Outside one of our soccer stadiums there are very helpful and clear signs indicating where team buses should go and also for parking for VIPs; in fact, interestingly, there are also now signs for VVIPs.
So, being a Very Important Person is not enough of a distinctiveness, marking people out as being superior and thus more deserving; now we have to add that extra special category of a Very, Very Important Person!
If we were to voice it (rather than write it) we would emphasise strongly the first ‘Very’ then stress even more forcibly the second ‘Very’. Make way, everybody; watch out, everybody – here comes a superstar, a god, someone far, far (repetition here will also help us to understand the importance of this) greater than any of us mere mortals.
Those people who love to ask us “Do you know who I am?” want us to respond with “You’re a VIP”.
It might be noted initially, though, that in the UK, the King awards different titles to deserving people, be it a knighthood, an OBE, CBE, MBE and the like but there is no award for a VIP.
It is a self-awarded title. Such people obviously believe they deserve it, for whatever reason.
They insist on others being reminded of it, whenever possible. We need to ask though: who has told these people that they can award themselves such an epithet? How come they believe they are VIPs?
The answer is very simple. Schools have! Really? Surely not? Schools do not have special Assemblies where they teach pupils that they must ensure that at every possible opportunity they remind all those around them that they are very important.
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No, of course not. However, we may well find that schools do in effect do that for if they continually declare proudly and loudly how great the school is, in achieving excellent results in academics and sport, then they are inviting their members to take on the mantle of seeing themselves as being very important.
That, though, is the least of the ways that schools may be teaching unthinking pupils to believe that they are VIP.
At Speech Days and school plays and other special school functions, they allocate seating for VIPs, usually right at the front, in what are considered to be the best seats.
But why are the best seats the ones at the front? Is it so they can be seen to be important people? Why do they have to sit in special seats? What is more, surely the pupils are the VIPs at any such school function?
It is their day yet we show that others are more important than them. Are parents of said children not very important people as well?
They have supported the school throughout the year yet in come other people to the best seats who have done little for the school. Really?
Schools develop the concept of VIP in a number of other ways that on the surface may appear harmless and even positive.
The award of Colours and the opportunity to wear badges on their blazer (actually making them look like Christmas trees), and even having different coloured blazers, marks them out as being superior (because less people have them).
When we add to that the privileges that are afforded to them, simply because they are talented in one specific area, then they are led to believe that they are more important than others.
The concept of seniority that remains prevalent in our schools also only succeeds in reinforcing the idea of Prefects being VIPs.
Pupils must move aside to let the seniors pass on the pathway, must greet them with certain in-house titles, must let them go first in any queue – welcome, VIP!
The leadership system, limited to smaller numbers, also potentially leans towards giving the idea of VIPs.
The result is that because we received certain privileges at school (or because we went to a certain school), we think that we can demand equivalent privileges outside of school.
If we say it loudly enough, convincingly enough, strongly enough, then mere people will recognise that they must move aside.
VIPs think they can have special parking places, arrive when they want, interrupt proceedings, jump the queues, just because they consider themselves to be VIPs, reminding others.
It is not the lady only that “doth protest too much, methinks”; VIPs do, big-time.
Let us be clear - there are no VIP; everybody is important. It is time to say RIP to the idea of VIP.
There will be no rest while people think themselves better than others; such people are simply Vain In Passing.
