I give a bit more time to Janan Ganesh. His 'Citizen of Nowhere' column can have me nodding in polite agreement, observing something I have also seen but never managed to articulate or, from time to time throwing the whole page across the room in frustration at the sheer idiocy. This makes him a good columnist.
This week I came across a fourth category. The nerve striker.
Whilst huge strides in education and access to information should have left us thinking, chattering people bursting with lively talk about stimulating new ideas we have settled for being, what he calls, 'Normies'. The sort of people who display Sapiens on their bookshelves with a flourish to announce our right-on-ness. Guilty. I have other books, some a bit more niche, but it hurt.
If you haven't read Sapiens I wonder why you're so disinterested in the latest ideas.
If you have read Sapiens and disagree with the science you're too smart for me.
If you have read Sapiens, aren't clever enough to disagree with the science yet still display the book to show you've read it, you're me. And a bit of a git to boot. I live in a small house with too few bookshelves but that's no excuse. I'll put it somewhere more discrete.
He goes on to list a few characteristics of a Normie. I scored four out of seven. Gulp.
He is self-aware enough to agree that much of the time he spends in Normie conversation is for column fodder. '...I do, increasingly, resemble one of those medieval kings who execute their jesters for being insufficiently diverting.'
But he's right. I am skewered. Those of us who talk about, you know, things, should raise our game. We should be sufficiently diverting.
In case you haven't:
Sapiens
A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari
Vintage Books
2011
Available from wherever you usually get your middle class show-off books
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