Ego trippin'

Egoism has increased to such an extraordinarily high level in our society that it is tempting to conclude that the majority of people today do not feel any genuine obligation to take into account the beliefs, interests, attitudes or accumulated wisdom of any other individual member of the species, not even those who are well-versed experts in fields relevant to a given area of inquiry. This cannot but be squarely to blame for the extreme disinterest the general population tends to evince for obtaining what might be called a well-functioning conceptual vocabulary, the acquisition of which necessarily presupposes that a person is mostly ignorant of a certain idea or concept until the requisite degree of familiarity with and understanding of such has been reached in good faith. The individual persona or "identity" has become an almost unassailable entity, the end-all and be-all of every standard of judgement, no matter what the context. "I am already perfect", the thinking seems to go, "so why should I have to submit to the rigors of competency?" 

Considering the magnitude of the crises we now face as a globally interconnected species and planet, it would appear most unfortunate that this tendency has progressed to such an advanced degree when we can so little afford the attendant consequences. While the alienating and atomizing effects of consumer capitalism have long contributed to this development, it is altogether not surprising, given the anti-intellectual climate already established in a place like the United States, that only a few ever seriously began to ask any fundamental questions of themselves beyond the immediate concerns of survival (for the poor), status (for the middle), or the upkeep of intergenerational wealth (for the rich). As our species continues to careen (or sleepwalk?) toward planetary catastrophe, the situation is made all the more distressing in that never have so many seemed to care so little for others, or indeed for themselves.

Some no doubt will wish to place blame for our present difficulties entirely on the principle outlined above, and thereby cease looking for other, possibly more fundamental factors, but here we must be careful: Correlation does not imply causation.