Sunday, January 30, 2005

getting in touch with your inner snob

oh man, i'll tell you. do you want to hear? i have some thing freakin important for like the world or something. this is quantum, man, esoteric secrets granted to only a select few. this knowledge could shake the foundation of the world. this could end world hunger and war and stuff. yeah??? yeah. i mean DO it, man! i mean: take it it's yours. there is no need to shame this out of me. this was created for you... this could change the world... if they could take it. i mean no one can think like YOU, now can they? not everone can be special. not everyone can understand things that are special.

takeittakeittakeittakeittakeittakeittakeit.

like this.

snobbishness begins concurretly with the genesis of history. in the biblical (quick side note, the word "judeo-christian" is such a fallacy and used by people who can't separate text from context) creation story, God, gives the entire garden of eden to his humans, adam and eve. however, the tree of knowledge/tree of life were not to be touched or sampled. the right to special privileges is born. from then on, we establish cities with their classes and their ruling powers and caste systems. also, especially in the hellenistic times, elite relgious movements claiming ultimate truth are founded, holding special appeal to it members for their salvation. and this trend continues all the way down through history, highlighting in the colonial movements and feeling its first twinges of threat in the advent of the american revolution, arguably the first instance of "post-colonialism." the classless society has been imagined, although a serious consideration must be payed to the advent of the printing press as well, disseminating knowledge to others than the elite. america does indeed adopt the media and it ends up both helping and harming the snobbish cause.
in the democracy, ideally, all have te same rights and privileges. yeah right. capitalism takes care of that, as do deep seeded racial fictions. money creates the new class of the supposed meritocracy, those who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps etc. however, the mass media, with its mind numbing pablum creating powers and exutation of mediocrity, DOES have its positive results of widely disseminating information. and: as unfair as it was, the snob-system DID make people feel quite special and different from others. even the untouchables, as abused as they were, had special bonds that could be connected to no one else. our supposed democracy and freedom atomizes us, separates us from our peers. and if everything is open to everyone, then what makes social interaction effervescent and unexpexted? if everyone reads the same magazines and listens to the same polkas, then how do we learn from each other? how do we differetiate from each other????? oh no.
so: snobbishness does indeed have its value. it's fun to know something cool when no one else does! it's also fun to spread the love to only those you deem to be able to handle it. it's like discovering something about someone/the world that no one else knows or has even known. treasure. snobbishness is why we have gradients of friendship, to claim rights to intimate knowledge of people who should ideally belong to the world. after all, we can't belong to anyone can we? well, if i grok you, then i have something special no one else does, so... there is part of you in me, that is in no one else.
i know this may sound cynical on the surface, but the story is told with a disarming grin and an offering of secret candy to you, the worthy recipinets of my esoteric wisdom. don't tell your friends. just wink knowingly and leave quietly, secretly inscribing your name in the earth, on the sky.

peace,
~josh