Even in Corinth itself, even in the highest families... But there is also such a thing as vulgar opposition to vulgarity, which is worse... it speaks folly, blames impertinently, is a disciple of ignorance, a patron of folly, and past master of scandal... For all folly is vulgarity, and the vulgar consist of fools.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Vulgarity here means folly, not low birth, and the point is that it appears at every level: in the highest families, the most senior offices, the most credentialed rooms. Status is no proof against it, so do not assume the powerful are wise or the polished are sound. The subtler warning is about a second kind, the vulgar opposition to vulgarity, the person who postures as above the common folly while committing a worse version of it: sneering, blaming impertinently, trading in scandal, all performed as if it were discernment. Recognise both. The first keeps you from over-trusting rank. The second is the trap of thinking your own contempt for fools proves you are not one.
Practice
- Judge soundness by evidence, not by rank or polish; folly wears expensive clothes as easily as cheap ones (maxim 186 sees the fault under the brocade).
- Watch for the second kind in yourself: the sneering, scandal-trading superiority that poses as taste is the worse vulgarity (maxim 201 keeps you suspecting your own folly).
- Learn to recognise folly precisely in order to avoid it, in high places and low, without either deferring to it or performing contempt for it.
Use this when
- Use this to keep judgment independent of status; the senior room is not automatically the wise one.
- Use it as self-examination; the contempt-for-fools posture is a common and comfortable form of the folly it claims to be above.
Ignore this when
- Don't let it become a licence to disdain everyone; seeing folly clearly is not the same as holding all people in contempt (maxim 195 still appreciates).
- Don't confuse genuine discernment with the performed kind; the difference is whether you act on judgment or merely broadcast disdain.
A picture of it
Newly promoted, an executive assumes the boardroom is where the wisdom lives and is startled to find the same petty folly there as anywhere else, just better dressed: the ego decisions, the scandal traded over dinner, the fashionable opinion mistaken for thought. Worse, he notices a senior figure who makes a whole persona of being above it all, sneering at the "sheep," which turns out to be its own louder vulgarity. The lesson lands twice: rank guarantees no wisdom, and the loudest despiser of fools is often the one most worth watching.
Folly sits in every room, including the grand ones. And the person sneering hardest at fools is often the one to watch.