There are several problems with the majority of our knowledge revolving around ourselves, particularly if we are unconscious of this bias, and never seek to correct it. First, in the most practical and selfish terms, there is the difficulty that knowledge is always contextual. If you are American, and want to know everything there is to know about American history or American literature, you will need to know a great deal about the history and literature of Europe, including ancient Greece and Rome as well, not to mention a lot about the Bible and the history of Christianity. If you are a Christian, and want to know about Christianity, you also need to know about Judaism.

For society at large (and therefore ultimately for individuals who have to live in that society), it is a problem if too much of people's knowledge revolves around themselves, both because this prevents society from developing and diversifying and because the people in it will almost certainly lack perspective. One way of defining morality and the moral point of view is as a method of correcting one's perspective to allow for personal bias so that one's own interests do not seem more important than anyone else's. The distortion this addresses can also occur in the realm of knowledge, meaning that solutions and ideas gain or lose importance according to their proximity to our lives and interests. This self-centered attitude to knowledge has a severe limiting effect on the intellectual life and therefore the productivity of both the individual and the society.