Sophistication.

People who regard themselves as sophisticated should know the origin of the word. They are supposedly, after all, worldly wise. To sophisticate means to make things make less natural or innocent, which usually means by a process of refinement, like education, or to make something more complex such as through mechanisation. Having become sophisticated, of course, it's probably impossible to remember when things were simple and innocent and unrefined. The word also means to alter and make impure, as with the intention to deceive. In fact, sophistry is using specious arguments (sophism) to deceive someone.

Sophisticates know a lot but have also forgotten or never known a lot. You can easily imagine that they know what a cork screw is used for, but probably have no idea how to milk a cow, raise crops, or descale fish. With sophistication comes more division of labour. They know how to push buttons and pull levers on machines, but do not know or prefer not to know how they work and how to fix them when they do not work. Simplest solution is to replace them. There's no need to know how to do the other things: once the wine is being opened, someone else can occupy themselves with milking, farming, and fishing chores. I remember when I first went back to Jamaica in the late 1970s and saw lots of old cars on the streets, still running like new, but clearly having been patched up many times. In England, such vehicles had been consigned to scrap heaps and been replaced by newer models. As cars become more sophisticated, the average owner knows less and less what to do with it except take it to a garage to be repaired. Increasingly, the person who could try to fix a problem him- or herself is being put out to pasture. Sophistication and modernity often find themselves as willing bedfellows.

I'm generally put on my guard when someone says that so and so is not sophisticated. That means that they have not achieved a certain level of learning--this is a form of snobbery at work now--and are therefore near the bottom of the heap of acceptable people. They would thus be greeted by remarks such as "You have not read...[include any piece of literature that has been thought to be influential]? Really!" or "You must read...[include any piece of literature that has been thought to be influential]. It will change your...[life, outlook, etc]".

Sophisticates are usually bigoted, in differing degrees, remembering that a bigot is a person who is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles, or identities differing from his or her own.

Many lessons are going to be drawn from this week's momentous and historical US presidential election results. It's an interesting exercise to try to figure out if Senator Obama's victory was in fact a demonstration of sophistication or not, or a victory for a sophisticated approach. He went back to doing many simple political things: he organized an enormous grass roots/community support structure, which enabled his campaign to track and trace almost every possible voter. He understood that from acorns do mighty oaks grow (no intentional allusion to ACORN): so small financial contributions from many people can turn into an enormous total of contributions. He, of course, would be grabbed by sophisticates as one of them, not least because of his immense learning and apparent grasp of intellectual issues. But is he also a sophist? I have no reason to doubt his sincerity, but then again I do not know him personally. His policies will be interesting to follow to see if indeed he can be all that he seemed to be on the campaign trail. What I have learned is that he is no naive politician; no innocent; a man groomed in the rough and tough arena of Chicago's political affairs, and who rose through it. I will watch with interest to see what kind of sophistication President Obama will bring to his administration.