Repost: on how to look good without actually being good

A majority of people seem to feel there's little advantage to be gained in educating themselves, compared to the feeling of moral superiority one can have by not educating themselves. Educating oneself takes time, often money, and substantial effort to move oneself from a state of ignorance to one of being able to understand complexity. Being moral superior takes a certain amount of confidence that one’s views predominate within a particular cultural matrix. Would you change that easy position of feigned superiority for one that is considerably costly?

I find that people of the English speaking world have also invested quite a lot of energy in the belief that their countries are no longer ‘colonial’ (like they assume to know what mine was). They know better. They would never participate in such a thing so resonant with negative meaning. It’s not that they would feel comfortable speaking to an actual non-white person — they wouldn’t — they just think that it is up to them to teach me better manners whenever I make reference to others

There are specific forms of jargon that one absolutely needs to separate oneself from seeming to have any nefarious, colonial intent.