My Prejudice

I just finished reading Blue Like Jazz. It was incredible. Donald Miller has written a book without pretense about, among other things, his struggle with being pretentious. It's disarming. Entertaining. And he read my mind. Or, more precisely, my heart.

There were so many things from the book that I would like to discuss. But one (and I don't even know if this was really in the book, but just came to my head while I was reading it) is that I have this problem with intellectual snobery. I really think I'm smarter than most people.

I don't know how I've come to such a conclusion, but I have. Most people that I meet, I assume that they watch too much TV, don't read much, don't know the capitol of China, haven't thought clearly through their political affiliations, haven't thought critically about the literary merits of Napoleon Dynamite, etc. If I disagree with them, I don't say so because I know I'm right and to show them so would either make them mad or ashamed that they could have not known what I know. Ya know?

The other day, I had written something to someone that included a reference to the UK. They asked me "what's UK? Ukraine?" I said, "United Kingdom." They said, "Oh. Where's that?" I said "Great Britain." They said, "Oh."

I sometimes wish I were part of some deeply spiritual, rigorously academic, culturally hip crowd that could talk about Derek Webb and the Gaza settlements and Second Temple Judaism and Eric Dampier without missing a beat and always have something insightful to say about each topic. We would meet in a coffee shop, of course. Not like, have meetings, but just run into each other there like at Central Perk in Friends but without the lame jokes. And even though I know hardly anything about the topics I just listed, we would all know everything about them and lots about lots more because we would pay attention to such things so that we could talk about them at the coffee shop.

I even have this problem with people who know more than me. My brother-in-law, for instance. He's a genius. He knows like six languages. He picks up languages like I pick up movie lines. He learns them so he can study ancient manuscripts and stuff. When you ask him about a difficult passage in the Bible, he can quote it to you in the original language, tell you the three most common interpretations of it, and give at least two textual insights to support or discredit each. I'm not kidding. But even with him I have this idea that I'm smarter. At least in what matters, right? I mean, who wants to know about the Old Testament Pseudopigrypha anyway? Only seminary professors and dorks who hang out at coffee shops and don't have a real life. And bloggers who want to drop words like pseudopigryha so they sound smart. I don't think I'm spelling that right.

Like I said, I don't know how I've come to this point. It might have been the newspaper. My editor at the newspaper was never surprised at anything. He had a mental cubby-hole for every story. He would say things like, "The city is cleaning up the streets again. Big campaign. No more litter. Gonna clean things up this time. Give me 12 inches on it." This really impressed me. I thought, "Wow, he must have seen dozens of city street-cleaning anti-litter campaigns in his time. He's been around the block. Nothing impresses him. He knows it all." But he wasn't a know-it-all.

I've written 601 words now (I checked) and just realized I don't really know what point I'm trying to make. Other than, this is the stuff that clangs around in my skull and I think that's what a blog is supposed to be for. So there ya go. Go check out Blue Like Jazz.