The ethos of snob

The American Heritage Dictionary” relates snob with pretentious. And yet there is much literature that repeats that age-old moral lesson. Eventually, we all become what we pretend to be.

Such as when a young artist decides to risk poverty to do great art. There is no easy market for great art. More often than not people will not even understand it. Only a few see its value. And how would the young artist know it is great art? He or she can only play at it at first. He or she can only pretend.

And then over time he or she might develop the sort of snobbish arrogance that would give him or her the strength of resolve required of every great artist. Is it snobbish pretension which drives him or her to think this? Ordinary artists look for a market for their art. Great artists wait for the market to find them.

Despite an upper-class upbringing the great philosopher Karl Marx lived a difficult life sacrificing himself and his family to poverty and ill-health for his writings. He was expelled from one European country after another before settling finally in London where he died without the slightest evidence his writings would change the world the way it did.

And what of Jose Rizal? What of the people who stood before tanks at Edsa? What could drive them to do what they did if not the strange conviction that they were different from “everyone else” and simply because they were right where “everyone else” was wrong.

There is much to be said of pretentious even if both dictionary and the local ethos tend to present it in a bad light. And Cebuanos especially are quite wary of snob and snobbery. They hate pretentious. They pride themselves with being down to earth. Or at least more down to earth “daw” than the Illongos and the Tagalogs. And they will be the last to admit or even see this sort of thinking is in itself a form of snobbery and pretension.

Ah, but then again, perhaps they are really more down-to-earth because they pretend to be. Snob, snobbery and pretension are not entirely bad things. The act of defining ourselves as would make us distinct from others is an act certainly of snobbery. Let us say each of the Bisayans have their own ethos of snob. It is their source of personal and collective strength. It is their justification for telling themselves: We stay because things are much better here.

Where art and literature are concerned, the idea of being different from “everyone else” is a pivotal resolve not just for those who do art. The young person who admits feeling a pleasure from walking into an art gallery or museum risks something with his or her peers. The young person who enjoys reading a book invites becoming the target of name-calling. Geek is just another way of saying intellectual snob.

The true intellectual snob does not mind. He or she learns early in life that we pay the price for being who we are. We are different from “everyone else” because we seek to be. We seek by first pretending to be what we wish to become.

And we pretend through strategic behavior. We learn of art even if we might not actually do it. We learn to love to view or read or listen. We surround ourselves with it. We befriend artists and writers finding out in due course they are quite enjoyable to be with. And it is not at all about vanity even if some of them can’t really be described without using that awful word.

We might have at a younger age bought a piece by a young struggling artist whom nobody knew. When in the course of time the young artist becomes more appreciated we feel from this the distinct sense of affirmation. We feel a sense of pride.

Because we know people are not born into good taste, nor is it something bought with money. It derives from a singular sensibility. A rare gift blessed only on a few. And they know their gift by enjoying what most others do not. They do not mind being different and marking themselves that way.