(no subject)

People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people.
- Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

With that in mind, there's an Ursula K. LeGuin quote I can't find--something discussing fantasy as escapism, and noting that escape is the highest duty of any soldier trapped in an enemy prison, or words to that effect. Anyone have a reference handy?

Migod, this has been bouncing around in my head lately.

So.

On my trip into work, I got coffee.

And I was sitting with the coffee on the bus, and remembering something someone once said, about how a co-worker was carrying coffee in a paper cup and spilled a little, and how they were obviously an amateur who hadn't learned the trick of carrying coffee that we all knew[1], and he laughed.

And it struck me at the time as a really odd thing to use the term "amateur" about. I mean, yes, the word has a casual meaning. But for god's sake, who talks about *carrying a takeout cup of coffee* as if there were tricks to be learned about it, or skill involved?

(Well, said person. But who else?)

And it leads me on to thinking about the other times (largely years ago, although whether it is because I hang out with less people now or because the people years ago were collecting in groups that were more confused about defining themselves) I've seen the us/them social split used in fluffy ways, and skill or talent or insight assigned to the us. The them doesn't get it, or can't get it. It's not that they're not *interested* in what we do, it's that they're incapable of pulling it off. Because, naturally, horror fiction or hockey or paganism or /Sex in the City/ or LARPing or what-have-you is the highest and most demanding and purely aesthetically sublime aspect of creation, and a lack of interest merely indicates the uninterested party is subnormal (or, more often with marginalized interests, normal but subideal).

...god, I hope it was a transient thing.

(Mother of god. Amateur coffee carrying.)
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[1] I'm still not sure exactly what this trick is. Presumably it involves some version of the common sense outlook that one should silghtly tilt the cup so that the hole in the lid is the absolute highest point, and is thus less likely to have anything slop through when the coffee moves around because you are walking.