You're no doubt nicer than I am. So even if you read David Brooks's column in this morning's New York Times, you probably didn't think, as I did: What a self-impressed twit Brooks is. But, really, he is. He imagines himself to be The Greatest Anthropologist of His Generation (TGAHG), explaining cultures and societies (whether Red and Blue states or Asian and Western societies) to the less enlightened. I don't actually know whether he fancies himself an anthropologist or a social psychologist. It doesn't matter. He's a twit.
The world can be divided in many ways — rich and poor, democratic
and authoritarian — but one of the most striking is the divide between
the societies with an individualist mentality and the ones with a
collectivist mentality.
This is a divide that goes deeper than
economics into the way people perceive the world. If you show an
American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe
the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese
person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the
context in which the fish swim.
It's ALWAYS good to see the self-important get their comeuppance. Hubris is a nasty little quality.
So, along comes Jim Fallows, who, writing from Beijing, provides this delightful smackdown of Brooks. Ahhh. Life doesn't get much better than this.