On Elitism

What an elite (supposedly) is?

Wiki says: ''a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes (...) whose views and / or actions are most likely to be constructive to society as a whole, or whose extraordinary skills, abilities or wisdom render them especially fit to govern.''

So far, so good. Trained, educated, clever and even charismatic people. We all could use some. Sounds just fine. As long as their wits and skills are constructive to society as a whole.

The problem with elites is that they tend to be elitist. 

Being educated in a private institution (sounds like a madhouse, but a school is what I mean), I reckon I know a few things about this strange behavioural pattern. I know it from both sides, that is. Either belonging to a social group or being excluded from one. And this either / or, is equally interesting. Mainly, it is translated into, either inclusion, or exclusion. 

People may argue that, OK, it's rather uncomfortable to be excluded from a social group (the why is even worse, because it contains lack of something and hits directly the core of insecurity, something you do not want at a tender school age, when personalities are formed -or disformed).

But, OK with exclusion, why is it so bad to be included in a social group?

The answer, in my opinion, is, because it leads to elitism.

I will explain. 

Elitism is something like a cult, a belief, and furthermore, an attitude of inclusion. It doesn't have to do with forbidding people to enter the circle, as much, as retaining the formation ''within our own kind''. It has to do with superiority. Intellectual superiority, resourcefulness, specialization, and so on - and even wealth- are fine attributes. Everyone would agree with the necessity of a skilled leader, a resourceful manager or an intelligent mentor. As long as their wits and skills are constructive to society as a whole.

But, if elitism is about inclusion, then...

What happens when all this educated, wealthy and resourceful lot gathers together?

They are the best at what they do, and they are keeping what they do within themselves...this sounds like power.

Their power allows them to assist each other, whether by means or information...this sounds like special privileges.

Their special privileges will have to be sustained, not among themselves (since they all want similar privileges), but at the expense of others, i.e. people outside their ''circle''...this sounds like discrimination, or even abuse.

Inclusion works in the sense of protecting your own kind. When your own kind is powerful, privileged, discriminative and abusive, the outcome is a nasty combination.

I realise I am not saying anything new here. This process occurs since the dawn of mankind and organized society. It's just that I recently directed the mirror to myself, and elitism covered a great part of the reflection. Intellectual superiority, arrogance, discrimination, haughtiness, and so on. Nasty things, indeed, when one realises that their whole life has been a constructed attitude to include one's kind, to protect oneself within their own kind and consequently, to shut oneself inside. Feels like fear to me.

Fear again, then!

What could elitist behaviour be afraid of? What are these misguided elites afraid of? They possess the ''weapons''. They are well organized within their comfort zones. What could they possibly be afraid of, then?

Is it the fear of admitting that they will have to abandon their special privileges, if they allow (or force) themselves to be constructive to society as a whole?

Is it the fear of admitting their failure of belonging into the real world?

Is it the fear of admitting that they are part of the real world, i.e. that they are common people themselves?

Or is it simply the desire to maintain greed and their atomistic behaviour, i.e. possess negative, and rather common human characteristics?

Or simply, is elitism nothing but a fearful reaction against the painful realisation of the ordinary? 

The Truth behind the Lies

Honesty is partial.
We are the people that love to tell the truth, we are the people that love to hear the truth.
Up to a point, of course. The point of insult or the point of pain.
We live in a structured society that has behavioural limits. But, most importantly, we live our everyday lives within our own limits.


Society's limits are common sense and politeness. Our interior limits, though, too often, and sadly enough, are driven by fear.
Fear, again, then!

A simple example.
Our rather fat friend comes up with a new dress. ''How do you like it?'' she asks. ''Love, you look splendid'' we answer, in politeness, although we do add in our mind ''if you cared to lose those hundreds of extra kilos''. Or, we think ''the dress is astonishing, but you in it, rather ruins it''.
What we actually say is half truth, something of an innocent white lie, because we certainly do not want to hurt our chubby friends feelings. Because if we do, we may anger or disturb her and risk loosing her.
There! Fear!

Another example, more to do with love (our spicy topic).
Our boyfriend. We love him enough to go to bed with him.
In the beginning of the relationship, we were fascinated and neglected few uncomfortable things about him. Bedroom things, that is. And he is a nice man, on the whole, why talk about his coming too fast (and not giving a shit whether you actually came too, or if you 're insecure enough and faked few times, how the hell is he supposed to know anyway), or coming too slow (come on, it's been five hours already, come please!), wanting to have sex whenever he wants to have sex, and that is not too often, or wanting to have sex all the time, again, man?, we just did it!
And when we want to have sex more often, we are horny bitches and inconsiderate of his work, the football match, the weather or the stock market. Or when we do not really feel like fornicating chimpanzees, we are too cool, too inconsiderate that a man's got to do what he 's got to do, and if we don't give it, he will find plenty of interested birds out there.
What happens when these issues arise, then? Either we fake it, and play happy girlfriend, or we argue and argue and argue and pull long faces and get depressions and generally feel incomplete and nag about it all the time until from a few good friends that we cared to have, then...there were none.
The point is, we do not tell the truth to the person that needs to hear it. We tell everyone else. We send messages but we keep our mouths shut. Why? The fear of losing him, again.

But, recently I discovered, that the greatest fear is not losing a friend or a lover.
It is the fear of admitting to ourselves that we are afraid of negotiating our place in the world out of mere assumptions. We are afraid of losing whatever we secretly admit that is a convention.
That is, if our friend doesn't like our opinion about her weight and gets angry or even mean, that is her problem of negotiating with the truth. If our boyfriend does not like the truth about his not quite satisfying us, that is his problem, also.

Key word here is negotiating. Social life is based on negotiations. What can we both do (since we do love each other) to move a step closer? We might have to let go of some things that bother us. We might have to change some behaviour, or rethink about it.

But, of course, to be able to negotiate, we have to start telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. To the person involved.
And to the other person involved. Ourselves.  

We were the world, we were the children of awareness

We were born in less turbulent times than our parents.
We were born in democracy.
We were lucky to be born in a big city.
We were born into a, seemingly, era of prosperity.








'We', refers to us, children born in mid seventies, not earlier than the Energy Crisis, not later than the King's death.
'We' were middle class city kids with the privilege of decent education, i.e. private, and moreover international.
'We' were citizens of a small country with a huge history.
'We' were part of the European family.
'We' were born and grew up with a European conciousness.

We were forced into awareness at an early age.

We were informed of the Ethiopia famine.
We grew up with the delusions of Live Aid.
We were educated on the A- Bomb.
We watched with awe 'The Day After'.
We learned about the discovery of the ozone layer hole.
We were informed on Olof Palme's assassination.
We experienced the Chernobyl fear.
We witnessed the Challenger explosion.
We thought we could see Haley's Comet from our rooftops.
We grew up on MTV, CNN and TV5.
We had to learn to save water though National Water Company ads.
We learned about the new disease, AIDS.
We were deeply saddened when Freddy Mercury died.
We witnessed the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
We watched the Gulf War second by second on CNN live.
We supported Unicef.
We subscribed to Greenpeace.
We read Le Monde Diplomatique.

We were aware. We were the educated middle class.

Thirty five years later, we are still aware.
But we woke up into a different awareness.
And this one, is still yet to be defined.