It's true but incomplete, in the way that so many written articles on the web are.
If you explicitly went up to an Ivy League or top liberal arts student with the above quote, most of them would be disgusted. It's not like people walk around campus all day talking about how everyone else is inferior to them. Someone like that would probably be considered an antisocial boor.
But the point about not having anything to talk about with people who didn't go to an Ivy or other top college is true. One of the selling points of Ivies & top liberal arts colleges is that they "teach you how to think"; well, if they teach you how to think, how do you relate to other people that think differently? There's a shared depth of experience that going to a top college gives you, like the close relationships with professors, chance to talk to well-known public speakers, hanging out on a lush green quad in the middle of a city, or being able to break lots of rules without the administration caring. People who went to state schools, community colleges, or no college at all often didn't have that experience, so what's there to talk about?
This is ameliorated somewhat depending on what you choose to do after college. I went into computers, where many of the best programmers went to no-name colleges or dropped out of high school, so a.) I can always talk tech with other people in the computer field and b.) I found out pretty soon that where you went to school isn't a good proxy for ability. Some of my friends are bakers or teachers or secretaries, and they're sitting firmly in the real world. But the financial system and top law schools are populated with huge proportions of alums from top colleges, so the "Amherst bubble" (which includes Harvard & Yale & Columbia & Brown & Dartmouth & Swarthmore & Williams too, except they undoubtedly call it by their own school name) extends over it too.
I dunno. Something doesn't quite add up to me. There are certain topics that all people like to talk about, regardless of how they think. Knowing those topics reveals certain tricks to talking to different people. "Ask the expert", where you compliment someone on their skill or knowledge (plumbing, say) and then ask them for more details, showing genuine interest as they talk. People who have kids or pets are also pretty easy to talk to, because they're proud and love to talk about them. Humor, sports, and local news also tend to break the ice.
So I'm truly curious what's at work behind this inability or unwillingness to talk to "the masses", as it were.
So I'm truly curious what's at work behind this inability or unwillingness to talk to "the masses", as it were.
Class consciousness. The problem has nothing to do with the content of the conversation, but everything to do with the subtext: You're interacting with someone from a completely different social group and you may not even be sure what social cues you want to send, let alone exactly how to send them.
What is the proper relationship between you and your plumber? Master and servant? Master and slave? Contract employer and contract employee? Genial boss and long-term employee? Two friends trading with each other? Fellow members of a communal society? Friendly rivalry? Unfriendly rivalry?
How does this change if the plumber turns out to be the cousin of your sister-in-law? If the plumber belongs to your church? If the plumber lives next door?
If the plumber recommends an electrician friend, how important is it to hire that friend? Why is the plumber telling you this tale about the draconian local house inspector -- is this a standard plumber gripe, the plumbing equivalent of complaining about the weather, or is he trying to excuse the fact that his work might not pass inspection? When the plumber asks to be paid up-front, is that a standard practice or could he be planning to get drunk and then skip town?
(Regarding that last one: The books suggest that you never pay construction subcontractors in advance, but only as the work is completed. Unfortunately, the books don't tell you the precise words to use to inform your subcon that, no, you were not born yesterday. That part is up to you, and it's one of those things that they can't teach in an Ivy League class.)
Obviously, the problem of conversation has nothing to do with the topic or your knowledge of it. Thanks to the web, we know that people can happily spend hours discussing topics that they know absolutely nothing about. And there are probably very few topics that you're afraid to discuss with your peers, because you know how to navigate their social world: you know the slang, you know the legends, you know the taboos, you know when you're being insulted and how to give insult in return, and you know how to change the subject. Most importantly, you know the social order. If I log on here and write "Arc is Blub", everyone knows that I'm either issuing a (crude) challenge or being a clueless noob -- the authors of Arc have high social status here. If I write "VBScript is Blub", everyone knows that it's the news.yc/Slashdot/Digg equivalent of talking about the weather. ;)
But it's not as if socializing is as hard as I make it sound. It's like riding a bicycle -- if you enumerate all the computational tasks involved it sounds like a monumental feat, but kids do it all the time.
I think many people at Ivy League colleges don't know how to talk about those topics, or aren't interested in them. ;-)
I certainly didn't when I went to college, though I try to practice when I get a chance now. And I remember many of my classmates expressing an uncomfortableness with smalltalk when I got to freshman orientation. "I'd rather talk about God or philosophy or Plato or quantum physics than the weather or sports results," I heard many people say.
Remember there's a bit of selection bias at work here: people who like to learn about and talk about academic things tend to do well in academics, which is how they got into Ivy League colleges in the first place.
Comments
It's true but incomplete, in the way that so many written articles on the web are.
