutions and customs were identical to people they look down upon today. They try to portray the technological and industrial revolution of the last 200 years as an ode to their superior intelligence, when it was largely funded by stealing and enslaving people in other countries and abusing many in their own. I could go on, but on to the next point.
Why do people and cultures always try to cover their often glaring inadequacies by lying to others and themselves?
I believe that the answer lies in their futile efforts maintaining a positive 'self-image'. Humans have an instinctive sense of right and wrong that is independent of religion, culture or other secondary belief systems. It is this instinctive sense which pushes people to make up lies, cover stories, concoct rituals and propaganda to reconcile their instinctive sense of right and wrong with reality and actions. Most propaganda, lies and misrepresentations are not meant for others. They are meant to convince yourself that you are a decent human being in spite of substantial evidence to the contrary.
What do you think? Comments?
Nations and Societies Always Fool Themselves about their True Selves
Being self aware in a society like the one we live in today means you are aware of the giant pile of shit that society has become. Most people can't understand it, and for those that can, a bunch of them choose to hide their head in the sand.