Elitism and Tolerance (repost)
Lately I've been thinking about elitism and tolerance. Of course, I say that and it sound like I'm talking about two mutually exclusive things, which they aren't. So maybe I should say that I've been thinking about elitism and acceptance.
Let me clear something up before I start -- the examples that I mention aren't bad people; in fact, they're some of the best people I know. Thus a good example of how being elitist doesn't mean one is bad. However, I needed examples, preferrably real-world ones. So there we are.
Generally speaking, elitism is an offshoot of arrogance. Now, someone I know argues that arrogance is okay, provided that it's justified. I personally happen to disagree, but neither point of view changes the fact that elitism tends to stem from arrogance.
Now, for me elitism is inextricably intertwined with judgement -- how quickly one judges another person, by what standards, and how easily one will forgo that judgement once new evidence has come up to contradict it.
The problem with judgement is that we usually make a very fast judgement about a person based on a tiny amount of knowledge, and then we are unwilling to get any new information and use it to reconsider our original judgement.
For example, say a student attending GT asks someone where they go to college (to put this in a light relevant to most of those reading here). If the answer is a college deemed `lower' -- say, one in Georgia that *isn't* GT -- there is a certain likelihood that the conversation ends there. The instant judgement is, this person is not as intelligent as I am, or this person is not worth talking to. I have personally managed to limit the occasions on which I react in such a way. Rarely now will I forgo a conversation or, really, getting to know someone, simply because of what school they go to or what classes they were taking (in high school) or whether they drink or not.
That, I've observed in my own circle, is also a point of judgement. In general, it seems like drinking is an instant turn-away reason for a lot of people I know. By consequence, membership in, say, a fraternity or a sorority yields the same reaction (since these are generally associated with alcohol and lots of it). I can understand the reaction, because it was my reaction at the beginning of the year. But over the course of this year, I've noticed this gut reaction that makes no sense. As such, I've slowly stifled it. Now, I'm at a point where I'm close to being able to pass minimal judgement about people until I'm fairly well acquainted with them.
Really, what this means is that in college I can judge people the same way I did in high school, because in high school fraternities and sororities were nowhere to be found, and boasting about drinking wasn't exactly something you did in the middle of class.
But this also means that I've expanded the people I'm willing to meet. Unfortunately, being at Tech means that there's already a certain bottom barrier beyond which I'm not really going to get to know anyone directly. That bottom barrier goes up with every semester I stay here, as the people who can't make it... well... don't...
The effect is that within the next semester or two I will be surrounded by very intelligent people. That's good. But also by very arrogant people, because by God they've made it this far at Tech and so they must be just that cool. And *that* is not so good. But it's the price I pay, I suppose, for going to a fairly well-known school.
The culmination, really, of the above things is that I can happily say that I know how to overlook negative traits now. Because we all have them. I can reliably ignore those if the positive traits outweigh them -- and it's surprising how much of the time that is the case. I'm glad.
Hmm... This is the first in-depth self-analysis I've done in a few months now. This one came out a lot better than the last one. I'm improving as a person. Sweet!
Let me clear something up before I start -- the examples that I mention aren't bad people; in fact, they're some of the best people I know. Thus a good example of how being elitist doesn't mean one is bad. However, I needed examples, preferrably real-world ones. So there we are.
Generally speaking, elitism is an offshoot of arrogance. Now, someone I know argues that arrogance is okay, provided that it's justified. I personally happen to disagree, but neither point of view changes the fact that elitism tends to stem from arrogance.
Now, for me elitism is inextricably intertwined with judgement -- how quickly one judges another person, by what standards, and how easily one will forgo that judgement once new evidence has come up to contradict it.
The problem with judgement is that we usually make a very fast judgement about a person based on a tiny amount of knowledge, and then we are unwilling to get any new information and use it to reconsider our original judgement.
For example, say a student attending GT asks someone where they go to college (to put this in a light relevant to most of those reading here). If the answer is a college deemed `lower' -- say, one in Georgia that *isn't* GT -- there is a certain likelihood that the conversation ends there. The instant judgement is, this person is not as intelligent as I am, or this person is not worth talking to. I have personally managed to limit the occasions on which I react in such a way. Rarely now will I forgo a conversation or, really, getting to know someone, simply because of what school they go to or what classes they were taking (in high school) or whether they drink or not.
That, I've observed in my own circle, is also a point of judgement. In general, it seems like drinking is an instant turn-away reason for a lot of people I know. By consequence, membership in, say, a fraternity or a sorority yields the same reaction (since these are generally associated with alcohol and lots of it). I can understand the reaction, because it was my reaction at the beginning of the year. But over the course of this year, I've noticed this gut reaction that makes no sense. As such, I've slowly stifled it. Now, I'm at a point where I'm close to being able to pass minimal judgement about people until I'm fairly well acquainted with them.
Really, what this means is that in college I can judge people the same way I did in high school, because in high school fraternities and sororities were nowhere to be found, and boasting about drinking wasn't exactly something you did in the middle of class.
But this also means that I've expanded the people I'm willing to meet. Unfortunately, being at Tech means that there's already a certain bottom barrier beyond which I'm not really going to get to know anyone directly. That bottom barrier goes up with every semester I stay here, as the people who can't make it... well... don't...
The effect is that within the next semester or two I will be surrounded by very intelligent people. That's good. But also by very arrogant people, because by God they've made it this far at Tech and so they must be just that cool. And *that* is not so good. But it's the price I pay, I suppose, for going to a fairly well-known school.
The culmination, really, of the above things is that I can happily say that I know how to overlook negative traits now. Because we all have them. I can reliably ignore those if the positive traits outweigh them -- and it's surprising how much of the time that is the case. I'm glad.
Hmm... This is the first in-depth self-analysis I've done in a few months now. This one came out a lot better than the last one. I'm improving as a person. Sweet!