The new “Miss America” was crowned a few days ago. She is of Indian descent, and fairly dark-skinned, though completely American,
Yet her crowning was followed by a few bloggers accusing her of being an “Arab
terrorist”, apparently unable to distinguish between an Indian and an Arab (and where did the "terrorist" label come from??). One does have to wonder how stupid people can
get!
Actually, most people are fairly shrewd in their own short-term
self- interest, but sharply limited otherwise by their cultural upbringing.
One only has to look around at the range of utterly
implausible religious beliefs in the world to see this. Or the range of equally
implausible political beliefs and ideologies. Or the astounding naiveté of most
people about financial matters. There is
a reason why the Nigerian scam (we have a million dollar inheritance to send
you, if you will just supply us with your bank account details so we can
deposit it) continues to be run. There
is a reason why we all still get email spam about increasing one’s penis size
with a pill. There is a reason why Bernard Madoff was able to build such a
large Ponzi scheme and run it for so long. There is a reason why we continue to
elect politicians who promise things which are clearly impossible to deliver.
It’s because enough people are taken in by these scams to make it worth running
them.
Part of our nation’s problems right now are due to the culturally-limited
vision of our ruling elite – the (largely Washington and New York) politicians,
CEOs, and think-tank advisers who set the nation’s policy. Many of them have no
idea how the rest of the nation lives – they can (perhaps) sail their yacht,
but not fix a lawnmower . In fact, many probably don’t even own a lawnmower –
their gardening service handles that. When then-president Bush discovered that
he didn’t know how to go through a self-check line at a supermarket, one got a glimpse
of this sort of cultural isolation.
In the absence of real-world experience they substitute ideology
– great sounding ideas (like the minimum wage idea discussed in my last post)
that have little or no root in the real world.
This infects the ruling elite of all persuasions – right and left alike,
conservative and liberal alike. And since
people tend to associate with. work with and live among people like themselves,
these ideologies get reinforced every day, even if they are obviously not
working and obviously at odds with the real world.
There really is nothing to be done about this. We are all
primates, shaped by our evolution and our environment and the cultural milieu we
grew up in. In fact, given these limitations, it really is remarkable that we
have survived as a nation as long as we have. More and better universal education
would certainly help, but in fact even the educational system is constrained by
these same cultural limitations and myths.
It’s a problem worth thinking about.
Posts
