The importance of being snobbish
No one likes a snob.
However, I would like to argue that in some areas - especially in the internet age - it is vital that we do become snobbish.
I was inspired yesterday by a review of a new book (http://www.revkevindeyoung.com/2009/03/why-johnny-cant-preach-1.html). Based on the review (I have not read the book yet myself) one of the main theses appears to be that we have abandoned excellence and true culture in favour of sound bites and low culture. It is addressing the facebook generation who get excited by the gibberish (for one would scarcely call it English) that appears on their friends' status updates or photo comments, yet have never written a real letter; the generation who have vigorous, lively and completely uninformed debates, yet do not possess either the language to articulate their arguments, nor the knowledge to insert compelling content; the generation who consider culture to be youtube knowledge yet have never read a poem or an Oscar Wilde play to be delighted truly.
I am not saying these 'low-culture' things should be rejected. I'm not saying this at all. But we should turn our nose up at them - 'as we use them' and consider them to be what they are - BENEATH US. We should not be content for the sum total of our education and culture to be the malformed ideas and brutalised language of the facebook culture.
Facebook, YouTube and the like are fantastic, useful tools - but tools they are and tools they will remain. We must use them, love them but keep them in their place... and pursue concurrently and with far greater passion and expectation the 'higher things'.
It is no coincidence that those with things to say are also those who have maintained a healthy level of snobbishness throughout their life. And just a caveat as I close - snobbishness, in the sense it is being discussed now - in no way should be equated with pride (always an ugly thing). It is quite possible to be a humble snobb... for your snobbishness has led you to sit under the instruction of those greater, more informed, more eloquent, more holy than yourself...
posted by Achilles @ 11:00 am
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Hey Timothy,
I just followed a link to your post from Kevin DeYoung's blog. I feel qualified to respond, since I'm right now studying to take the GRE test on English literature. I agree that there is a lot of mental and emotional delight that we cheat ourselves of by not choosing the best. That's really what snobbishness is, as you have described it. Howard Hendricks talks in "Teaching to Change Lives" about growing as a whole person in your mind, body, and spirit; if one area is shallow, the others will be stunted as well.
On the other hand, great writers and thinkers battled or followed the same sins we and our Youtube culture do. Look at Oscar Wilde's apt self-portrait in "A Picture of Dorian Gray" or Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond. What is more dangerous is if we look up to them and are deceived into admiring the sins and lies woven into their books and lives.
So... be critical and judicious in high books as well as low books. Pick your heroes well.
Hi Nathan. Thanks for providing some balance. I guess the only thing I would add is that my point was not that we should be admiring 'high culture' uncritically - rather the emphasis was (purely in terms of art, not morals) to avoid settling for low culture and regulating our own sensibilities to the lowest common denominator. As long as this continues, we should not be surprised by the fact that we have nothing to say...
And interacting with someone like Oscar Wilde (the title of my post was actually an allusion to him!) I would say is more profitable than interacting with a fundamentalist Christian even who has never engaged with anything other than his or her own clique/subculture and ego - and I say this as a Christian.
You don't have to agree with Wilde to admire him.
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