I have known – closely – many different kinds of people; and I found in many of them the attitude that what they do is important and that nothing else is.
I have seen this in engineers and software professionals who think that they are the only sane and rational people in the world and that everyone else is lazy, crazy, dishonest or stupid.
I have seen this in children of lawyers, salesmen and businessmen who think that academic learning is worthless and that all that matters in life is social skills and common sense.
I have seen this in military people who think that everyone except themselves and their friends is a sissy.
I have seen this in doctors who think that they are better than everyone else because they finished medical school.
This attitude is worse than narcissistic. This attitude is completely destructive. It is valid to consider what you do to be important. It is completely wrong to consider that nothing else is. Where would we be if everyone was a lawyer or a salesman? Where would we be if everyone was an engineer? Where would we be if everyone was a soldier? We need all these, and more.
And since we need one another, we need to learn to relate to one another in ways that work.
So we see among some the semi-Confucian attitude that the son should do what the father has done. Where would we be if Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton and Bill Gates did what their fathers had done? We see among others the semi-caste system attitude that if you are raised by less wealthy people you are scum. And yet America benefits vastly from many people who came from poverty and rose through their efforts. Both attitudes have to go and be gone forever. They have no place in America, and they have no place in the contemporary world. Most major contributors did not do what their parents did; and many of them came from poverty. And neither the Chinese Confucianism nor the Hindu caste system has produced anything approaching what America has achieved.
So we see some parents wanting their children to do what they have done, when they themselves did not do what their parents had done – rightfully. And we see some students from higher backgrounds abusing students from lower backgrounds when neither situation's is either their merit or their fault. And it is time that more people say not only that this is wrong, but that this is completely incompatible with the country that America has been intended to be.
But neither should one encourage the attitude such as that of Richard Nixon, who hated the high-born even in case – such as that of John Kennedy - that the high-born were better people than was he. Or attitudes that we see among some in technology sector that anyone with business or political skills is deceitful or manipulative or sociopathic. Or the belief that the military people are stupid brutes, or that the highly educated are elitist snobs, or that artists and thinkers are narcissistic bums. Once again, all of the above are necessary. And even if you do not believe in the Christian value of treating the other person the way that you yourself would like to be treated, you need to figure out better ways of relating to one another for a simple reason that you need one another for your country to survive.
Now it may very well be difficult for people who think in different ways to get along. Salesmen have to think one way; engineers another. A salesman, in order to amount to anything as a salesman, has to be a positive person. He has to think positive. An engineer cannot afford to think positive. An engineer has to think analytically. An engineer has to anticipate anything that can possibly go wrong with the product. An engineer who thinks positive will design equipment that will blow up on use.
So we see engineers seeing salesmen as neon balloons and salesmen seeing engineers as negative ninnies. In fact all that both are doing is think in ways that are appropriate to their professions. And unless they understand the reasons for one another's thinking, the people who think in ways that differ from one another will not get along.
The correct solution is not to devalue the salesman or the engineer. The correct solution is understanding why they think the way in which they think and relating appropriately. And it is also separating the valid from the invalid.
It is valid to affirm both social skills and academic intelligence and not valid to attack either.
It is valid to see what you do as important and not valid to think that nothing else is.
And it is also valid to remember what America is meant to be about, and not copy the worst features of China and India and use them to hold down the potential of America's people while completely forgetting the attitude that actually built the greatest country that the world has ever known.