All right, this is probably a bad time of year to start a new thread, especially an unseasonal one, but this is on something that’s been bothering me for awhile.
Basically, do you suffer from an intolerance of a certain strand of society or a certain type of person that you know damn well is partly based on jealousy? I do. I will freely admit – here and now, in front of everyone – that I have an unsinkable hatred of extremely posh people.
Now, I’ve tried to shake it off. I’m not sixteen anymore. I don’t think the world will be saved and justice will be done if I sign up to Class War and attempt to make arrangements to crucify them all. More to the point, I know damn well that there are some decent posh folk out there, who are humorous, well-meaning and level-headed in their approaches with others (though I don't seem to meet them terribly often).
Talking to these people, though, is to me like attempting to converse with a culture still more alien than someone from a hick town in the southern states of America. And the cold, clipped delivery of their sentences and scrutinising looks feel utterly chilling to me. Then there’s the small fact that many of them have a confidence that’s misplaced and often far above their actual intelligence, and a commandeering air which in certain social situations feels ridiculously inappropriate. This, of course, often stems from being taught to be “a leader” in some of the better schools in the UK, rather than being brought up to expect to be a drone. It’s a social divide I can’t work out how to bridge.
To give you an example, I was at a poetry reading hosted by a super-super-snoot woman on Saturday night, and myself and my friends were told off for laughing at and cheering certain lines in a witty piece of work a poet and actor was delivering (an appreciation he seemed to enjoy). Her words to my table were:
"Er think that one of the things some people have to learn about listening to poetry is that it must be internalised, and you have to transcend your ego and not inflict your view of the poem very loudly on everyone else..."
Ironically, of course, she unknowingly and unwittingly delivered this phrase to an entire table filled with poets. Rather than be embarrassed when the truth was revealed though, she shrugged and carried on utterly unabashed.
I could also tell she was from really wealthy stock, because I shook her hand earlier in the evening, and it felt absurdly, ridiculously soft, incredibly silky. I used to have an incredibly wealthy boss, and his hands were the same to shake – like he’d either been bathing in Nivea all his life, or else he’d never actually needed to rough them up for anything.
So… I hate them. I try to see past it all, but I can’t.
Do you lot have any similar dislikes, based either or irrational hatred or logical jealousy? And can anyone talk me down from mine? Is there a course you can go on to become more level-headed in your handling of the presence of snoots?
