Postmodern Snobbery: We’re All Snobs about Different Things
Here’s the truth. We’re all snobs.
I mean, some of us are less snobby than others. Many of us try our best to be open-minded. But when it comes right down to it, all of us have some thing that’s important to us, and we look down at certain other people when they don’t share that thing. You may be an open-minded person, but admit it, on some level, you’re a snob. Because, as much as I hate to admit it, so am I.
People have always been snobs. The curious thing about today’s snobbery is that we’re surrounded by diverse people with different and conflicting snobberies. It used to be that people belonged to tight-knit groups where community members looked down at the same kinds of people. Sometimes those people belonged to a different race or religion, or maybe those people drove the wrong kinds of cars or let their daughters act the wrong kind of way. Of course, this sucked for the people in these groups who didn’t conform to the norms of group snobbery. But for those who did, there was a sense of belonging.
These days, it’s rare to be part of a homogenous group and have no contact with people from different groups. We come into contact with people with different snobberies every day. The good thing about this is that this makes us more open-minded. The difficult thing about this is that no matter what we do, we’re bound to trigger someone’s snobbery. That’s not always bad, because it makes us build a thicker skin, but there are sometimes that I find these conflicting snobberies downright exhausting.
