When you live in a culture that deeply believes in the idea of progress* it's blasphemous to give time to ignorance. If you believe in progress you can be humbl

When you live in a culture that deeply believes in the idea of progress* it's blasphemous to give time to ignorance. If you believe in progress you can be humbled by ignorance but not awed by it. In the west we know of other cultures (past and present) that chose to be complacent and live in ignorant comfort but we know that they chose that path at the expense of truth. We know that our striving for truth is the reason we destroyed and dominated those who chose complacency. There is a lot of cultural superiority wrapped up in why we can't admit ignorance. In the west we believe in cavemen. We think people with spears and grass skirts are "lesser" civilizations. Even if you are the least bigoted person in the west you still feel a sense of cultural pride that you live in a world ruled by the scientific method and not by gods. You pity the natives because they lived and died and created no objective truth, they left no enduring mark on humanity. In terms of human progress they are the before and we are the after. "Cultural relativism" is a phrase many people have no time for in the west. We shouldn't long to live like the "noble savage" but I think we have serious problem in the west appreciating our cultural reality isn't the one true cultural reality. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea_of_progress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea_of_progress