The Sword and Laser discussion

Reading through the first few chapters of Ninth House I'm thinking "Did the author have a writeup on my life?" Because I felt like I knew these people. Certainly I knew the situations.

I grew up in suburban Boston so the references for me were Harvard instead of Yale. They're both bastions of privilege. If you believe teachers, it's a meritocracy with admission based on grades, test scores and extracurricular activities. What a joke. The Ivy League exists to perpetuate money.

The tanned "boy of a thousand second chances" fresh in from a tropical vacation over winter break? Knew a guy just like him. Some of the Boston Brahmins slummed in our high school between prep school and Ivy League educations. Actually, I beat him both in grades and as for test scores, a good 200 points on each section of the SAT. He was from a Brahmin (Mayflower descendant) family. Guess which one of us got in to Harvard? All in all I think I prefer the outright snobbery of the private school alums, who at least are not pretending to be anything else.

The bit about Skull & Bones engaging in insider trading...in a technical sense, perhaps the alums do that. It's more like they consider it the kind of accommodation one aristocrat offers another. A toff toff toff.

As for the Earnest Strivers who would never fit in, yep, seen that snobbery. Teachers tell you to try, the snobs know it isn't relevant. The Texas student, in for STEM who would never fit in? Yeah, the upper crusties make a fetish of "not trying" as if the game were fixed so they could never lose. Which would annoy me less if it weren't so abundantly true.

Anyway. Money begets money and the Ivy League protects it. They might let in others but don't invite them to the inner circle. Like the STEM student, you'll have the degree but not the pedigree.

Or at least, that's my experience. I ran screaming from Boston some 35 years ago and now can't spend more than 3 days there without going insane.

Anyhoo. I could go on and on (and ON and on) but will stop there. Anyone else? Outsider's view of the situation? How did you find it?

Anyone who says that the US has no class system only needs to be pointed towards the Ivy League colleges 😉

At least I live in a country that has no class 😜

Ah, the famous bit from Back to School. Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) asking Diane to dinner:

Diane : Actually, I'd like to join you, but I have class tonight.

Thornton Melon : Oh. How 'bout tomorrow night?

Diane : I have class then, too.

Thornton Melon : I'll tell you what, then. Why don't you call me some time when you...have no class?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJaz_...

One thing that strikes me about the Ivy League colleges is the way they seek to imitate/replicate the Oxbridge system in England, but they push it to the next level... I found a lot of the stuff Alex encounters very relateable but it feels heightened even compared to what I saw in my own time at Oxford.

Oxford and Cambridge are these days state-run and (at least in theory) fully meritocratic, with all candidates assessed on their own merits and not on where they went to prep school or if their daddy and grand-daddy went to the same college or not. There's no such thing as 'legacy admissions'. Of course in practice people from upper-class backgrounds who went to certain schools are much likelier to get admitted but that's a matter of tutoring and self-confidence, not official policy.

There are also various societies -- most notoriously the Bullingdon Club at Oxford where posh boys get dressed up in white tie and get blind drunk before going off to become Prime Minister, but they don't have nearly as much power and prestige as it seems the Yale Societies do, let alone their own fancy buildings. They're basically just drinking and dining clubs.

As for the cult of not trying... well yes. My own alma mater, Balliol College, Oxford, has the unofficial motto 'effortless superiority'.
Our most recent graduate to become Prime Minister was Boris Johnson. He was certainly effortless but I'll leave it up to you to decide on his superiority. This is the sort of result you get from unearned privilege, filtered through Eton, Oxford, and the Bullingdon Club.

Anyway, for a supposedly classless society, America (East Coast at least) does seem awfully keen to replicate and refine the instruments of social stratification from Olde England. We are of course hopelessly bound up in our ossified class system (just look at the coronation) although we never pretend otherwise.

America’s hypocrisy is found everywhere, and it certainly is when it comes to class. For a country that supposedly rejected the power of kings, there is definitely a significant portion of the populace that is both fascinated by royalty and strives to emulate it.

