elitism
05 Jan 2026 - 05 Jan 2026
- I really hate this, based on my leftist/democratic commitments but am starting to question it.
- There's always an elite, simply due to the way societies work. You can't have everybody involved in everything, groups need direction which requires leaders and bam, you have an elite.
- Of course I'm in an elite (how many people have a PhD from the MIT Media Lab?) even though I don't feel that way. I'm an extreme culture snob, and I have fights (in my head) with other snobs from different branches of the elite (eg, the WS guys who are art-snobs).
- The thing that pisses me off most about Chapman is his unapologetic elitism.
- Hypothesis: there are two ways to be an elite: the snobbery/excluding mode, and the thought-leadership mode (sorry for that unfortunate phrase but it seems apt). A good critic is not trying to exclude anyone because they aren't good enough, but to bring people along who might not have the education training vision to see what is actually good.
- I think by nature I'm the second kind, but all the machinery of social rank pushes me and everyon else into the first kind.
- Social status is such a fact of life and has to be constantly navigated. That's not elitism, its just basic society. Elitism might be