Snobbery Blinds us From Seeing What's Truly Good

You've never read Proust?!

“Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first—the story of our quest for sexual love—is well known and well charted, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second—the story of our quest for love from the world—is a more secret and shameful tale.”

— Alain de Botton

It is uncomfortable to admit that we love attention: as much as we’d love to spread the virtue of humility with the sincerity of a preacher’s passion, deep down inside, there’s nothing that tastes quite like the reward of being attended to.

Because how can we not?

Up until a certain age, we were given attention by adults just by being small and cute. The adults smiled at us, waved at us, complimented our shoes, and they chimed along to whatever we were interested in. Then, suddenly, we grew up and everything became merit-based: we get a pat on the head for getting good grades, the adults only applauded when we outdid our peers at music or sports—even when we became adults ourselves, th…