In Defense of Elitism, Part II

It has occurred to Pretty Lady, pleasant and diverse as this conversation has been, that she is not certain her original point was understood. She is not, and never has been, calling anybody stupid. Her contention was merely that persons who are not familiar with the forms, range, history and conventions of literature are not fit to judge the quality of a single work of literature. That is all.

They may, of course, have an opinion. Pretty Lady may have an opinion as to the elegance and viability of the proof of Fermat's last theorem, as well. That is not to say that Pretty Lady's opinion on this proof amounts to anything more than the opinion of her two feline companions on the screenplay of As Good as it Gets, which Pretty Lady viewed yesterday evening. The felines appeared uninspired by the movie; Pretty Lady herself was pleasantly surprised. It is rare that sappy, predictable love stories are actually accompanied by witty and insightful dialog.

It is all the more astonishing that in this age of Advanced Technology, people seem to forget that in order to assess whether something functions, one first has to test it. Nobody would consider that the design of the latest BMW had set a new standard for perfection in automotive technology if it never left the showroom; why then do people believe that they are competent to judge the effectiveness of a work of literature without having read it, the power of a painting without having viewed it, or the transformative capabilities of a spiritual practice without having practiced it?

Ah. Now we see that Pretty Lady has yet another Deeper Agenda.

For it strikes her that as arrogantly ignorant as people can be regarding the arts, this arrogance is dwarfed by their cavalier views toward the spiritually esoteric. For the mere reading and intellectual analysis of a spiritual text is not at all sufficient to the assessment of the merits of this text. One has to actually try it. Spirituality is not an abstract theory with no bearing on the physical world, except insofar as it is used to justify the ego-will; it is a practice.

Pretty Lady visited, yesterday evening, a regular client of hers. This charming lady has suffered from chronic, unspecific and seemingly acausal physical pain since long before she started working with Pretty Lady. Pretty Lady knows this pain is genuine, because she can feel its consequences.

Yesterday evening, her client seemed much more cheerful than usual. 'I've become a Buddhist,' she declared. 'I've been chanting regularly.' She informed Pretty Lady a bit about the history of her particular branch of Buddhism, the services she attends, and their activities on behalf of World Peace.

But it was when Pretty Lady began work that she sensed the true fruits of this practice. 'Buddhism seems to be good for you. You are more relaxed than I've ever felt,' she exclaimed. Indeed, at the end of the session, the client declared that it had been the least painful session of her life.

Pretty Lady understands, of course, the inadmissibility of the link between correlation and causation. Moreover, she does not prescribe Buddhism as a method of healing pain. However, she finds her client's experience to be a more compelling argument for its practice than twenty volumes of purely theoretical argument against it.

In Defense of Elitism

Pretty Lady, being in a bit of a Mood yesterday, created somewhat of a furor over at poor dear Edward's blog. She must apologize to Edward, since he has been ever the gentleman; moreover, she is doing him the courtesy of moving her diatribe to her own space.

But move it she must. She cannot let people get away with such Philistinism.

For the fact is, people, Literacy Is Important. And Pretty Lady maintains her view that an illiterate person suffers under such a whopping big handicap in terms of ability to process and communicate issues of universal importance, that this person's opinion on such matters is innately suspect. As she controversially stated:

Judging by numbers in the 'Da Vinci Code' sense is a red herring, because we're dealing with factors other than the perception of Quality--availability, marketing, and the generally abysmal state of literacy in the U.S. these days. One glance at the blogosphere is enough to tell you that most people are unable to comprehend a basic sequence of logical causality, when presented in a coherent paragraph; are we then judging questions of literary style based on the perceptions of these people?

A more accurate test would be to take a group of people who have all proven themselves capable of explaining, in their own words and in complete sentences, the basic principles underlying our Constitution, the plot of Anna Karenina, and why a poem by e.e. cummings was radical for its time, but still holds up as literature in these degenerate days. Then you give this group a copy of 'The Da Vinci Code,' and 'Gaudy Night' by Dorothy L. Sayers, and ask them to assess the relative literary merits of each, providing support for their assertions.

I would stake my inheritance that Dorothy L. would win by a landslide.

The immediate reply to this screed was sadly predictable:

What is this elitist ethnocentric bullshit? If I haven't read Anna Karenina or e e cummings I'm not fit to discuss spirituality or transcendance with this "pretty lady"?

Even her dear friend David, who should know better, was skeptical:

PL, it sounds like a wonderful group of people to have over for dinner, but I seriously doubt they represent "the vast majority of people."

Pretty Lady hangs her head, and cries.

Because any literate member of Pretty Lady's friends will be able to spot the trick at once. That trick is, these questions are easy. Anybody who has ever BS'd their way through an examination after drinking beer in the parking lot till 3 AM instead of studying knows that.

But let Pretty Lady explain the answers, to those whose BS skills are as poor as those that Pretty Lady used on her grant application:

1) The Constitution is the basis for the U.S. government. We live in the U.S. Our basic rights as citizens are outlined in this document; therefore it behooves us to have a vague idea of what these rights are, and assert them, and defend them. These rights include things like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right to bear arms, and right to privacy.

For extra credit, one may mumble about 'checks and balances,' which were put in place to prevent, oh, the executive branch of government from launching foolish, unwinnable wars to satisfy private grudges and not-so-private Messianic complexes.

Eh?

2) One need not have read Anna Karenina to have heard, somewhere, that it is about a Russian lady who has an extramarital affair, and jumps in front of a train as a result of it.

3) Similarly, one need not have a degree in English Literature to note that the poems of mr. cummings are unconventionally capitalized and punctuated; one need only read a few of them to perceive that they are rather spicy. They Hold Up, in Pretty Lady's opinion, because they are still sufficiently oblique to be Teasing, rather than hitting you over the head with a hammer.

Notice that Pretty Lady did not demand that anybody understand a poem by Wallace Stevens.

Pretty Lady does not consider that people who cannot summon up even a cursory, BS'd answer to these questions are necessarily unintelligent; she can say, and boldly, that they are disgracefully and dangerously ignorant. She understands that the state of public education in this country produced this state of affairs; she has even heard rumours that this was done deliberately, by the government, to make people easier to control.

Judging by the state of the country's affairs at the moment, it seems to be working.