For sure, anybody who looks at a blowsnail and finds rhapturous beauty in it keeps the ball rolling by posting pictures of it, educates people, maybe hustles the maker of it up a little business, and spreads joy in the world. All good things. I don't think anyone's "anti" that.
The title of the thread, though, is pipe elitism. That's a mindset. Whole diff'rent story.
Anybody old enough can remember when (same plot, different decade) it was Dunhills. And since there had to be a resistence movement to oppose the establishment, Charatans. Ford or Chevy --which side are you on ? You "are" (as the thinking went) (if you can even call it "thinking") what you smoked (in public). (Petersons seem to have identified you as a hippie. So declasse it was almost, but not quite, cool. You needed a set of functional stones to show up at the B&M on Saturday with one -- it being understood that you were kind of saluting establishment values with one finger).
Just because this is puerile (even silly) when it's considered in isolation doesn't mean it ever went away. People being people, the Law of the Conservation of Matter, Energy and Primate Hardwiring was not to be repealed by mere reason. Reason doesn't phase stuff like this. But it does develop coping skills.
Confession being good for the soul (even if a political blunder), I still lust after the good stuff at 60 as I did at 25. Only where a young bull would have rushed across the field to nail a cow in heat, the old bull takes his time, grazing as he goes. No sense getting carried away. Even though this end result is the point of the exercise in the first place.
Intending no offence (a preamble so utterly ineffectual it's comical -- offence will always be taken), it is interesting (a good, value-neutral term) to watch the debut of famous artisan A's new design. Followed, often in time for the next big show, by famous artisan B's, C's and D's takes on it. And thus a new idea establishes itself. Always from the top down. Edward VII once rolled his trouser bottoms up walking across a muddy lawn and forgot to un-roll them afterward. Thus trouser cuffs appeared in the world. Fashions in anything do not come from (hoping that no pipmakers live there to take umbrige at this) North Adams, Massachusitts or East Saint Louis.
Might one not unreasonably suspect that, when famous artisan A's blowsnail changes hands at $5,000, pretty famous artisan B's at $3,500, worthy artisan C's at $1,250, and hot up-and-comer D's at $375, with not all that much to distinguish them in terms of lines, material, craftsmanship or finish, we might have something going on that could be uncharitably construed as evidence of the dreaded "elitism" in disguise ? Have we met the enemy and he is us ?
Well, ask whether we still have heirarchies. And if we don't, when did we stop ? And why didn't somebody tell me about it ?
Years ago (back when people still read anything), you knew instantly who someone "was" by her coffee table. She announced her affiliation with this cast of mind or that one by her choice of magazines. Newsweek, Time, Rolling Stone, Ramparts and the rest of them were identity statements. You knew going in that your Guns & Ammo was probably going to clash with her New Republic. If you could imagine a joint coffee table working, the rest was pretty easy. Barron's told you what you were in for if you "went there." As did Mother Jones and The Watchtower.
Now take it from pulps on a coffee table to pipes in the "A" rack on said (imaginary) table with pipesmoking company coming. Or on a image hosting site entitled "My Collection." The essential difference would be . . . (?)
If you "are" what you eat, drive, wear and copulate with, then maybe it's disingenuous to dissemble about pipes ? (Hi. My name's Yak and I'm an elitist").
Yeah -- but it's ART ! (?)
When Picasso started fixating on blue, the art world did not enter a "blue period." Only Picasso did. Even Impressionism was a general idea with as many individual "takes" on it as there were artists involved in it. Nobody mistakes a Renoir for a Seurat. Nobody could.
Artistic ? We be cool, bro. "Art" (capital"A") ? We have a problem.
Can we just come clean here ?
Everybody alive divides the population of the world -- whether overtly or covertly -- into "the better sort of people" and "them." And the more pressure is exerted by Big Brother to deny this, the more (like elitism) it just goes underground and intensifies. For, as Richard Swartzbaugh pointed out (in The Mediator), "Every time two men meet on an instinctual level, a tiny but significant conspiracy is hatched." (It wouldn't BE a conspiracy in the first place if articulating it weren't persecuted).
"The better sort" (I have established this beyond question by years of research) are, with truly remarkable consistency, people like the one making the evaluation.
So skipping the "flavor of the week" observation, the "more expensive means better" one, the Mercedes Syndrome, the "embracing diversity" farce and the rest of it, what IS "the Good stuff" ?
Bwaaa Haaa Haaa ! I'm never going to tell you ! You know why ?
A diner in Kalamazoo
Found a big, hairy fly in his stew.
Said the waiter, "Don't shout
and wave it about,
Or the rest will be wanting one too."
Being an eBay shopper (a very occasional one), I don't need a horde of crazed suggestibles out-bidding me for something I've tipped them off about in the first place. Vee get too soon oldt und too late schmardt.
:face:
ELITIST
NOT smoking a new Flying Esquimo Foot
