Somewhere on the interweb, I happened to use the term "anti-art" recently, in reference to myself. Someone, reasonably enough, challenged me on this; specifically, what exactly does that mean?
Well, it means something fairly specific to me, and it isn’t that I think all paintings, poetry, and sculptures should be thrown into the ocean. What annoys me, apparently to the point that I started using the term "anti-art" in the first place, the the elitism and snobbery associated with the demographic who adores "high culture" — it’s not the art or material of the culture itself that annoys me. That is, I don’t hate Picasso… I hate the attitude that sneers at Norman Rockwell simply because he wasn’t Picasso.
Even though I have a reasonably broad education and am an inveterate auto-didact, I don’t consider myself an intellectual. The main reason for this is that I don’t have a very high regard for most so-called "intellectuals", and don’t want to associate myself with that sort of nonsense. The primary aspects I see in this attitude (and really, the attitude is the thing that vexes me) is an over-inflated opinion of one’s own intelligence, a disdain for anything or anyone who is not intellectual or artistic "enough", and a tendency to take oneself too seriously. U2 is a great example of this, and this is one of the reasons that I am the last person in America who still hates U2; they just take themselves so seriously that I am unable to take them seriously at all.
The most snobbish thing about elitist culture is the disdain for "lesser" people. The use of the expression "hoi polloi"("the masses", Greek) is a prime example. Simply by using the expression, one is separating one’s self from the masses — they are down there, we are up here. They are foolish, we are wise. They eat at McDonald’s, we sip wine. It’s for similar reasons that, even though I like Macs, own a Mac, and think that they’re great, I don’t really call myself a Mac-user; because Mac-users, in my experience (please, put down the pitchforks, this is only a generalization), tend to be arrogant and elitist in that regard.
I realize that the very act of despising elitism and intellectualism could be seen as being in itself a form of elitism, as though I were somehow "more moral" or something. There is the danger of that; but I don’t hate or "look down on" people; it’s just this general elitist (for lack of a better word) attitude that I’ve grown to hate. It is not confined to the world of art, or wine, or film (elitists don’t watch movies, they watch films), but politics, music, and business as well. Politics is a great example; the Democrats have become, over time, the party of elitism in America. I’ll leave it to some other, more political, bloggers to rant about that; there’s no lack of ranting about Democrat elitism in the blogosphere.
I’ll probably look back on this post and wonder why I bothered; saying I hate U2 or look down on "elitism" is probably only bound to offend people. Oh well; it never hurts to grow a thicker skin, I suppose. I could go on about Noam Chomsky (patron saint of the "more intellectual than thou" politerati), REM (yech), haute couture, highbrow/lowbrow, neo-anarchist anti-corporate Ad-busteresque leftism, environmentalist lunacy, and so forth, but I would probably only succeed in alienating more people (oops, too late).
Back to Linux and programming. :-)
