Today my facebook and twitter feeds have been filled with Boat Race related chat. Given that I study at Oxford and live in Cambridge, and today is the day of the yearly racing clash, I would have confidently predicted this outcome. But I would never have predicted what everyone is talking about.
Today the boat race had to be restarted because a swimmer appeared just a short distance away from the Oxford boat, narrowly missing having his head taken off by a blade swooshing past him. After the restart, the Oxford boat crashed into the Cambridge one and the 6-man broke his blade. Oxford crossed the line 7 lengths behind Cambridge and their bowman ended up being carted away in an ambulance. Despite initial celebrations from Cambridge, probably before they realised how ill Oxford's bow was, presentation of trophies and so on was delayed and the ceremony was fairly sober. Both teams were clearly shaken by the restart and its effects.
It emerged after the medical emergency was over that the swimmer's name was Trenton Oldfield. He has a page. It has been doing the rounds of the social media sites. It's difficult to know where to begin, really.
One could say this man is a hypocrite. He too has benefited from the privileged education he accuses the 'elite' of having. He went to a good university. He has a membership of the Royal Society of Arts. He sounds like someone with an enormous chip on his shoulder. One could add that this education doesn't seem to have done much for him. His page is poorly spelled, riddled with grammatical errors and reads breathlessly and incoherently. His 'examples from history' are selective and miss out some pretty crucial ones. I'm biased, obviously, but I think 5th century Athens is a pretty good example he could have picked to demonstrate the overthrow of tyranny by the people.
The problem here is that many people are only picking up on the fact that he appears to be a hypocrite. We should consider that one can choose to use the system in order to empower oneself to fight it later on. But we should also consider how he has chosen to express his disgust at 'the elite'. He has disrupted a sporting event which he avows no-one who is not a part of that scene watches or has any interest in. He has ruined the culminating moment of months, possibly years of training for around twenty people. I doubt he could tell you the backgrounds of all the participants in the boat race. He has screwed something up that has small relevance to what he is protesting about. There are a lot of miserable athletes in London at the moment because of him. No-one's impressed at a football match when there's a pitch invasion that stops play - why should things be taken any less seriously in this case?
Yes, it was a stunt, and stunts are designed to attract attention and comment. Many people do feel that Oxbridge gets undeserved attention and that it is populated by toffs and the privileged. But this is a vicious cycle, and it's also symptomatic of the British inability to feel good about anything we do well. We have some of the best universities in the world and instead of celebrating them and encouraging ALL capable students to aim for them, we set them up (and we are all, as a nation, guilty of doing this to some extent) on a pedestal. Anyone who gets into them is derided by those that didn't make it and welcomed by those that did. Immediately a conflict is created and because of this deep-seated desire to widen the breach, people fall into the stereotypes that the divide creates. These stereotypes get names like 'the elite' and 'the people'. What about the boundary-breakers, the state-school kids that slave away and apply to Oxford thinking they won't get in, but do, and go, and enjoy it? Well, to begin with, they are celebrated for the way they beat the elites at their own game. But in time they too are derided for becoming traitors to the group from which they came. When they realise they've been rejected by one group, they throw themselves whole-heartedly into the other. And stunts like this one only reinforce the divide. The interested world is currently split into people who are outraged at the stunt, bemoaning the stupidity of the protest and commiserating with the disappointed athletes, and people who are celebrating it.
The Iron Law of Oligarchy states that the more complicated a state/system of government, the more likely it is that it will end up, sooner or later, being run by a small (probably elite) group. However, this Iron Law seems to have one exception - truly democratic Athens. Athens worked because although there were class and wealth distinctions, everyone had to listen to everyone else, and everyone was just as informed as everyone else. There was equality of interest and equality of knowledge. If we all choose to become truly involved, instead of just latching on to generalisations and stereotypes, we will be able to put aside our mistrust of each other. Apathy and ignorance breed resentment and decline. We have to stop seeing 'sides' and we have to be cautious of labels like 'hypocrite'. Everyone who wants knowledge must be encouraged to seek it. It is so readily available! Seize it! And seize the day!
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