From Charles Douglas Wehner:

Re: It seems we’re all more human than average (March 14): It is significant that “self-humanizing was stronger in Germany and Japan”.

Sorry to bring this up, but it’s the war. Both, as losers, have a reputation for savagery. So there is a deep-seated feeling, amongst the populations, of REBELLION against this typecasting. This is a point not raised in the article.

By way of example, I was often met in the street by a young man who always began his “conversations” with the words “Einstein was wrong”. Apart from the important point that this makes the many mathematicians who collaborated with Einstein wrong, and the entire academic community wrong, and the Nobel Committee wrong, his arguments were always themselves wrong.

Then he showed me where his psychiatrist had his clinic. OK. So he feels inferior because of a mental problem. The motivation behind his attacks on Einstein were rebellion against type-casting. He was self-aggrandizing as a reaction to feelings of inferiority.

Another young man was classified as “educationally sub-normal”. He applied for the test to join Mensa, and failed. He tried again and again. He was determined to prove that was not less intelligent but more.

It’s human nature.