the ch!cktionary

22 Sep 2009
Comments

17 notes

“Don’t talk about the embittered masses like this either. It’s not kind. We didn’t and can’t all rise to great heights on the back of one of the last remaining pseudo-meritocracies in America; don’t begrudge us our doubts, our mutterings about whether your notoriety is entirely deserved. This isn’t about the glamour or what your mom makes or where your friends live or whether they would be douchebags to you if you weren’t in the Ivy club, it’s about your intelligence and the self-congratulatory sense of entitlement that weaves its subtle lack of sympathy for others into everything you write. It’s about the tunnel vision that will continue to narrow and plague you the more opportunities you seize, regardless of how many angry, liberal columns you write defending the downtrodden. Those of us who are upwardly-mobile are all to a certain extent guilty of this sort of self-satisfaction and the tendency to want to spend time looking at our own path up the mountain with pride and complacency. This is your life now, Lena, and the view is nice—almost enviable. Don’t feel bad, but do try to cultivate some self-awareness beyond what you displayed in this post. Be kind, be gracious, and be magnanimous if only because you, unlike many of us, can afford to be.”

— response by unshared to my previous post

Spare me the lecture on pseudo-meritocracies. I’m well aware that there’s nothing meritocratic about higher education or occupational outcomes. If you could point out examples of a “self-congratulatory sense of entitlement” and a “lack of sympathy for others”, I’d be perfectly happy to reconsider how enlightened I am. But until you do, I’m just going to find it condescending when a stranger informs me that I must be kind, gracious, and magnanimous, as if these are qualities that I’ve somehow lost by attending an Ivy League school.

Contrary to popular opinion, a Harvard degree does not automatically lead to upward mobility, self-satisfaction, and complacency. If it did, I wouldn’t know any kids who entered the Ivy League poor and exited poor and unemployed. I’m sure those kids would love to have a conversation with you about how four years of undergrad have catapulted them into the upper echelons of society. I, for one, am opting out of corporate recruiting and don’t expect an income over $30,000 next year, but I don’t resent my peers who will make nearly six figures, nor do I make assumptions about their character. Are there Harvard grads sitting around smug and happy with themselves while the embittered masses toil away? I’m sure there are, but I don’t count myself or my friends as part of that group, so pardon me for being offended when strangers indiscriminately hurl slurs at us.