Hypocrisy

One thing that is interesting to observe in Skypeland is the hypocrisy of the average person. Again, I talked to a young lass from Ireland who wanted to talk negatively about the US. She asked my friend from Japan what his impression of the US education is, since he had lived in the US during high school for one year. The Japanese man said that the US education standards in high school for science and mathematics are quite low, but advanced education in the US is the best in the world. The Irish lady did not understand this, so I tried to explain it.

I gave as an example, the seismology graduate schools; the US has perhaps 10 world-class graduate schools for seismology, the Netherlands has maybe 1 and the UK has 1, Japan only one and maybe Russia has one as well. The Irish lady did not understand this, stumbling over her words and asking us what "size-ology or zoo-logy" is. I tried to explain it, and she became defensive and claimed that there was no reason to know anything about earthquakes in Europe so of course they did not need to study it. She said that the UK was much smaller than the US so it had no reason to have any institutions studying this subject. When I tried to point out that the US constitutes less than 5% of the world's population but has most of the world's best institutions in this area, she became enraged and talked over me and would not let me speak or discuss my points.

In the course of the discussion, she said she had never heard of Cambridge University, and was quite disdainful of me for asking about it or mentioning it since it was clearly not a very important institution. She presented all her points in a smug, self-assured and confident fashion, positive she had demonstrated her incredible depth of knowledge and perspicacity, effectively eviscerating all opposition or arguments based on anything so ridiculous as facts or evidence or data or "satistitics".

She launched into a huge discussion about how racist and selfish and greedy and materialistic the Americans are, although she said, "I don't know any Americans personally." I think all her knowledge comes from a couple of Skypeland conversations and some discussions with her friends and some reading of media accounts. Her accent was so thick I could not even understand what she was saying a good fraction of the time.

She prided herself on never changing her opinions no matter what the evidence or facts are. She said, "Facts don't really mean much to me. I just believe in what I believe in. I just hold to my opinions no matter what." (Ah, sounds very rational, sensible and reasonable...)

She interrupted a lot and talked over me. Then she decided she was going to prove I was wrong when I had looked up statistics and data about Irish immigration. She presented the following website:
http://www.workpermit.com/news/2006_04_04/uk/immigrants_to_ireland_continue.htm
She claimed this proved that Ireland was composed of 19% immigrants and this showed I was wrong when I said it was around 8.4% immigrants. She also claimed it proved that I was wrong when I said that Ireland was 98% European.

I said I would look at the website later, but she badgered me and attacked me and challenged me repeatedly, saying I did not look immediately since I was afraid of being shown to be wrong and stupid. She was gloating and so combative, I decided I would look at the article she had found.

So I looked at the website. Sure enough, it said that in the year 2020, Ireland was expected to have 19% immigrants, but at present it has about 8% immigrants. It also said that most of the immigrants were from Eastern Europe, completely consistent with the information I had found previously. (People like this are glad to attack and deride and insult others, and even positively gleeful about it, but do not like the same tactics used on them. As I say always, if you dish it out, you better be able to take it. This sort of discourse is a two-way street. In regular life, I am unable to call people on this sort of dishonest and offensive tactic, but in Skypeland I do it, and I do it aggressively. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. And if you accuse another group of some bad behavior based on bad evidence or no evidence, except to be called on it, particularly if your own group exhibits the same or worse behaviors. Bullies always hate it when someone stands up to them, however...)

She apologized for not reading carefully. I said that before she lectured others, and attacked them for supposedly being racist and narrow and selfish and greedy, she should look at home first. She said that she was ok in her home and that she was bringing her son up to not be racist and to be open to others. I said that the expression "look at home" is more of a figure of speech, and I was referring to her town or her county or her country or her region, not so much her house, or her bedroom. This seemed to puzzle her. She did not seem to understand what this meant. I realized that most of what I told this person probably went right over her head. Just as many of her pronunciations were so difficult to understand for me that I missed a lot of what she said...

I tried to point out that her drawing conclusions based on a few Skypeland conversations was really unreasonable. If I did the same, I would believe that all the Irish were drunken ignorant fools, and have the worst anti-Irish propaganda and rumors spread by the English and those opposed to Irish immigration to the US confirmed. She did not buy this and just became more angry. She was positive she was right, and said she wanted just to "hold to my opinions no matter what". I do find it interesting that I have met several people like this, all from Ireland however. I do not myself believe that it constitutes a pattern, but is more likely a statistical anomaly and the result of a small sample bias.

Addendum: People who are Republicans, or Religious fundamentalists always take umbrage when they are pilloried for misdeeds that Democrats or atheists commit as well. However, the difficulty arises for these people in that they are setting themselves up on some sort of pedestal, and claiming they are superior than their opponents because they are more ethical or morally superior. When it turns out that this is not true, the repulsion of the public and the rejection is even worse, since they have displayed a bit of hypocrisy. It is not the bad behavior so much as it is the hypocrisy.

And so it is in this case, and similar cases documented in this blog. If a person claims some sort of superiority over another group, then they had better be beyond reproach when their behavior is examined, particularly in regards to the same issue. This is the origin of the age-old expression, "People in glass houses should not throw stones", or the bible passage, "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" (Mathew 7:3).

It is not a problem that some Irish or others might be ignorant, or selfish, or display completely irrational and stupid attitudes; one might expect this of any group. However, to harbor brazen pride, narrowness, shallowness, defensiveness and a combative superior mindset while still regularly hosting Skypecasts with names like:

Yankees are No Brainers!! True or false? Only Yanks with an IQ of 130 and over please.

leaves one open to criticism. I daresay, the host of this Skypecast would be unlikely to meet the qualifications even if the standard for admission was set at the mean level. It is ok to be stupid, but to be aggressively stupid is really asking for trouble.