Sundog Rising: culture/pretension

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Culture/Pretension

On a recent visit to the Chapters bookstore at Polo Park in Winnipeg on what turned out to be the hottest day of the summer I found myself on arrival in serious need of rehydration before starting to shop.

So I purchased myself a Shaken Iced Tea Lemonade and piece of Very Berry Coffee Cake (without actually enunciating the words “shaken” or “very” myself), took a seat against the wall, and soaked up the ambience while I waited for the over half-a-cup of ice cubes I had paid an exorbitant fee for to melt. Observing the look of the other customers and noting the tenor of the conversations, I found myself pondering this question:

Are all cultures inherently pretentious? Or is it just Starbucks?

Look at them: the short, loud annoying indecisive woman faced with hundreds of decisions to make before ordering flitting madly about occupying the personal space of at least four people; the fat middle-aged man carrying an Entertainment magazine snidely excited because Larry David’s going on Broadway; the fey Asian guy lisping articulately and rapidly about grave personal drama hinging on the apparently inconsequential; the tall model-like woman somehow managing to languidly affect wearing bluejeans; the ponytailed skinny student nervously doing homework on a laptop; the two cool guys passing the time leaning back loudly enunciating the final word on whatever subject may happen to arise; a strange, nattily dressed couple in their thirties engaged in an unutterably inconsequential impassioned conversation concerning Warren Beatty (?); the connected dude alternating between his I-Pad, triple very shaken whatever, and his I-Phone, sometimes on all three at once; and one guy in a black heavy metal tee shirt with his baseball cap on backwards communing with his knapsack sitting facing him in the opposite chair.

The thing is, everyone except the guy in the metal tee and the girl with the ponytop and laptail manage to exude an unutterably insincere smugness and sense of “this is my place, see me in it.” A conceit that comes across as “well, it’s such a bore, but one must be a presence.” Except I don’t think anyone is paying any attention to anyone else except me.

God knows what the knapsack thinks.

So I start pondering further — is pretentiousness mostly a morbid affliction of Western Society coffee depots, or is it something any society is bound to develop regardless of their cultural background? Or sources of caffeine?

I see it coming out of the coffee shop naturally as an extension of Jean Baudrillard’s thinking in The System of Objects. Give people unnecessary extensive selection of material goods, and they will come to associate their meaningless personal choices as a defining function of their being. This is my particular choice of exotic caffeine blend, so I am never quite so much myself as when I am sitting being witnessed sipping it. This might not apply to everyone, but a Starbucks would certainly draw the types who do subscribe to such facile thinking like moths to a flame.

Trying to research the subject, I find there is surprisingly little written on the subject of pretension, given how prevalent it is in our society anyway. The only information that I can find concerning pretension in other cultures and societies is that people in one culture usually regard every other culture as being pretentious.

The general definition of being pretentious seems to be acting as if you’re someone you’re not.

But I think one source I found hit the matter more accurately on the head:

“Pretentious people overstate their style, value and opinions. They believe that anything below them should be pitied and ridiculed. Their opinion is gospel and they give out that opinion a lot. The pretentious accomplish nothing but comment on everything around them. Their way is always better. They drain the liquid plasma out of everyone's circulatory system, one unwelcomed fact and opinion after another.”

Sort of like bloggers …

“Self importance is the key here. Pretentious people are not important. Important people don't have time to tell others how amazing they are before having an actual conversation.”

Why do people act this way? Again there is no consensus, but the general opinion seems to be: a.) pretentious people have very little self esteem and need to build themselves up in what they perceive to be the eyes of the world; b.) people are bored and are trying to add some excitement to their lives (which is ironic, since it’s also generally accepted that pretentious people are just about the most boring people you’ll ever meet); and c.) that people are trying to hide from reality. “Our fingers must be in our ears all the time - lalala, I can't hear you - just to keep out the plain sound of the real world.” (Francis Spufford)