Like all our abstract concepts, being elite has two major distinctions. One is how you see yourself. The other is how others see you. In either case it simply means you are better than most others.
Ah, but better in what way? I believe in elitism, although my elite (of which I surely consider myself a member) is composed of intelligent, knowledgeable, good and wholesome people of any place or age. In our society, the commonly accepted elite are those with money and power. Or consumer good taste. And I am surely not one of those.
Like so many words, definitions and especially connotations change over time. Once the “elite” were people to be emulated, perhaps to fear. At least the fear remains.
In changing social times – and this is certainly one of the most chaotic social periods in history – “elite” begins to lose its value. The elite represent stability – the “upper crust.” Cream cannot rise to the top if the milk is constantly shaken.
So I hide in my internal definitions, happy in my nearly autistic self-reflective dreamland, as a member of an aristocratic elite of one gazing at the rest of the world. A way to get through life happily, if they don’t send me to the asylum with the other looneys.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 