<story><title>Eton and all the murder (2019)</title><url>https://johnhiggs.com/eton-and-all-the-murder/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DC-3</author><text>An interesting example of how the old English class system wasn&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;just&lt;/i&gt; about venal entrenched self-advantage. The upper classes of old really did feel a noblesse oblige, and were killed in the trenches at considerably higher rates in the trenches. Young men of high birth were expected to be officers, and to lead by example - a job that came with a life expectancy measured in days during the darkest hours of the first world war. One doubts if the present bearers of class privilege feel a similar sense of duty.</text></item><item><author>globalise83</author><text>On a side note, it is worth paying a visit to Eton to see the number of old boys killed serving their country in WW1 and WW2: the walls of the old building are literally lined with their names in the thousands.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yamtaddle</author><text>What gets me is religiosity in past ages.&lt;p&gt;You read about the motivations of the elite in supporting religious institutions and dedicating their children to the regular and secular clergy, and you think, well, surely that&amp;#x27;s an arrangement of convenience or mutual advantage, mainly... but no, if you look at the data it really, really wasn&amp;#x27;t. They genuinely believed the whole eternal-damnation thing and took it super-seriously and contributed to the church in ways that were &lt;i&gt;very much&lt;/i&gt; net-negative to them and their families (and that some others avoided doing to no clear disadvantage, so it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be a harm-avoidance measure, at least not in material or social terms). The &lt;i&gt;norm&lt;/i&gt;, at least for a good stretch of centuries, was for these transactions to confer less in material or political benefits than they cost (though, sure, some were political power-plays or otherwise highly beneficial).&lt;p&gt;The thinking seems so alien that it&amp;#x27;s hard to really put myself in their shoes. Even the vast majority of the modern religious, and certainly the &lt;i&gt;elite&lt;/i&gt; religious, at least in the US, don&amp;#x27;t act as if they truly believe like the barons and dukes of Europe did. The only place you see that kind of self-sacrificial dedication to religion these days is what we&amp;#x27;d call cults.</text></comment>
<story><title>Eton and all the murder (2019)</title><url>https://johnhiggs.com/eton-and-all-the-murder/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DC-3</author><text>An interesting example of how the old English class system wasn&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;just&lt;/i&gt; about venal entrenched self-advantage. The upper classes of old really did feel a noblesse oblige, and were killed in the trenches at considerably higher rates in the trenches. Young men of high birth were expected to be officers, and to lead by example - a job that came with a life expectancy measured in days during the darkest hours of the first world war. One doubts if the present bearers of class privilege feel a similar sense of duty.</text></item><item><author>globalise83</author><text>On a side note, it is worth paying a visit to Eton to see the number of old boys killed serving their country in WW1 and WW2: the walls of the old building are literally lined with their names in the thousands.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eddsh1994</author><text>Most of the Etonian Oxbridge guys I&amp;#x27;m friends with ended up going to the military after graduating (one became a lawyer instead). It&amp;#x27;s still seen as a great job to begin your career with in those circles. I went to a public school (but not Oxbridge) and did a couple years in the Rifles myself.</text></comment>