Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Plus ça change

Got an e-mail today from someone I haven't seen or heard from in about twenty-two years. We were at uni together - read PPE at Worcester College, Oxford (iconic view below) - and shared a suite in our second year on the fifth floor of a residence hall which has since been trimmed to four stories to harmonize with a new quad. I remember a shared anxiety about the temptations to social climbing, and vowing not to be changed by Oxford in ways we would not otherwise have been changed. (Those were wordy years, made worse by the manic precision demanded by our philosophy tutors.)

He now evidently teaches economics and marketing at a private school in Bangkok but sounds unchanged: Having come across your name on the web, I am reassured that you continue to grapple with the problems of good and evil. Nothing so lofty for me I’m afraid. I attempt to justify my educating the children of a financial elite on the grounds that I do so sufficiently badly that they are less privileged than they otherwise would be.