Cosmopolitan

A speculative post this, but there is plenty of evidence that cosmopolitan elites despise the rest of us at least as much as they always have. It is not an excessively cynical assumption. Suppose we concoct another assumption which says that to be cosmopolitan is to be a generalist rather than a specialist. 

Over recent centuries, specialists have become more embedded in the increasingly complex maintenance of elite lifestyles. In addition and almost within living memory, certain aspects of the elite lifestyle became less exclusive and more accessible to a much larger number of people.

Familiarity with another language, travel in other countries, other continents was part of being conspicuously cosmopolitan and once only accessible to elites. Educated familiarity with literature, music, art and fashion were also essential. Then a slow change began to seep in, the pretensions became easier, cheaper and more widespread. Economic growth and technical development changed what it is to be cosmopolitan, to be apart from the masses, to be superior in every sense that matters.

The beginnings of the change are impossible to define closely, but after the Great War there were signs which have since become familiar, almost clichés. The boundary between cosmopolitan pretensions and middle class aspirations slowly blurred. Millions of men had been to Europe, met Europeans, heard other languages spoken. Books were mass produced, wireless and cinema waiting in the wings, travel became easier, cars cheaper, as did travel by rail, ship or aircraft.

It was still possible to be cosmopolitan as opposed to not cosmopolitan, but the solid facts of it, the travel, languages, broad cultural familiarities, were eroding. Certainly not disappearing, but certainly eroding. Almost everything can be imitated and even superior versions and exclusive brands became exposed to that neat old cliché – more style than substance.

At some equally indefinable point, elites apparently began to dislike all this erosion of their cosmopolitan pretensions. If one is not an aristocrat and one cannot be conspicuously cosmopolitan, what else can one be? The reaction was an old one – openly despise the lower classes for their pretensions and specialist capabilities, just as the wheelwright was once despised as a common artisan.

Admittedly this is all very nebulous, but we seem to have entered the age of specialists who are worthy of being despised. Scientists and academics have been corrupted by the political games of elite generalists who still see themselves as differently cosmopolitan. Yet the wheelwright must still make circular wheels, not sustainable wheels or carbon neutral wheels and it cannot end well.