Reading a debate about the World Cup in Brasil in a Facebook page for cinephiles, I had the occasion for remembering how much I can be irked by the snobbishness of some people. 

People convinced in a gerarchy of interests and hobbies, where their cultural inclinations are worth the money spent (even if we talk about colossals like Titanic and actors who take abnormous rewards, particulary if compared with a doctor's salary)  and all this fuss about football not. I'm not interested in football, but I don't think that this makes me a superior person because I don't follow "that rubbish where idiots run after a ball" (like someone else say). This is a superficial prejudice, a total underestimation a priori of an entire sport.

I love culture and I love to learn something new and to expand my horizons, I love it particulary when it doesn't allow an intelligent mind to think about who dedicate his time to something less elevated as an ignorant idiot. I give "epithets" like those only when this "ignorant idiot" is as arrogant as the cultured snob. Everyone is free of managing his free time as he prefers, if it is not a violent way of filling his hours. If he's sincerely happy, why not? 

It's pretty much similar to those readers who try to force others to read because they can't imagine that a "sophisticated" art like literature doesn't fascinate everyone. A person who doesn't read is not automatically a recidivous idiot. 

 

I know a lot of "uncultivated" people who are by far better human beings than some of those "élites", who can't even see further than the end of their golden nose to understand the reasons of people different from them, and I'm not talking only about reading or not, but even different opinions about literature itself and its authors. What have you learned from so much culture if you can't even accept pluralism? 

I don't read because it makes me a "superior" person, I read because I like it so much that I cant' stop doing it, because it helps me to understand myself and the others, because literature captures me and I am always passionately curious of exploring it. 

But I always pay attention to not become one of those people described here, because I know that I would have failed in some way in my "personal path".

I dislike who is fossilised on opinions he can't change because he's too proud for admitting of being wrong and I blame who is not able to understand but only judge, confident about his self-righteousness and sure that he almost never need to call himself into question. And, actually, I think that calling ourselves into question is the key of growing up not only intellectualy but also as admirable human beings. 

 

I don't believe that a person could not judge, but I strongly believe in the ability of understanding as much as we can before judging. At the end of the game I will prefer the company of smart fellows who share too my interests, but only because it pleases me personally, not because the others (if intelligent) are not worthy of my attention.