Thanks for theorizing that—my situation was different from the situation most of you guys probably had growing up, I was disadvantaged. That might be the cause for the differing viewpoints. I have realized I’m pretty ignorant about other points of view on elitism. Care to explain yours? I want to understand them.
I probably internalized something like this growing up:
There are people who are really good at something,
this is a good thing,
I’m not one of them,
but if I work very hard I could be.
I haven’t been very aware of social class issues or using ‘elitism’ as an actual term. So my quick association with someone calling out elitism as a bad thing is that they’re saying that people shouldn’t try to be very good at anything. People who grew up more social class aware might have quite different instant associations.
Hmm. That’s interesting. What’s interesting is that I relate with you completely about knowing that there are people who are good at things and wanting to work to become one, and not seeing anything wrong with it. I even want to defend the right to work to become good at things.
I find this confusing too. Maybe Epiphany is coming from somewhere like the American place where a prosecutor will always remember to address a defendant with a PhD. as ‘doctor’ in order to turn the jury against them.
Thanks for theorizing that—my situation was different from the situation most of you guys probably had growing up, I was disadvantaged. That might be the cause for the differing viewpoints. I have realized I’m pretty ignorant about other points of view on elitism. Care to explain yours? I want to understand them.
I probably internalized something like this growing up:
There are people who are really good at something,
this is a good thing,
I’m not one of them,
but if I work very hard I could be.
I haven’t been very aware of social class issues or using ‘elitism’ as an actual term. So my quick association with someone calling out elitism as a bad thing is that they’re saying that people shouldn’t try to be very good at anything. People who grew up more social class aware might have quite different instant associations.
Hmm. That’s interesting. What’s interesting is that I relate with you completely about knowing that there are people who are good at things and wanting to work to become one, and not seeing anything wrong with it. I even want to defend the right to work to become good at things.
But I don’t call that elitism.
Why do you?
Because that’s what I think the people who say LW should be more elitist are saying.