It isn’t just Eton - it’s many or most of the old British public schools. I went to one, and the scars run deep - as does the will to power and the desire to hurt others as I was hurt. It was a brutal environment, a panopticon in which you learned to bend systems and people to your will, in which you learned you had to stab your friend in the back before they did the same to you, as the rules of the game mandate it. Discipline was relentless, and was largely enforced through cooption of pupils. You were not a name, you were a number. The purpose was to churn out colonial administrators, who now have no colonies to go and quietly exercise their depravity out of view.
I’ve worked and am continuing to work on healing or soothing some of the wounds inflicted in my time at elite boarding schools - but I can’t say the same for the rest of my cohort, who are now generally busy running the U.K. or burning down rainforest for profit or whatever it is this week.
I’ve worked and am continuing to work on healing or soothing some of the wounds inflicted in my time at elite boarding schools - but I can’t say the same for the rest of my cohort, who are now generally busy running the U.K. or burning down rainforest for profit or whatever it is this week.