A couple of popular misconceptions come to mind, based on discussions I have heard or taken part of, and things I have read here in the United States (or the year I lived in Europe)

1. Many Chinese people are keepers of ancient and superior wisdom. (T'ai Chi, Qigong)

2. Many Japanese people are keepers of ancient and superior warrior/martial arts knowledge. (Karate, Samurai...etc)

3. Oriental students are naturally smart, and learning comes to them more easily.

4. Indians (re: the nation of India) have an ancient, superior knowledge of medicine. (Ayurveda)

5. The Tibetans have an ancient and superior knowledge of all things spiritual.

6. The Chinese have superior skills and practices for room furnishing and decorating Feng Shui)

And so-on. Forgive me if I mis-spelled any of those disciplines. My point is that we Westerners have sold ourselves short at times. There is nothing wrong with learning from other cultures, but sometimes we have failed to value our own. We look elsewhere for answers and assume that ways from the other side of the globe are superior to ours.

Meanwhile, most of the other side of the globe doesn't want to learn anything from us, and many of the countries proudly post "anti-western" banners in their town squares. Our culture is no more sick, or no more healthy, than the rest of mankind. It has its good points and bad.

So in answer to your question, I think we have contributed to the attitude ourselves, and I think in many regions it is just a pervasive school of thought that western society is sick.