I'm Kind of Elitist

[Inkfingers]

An elitist is arrogance turned into a clique.

You're just saying that because you think you are better than them

 

[Received]

You're just saying that because you think you are better than them

 

[Star Adept]

I am just throwing out my opinion. I have confidence in myself but humility as a foundation. So, no, I do not think I am "better than them" because that would state that I would have to know all of "them" individually and every aspect of each one of them that is qualitative (which is unkowable because intelligence is just one qualitative trait and you cannot know the quality of someone else's intelligence, you can only perceive the intelligence that they put forth. The same with morals) and then I would have to find all of those aspects to be of lesser quality than my own. Then and only then could I reach the conclusion that I was wholly "better" than "them" which is impossible and could change at any moment because what one learns one day affects, at differing levels of severity, several to many of the traits that are qualitative.

 

[Star Adept]

Besides that, it was a definition, not a judgement

 

[Inkfingers]

 

[Received]

I am just throwing out my opinion. I have confidence in myself but humility as a foundation. So, no, I do not think I am "better than them" because that would state that I would have to know all of "them" individually and every aspect of each one of them that is qualitative (which is unkowable because intelligence is just one qualitative trait and you cannot know the quality of someone else's intelligence, you can only perceive the intelligence that they put forth. The same with morals) and then I would have to find all of those aspects to be of lesser quality than my own. Then and only then could I reach the conclusion that I was wholly "better" than "them" which is impossible and could change at any moment because what one learns one day affects, at differing levels of severity, several to many of the traits that are qualitative.

If elitism means being better (as a person) than someone else, then it is arrogant. If it means being better at such-and-such (quality, skill, position) than someone else, it's honesty. The fact that we call this honesty bad names means something deep and considerably ajar in the American (etc.) psyche. That's the interesting part: why?

 

[Star Adept]

Lack of humility, I would contend is at the core. I've added emotions into the mix because of the events at work in the past few days.

Just yesterday, a co-worker of mine got fired because, the day before, she told one of the more difficult doctors to work with that he should stop wasting our client's money and our time by running bloodwork in-house if he's just going to turn around and mistrust perfectly error-free results and send them to the lab anyways. The machine has had errors in the past, but it always flags them when it does. It actually was not working right in the morning, but I had resolved the errors and shown him the resolved, error-free bloodwork from a patient that morning as proof, before she had her shift, which I did not work yesterday. He is the definition of arrogant but he is also a very intelligent man. I would not question a thing he has to say about medicine, procedures, the veterinary business world, or history. In fact, these are the things I learn from him. In his security of intelligence, he mistrusts that which he does not understand and very hypocritically gets emotionally upset when anyone says anything below the line of neutral or agreement with him. Therefore, when my co-worker said this, he went and complained to our manager. She was fired upon coming into work yesterday and I had to come in for her shift. She's a good worker and a good person, in my opinion, but against her credit, she does not put forth her opinions with out a little or a lot of frustration behind her words most of the time and they have a little bit of a history of not working well together.

So, yesterday, when I was working with him, we saw the same patient that we ran bloodwork on that made me realize there was a problem with the machine. As a tech, I draw them in and get a history and I saw that she was in for recheck of her bloodwork as requested by the doctor from yesterday, but no medical notes as to why (which is very peculiar for him). I asked the client if she knew what values or general organ we were concerned about so I could grab the right tube -- a lie, to be fair, because now I was suspicious -- she said nothing in particular just that she was told by him that the machine was not working properly so she'd have to come back in. See, not only had I fixed the machine (it was just a filter change) but I had rerun the blood twice (for consistency check) and presented the doctor the error-free results before she left and he discharged her the day before. He told her to come back anyways, as if time to rest was what the machine needed.

