Are You a Snob? Join the human race!

I’m dealing with some family trauma recently when I talked it over with a friend. 

  “Cliques,” he said, "stick together and protect one another.  They easily gang up on one who is ‘different’ in some way.”

“Wow!” I said, “This fits!  In ways  that hurt”

“It’s unconscious, a culture,” my friend said, “Not intentional.”

“How to they keep it going?” I asked.

“Snobbery,” he said., “Do you know what a snob is?”

“You tell me!”

“A snob is someone who judges you by a piece of you.  The complexity of you, the whole of you is ignored.  They see only the piece. By focusing on that piece, they do not need to change anything, or rattle their comfort zone.”

Boy, I thought, does that fit all sorts of situations. I have seen it happened in most of the groups or organizations I joined or tried to join. I did not know I must have stuck out like a sore thumb.

I decided to risk another question. "Do some develop lifestyle by finding fault everywhere out there?"

“These are the cynics, who risk nothing, They use their perennial fault finding to  justify doing nothing for their community, “ said  my guru friend.

“They do not accept that we are beautifully imperfect people living in a beautifully imperfect world,” I responded.

“Paschal, you live on a different planet than most, no better ,  no worse, just different,” my friend said.

I agreed and decided that was enough food for thought,  for one day. Then I remembered a text, "Forgive us as we forgive..." And I thought. We are in trouble as humans.