In 1821, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," then presumably coughed a little and raised his eyebrows, looking around with a smile.
I'm not sure that poets have the clout anymore to make statements like that. But that's just fine -- there are plenty of other vocations in which the practitioners have a self-regard that would make Caligula seem like a shy, modest type.
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| "Little ol' me? I'm just a kindly emperor, trying to help the people." |
Journalists seem to have an enormous self-regard. Maybe they always did, feeling that with the power of their words they were able to assume an authority that required neither education nor invention, just the vote of the public when it purchased the newspaper. Since Watergate, their self-regard as truthtellers in a corrupt world has inflated as respect for the profession and evidence of its independence has cratered. Reporters on the whole seem to be happy lapdogs for the people they like, covering up things here and attacking on command there, whose mistrust by the public grows daily. (Was anyone surprised when the Newseum closed?) And yet if you read a book by a reporter on reporting, he'll tell you that he's not important, the story is, and also, ME ME ME. It's a tour de force of the author's humblebrag, with a few lectures on his Journalistic Ethics tossed in.
Saints never tell you they're saints.
Perhaps this egotism is purposeful puffery for journalists, designed to dispel the creeping fear that they really are useless loudmouths. Could be.
Teachers have really gotten out in front of their skis on this one as well. Yes, they are important for the education of our children (when they do it), and most teachers I know are great people who love what they do. But when did some of them begin to think they were more important than the children's own families? While it's true that a bad family can turn out a bad kid, one bad teacher can corrupt a whole passel of them. Ironically, a little humility goes a long way to earning respect and trust.
Sometimes I get the feeling too many of them took Plato's Republic seriously, thinking that philosophers ought to be the monarchs and children should be taken from their parents for education. They ought to remember that it might be a nice place to visit, but they wouldn't want to live there.
Money handlers as a class do not consider their large sums of money adequate recompense for their work. They also demand the respect of the public for the genius that they possess. If you were smart, you'd be rich too! seems to be the thought. They needn't worry -- rich people will always get their tuchuses polished by those who want to know their secrets. They never have to see the disdain of those who find their egoism tiresome, their methods dubious, their gospel damaging. They never have to hear the moans of those who despise how they use their cash for charitable purposes and have to live with the consequences.
Politicians are and have always been the worst of the lot, able to convince themselves of the good they are doing while stuffing their pockets and crushing the lives of citizens they are meant to serve. I'll give them this -- if people were always coming to my door and begging me for special favors, I'd begin to think less of humanity as a whole. Perhaps that's the best argument for term limits -- as a means of preventing cynicism and hatred among the ruling class.
Successful actors and other performers are perhaps the most revolting of them all. The love of the fans ought to be enough, but the appetite of the ego grows with the feeding. They must be world-changers as well and loved for it. It usually makes them pretty tools for the faddish fanatism of the day. This would be harmless, but it inevitably requires telling us little people what we ought to be doing. Yeah, we all just love that.
And what of the humble novelist, who sweats away in his little garret, chipping away at his stories like a sculptor trying to draw the angel from the coarse stone? Like moi, in other words? Do we not think that we are hot stuff, and expect to be respected for it?
Meh -- not me. As with poets, maybe there was a time when the novelist was a person of some societal rank. A million lousy novels and a million good but forgotten books since, those days are gone. Now only a pinpoint of wildly successful and wealthy authors would expect that kind of obsequiousness, and they fall into the money handlers category. The rest of us prefer love to respect. (Although a little money is nice, too.)