That co-worker had always struggled for money mainly because she has children and an hour and a half drive to work to a job in the vet industry which does not pay well comparatively. I grabbed another doctor for the appointment, knowing she'd question him about why he wanted the bloodwork given that he left no notation and with at least two error-free runs in the chart from the day before. Had I asked him myself, well, I'll admit I am less collected in my thoughts when speaking versus typing and for fear of him finding a hole in my concern to weasel through, I thought it better to let a colleague who would rightfully not understand his motives do the asking. She also is a young doctor who frequently chills with the fired co-worker outside of work. So, she knew about the termination and why and it gave her good reason to really want to find out what his deal was.

She unemotionally and clinically asked him the very questions that should have been asked. You see, he is an elitist type for ethical reasons I would imagine. He would not speak to another doctor the way he speaks to me or my fellow techs, not to their faces, but is quick to share his opinion of what they're doing wrong medically and personally whenever they're not around. So, when she got to the question of "I understand there were problems with the machine, but there are two non-flagged results that Rob ran that are perfectly normal (medically). Why did you have them come back in?"

I have never seen anyone in my life physically fighting back his words so hard. His face was getting red and kind of shaking from it. Eventually he just exploded and started screaming about how he didn't need her to question his directions as a doctor and she was being unethical by doing so, etc. She kept her cool and let him rant until he got to the part where he said "just do your job and get the blood like I asked." She, instead, sent the client home and told her it was a mis-filing of her bloodwork which made it look as if the machine wasn't working. Although I'm not quite sure the client understood because the whole clinic could hear him screaming before we came back into the room.

So, we're closed today, but my manager has already informed me that "we need to talk about saturday..."

That's as far as the story goes. I just honestly in everything I've learned in my entire life have never been able to understand how someone cannot let go of the position of "better" such that it affects other people in a way that is so hypocritical.

He got a young, struggling girl fired because she told him he was wrong and was a bit too mouthy with her position. He blew up when another doctor told him he was wrong and I doubt my manager will do much in way of reprimanding him, which is a problem with management that only feeds into this kind of event but that's beside the point. The story would have been longer, but, it was self-serving to write it at length and collect my thoughts before I go in tomorrow.

 

[dlamberth]

She says elsewhere that she's an elitist, because she believes that some people are just smarter and better at some things than others.

That's like saying that a red rose is elite because it's red. Where as any other colored rose is not elite because they are not red.

The whole thing strikes me as ego in denial.

.

 

[Inkfingers]

That's like saying that a red rose is elite because it's red. Where as any other colored rose is not elite because they are not red.

No it's not.

Higher intelligence makes people better able to comprehend and thus act from greater comprehension.

Red just makes a rose a different colour.

Your child is ill; do you want a doctor with an IQ of 90 or an IQ of 150 looking after her?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Ultimately you have to pay 1000 dollars for a flippin' t-shirt, to prove your worth.

 

[Inkachu]

As someone who's very intelligent, and often has to hide or mask that fact, I can definitely sympathize with the OP's frustration. I've been called snobby, stuck up, condescending, etc. All because I'm smart. So many people seem to feel threatened by it, and I don't quite understand why. I'll never forget one of my closest friends who heard me use some kind of "big" word, and she said snarkily, "Some of us don't feel the need to act all educated and make other people feel dumb". I was stunned. I hadn't been trying to "act" like anything, I was simply talking. Or another time, I used the word "permeate" in an 11th grade assignment, and the teacher said, "Oooh! Oooh! Big word!" I thought, "Really? That's a big word? That's just a normal word!"

Sometimes, I wonder if the average person who acts threatened or defensive around those who are more intelligent or better-spoken, realizes that they may be contributing to that person feeling bad about themselves for no good reason. Or causing that person to feel the need to "dumb down" their speech or writing or work, just so they don't get attacked or snubbed.

I wouldn't call myself an "elitist", though, because the word "elite" means "best of the best", and I don't think I'm necessarily the BEST at anything. I'm just really good

 

[Inkachu]

Typical christian. The three most valued things, all idols. Looks, wealth and intelligence. (my guess at the values you admire, because they are typical of our day and age).

No, that is not a typical Christian.

