Being Unimpressed.

I’ve been seeing an awful lot of big prestige cars around the town lately – big new Bentleys, Mercs, Lexuses and the rest – and today I took to musing on the reason why I instinctively look on the owners of such vehicles with derision.

The first and most obvious suspicion is that I’m afflicted with a case of inverted snobbery, and that isn’t a good thing with which to be afflicted. But no; inverted snobbery stems from inner feelings of inferiority, deprivation and envy, and I don’t feel any of those things. I know full well that if I were to become a millionaire tomorrow, I wouldn’t dream of buying a big prestige car. So what is it?

Well, I came to the conclusion that it stems from an audit trail of suspicions. I suspect that most people who buy such cars do so for the sake of show – to declare their perception of superior status to the world. And that leads to the further suspicion that it stems from naked ego, and I can’t help suspecting that naked ego is a bi-product of the Id-obsessed mind which is blind to the finer and deeper impulses of life. And the natural inclination is to further suspect that such people have strong psychopathic tendencies. I dislike psychopaths, as most of us do.

This is a generalisation, of course; I do realise that at best there will always be exceptions to the general principle, and at worst I might be completely wrong. And so I must try to be at least more polite to the owners of big prestige cars than I am to men dressed in smart hunting gear who ride down the lane on their admittedly splendid steeds, out for a day of fun riding down a fox and torturing it to death. When they say ‘good morning’ to me I frown back and decline to return the greeting. I suppose that’s a fault of mine. Must try harder.