11:23 Dec 29, 2008 

As the former buzzword has lost some currency and sounds slightly passé, its use now gives an impression of mild irony.

00:38 Dec 29, 2008 

Actually, etymology shows that the use of "highbrow" meaning intellectual dates from the middle of the 18th century, since in tihe science of phrenology people with high eyebrows were considered to be intectual or erudite.


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In the 'science' of phrenology which was very popular in the mid to late 1800's, it was believed that the bumps and ridges on someone's skull could be 'read' or interpreted to learn about that person's psychological aptitudes and tendencies. Having a high eyebrow line was supposed to indicate great intellectual capacity, and vice versa.

21:47 Dec 28, 2008 

I'm an highbrow
To a great extent, of course, it is just a matter of taste. I am a highbrow for the same reason as I am an eater of strawberries. I enjoy the eating of strawberries and I enjoy the process and experiences, which are commonly qualified by the name of highbrow. Conversely, I am not a lowbrow, because I do not enjoy lowbrow process and experiences. Thus I derive a great deal less pleasure from dance music and thrillers than from the music, let us say, of Beethoven or the novels, for example, of Dostoyevsky; and the sex appeal of the girls on the covers of magazine seems to me less thrilling than the more complicated appeal to a great variety of feelings made by Rubens, an El Greco, a Constable, a Seurat. Again, I find the watching of a horse race or football matches less agreeable as an occupation than the acquisition and coordination of knowledge. Reading seems to me more entertaining than bridge or crossword puzzle. And the slaughtering of animals for fun is a pastime that leaves me either cold with disgust or hot with indignation. There is no disputing, says the proverb, about taste-though, in fact human beings spend at least half their leisure doing nothing else- and if highbrowism and lowbrowism were exclusively (as it is certain that they are in great part) matters of individual taste, there would be no more to say about them than what I have said in the preceding lines. But more than mere taste is at stake; and, realizing this, the supporters of either party have rationalized their preferences in terms of arguments that involve an appeal to more objective standards than those of simple personal preferences. Thus lowbrows are never weary of condemning highbrows for their "inhumanity", nor of admiring themselves for being so admirable "human". At the same time, they argue that they must be in the tight because they are so much more numerous than the highbrows. To the attacks of lowbrows (attacks which have grown increasingly vocal and violent in the course of the last few years), the highbrows generally reply in a tone of patronizing contempt. They start, like the Pharisee in the parable, by thanking God that they are not as other men are, and proceed to paint a picture of those men, hardly more flattering than that which swift painted of Yahoos. Then, explicitly or implicitly, they associate their highbrowism with virtue, and speak of their own learned refinement as good and of their adversaries' ignorance and crudity as bad. Each party's arguments seem to me equally futile and each party's emotional attitude equally deplorable. Thus the lowbrows appeal to numbers cuts no ice at all. In 1600 the earth was not the center of the universe because the majority then supposed it was; nor, because she had more readers, was Ella Wheeler Wilcox a better poet than Father Hopkins. As for lowbrows' claim to be specially "human", I for one have never been able to understand why it should be "inhuman" to use the faculties that distinguish us from pigs and geese, and "human" to use those which we share the lower animals. The highbrows reverse the numerical argument and imply that, because they are so few, they must therefore be right. But where they chiefly offend is in their pharisaical self-congratulation and contempt for others. In the past, the highbrows were alone in expressing a feeling of superiority; the lowbrows humbly accepted the position assigned to them. Recently, however, there has been a change, and lowbrows adopt towards highbrows exactly the same attitude as highbrows have always adopted towards them. Each highbrow did and does congratulate himself on being unique in his unlikeness to other men; and conversely each lowbrow now congratulates himself on being in some mystical way unique in his likeness - on being, so to say, outstandingly average and extraordinarily ordinary. The snarling of their respective egotisms add yet another discordant note to the contemporary babel. In point of fact, the question of rightness or wrongness simply does not enter into the dispute. The difference between highbrows and lowbrows is essentially quantitative, not qualitative. In certain respects (though not, perhaps, in others) the life of the highbrow is fuller than of the lowbrow. He is interested in a greater number and a greater variety of things; and his knowledge enables him rationally to coordinate more facts of experience than the lowbrow can do. The lowbrow lives in a world where events are isolated and unconnected; the highbrow, in one where knowledge has fused these isolated happenings into what is at least a partially comprehensible whole. In a certain sense, even the works of art admired by highbrows are quantitatively more considerable than the works admired by lowbrows. A Dostoyevsky novel contains, explicitly or by implication, all that a thriller contains, plus a great deal more. The emotionalism which makes popular music popular is there in the best music, but it is transformed, refined and given a general significance by it's association with other things. The works of art appreciated by highbrows are in general qualitatively superior to those appreciated by lowbrows; and the effort to comprehend qualitatively superior work leads to an enrichment, a filling out of experience. But even of these works were not qualitatively superior, they would still contribute to a fullness of experience by quantitatively more substantial and extensive. Now the fuller life is not, as such, good; nor, as such, is the emptier life bad. Any kind of life is only the raw material out of which individuals can make goodness or badness. Whether the relatively full life of highbrows is a more suitable material out of which to manufacture goodness than the relatively empty life of lowbrows, I do not know; but I think that, under whole, it maybe. That its content, judged by aesthetic and scientific standards, is intrinsically richer and more significant than the content of the typical lowbrow life, seems to me to be unquestionable. No less obvious is the fact that there are great numbers of people so constituted or so brought up that they cannot get so much pleasure out of processes and experiences which result in a rich, significant life, as they can get out of processes and experiences resulting in a poorer life less full of meaning. We are back again where we started, among the taste and capacities of individual.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)