 

[Received]

As someone who's very intelligent, and often has to hide or mask that fact, I can definitely sympathize with the OP's frustration. I've been called snobby, stuck up, condescending, etc. All because I'm smart. So many people seem to feel threatened by it, and I don't quite understand why. I'll never forget one of my closest friends who heard me use some kind of "big" word, and she said snarkily, "Some of us don't feel the need to act all educated and make other people feel dumb". I was stunned. I hadn't been trying to "act" like anything, I was simply talking. Or another time, I used the word "permeate" in an 11th grade assignment, and the teacher said, "Oooh! Oooh! Big word!" I thought, "Really? That's a big word? That's just a normal word!"

Sometimes, I wonder if the average person who acts threatened or defensive around those who are more intelligent or better-spoken, realizes that they may be contributing to that person feeling bad about themselves for no good reason. Or causing that person to feel the need to "dumb down" their speech or writing or work, just so they don't get attacked or snubbed.

It's the arrogance of the less-better-than you're describing. Even what Nietzsche called ressentiment -- and actually I'd say it's primarily this: the ressentiment of not being as good as someone at something. They don't think about it, or they think the person who does distinguish things as we talk about should be shamed for thinking this, which really means a profound distaste for anyone who considers others, and especially himself, better. The real interesting part is: why? And I think that's because (in addition to the ressentiment mentioned above), especially in our American and generally Western individualistic sentiments, we erroneously equate "I'm better than you at this" with "I'm a better person than you," and that's just wrong. But it makes sense given our overidealization of individualism, because the tendency is to equate the person with his will. So that's what you get, America.

I wouldn't call myself an "elitist", though, because the word "elite" means "best of the best", and I don't think I'm necessarily the BEST at anything. I'm just really good

If that's the meaning, it's virtually impossible to determine who's the best of the best, or if it is then it applies only to such an incredibly small group of people as to have no application for the population beyond such a group -- and that's how people tend to use it.

 

[Eyes wide Open]

Lack of humility, I would contend is at the core. I've added emotions into the mix because of the events at work in the past few days.

Just yesterday, a co-worker of mine got fired because, the day before, she told one of the more difficult doctors to work with that he should stop wasting our client's money and our time by running bloodwork in-house if he's just going to turn around and mistrust perfectly error-free results and send them to the lab anyways. The machine has had errors in the past, but it always flags them when it does. It actually was not working right in the morning, but I had resolved the errors and shown him the resolved, error-free bloodwork from a patient that morning as proof, before she had her shift, which I did not work yesterday. He is the definition of arrogant but he is also a very intelligent man. I would not question a thing he has to say about medicine, procedures, the veterinary business world, or history. In fact, these are the things I learn from him. In his security of intelligence, he mistrusts that which he does not understand and very hypocritically gets emotionally upset when anyone says anything below the line of neutral or agreement with him. Therefore, when my co-worker said this, he went and complained to our manager. She was fired upon coming into work yesterday and I had to come in for her shift. She's a good worker and a good person, in my opinion, but against her credit, she does not put forth her opinions with out a little or a lot of frustration behind her words most of the time and they have a little bit of a history of not working well together.

So, yesterday, when I was working with him, we saw the same patient that we ran bloodwork on that made me realize there was a problem with the machine. As a tech, I draw them in and get a history and I saw that she was in for recheck of her bloodwork as requested by the doctor from yesterday, but no medical notes as to why (which is very peculiar for him). I asked the client if she knew what values or general organ we were concerned about so I could grab the right tube -- a lie, to be fair, because now I was suspicious -- she said nothing in particular just that she was told by him that the machine was not working properly so she'd have to come back in. See, not only had I fixed the machine (it was just a filter change) but I had rerun the blood twice (for consistency check) and presented the doctor the error-free results before she left and he discharged her the day before. He told her to come back anyways, as if time to rest was what the machine needed.

