On how to be a pompous windbag

Caught your attention, did I not? Sorry - if anyone really wishes to be such, I'm afraid I cannot give much instruction. But I read a delicious item today which had me laughing aloud. I had received an email about a book discussion, for which the text was Envy by Joseph Epstein. It seemed vaguely familiar, and I looked it up on Amazon. On that site, it is possible for people to construct 'Listmania' collections of books on any topic. I laughed at a Listmania list which appeared on the page, entitled "Be a pompous windbag: how to pose as an intellectual."

I indeed have a strong intellectual side (and would imagine that, if anyone visits this blog more than once, they also have the affliction), and it tends to mean that one is so analytical that one cannot see the obvious. I know I could use a good dose of Ockham's razor on many occasions, because I am so caught up in looking for profound and hidden reasons for everything that I'll not see that much in this world is all too simple. I'm in outer space without realising it in the least. As a simple example, when a friend of mine, Doris, was wearing a necklace with charms commemorating various occasions in her children's lives, when I saw one charm was a capital D, I asked "500 what? What does the D stand for?" It would not enter my mind that, rather than being a Roman numeral, it stood for "Doris."

Still, if I ever accomplished anything, it was definitely a 'tortoise and hare' situation. I'm capable of insight, but it takes me much time to absorb and express the concepts. I never was an outstanding student - the best I could hope for was 'you're well read.' (That is close cousin to being called 'attractive,' which, for anyone under forty, means 'you are certainly not pretty.')

I'm too shy to be a windbag, and I don't know that it is possible to be pompous when one comes from pure peasant stock. My mother's family, artisans (hatters and shoemakers, not painters of the Sistine chapel) with some taste for aspiring to the 'refined' (in Teora, being something akin to nobility meant owning two chickens), may have given me a small inclination towards the regal. But my dad's crowd were honest, totally pragmatic, very earthy creatures who would have seen me as purely ornamental in my interests. They were pure terra firma - and I'm sure I'll be forgiven for the worst pun of my life in adding 'the more firma the less terra.'

It's about 35 years since my university days began. Most of our professors were very intellectual but very few were pompous. I don't recall most of the students even aspiring to seem intellectual - no pomposity epidemic there. But I'm smiling remembering the few who probably see themselves, with hindsight today, as having been at least minor bags of wind.

Many people at that college were studying education - and some were embracing theories which made it seem that all teaching and 'parenting' prior to around 1973 was all wrong, and now suddenly replaced by innovative perfection. (I'm by no means suggesting that, in this or any category, this was true of most students. I'm speaking only of those who applied for the windbag award.) They definitely over-rated the huge importance they thought they would have in forming the children they taught. Windbags of the day saw revolutionary strides in such approaches as teaching children to read with a contrived phonetic alphabet, which would give them unprecedented confidence and 'self esteem.' (The result, when such methods actually were tried in schools, was that kids had to learn to read twice - first in the make believe alphabet and then in English - and that they'd never, ever learn to spell.)

The general windbags all seemed to be quoting from Siddhartha, or from the dreadful but highly 'revolutionary' Your Erroneous Zones. The theory behind the latter was that guilt and worry were 'useless emotions' of which one must be free - it struck no one at the time that those who are completely free of guilt and worry are sociopaths. There also was the bullying 'assertiveness training,' which boiled down to "I'll get what I want at any cost - I'll treat everyone in a bullying fashion - and, if I throw you off a cliff, you chose to feel broken." The peace and love generation indeed did tend to see it as huge progress to become utter bastards.

Those interested in theology all seemed to be quoting Teilhard de Chardin. (I indeed loved theology, but was too afraid of looking stupid to admit, then, that I didn't understand Teilhard in the least. I still don't.) It was an era I found exciting because of my passion for liturgy (this was a time of what I really thought would be wonderful liturgical reform... I must have been drinking perfume...) The windbags who complained most about liturgy were sad that the Church had 'sacramentalised, not evangelised.' Tortoise that I am, I was slow to fully grasp that those who see worship and sacraments as opposed to spreading the gospel are not precisely those who should be involved in liturgy...

The history windbags had read a revisionist volume and now knew that every historian for five centuries had been dead wrong. Music windbags had discovered that some obscure composer, long forgotten, had really written the works attributed to some famous one - and would miss no opportunity to work in a reference to "Smith's Moonlight Sonata."

Those who were very 'progressive' about religion wanted to get back to 'the beginnings.' Now, that is not such a bad idea in itself, but this seemed to entail not only huge (and often weird) speculation about 'the beginnings', if not downright disregard for the history, but to speak endlessly of progress while requiring that (if something happened 7 centuries ago) one ignore any developments in the particular area since.

Of course, progress was popular in other windbag varieties. I love John Henry Newman, and allow for his being as infected with 19th century optimism (which it took two wars to cure) as I am with 20th century cynicism. But I was bored to death with hearing "to become perfect is to have changed often," as if that canonised any change for the sake of change. Newman made an excellent point - but even then I was tempted to remind the others that Hitler and Stalin started out in baptismal innocence and changed often...

I must get back to the Amazon site, and see if I can thank the author of that Listmania collection for the best laugh I've had since the mercury dropped below freezing. Even with all these 1970s reminiscences, I'll refrain (now that we seem to be in some new Ice Age and salt is getting scarce...) from saying anything such as 'stay cool.'