That’s why so many continue to refer to the Kennedys as “America’s royalty”, and that family continuing to skate on the “magical Camelot” of JFK and Jackie, despite what we now know about JFK and his father.

There is no doubt in my mind that JFK Jr. would have been elected President eventually if he hadn’t accidentally killed himself (and his wife and sister-in-law-law) in that plane crash. The mythic afterglow of the 1960s is still so powerful that MAGA loonies think JFK Jr. is coming back from the dead to take the reins from Trump, a truly bizarre belief given that everything Junior ever did and said indicates he’d oppose the GOP. So now we’re left with RFK Jr. and his absolute batshit crazy ideas inheriting the mantle of the Kennedy clan mystique. If he were anyone else besides Robert Kennedy’s son and John Kennedy’s nephew he would’ve been dismissed for the nutbar he is. Yet he commands media attention because of all this… plus the Boston stuff John Taloni mentioned.

Trike wrote: "plus the Boston stuff John Taloni mentioned."

Who? (g)

More later, but for now: When Ruth posted above, and now Trike on the same concept: I was reminded of Brin's bit in the Uplift books. Second one IIRC. A human remarked on how the servitude lengths were extreme and, to his/her (can't recall) point of view, unconscionable. So the human asked, have the client races ever tried to rebel? Answer: Yes, six times (or eight, memory is a bit dim) and succeeded twice. Then the new overlords went back to the same kind of system.

Long around halfway through the book I found myself wondering why the author wrote it. What did she hope to achieve? The moneyed classes use the Ivy League as a marker and they're not going to change. If the excesses she identifies were addressed, the privileged elite would just find another way. Anyway, it occurs to me that this kinda presupposes several things. Which may be a bore to read. But I feel like it, so I'll do my best to keep individual posts short and snappy. (several posts follow)

So, my personal experience. The "boy of a thousand second chances" that I knew went into Harvard with decent but not great grades and SATs in the low 500s. I recall complaining about this to a high school colleague who said "his family contributed $10 million to build H- House, did you think he wasn't going to get in?"

What next for this guy? (And these are 40ish year old memories, gonna be a bit dim.) Long around my junior year of Boston U, a high school friend (maybe the same one) said he was "getting Cs" (at an institution that grades A to B unless you are truly screwing up) and focusing on Lacrosse. From then I next heard of him around the 10th high school reunion. He was working as a stockbroker and living with the daughter of a well known Mass politician, who I also knew from High School. So his family arranged for his entrance to the Iviest of colleges, shepherded him through despite atrocious grades, and then used the family influence to get him a high paying job. From there he need only wash the money of his connections through setup situations to keep the money flowing for the next generation. And so it goes for the East Coast upper crust. These are who are in the secret societies Bardugo writes about. They will not change. Take down a secret society and they will find another way to be exclusionary. In fact it may already have happened - Skull and Bones is no longer what it was, having been in the public eye too much with both Presidents Bush having been members. (GW could be "boy of a thousand second chances" Mark II, money buying what he didn't earn. But it's not political, the Kennedies are much the same.)

So who else goes to the Ivy League? They have a history of letting in some non-privileged people. Not by the alleged merit, or they would have a lot more Asian and Jewish students. They pick for geographic diversity and some ethnic diversity. One could argue that the admissions officers are trying to even things out. I'm a cynic. Seems to me that they are letting in sufficient "others" to round out the experience of the moneyed class. Can't let them all meet only each other.

In my high school 12 people got into Harvard. 10 were children of alumni. One was a musical genius so advanced that Harvard described how he could get to a Masters in three years. The other was all state in three sports and taking AP classes in STEM. He went on what was in all but name an athletic scholarship. Hired to do a job (play football) and granted the degree for it. But not the pedigree. While "boy of a thousand second chances" went on to "earn" millions a year moving around the money of his family's connections, the athletic kid got a job with a bank and had to earn a living. It was a good living. But not commensurate with that the upper classes were reserving for themselves.