That co-worker had always struggled for money mainly because she has children and an hour and a half drive to work to a job in the vet industry which does not pay well comparatively. I grabbed another doctor for the appointment, knowing she'd question him about why he wanted the bloodwork given that he left no notation and with at least two error-free runs in the chart from the day before. Had I asked him myself, well, I'll admit I am less collected in my thoughts when speaking versus typing and for fear of him finding a hole in my concern to weasel through, I thought it better to let a colleague who would rightfully not understand his motives do the asking. She also is a young doctor who frequently chills with the fired co-worker outside of work. So, she knew about the termination and why and it gave her good reason to really want to find out what his deal was.

She unemotionally and clinically asked him the very questions that should have been asked. You see, he is an elitist type for ethical reasons I would imagine. He would not speak to another doctor the way he speaks to me or my fellow techs, not to their faces, but is quick to share his opinion of what they're doing wrong medically and personally whenever they're not around. So, when she got to the question of "I understand there were problems with the machine, but there are two non-flagged results that Rob ran that are perfectly normal (medically). Why did you have them come back in?"

I have never seen anyone in my life physically fighting back his words so hard. His face was getting red and kind of shaking from it. Eventually he just exploded and started screaming about how he didn't need her to question his directions as a doctor and she was being unethical by doing so, etc. She kept her cool and let him rant until he got to the part where he said "just do your job and get the blood like I asked." She, instead, sent the client home and told her it was a mis-filing of her bloodwork which made it look as if the machine wasn't working. Although I'm not quite sure the client understood because the whole clinic could hear him screaming before we came back into the room.

So, we're closed today, but my manager has already informed me that "we need to talk about saturday..."

That's as far as the story goes. I just honestly in everything I've learned in my entire life have never been able to understand how someone cannot let go of the position of "better" such that it affects other people in a way that is so hypocritical.

He got a young, struggling girl fired because she told him he was wrong and was a bit too mouthy with her position. He blew up when another doctor told him he was wrong and I doubt my manager will do much in way of reprimanding him, which is a problem with management that only feeds into this kind of event but that's beside the point. The story would have been longer, but, it was self-serving to write it at length and collect my thoughts before I go in tomorrow.

I think there is a particular problem in society putting people onto a pedestal because of a skill or expertise in a certain field, which brings with it a certain kudos and power. The guy is a tool, but he's an intelligent well skilled tool in his field, and as such his ego (his sense of self) is defined and moulded from this aspect, when clearly he is lacking in other areas of his life, like trust and allowing others to be good at what they do when he isn't skilled in that area. It's and arrogant attitude. Why is this guy any better than a skilled baker that puts out wonderful food in his store?

 

[dlamberth]

Higher intelligence makes people better able to comprehend and thus act from greater comprehension.

But that does not necessarily make them a better Human Being. Even with a higher intelligence, those people will still go through life with the same stuff going on around them as everyone else.

Red just makes a rose a different colour.

And a person with a higher intelligence is also just a human being with a different color.

Your child is ill; do you want a doctor with an IQ of 90 or an IQ of 150 looking after her?

I'd take my child to the person who is trained in the medical field. The other thing I look for when it comes to my children is a doctor who has heart and compassion and understanding of children. I have never looked around testing and looking for the doctor with the highest IQ. Have you?

.

 

[Ana the Ist]

As someone who's very intelligent, and often has to hide or mask that fact, I can definitely sympathize with the OP's frustration. I've been called snobby, stuck up, condescending, etc. All because I'm smart.

I wouldn't call myself an "elitist", though, because the word "elite" means "best of the best", and I don't think I'm necessarily the BEST at anything. I'm just really good

And modest....don't forget modest.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I am just throwing out my opinion. I have confidence in myself but humility as a foundation. So, no, I do not think I am "better than them" because that would state that I would have to know all of "them" individually and every aspect of each one of them that is qualitative (which is unkowable because intelligence is just one qualitative trait and you cannot know the quality of someone else's intelligence, you can only perceive the intelligence that they put forth. The same with morals) and then I would have to find all of those aspects to be of lesser quality than my own. Then and only then could I reach the conclusion that I was wholly "better" than "them" which is impossible and could change at any moment because what one learns one day affects, at differing levels of severity, several to many of the traits that are qualitative.

