Why Do People Make a Dirty Word of "Dilettante?"

The word "dilettante" may be defined as a person who has an interest in a field of knowledge or the arts as a non-professional without expectation of ever being a professional.

This seems to me an inoffensive thing in itself. Certainly there are worse ways to use one's time than such "dabbling." (Every single day the news is full of stories of people who make such worse uses.) Still, the term is strongly pejorative. Why is that the case?

One may think that this is because of the reality that in many a field the non-professional can less and less hope to make any sort of contribution, with the natural sciences an obvious example. Not only is it the case that the relevant fields have become exceedingly specialized, but--in spite of how bad fiction loves to present "scientists" and "technologists" who are obnoxiously swaggering individualists--even where the specialist is concerned they leave ever less room for even the most highly qualified individual working outside the field's Establishment, and working with the benefit of significant grant money, to accomplish anything likely to be considered worthwhile, let alone get it before the eyes of the world. (Thus is it common for a single scientific paper to have dozens of authors these days, sufficiently so that citation styles have been modified to accommodate the fact.)

However, the fact that, for example, someone taking a measure of interest in a field to which they are unlikely to be able to contribute hardly seems reason enough for the sneering tone--such that its interaction with other factors seems critical. There is, for instance, not only the way in which such work specialized, but the way that those who step outside of the "iron cage" of their specialization to take an interest in anything else are treated as if they are slacking in their real "vocation"--with the impulse to admonish people for it deriving an edge both from a realization that most people's supposed vocations are anything but, just what they have to do for a paycheck rather than anything in which they are truly engaged or with which they truly identify (perhaps more than ever these days), and of course, cheap anti-intellectualism. At the same time professionals, whose training and acculturation and privileges make them hostile to anyone getting onto their turf, very easily start acting the idiot bully toward anyone they think is doing so, with all this exacerbated by the essentially mean and elitist tenor of the times.

That intolerance of interests "outside your line," and that hostility to anyone setting foot on the professional's turf, seem likely to be what really give the utterance its sneering tone--and makes us all the poorer. The truth is that, even if one discounts the manifold ways in which even a slight interest can enrich one's life, some measure of curiosity about the larger world is probably essential for the health of any mind, all as those who would at least presume to care about imagination and the "innovation" of which we hear so much and see so little ought to think twice before dismissing any such exercise of the human faculties as "useless."

Alas, too few people think even once about anything--above all, the possessors of those low and conventional minds which are apt to use the word "dilettante" in the way discussed here.