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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8207553" data-attributes="member: 177">I'm going to step this away from politics and religion, and cast it in a different light.&nbsp; It can be seen as an upshot of our persistent ideal of rugged individualism and exceptionalism.&nbsp; Our iconic hero is the cowboy - a man of no particular learning or understanding of the world, with some animal handling skill which is largely irrelevant to our story, who comes into town and, knowing little to nothing about the situation, and through not being willing to take crap from anyone and a few well-placed bullets, solves problems the locals haven't been able to deal with for years.&nbsp; He then gets the girl as a prize, and rides off to the next town, presumably to solve its problems as well.Our persistent myth is that you (for every particular &quot;you&quot; - for ART! and Horwath and me and Imaculata and every other of the 300+ million people in the nation) can be/do whatever you want to be/do.&nbsp; You can do this by dint of persistence and can-do spirit - actually understanding anything is a tertiary consideration, behind grit and personal attractiveness.&nbsp; This is very convenient, because learning things is hard, and everyone imagines they have grit.These kind of myths set us up for failure, because they are untrue, and they characterize failure as a lack of the few valued virtues - and since nobody wants to admit they lack the valued virtues, they find scapegoats - typically folks who succeeded by actually knowing what they are doing, or people in out-groups.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 8207553, member: 177"] I'm going to step this away from politics and religion, and cast it in a different light. It can be seen as an upshot of our persistent ideal of rugged individualism and exceptionalism. Our iconic hero is the cowboy - a man of no particular learning or understanding of the world, with some animal handling skill which is largely irrelevant to our story, who comes into town and, knowing little to nothing about the situation, and through not being willing to take crap from anyone and a few well-placed bullets, solves problems the locals haven't been able to deal with for years. He then gets the girl as a prize, and rides off to the next town, presumably to solve its problems as well. Our persistent myth is that you (for every particular "you" - for ART! and Horwath and me and Imaculata and every other of the 300+ million people in the nation) can be/do whatever you want to be/do. You can do this by dint of persistence and can-do spirit - actually understanding anything is a tertiary consideration, behind grit and personal attractiveness. This is very convenient, because learning things is hard, and everyone imagines they have grit. These kind of myths set us up for failure, because they are untrue, and they characterize failure as a lack of the few valued virtues - and since nobody wants to admit they lack the valued virtues, they find scapegoats - typically folks who succeeded by actually knowing what they are doing, or people in out-groups. [/QUOTE]

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