Some observers have maintained that the decline of the shipyards is punishment for a hubristic sense of primacy among the Protestant working class.
Tasked by the BBC's Jim Naughtie to justify excessive pay, Hester conceded that due to the "hubristic" and long period of "unbridled expansion" the banks had suffered from over-confidence and "with the benefit of hindsight over-rewarded".
Mr Bastaiens, a Silicon Valley veteran who returned to his native Belgium to run L&H in 1996, just after its Nasdaq debut, could even claim that the firm was ready to rub shoulders with the likes of SAP and Nokia.That said, there was always something slightly hubristic about both L&H and Mr Bastaiens.
Or should I resent the fact that Mr Hester's decision seems entirely the result of pressure from the government (which owns 83% of "my" bank, having bailed it out after the disastrous and hubristic regime of Sir Fred Goodwin)?Actually, my reaction is one of wry amusement.
They may inhabit hubristic skyscrapers, but the largest bank in the region, Emirates NBD, has assets worth just $75 billion, puny even compared with the shrunken trillion-dollar balance-sheets of its Western counterparts.
With remarkable, if not hubristic, prescience, Dr Polgar had written a detailed book on the subject of child rearing, entitled "Bring Up Genius!" before beginning the coaching of his children.
But it is also because there is an emerging theory about a superior Asian model of government, put forward by both despairing Western businesspeople and hubristic Asian chroniclers.
However, inspired (at times, perhaps too much) by the Churchillian belief in never giving up, Mr Collins points out that many still-great firms have bounced back even after getting to stage four, including IBM, Nucor and Nordstrom.At the very least, "How the Mighty Fall" is worth buying as a gift for the hubristic boss in your life, to remind him of the need for humility.
Britain's diminishing global clout is a big problem, both for the country and for the world.In this section Space and the city Three cheers for democracy Great expectations Punch and duty Not so special ReprintsThe uses of abroadAs a largish power in relative decline, Britain has a tendency to veer between hubristic intervention abroad and anxious introspection at home.
In the decades since then American foreign policy has been, at times, self-interested, excessive and hubristic.
If cultures, he concludes, are ranked by how civilised they are—how well, in his view, they work with nature then a hubristic West is not very civilised.
