Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Sanctimonious superiority is easy to muster, and provides one the opportunity to bask in the glory of moral indignation, but it's primarily practiced by fools, because anyone with the least bit of self-awareness would recognize the risk they're taking with irony, if not outright hypocrisy, when they feel morally or intellectually superior to others. Sanctimonitude comes from believing everyone has the same value system you do, that your ideas & concepts are universal, and if other people don't share in your delusions then they are simply stupid, greedy or ignorant of the true facts. Sanctimodes think they are the arbitrators of what is positive & good.

Because the feeling of sanctimonious superiority gives immediate self-pleasure, it's a kind of mental masturbation, and many people will perform it over-n-over in their daily lives, as much a vice as anything physical. Emerging sanctimodes learn it from those around them, so it especially festers in churches and civic organizations that people join because of a lack of understanding, commitment & harmony in their own life. The School-of-Hard-Knocks seems to be an effective counterbalance to sanctimonious behavior but you have to have the courage to respond to the sanctimodes: confront those who act condescendingly towards you because allowing yourself to be demeaned will only embolden them. And heaven forbid, if you personally feel a sense of sanctimonious superiority welling in your own breast, practice self-control & beat that base beast back into the primeval id from which it emerged.