On the other hand, Silhouette, I think I’m the exact opposite of you. I’m very sensational, I confidently move forward in everything I do without ever thinking twice, because I’m already sure I like who I am and don’t need to change anything, and I enjoy all the things in life that give me instant gratification. I MUCH prefer this way of life, because I think that being introspective/introverted causes problems for most people socially (I’m not saying you fall under this category, but most people like you DO), and your amazing intelligence doesn’t take you anywhere if you can’t talk and get along with people really well. You can’t LOGIC yourself into making friends and gaining new experience. Looking inward can’t take you very far. Now, while it might sound like I’M an ‘elitist’, I certainly don’t think down on other people for it. You should really learn to accept everyone at their face value and try to find the good in people, cos just because they’re not bright, or they value things you don’t find important, doesn’t mean they’re serial killers or sociopaths or some shit. Don’t be an elitist.
You’re like that virgin friend everyone seems to have who’s always bragging about railing hot girls. Tsk tsk.
(And in case you’re actually as stupid as I’ve mentally tagged you to be, replace “virgin” with “retarded” and “railing hot girls” with “being intelligent” to complete the analogy.)
Then run for public office, Philosopher King.
My personal definition of an elitist is someone who draws from their life experience and chooses the very best while abstaining from what they consider to be beneath them.
With that in mind, I’m not an elitist. I don’t consider anyone beneath me. I usually see myself inferior to others in some aspect, but that’s because everyone has their strengths. They may be better than me in one way and I may be better than them in another way. I see things as balancing out that way.
To quote GameFAQs…
“She’s an elitist fool, which isn’t necessarily bad. But she’s a female and females have no right to be elitist.”
>.>
This is basically a way for him to satisfy his own inferiority complex.
I would consider myself elitist, to a small degree. It’s not a philosophy, by any means, certainly not one laid out with rules and arguments for and against every little nitpicking point. It’s an attitude towards other people that, since I practice it, I fervently endorse (or the other way around, really).
It’s an easy one, too. If you don’t think everything in life is of equal value, that there’s more in the end than eating, shitting, and fucking (intentionally crude, I wouldn’t want to be accused of being unconciously inelegant), and then hoping that someone remembers you for some of it after your death, why wouldn’t you choose to try to pursue that rather than specialize in the more mundane activities of life? Inevitably some people will, some people won’t.
I do live in an ivory tower, looking down on the world, but the door’s unlocked and anyone who can bother themselves to climb a flight of stairs is perfectly welcome.
For anyone sarcastically urging <strike>Seraphim</strike> Silhouette to put his money where his mouth is and lend his claimed wisdom to the practice of politics, why should politics be considered a good use at all for wisdom or logic? Real philosophy (not ideology), does not seem to have interacted well with real-world politics in the past, for my part probably because a real philosophy often demands a lot more of people than they’re willing to do.
This is basically a way for you to avoid giving a meaningful comment.
Because I feel like it.
Is being remembered by the world at large that important? I’d rather be remembered by my friends and family, and have some stories told about me to my great-great grandchildren, then to be remembered for inventing peanut butter or something.
Sort of edit : The world as a whole, and people in general all suck. Who cares what they think of you?
I just wrote a four paragraph post that the motherfucking boards erased, I’ll summarize it but it’s lost all the humor.
You’re a guy in his late teens/early 20s and have reached that magical period when you’re smarter than everyone else. Don’t worry, you’ll grow up someday.
It’s true that my definition of “elitism” doesn’t quite match the dictionary.com definition. However, it is related. The sense in which I (and many others) use it is more to express the underlying reality–as we understand it–that precedes any formal “rule” by the elite. That is, the state of us being “better” than the mass.
I’ve also noticed a strange interpretation among some of you, where you think my elitism means that I am better than everyone, rather than just most. RPT captures the spirit of my post better than I:
I am not alone there, I have a number of friends and strangers here, as well as a number of respected enemies. I also have friends who I wouldn’t consider elite, though open, of course, to the possibility.
Perhaps better stated: There is an ivory tower, and we’re having a fucking party up here.
Wasting my skills, hardly. Writing is a very important way to meditate on the ideas you’re trying to get across. In writing the original post and reading the responses, I have gained some important insights. While there are many fora for this kind of thinking, this board and these people, some of whom I know to be on the clever side after a number of years, isn’t inappropriate at all. If I had a writing assignment about this subject, or my thoughts were well developed enough to publish a book or article about it, rest assured, you would be spared from my posting. This is part of process of developing those thoughts, and in the age of instantaneous electronic communication, a fine addition to where these kinds of ideas have always been so developed–people one can touch. Also, this is my sick idea of “fun”.
I am not studying politics or law because I have always believed that these public realms deal explicitly with forcing others to become as you are (imperfect, sometimes outright harmful), and rather heavy handedly. I believe that we should improve ourselves first before improving others, and while I realize the importance of having these systems, they are not of enough interest to attract my creative attentions. I see our modern democracies as a sufficient placeholder to our inner improvements and the mutual improvement of our closest personal associations. At the moment however, I do feel greater attention than usual is necessary to bring our democracy back to its proper place and thus vote solidly Democratic.
I plan instead to be a writer.
T S Eliot, biggest elitist ever, most important poet and literary critic of the 20th century. I actually could write a book about your statement, but Harold Bloom has already written many. The Western Canon is a particularly forceful argument for the greatness of our best writers, and by extension, artists. I have found his discussion of the challenge the great works present both terrifying and liberating.
I suppose it is gratuitous to observe that any serious reader or writer of poetry is almost an elitist by default these days, but this is likely the main avenue from which I arrived at my current thinking.
If not, it was this moustachioed German man, no doubt. In trying to disagree with him, it seems I have been attracted by sheer force of gravity.
Good. We need more of us around.
This is the most pretentious thread I have ever read. My advice is to calm down, and stop putting so much effort in to posts on the internet.
T.S. Eliot is also regularly accused of being a Fascist and an anti-Semite. He certainly was an elitist, but I would argue that the <i>mode</i> of his famous poetry did not reflect it. J. Alfred Prufrock, The Wasteland, The Four Quartets: all very humble and fragmentary in demeanor, with speakers who are too pathetic to be elitists. Eliot was a conservative royalist, and his poetry did support that cause, so in <i>that</i> sense you could call him an elitist. On the other hand, there’s a vast difference between affirming the Hierarchy and deliberately setting yourself apart from and against common humanity, which appears to be the Elitism you are arguing for.
As for Bloom, you must know that he dislikes Eliot for the high-minded grandiosity of his ideas, and that he abhors Pound, mostly for his anti-Semitism, but also considers him a vastly overrated poet. Bloom favors poets like Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll, those who are least susceptible to accusations of elitism.
Is the thread any more high-handed than posting in it just to say that you disapprove of the topic, without really adding to the discussion at hand? Feel the burn, baby. We could all sit around making little of each other’s opinions because we find them distasteful, but that would hardly contribute to a discussion, which, I think, is what a virtual forum is for in the first place.
Yeah, well, your mom.
Yeah but this thread doesn’t even have a point other then prove that you can use big words. It’s not even informitive, or even funny in the least. It’s a bunch of teenagers and twenty-somethings talking about how smart, worldly, and great they are.
My weiner can cut diamonds
Your girlfriends must hate sex with you then. 
My weiner can cut diamonds that cut weiners that cut diamonds. !!!