Superiority Complex
Hemingway said it best. “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
Likewise, as a matter of principle, the administration of law rejects the notion of superiority. In 1797, Immanuel Kant defined the rights of citizens
thuswise:
1. Constitutional freedom, as the right of every citizen to have to obey no other law than that to which he has given his consent or approval;
2. Civil equality, as the right of the citizen to recognize no one as a superior in relation to himself..., and
3. Political independence, as the right to owe his existence and continuance in society not to the arbitrary will of another, but to his own rights and powers as a
member of the commonwealth.
As a society, the biggest mistake we make is that we are constantly judging when we should be encouraging and accepting individual differences. Instead of demanding
conformity, we should be celebrating diversity. When we judge people, and we do it all the time, we implicitly embrace the notion that superior people do in fact exist
even though the law does not formally recognize that kind of existence.
In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft exposed the bias that a superiority complex imposes when she said, “I love man as my fellow; but his
sceptre, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.”
According to psychologist, Alfred Adler, "A simple rule in dealing with those who are hard to get along with is to remember that this person is striving to assert his
superiority; and you must deal with him from that point of view." He believed that those who behaved as if they were superior were trying to mask feelings of
inferiority.
The inferiority complex, where acute feelings of inferiority lead to shyness or compensatory aggression and the superiority complex, where an exaggerated feeling of
being superior to others allows an individual to overcome or conceal feelings of inferiority, are all symptoms of a poor self image, and we must all learn to be more
accepting and less critical, to overcome the potentially destructive consequences of our emotions.
Consider, for example, the implications of the "superiority complex" with respect to the rule of law and the obligation of our judges who are entrusted with the obligation to apply it. Are they influenced by bias or the acknowledgment that we are all supposed to be equal under the rule of law?
Are politicians the servants of the people, who are entrusted with the obligation to improve their lives or are they their masters?
These are some of the questions we need to be thinking of to be able to be better citizens because it feels like the the boat is sinking and there is absolutely no excuse for that.
Next: Marilyn Monroe and her bro,
Joe DiMaggio
By Louis Kakoutis
