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Get over yourself
Friday, 2 June 2006
We live in a culture that's obsessed with self-esteem. A person can achieve no greater thing than believe in their own special importance - or so we're told.
Rap-stars shout about how rich and virile they are, sports-people know they're the greatest, and on-line discussion boards are filled with those who obviously think they're pretty smart. Most of us seem to believe that low self-esteem is the starting point for many of the world's ills.
But how big a problem is this really?
According to a story in Scientific American Mind (subscription required): "In study after study, researchers find that self-ratings of aptitude hold only a tenuous to modest relation, at best, with actual performance--indeed, other people can often foresee an individual's outcomes better than that person can. Individuals also overrate themselves. As a consequence, the average person claims to be 'above average' in skill--a conclusion that, in aggregate, defies statistical possibility."
Certainly there are some people who damage their prospects because they have low confidence, but those who have too much self-belief appear much more common. On a daily basis I - and I'm sure many of my readers - interact with people who make it clear they have an extremely high-regard for their own talents.
In short, we've compensated for the apparently small problem of low self-esteem by becoming arrogant. Society's message is that self-belief is an absolute good, so many feel that arrogance is justified.
I want to examine this by looking in particular at people who have an extreme belief in the level of their own intelligence and wisdom. This is mostly because that seems to be the main kind of arrogance I come across.
I think it's pretty obvious is that arrogance has costs for the person who practices it. While we may mouth platitudes on how great it is to believe in yourself, most of us don't like being around egotistical people. If you choose to be self-important, it's likely to have a negative effect on your relationships. And bad relationships with friends, partners, and colleagues come with obvious disadvantages.
But are these disadvantages outweighed by the advantages supposedly gained?
The evidence is pretty hard to see. Most people I know who insist they're extremely intelligent don't seem to have that much to back up their belief.
Extreme intelligence, as compared to the average or slightly-above-average kind, should come with some pretty big prizes attached. I'm not talking about the ability to write computer programs, understand financial markets, be well-read, or get good school results - millions of people can do those things. Even PhDs aren't that rare these days.
For real proof of extreme intelligence, I'd be looking for billion dollar bank accounts or Nobel prizes. Even a best-selling book or a top 500 website would suffice. Sadly, most of those who claim high-level intelligence seem to be missing anything close to such confirmations.
In fact, those who beat others over the head with their supposed "high-learning" generally come across as not as smart as they think. That's because, in my opinion, it's more difficult to gain high levels of intelligence and wisdom with such an attitude.
The base-assumption egocentric people operate under is "I'm right, you're wrong, and you have nothing new to teach me".
Their mouths are open, and their eyes and ears are shut, in other words. You can see such people as readily in the audience of a Jerry Springer show, as you can involved in supposedly more "intellectual" debates.
A good example of this can be found in what passes for political debate in the modern world. The many self-proclaimed super-intelligent experts in the traditional media and online display an overwhelming level of conceit.
It's difficult to think of more important issues than foreign policy, economics, justice and poverty. Yet there are no easy answers in those areas. It's often possible to construct a well-reasoned evidence-based argument from many angles on any particular issue. The intelligent and wise way to approach this would be to consider all the different arguments with an open-mind before reaching a conclusion.
Instead, the "experts" choose to treat the entire thing as a kind of football game.You choose your team and then construct a caricature of those on the other side - either "pinko, commie, fetus-killing traitors" or "greedy, fundamentalist, racist rednecks". Once you've made this decision, the game basically consists of collecting as much information as you can to reinforce this world-view.
The real issues become unimportant. What matters is underlining your own moral superiority, while making your opponent look as much like a comic-book villain as possible.
That's the path down which intellectual-arrogance takes you.
In my experience real learning often comes from surprising sources. It's rare I spend time with someone who isn't able to teach me something - even if that person hasn't done well in traditional learning. The advancement of humanity has been led by those who were able to overcome deeply-held beliefs in themselves and others.
"I'm right, you're wrong and you have nothing new to teach me" was the prevailing attitude during all the ages of intellectual stagnation throughout history. The story of the Renaissance is largely one of humanity realizing that maybe it wasn't as smart as it thought.
The shortcomings of the arrogant philosophy appear pretty obvious to me.
And I see evidence of this in people I meet who are of genuinely high-intelligence. Usually they're quite modest and very open to new ideas.
People I meet who are conceited about their intelligence are often smart in one particular area, but stumble once they leave their specialization. They think because they know a lot about computers or some other area, their ideas in almost any other field are also valid. Thus arrogant specialists can often seem hopelessly naive outside their field - even if their views are expressed in a loud voice.
Worse, even in their area of expertise, they seem to make errors more often than their modest colleagues. They don't believe they can make mistakes, so they miss them when they appear. We're all only human, after all.
I think it's time for society to quit this destructive pursuit of self-esteem at all costs and start taking a more modest approach. It's difficult to see what the advantages of too much confidence are for the average person, and easy to identify the drawbacks.
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