“We are not like everyone else”: what is bad elitism

Contempt for those who stand on a step below, a stupefying feeling of chosenness, a feeling of absolute permissiveness – the back of elitism, the writer Leonid Kostyukov believes.

I was recently called for the anniversary of the second school, and for some reason I did not go to it. And it cannot be said that I did not love my school.

I studied in it from 1972 to 1976 and, as soon as I got there, I felt joy. I liked to get up in the morning and drag on the other end of Moscow. For what? First of all – to communicate with classmates, interesting and funny people. Were we, fifteen -year -old, self -confident, gambling, capable of the product of this school? To a large extent yes, because our mathematical school has stood out against the general background.

Is it pretty to me that teenager who was, for example, I? Whether I tried these features, as far as possible, later carefully vaccinated my children or students? Here we step on very slippery soil.

Human gratitude is expensive: parents, teachers, time, place.

On the contrary, the complaints of the gray -haired uncle on other people’s flaws in his upbringing are sorry for his upbringing and, by and large, are not interested in anyone.

On the other hand, my observations show that gratitude to everything that happened to you is often combined with total complacency. And I, they say, drank port, got into the police – so what? (Does not agree: but has grown so well done.) But I’m not sure that I have grown so well done.

I had to grind and revise my life principles and household habits many times, feel shame for words and actions. I don’t know if I can objectively look at school, who formed me to a strong extent, but I will try.

Mathematics were taught remarkably in our school. Teachers in other subjects were very diverse: extremely bright and unstable, dissident and completely Soviet. This, as it were, emphasized the importance of mathematics in the system of school values. And since the communist ideology was replete with contradictions, she could not stand criticism of a mathematically oriented mind. Our free thought has come down to its denial.

In particular, the Soviet large style preached tenderness to the so -called people. We despised the people, understanding the layer of people who have not passed the competition in universities. In general, we made a competitive selection very highly

, once having passed it and intending to be progressed in the future.

There is another source of feeling of chosenness: a child, and a teenager perceives himself from the inside, and the rest of the people – from the outside. That is, he has an illusion that he himself lives every minutely rich in shades and emotional bursts of spiritual life, and the spiritual life of the rest exists only to the extent that he sees its expression.

The longer it lasts in a teenager that he (one or with comrades) is not the same as everyone, the more nonsense he does. This deviation is treated by the realization that you are in the very sample depths like everyone. Which leads to growing up and sympathy for other people.

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