Others I knew who went wound up in business or administration related to Harvard. So you could go, and get the degree. But without the pedigree, it was worth a whole lot less. Plus, to have the benefit of the connections you had to play the game. And the game is essentially snuffling your nose up the behind of the upper class for the crumbs they will drop. You have to validate the "rightness" of the system.

So by writing Ninth House, Bardugo criticizes the system. The system that also provides the educational and creature comforts she wants. Those are provided by the moneyed class, not for education in and of itself but so they can feel sophisticated and play the game. What will criticizing them accomplish? Taking a different tack, The Social Network showed a Harvard that was competitive and cutthroat - but stood up for competition.

I'm actually still fairly puzzled how this book made its way through a New York publishing establishment heavily influenced by the Ivy League and old money.

Which makes me wonder, why bother to even attempt reform? Who would actually want to join the east coast upper class? It's a way of life dedicated to exclusion of all but its own members. A cold way of life, where you must signal all day every day your membership. Clothes, manners, hobbies, all have to match a standard. They wind up viewing others not in their class as less than fully human. It's like an Egregore that lives in the Northeast, a vast distributed mind that offers an easy life to the bodies it inhabits- but only if you live exactly as it demands.

By writing the book Bardugo criticizes the very system that gave her a lift. It's a betrayal of the "deal" - if you agree that there is a deal. Perhaps she didn't. Certainly the system she describes is crying out for reform, for exposure.

Except...is that the reason for the book? Because, as I thought about it, no it isn't.

Writers will sometimes flat out tell you their inspiration. I was amused at the end of the Twilight books where Meyer describes the Vampire night life. They don't sleep, so what to do? Apparently have rampant sex all night long. It's an obvious statement of how Meyer's subconscious speaks to her in dreams, and then she writes during the day. Why the Werewolf could never actually compete. He represents the outer world and she's dedicated to the inner life.

And as for Bardugo, she's equally clear. Other adepts struggle to see the Grays even with dangerous potions. She seems them, in color, all the time. Even more so, she can hear them speak.

Ever read Gaiman's "Dream of a City" in Sandman? Because when I did I thought "hoo boy, that's Boston." A city steeped in its own history, where the ghosts practically shout their story. (I tend to think there is something to the concept in Rivers of London that stone and wood retain psychic impressions. Not to the extent the fiction takes it, but somewhat.) And when I moved to LA, one of my first thoughts was "this place has no ghosts."

So Bardugo comes from the West coast to the historic city of New Haven, where the city promptly starts talking to her. As a creative she felt it more - probably much more - than others. They asked that she tell their story. And she did so.

I have complex feelings about institutions that mainly exist to maintain power and privilege. They exist in all societies (Australia has a very big problem with private schools) and allow a very lucky few poor people to make the jump to become part of the elite. Thereby giving the illusion of a meritocracy.

The inclusion of the few seems to serve two purposes. One, it gives protective coloration so that the peasants do not burn the place to the ground. Two, the talentless rich need a professional class to keep them rich and entertained.

^ Yeah, seen it multiple times. Scalzi captured the type pretty well in Kaiju Preservation Society with the business "entrepreneur" from the connected family. And taking a bit of a leap, the Slitheen in the 9th Doctor. Specifically the episode where he confronts a Slitheen who has just let one human live after killing many more, saying that might salve their conscience but they're still killers.

It’s interesting to me how people who know these sorts of things best rate these books more harshly. I saw that with a review of The Poppy War, where a reader familiar with Chinese culture just eviscerated it.

I gave both of these (and the similar Legendborn) 2 stars, mostly because I just didn’t buy into them.

I saw this to some extent in college as well. I went to the Naval Academy and while there was definitely some classism in getting an appointment to attend, it was pure meritocracy once you were enrolled. (We didn't have any secret societies, but we did have secret steam pipe tunnels to sneak into town and some of the academic buildings 😉.) However, I did date a girl from Stanford and she echoed all your sentiments about the classism and snobbery there, as it is sort of a West Coast Ivy League school. Hard to get in but easy to stay.