• Do you often use the word “stupid” whilst driving, often in combination with other, shorter words?

• Are other people just basically lame, tasteless and disappointing in general?
• Were you smart as a kid, but for some reason your career never took off the way it ought to have, perhaps because of the above reason, although you’re still smarter than most people?
• Do you hang around with people who are dumber than you, or keep to yourself if none are available?
• If aliens were to land, and take over, and install you as supreme ruler, because you would be the obvious choice, would you do things differently?

If you think this is a lame quiz, then you may have a superiority complex.

As we all know, one of the most painful aspects of maturation is coming to terms with the realization that one is an asshole and a disappointment. At least it was for me.

An evolutionary psychologist might say that the Superiority Complex arose as humans evolved from your apocryphal caveman into the slicker social beings we now are, in order to spare us this painful epiphany.

Other symptoms of the Superiority Complex would include deriving deep satisfaction from finding typographical errors in the newspaper or other publications; experiencing simultaneous pain and pleasure when a television or radio announcer misuses a word; feeling a diffuse sensation of “slumming” almost anywhere one goes; a general feeling of misanthropy. One might add to this list secondary symptoms such as feeling extreme distress in the vicinity of schools one has attended, often to the point of feeling nauseous merely at the smell of cafeteria food; avoidance of one’s hometown and especially high-school reunions, often to the point of moving to a whole nother continent. Tertiary symptoms could include such behavior as habitually giving strangers nicknames spontaneously (“Monsterhead”, “Baloneyfingers”) and allergic reaction to trigger stimuli such as white socks with dark trousers, shoes and purses that don’t match, or bad haircuts; likewise various other improprieties in the subject’s area of expertise; good knowledge of trivia.

I don’t know what the proper treatment would be, but I think it would begin with a good mirror.