Hubris

Generically speaking, this term simply means, going by its Greek etymology, self-destructive arrogance. However, this ordinary word, as is often the case in my classes, has very specific conceptual meaning: beginning with its antonym, humility, it is used in the sense of an antithesis to what it means to be civilized (in all senses of the word—see, for example, civilization) and as such it has a number of variants; they include:

• technological hubris: the arrogant fallacious belief that not only all problems can be resolved through science/technology but the notion that scientific/technological mastery makes a given people and their technology infallible [n1];
• civilizational hubris: the arrogant fallacious notion that your civilization is not only superior to all others but that it owes nothing to other civilizations and that it will last forever;
• racial hubris: the arrogant fallacious belief that not only is your ethnicity/race superior to other races/ethnicities but that you are entitled to more than everyone else simply because of your physiognomy;
• environmental hubris: the arrogant fallacious belief that the environment can be abused, exploited, polluted, etc. at no cost to human life;
• ahistoric hubris: the arrogant fallacious belief that the present has always been a present with no historical background where things may have been (or actually were) different;
• teleological hubris: the arrogant fallacious belief that the current domination of a society, or a nation, or the world by… whoever it may be… was always meant to be, because of their superior intellectual, creative, etc. prowess (in other words, chance or accident has no part to play in this dominance);
• evolutionary hubris: the arrogant fallacious belief that because human beings have evolved to have a higher order brain they are entitled to dominate and exploit other animal species; and
• the hubris of ignorance: a better way to put this is the arrogance of ignorance. It is not unusual for many among those who are privileged (as expressed by their relative power and wealth) to adopt an attitude of arrogance toward the matter of knowledgeability of the world around them--be it at the local, national, or international levels--by choosing to deliberately remain ignorant (e.g. refusing to keep up with the news--especially from reputable sources); preferring instead to wallow in the mundaneness of their quotidian lives. What is amazing is that even in those circumstances where there is a clear need to be knowledgeable, they remain arrogant about their ignorance. (A good example here is the tragedy perpetrated by some terrorists in New York City that commonly came to be referred to as 9/11. This event should have spurred all who were literate in North America and elsewhere in the West to make an effort to learn about the historical antecedents that precipitated this event as well as the proposed military response to it by the governments of the United States and its Western allies to determine its appropriateness. But of course the ignorantsia did neither; the consequences of which continue to haunt us to this day.)