Real men go into business or sports. That's where the girls are.

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm exaggerating and stereotyping, but that's how American kids are brought up. And even when they grow up and don't actually believe it any more, that way of thinking remains lodged deep in their brains and tends to surface, unrecognized, when they least expect it, and when it can do the most damage.

In all societies everywhere, throughout history, ignorance has always been the norm. But there have always been exceptional people, either because of innate talent or proper upbringing and education, that have been able to get past that. And I believe in most cultures that is understood, and people at least try to bring up their kids that way--even when they may not know how.

There is something in our culture or our history that makes us different. We distrust knowledge and intelligence, scholarship and education. We tend to see people like that as snobbish, conceited, effeminate, cowardly, weak, at best helpless and inept, at worst as seditious and perverse.

Maybe you don't see it, you have Canadian roots, maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about, but its because we are mostly unaware of our cultural influences, just as a fish may not be aware it swims in a dense fluid. But I was brought up in another culture, and I've seen it and understood it ever since I was a kid. Nobody had to tell me about it, it was obvious because I had another paradigm I could compare it with and the contrast made it stand out. It was inescapable.

No, I'm not saying Americans are any dumber than anyone else. They are exactly the same because human beings everywhere are roughly the same. I am not a racist, but I am most definitely a cultural chauvinist.

But the smart Americans, the intelligent ones, the ones who think about their world rather than accept it uncritically, don't normally share that aspect of their personality with too many other people. And when they do share it, they do so with companions they feel are more like them than like most of the other people they know.