A small confession

One thing about living with other people is that you learn things about yourself.  Some things are completely new and sometimes they're good things.  Other times, they're things you might have suspected about yourself and which are confirmed by the presence of other people.  Over the last few weeks I've had to come to terms with the fact that I am, in fact, a bit of a snob. And when I say "a bit of a snob" what I actually mean is a massive snob of almost hipster-like proportions.  I'd long suspected it but now it's confirmed.

As Plato said (I can't help myself: I'm a snob and a pseud), the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms, so let's define snob.  According to teh interwebz, a snob is "a person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people" and I'm afraid to say that describes me, to a tee.

Now, before I excoriate (I'm sorry; pseud, remember?) myself I must just say, in my defence, that I think everyone is actually a bit of a snob.  Deep down, everyone thinks their tastes are a bit better than everyone else's: the music they like is a bit better, the films they like or the books they read and so on.  These things are part of the way we define ourselves - why else would people have such angst about being seen reading "50 Shades of Grey" in public? They worry that others will judge them.  In the same way, I've seen people argue that they wouldn't have an e-reader because then no one would know what they're reading.  We judge books by their covers and readers by their books.

So, everyone is a snob, including me.  But where does snobbery end and a general lack of standards begin?  After all, aren't some things not as good as others? Or are all things equally valid?  For instance, is this...

...better than this...

...and, if so, how do you judge?  I happen to like them both but for different reasons and in different ways. Am I open to a variety of influences or am I just lacking in discernment?  

Recently, S and I watched the film Music and Lyrics.  I think it's an awful film (formulaic, lacking in depth, predictable) while S quite likes it.  Which of us is right?  The temptation, being the snob I am, is for me to think that it's me, obviously, and that S just has terrible taste in films.  And that's indeed what I was thinking and was generally grumpy about watching it (although I do quite like Hugh Grant).  

But then I started to think to myself that I like some equally terrible films: as I've mentioned before, I'm genuine in my love of The Core, which is a movie that makes Music and Lyrics look like Citizen Kane!  I'm not being ironic in that; I know, objectively, that it's rubbish but I always watch it when it's on.  Does that mean I have terrible taste?

I guess the key is how we regard the taste of others.  We all have standards and criteria by which we judge things and those standards and criteria are different to everyone else's.  Sometimes there's overlap, sometimes there isn't: I might think something is terrible while you think it's a masterpiece but that doesn't mean my taste is better than yours.  I'll try harder to be more accepting and open in the future.  After all, as they say just north of here, 百花齐放，百家争鸣 but without the terrible consequences.  (Pseud, as I think I mentioned.)