If you explicitly went up to an Ivy League or top liberal arts student with the above quote, most of them would be disgusted. It's not like people walk around campus all day talking about how everyone else is inferior to them. Someone like that would probably be considered an antisocial boor.
But the point about not having anything to talk about with people who didn't go to an Ivy or other top college is true. One of the selling points of Ivies & top liberal arts colleges is that they "teach you how to think"; well, if they teach you how to think, how do you relate to other people that think differently? There's a shared depth of experience that going to a top college gives you, like the close relationships with professors, chance to talk to well-known public speakers, hanging out on a lush green quad in the middle of a city, or being able to break lots of rules without the administration caring. People who went to state schools, community colleges, or no college at all often didn't have that experience, so what's there to talk about?
This is ameliorated somewhat depending on what you choose to do after college. I went into computers, where many of the best programmers went to no-name colleges or dropped out of high school, so a.) I can always talk tech with other people in the computer field and b.) I found out pretty soon that where you went to school isn't a good proxy for ability. Some of my friends are bakers or teachers or secretaries, and they're sitting firmly in the real world. But the financial system and top law schools are populated with huge proportions of alums from top colleges, so the "Amherst bubble" (which includes Harvard & Yale & Columbia & Brown & Dartmouth & Swarthmore & Williams too, except they undoubtedly call it by their own school name) extends over it too.
I dunno. Something doesn't quite add up to me. There are certain topics that all people like to talk about, regardless of how they think. Knowing those topics reveals certain tricks to talking to different people. "Ask the expert", where you compliment someone on their skill or knowledge (plumbing, say) and then ask them for more details, showing genuine interest as they talk. People who have kids or pets are also pretty easy to talk to, because they're proud and love to talk about them. Humor, sports, and local news also tend to break the ice.
So I'm truly curious what's at work behind this inability or unwillingness to talk to "the masses", as it were.
So I'm truly curious what's at work behind this inability or unwillingness to talk to "the masses", as it were.
Class consciousness. The problem has nothing to do with the content of the conversation, but everything to do with the subtext: You're interacting with someone from a completely different social group and you may not even be sure what social cues you want to send, let alone exactly how to send them.
What is the proper relationship between you and your plumber? Master and servant? Master and slave? Contract employer and contract employee? Genial boss and long-term employee? Two friends trading with each other? Fellow members of a communal society? Friendly rivalry? Unfriendly rivalry?
How does this change if the plumber turns out to be the cousin of your sister-in-law? If the plumber belongs to your church? If the plumber lives next door?
If the plumber recommends an electrician friend, how important is it to hire that friend? Why is the plumber telling you this tale about the draconian local house inspector -- is this a standard plumber gripe, the plumbing equivalent of complaining about the weather, or is he trying to excuse the fact that his work might not pass inspection? When the plumber asks to be paid up-front, is that a standard practice or could he be planning to get drunk and then skip town?
(Regarding that last one: The books suggest that you never pay construction subcontractors in advance, but only as the work is completed. Unfortunately, the books don't tell you the precise words to use to inform your subcon that, no, you were not born yesterday. That part is up to you, and it's one of those things that they can't teach in an Ivy League class.)
Obviously, the problem of conversation has nothing to do with the topic or your knowledge of it. Thanks to the web, we know that people can happily spend hours discussing topics that they know absolutely nothing about. And there are probably very few topics that you're afraid to discuss with your peers, because you know how to navigate their social world: you know the slang, you know the legends, you know the taboos, you know when you're being insulted and how to give insult in return, and you know how to change the subject. Most importantly, you know the social order. If I log on here and write "Arc is Blub", everyone knows that I'm either issuing a (crude) challenge or being a clueless noob -- the authors of Arc have high social status here. If I write "VBScript is Blub", everyone knows that it's the news.yc/Slashdot/Digg equivalent of talking about the weather. ;)
Cool. So, class consciousness is a lot of work. What, exactly, is the benefit?
You get to boast to your friends about that one time you went slumming and actually talked to a plumber.
Ask someone who doesn't have indoor plumbing. :)
But it's not as if socializing is as hard as I make it sound. It's like riding a bicycle -- if you enumerate all the computational tasks involved it sounds like a monumental feat, but kids do it all the time.
I think many people at Ivy League colleges don't know how to talk about those topics, or aren't interested in them. ;-)
I certainly didn't when I went to college, though I try to practice when I get a chance now. And I remember many of my classmates expressing an uncomfortableness with smalltalk when I got to freshman orientation. "I'd rather talk about God or philosophy or Plato or quantum physics than the weather or sports results," I heard many people say.
Remember there's a bit of selection bias at work here: people who like to learn about and talk about academic things tend to do well in academics, which is how they got into Ivy League colleges in the first place.