Page 218 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

is intended to tell those whom the individual admires so greatly that "I am
one of you." That is why in one sense, putting on airs represents a common
language and philosophy among superficial folk. Someone who puts on
airs will immediately recognize another of that ilk, and someone who puts
on airs will best understand the language of another of that kind.

Although putting on airs is an embarrassing and humiliating state of mind,
many ignorant people feel a sincere admiration for those who do so. Those
who put on airs, often starting in high school, enjoy great prestige among
other people, while modest and well-mannered people are generally
undervalued. That is the reason why difficult, spoiled and showy people
enjoy such great esteem in high school. Putting on airs then continues to
grow apace after high school. While the pop music groups they listen to,
the concerts people go to and what they buy in the shops are all tools for
putting on airs in their school years, in the years that follow, it is such phe-
nomena as one's social circle, the places one chooses to go on holiday,
the exhibitions one attends, one's rank and position, the car one drives and
the area of town one lives in that acquire greater importance. Each one of
these is used as a tool to psychologically put down more modest folk.

Putting on airs is a common philosophy between pseudointellectual syco-
phants in the Middle East and Asia and their masters. However, pseudoin-
tellectual sycophants never put on the airs they learned from their masters
in front of them. They only display such an attitude to put down ordinary
people whom they regard as beneath them and inferior. In the presence of
their masters, they are most humble and sycophantic; they would never
think of putting on airs to them. It is not hard to imagine the kind of lan-
guage that someone in Egypt, Bangladesh or Palestine who has been to
Europe will use, or the way he will look down on ordinary people.
People who live in a state of deeply-rooted feelings of inferiority in
Europe or America, and slavishly do everything they are told, sud-
denly develop an entirely different character when they return to
their own countries, as if that despised person had not really been
them at all; that is another manifestation of putting on airs. What is
genuinely embarrassing is that poor, ordinary people are general-

216 America's Failure to Perceive the PKK