Boarding schools warp our political class – I know because I went to one | George Monbiot
Boarding schools warp our political class – I know because I went to one | George Monbiot
See this is what I’m getting at when I say I wish I spent my childhood without family in a punishing and unloving environment, that it would have made me stronger and better at manipulating the world. That shit is a real option and it works. (And speaking of ways the U.K. cultivated elite solidarity…)
I was cut off from everything I knew and loved. Most importantly, I cut myself off from my feelings. When expressions of emotion are dangerous, and when you are constantly told that this terrible thing is being done for your own good, you quickly learn to hide your true feelings, even from yourself. In other words, you learn the deepest form of dishonesty. This duplicity becomes a habit of mind: if every day you lie to yourself, lying to other people becomes second nature.
You develop a shell, a character whose purpose is to project an appearance of confidence and strength, while inside all is fear and flight and anger. The shell may take the form of steely reserve, expansive charm, bumbling eccentricity, or a combination of all three.
ah, so boarding schools prepare you well for adult life?
holy shit why do you wannabe defectbots see “being traumatized into becoming horrifyingly evil” as a good thing, wtf is wrong with you
btw: a good part of why i’m Like This (i.e. dysfunctional irresponsible teenager-for-life hedonist) is directly because of that very type of abuse in that specific sort of environment
so, fyi, if you’re shit at larping a repressed/emotionally-stunted character who knows no joy nor sorrow and ascribe it to a lack of horrific abuse? it would have broken you, not made you Stronk™. The ones who get to manipulate the world are the ones you see through survivorship bias. Those who broke? They’re NEETs. Or other sorts of losers.
People who are Actually Strong do not need the horrific abuse. It’s not a training, it’s a filter.
I think there’s something to the bolded. Though a filtering can be a training, if you observe those that passed and remodel yourself after them.
In truth I think everyone should get to have a childhood like that. Maybe my initially volunteering only myself and not inflicting this suffering on others was the fault of being raised and acculturated by a loving softmom and not properly like this, tho? You think Boris Johnson worries about inflicting suffering?
But okay let’s read it backwards maybe if I’ve got the desire for it I could’ve passed the filter and the issue’s everyone else getting to go on unfiltered.
There was a classic post from the golden age of blogging, 2003, wondering what the deal was with “Donner Party Conservatism”, the valorization of suffering as path to virtue and maybe that’s it, filtering for and not instilling.
After all isn’t that the new rightist issue in the modern culture war, that people corruptible by touchy-feeliness have gotten too deep into vital structures and started to corrupt them, that the internet has gotten worse since we knew to regularly scourge it (/ourselves) with gore and screamers and threats?