Just listened to a great example of cultural superiority - Melvyn Bragg BBC Radio 4 - about the history of the alphabet. Amazingly interesting stuff!
Very interesting accounts of how the alphabet, (the alphabet means a system of writing one sound per letter, instead of ideas embodied in written characters, or a character symbolising groups of sounds or phonemes) was invented and then came to spread across the majority of written languages.
Biggest moment of cultural arrogance came when he came to the conclusion at the end of the programme that our alphabet, which is based on the Ancient Greek, and for the first time contained vowels within the alphabet itself, as compared with say Hebrew or Arabic - is THE reason for cultural flourishing in the west. Each one of the historians disagreed and said that there was cultural flourishing before the invention of vowels in the alphabet. There are great epic poems written in Phoenician, for example.
He then accused them of 'political correctness'. All three explained that it is the education system which leaves these cultures outside of our awareness and not some notion that these cultures can have no value for us or are somehow worthless.