Aren't you the guy who posted not long ago that you considered yourself a saint?

I think you said something along the lines of...

"I don't like to call myself a saint, but I really can't think of a better term to use."

Wasn't that you?

 

[Ana the Ist]

No it's not.

Higher intelligence makes people better able to comprehend and thus act from greater comprehension.

Red just makes a rose a different colour.

Your child is ill; do you want a doctor with an IQ of 90 or an IQ of 150 looking after her?

I would agree with your point here...but I'd add a few things.

There are all kinds of intelligence. Yet when we speak about intelligence, or a person who's intelligent, we're generally speaking of one of two types of intelligence. The first is what someone would refer to as an "expert"...someone with an incredible amount of knowledge in a specific topic/field/or perhaps even a method. These people can also have a very deep knowledge of other topics...but when we talk about all fields of knowledge, their intelligence may not be as deep, or quite likely no more deep than anyone else.

What's kind of ironic is that most people fall into this category. Most people have a few topics which they have a huge amount of knowledge and understanding in...and just some knowledge when it comes to all other fields. I think as a society we tend to single out those with a deep understanding of very difficult fields or very obscure fields (like quantum physics or microbiology) and think "that person is really intelligent." The guy with an incredibly deep knowledge of cars, for example, doesn't tend to impress many people since so many people have a deep understanding of cars. What's more is we tend to look at that person who has an amazing understanding of microbiology and assume this person is going to be much smarter than most people on a huge range of topics....and that's not necessarily true. Dr Ben Carson is a great example of this, I think, because he has such a tremendous amount of knowledge in the medical field of neurology people think that he must also be an incredibly smart politician or lawmaker as well.

The other kind of intelligence we recognize is the kind where someone has an incredibly wide range of knowledge...across many different fields. They may not have an extremely deep amount of knowledge in any one field, but they have a deeper than average amount of knowledge across a large variety of fields. This type of intelligence is harder to recognize, and for some reason valued less than the other kind...which is ironic IMO because I think it's more valuable. I think these people have a harder time relating to others because they tend to confront life's problems a little easier than most...tend to have solutions that seem obvious to them while being unable to convince others.

Intelligence is a great thing to have, but it's far from a free pass to an easy life. Like beauty, it comes with its own unique set of problems and difficulties.

 

[Inkachu]

And modest....don't forget modest.

 

[Inkfingers]

I would agree with your point here...but I'd add a few things.

There are all kinds of intelligence. Yet when we speak about intelligence, or a person who's intelligent, we're generally speaking of one of two types of intelligence. The first is what someone would refer to as an "expert"...someone with an incredible amount of knowledge in a specific topic/field/or perhaps even a method. These people can also have a very deep knowledge of other topics...but when we talk about all fields of knowledge, their intelligence may not be as deep, or quite likely no more deep than anyone else.

I would not call that intelligence though. Knowledge? Yes. Skill? Certainly. But not intelligence; which is a label that I'd apply more to generalised reasoning ability than any specialist area.

Low intelligence can barely string a sentence together, and could not find a coherent thought with a flashlight and a GPS. Their thoughts are small and disconnected.

Hiigh intelligence speaks coherently, rather than in a broken and stilted manner, and their thoughts are generally coherent to each other, and broad, rather than disconnected, mutually contradictory, and narrow.

Knowledge can make that process easier (a knowledgable but average intelligence mechanic could put a complex engine back together far more easily than a high intelligence neuroscientist could) but the general ability is also there to be recognised.

Better a bright government than President Camacho....

Intelligence is a great thing to have, but it's far from a free pass to an easy life. Like beauty, it comes with its own unique set of problems and difficulties.

Oh, don't I know it. I have suffered under the burden of both for so many years.