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Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Rich White Kids
Is college anything but a way to legitimize oligarchy and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by calling it meritocracy? Seriously?
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9 comments:
icyabl, i feel this post and the comments you left on frank's are related. what i find interesting about our world class institution is not the prevalence of rich white kids, meritocracy, or disenfranchised sexuality, but a wild mix of all three. first, a tiered education system is necessary, with the sole argument that someone who doesnt have the grades to attend a top-drawer university or college probably wouldnt get an education worth three beans to prepare them for life here, the kids with the grades and smarts have enough problems doing it themselves. even though that may seem an elitist and closed minded view, its probably true. next, we look at the relationship between affluence and success, as its usually easier to succeed in that situation because there are more advantages. thirdly, while rez life places us in close proximity with like minded people (school and dormitory choices, it invariably leads to the chance to have any kind of intimate experience with them, romantic or not. this is also borne of the like mindedness. point is, there are plenty of people like everyone at this university, they worked to get here and will enjoy it as they will, since their arrows hit the same dot in the path of their lives. often, they are rich and white, and they would rather sleep with other rich white kids. so they do. and then there are others who want to fall in love with more rich white kids, and look at the world from their gilded platforms. it's another type of meritocracy for sure. the identifiably attractive people are essentially rewarded with other like minded people for whatever purposes their like minds have settled upon.
i'm to preach.
I'm actually kind of into asians
I agree with your first and second points immediately; certainly the differentiation between gots and ain't gots comes out before you can or can't afford tuition. The third idea is interesting.
Regarding my comment on Frank's porn idea: I don't begrudge anybody their enjoyment; I hope no one felt judged there. I'm a big believer in the Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges, Dana Plato, and Conrad Bain school of moral philosophy (i.e. Diff'rent Strokes). But what about this meritocracy of romance argument? Two elites--let's say the most attractive according to your argument--marry and progenize (not a word), creating 1.6 new beautiful baby bourgeois to carry on the cycle. My question is: do we have an obligation to use our privilege to improve the lives of the less privileged? How far does that obligation extend?
If you believe in karmic reincarnation, then we're rich because of good deeds in past lives and there's no debt to pay. But if you don't....
The only solution is to voluntarily regress into a primitive state of civilization, where the "elite" will be not those who are on the upward end of the inevitably uneven distribution of wealth in a capitalist society, but poor people who have had to eat squirrels all their life to survive. In the words of Tyler Durden, "Picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth hole of a forgotten golf course. You'll hunt elk around the ruins of the Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle."
As well, who says that elitists have it better off anyways? In the words of Lupe Fiasco, "The struggle-another sign that God loves you, cuz on the low, being poor, makes you humble. Keep their names in my rhymes, to try and keep em out of trouble, cuz being poor also teach you how to hustle."
One of my teachers once said that, to a great extent, the role of education is to flex your mind, and practice thought. Vocational school teaches you trade, and apart from plumbers, most tradesmen will end up less well of than the academics whose major skill is not to "fix" anything but rather to "think" about things and attempt to explain and order our reality. Which one is more useful? Are academics out of touch with the world as most people know it?
Yo, cheers to plumbing.
Interesting ideas. Frank and shaky are on to the same idea here--what's so good about being educated and rich?
In feudal Japan, the merchant class was the lowest of the still-human strata of society because Confucian ideology is essentially agrarian and holds that merchants are parasites, profiting off others' production. A kind of proto-labour theory of value, if you like. But the warrior-literati class (samurai), whose members contributed little to society except for token bureaucratic function and a bunch of pointless haiku, were revered. Does the ivory tower implicate us as a similar drain, of more use plumbing? Or is there a way to make all this so-called education work for the people around us as well as ourselves?
Ultimately, it all comes down to values by which we judge happiness. In Japanese society which ICGYABL mentioned, it seems that those most valued are those who protect the society and provide a model for hard work and devotion, motivated not by money but by mental strength. The merchants, on the other hand, are weakened by their desire for money and perhaps will forsake morals for profit. On a long enough scale, not just in feudal Japan but also now, those who have a strong will and are not swayed by like or dislike do come out on top.
A quite relevant quote from the late El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, AKA Malcolm X, on the subject of his learning to read and write in prison:
As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students...prison enabled me to study far more intensively than if my life had gone differently and I had attended some college...Where else but in prison could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day?
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