On not quite getting it
This isn't quite where I'm going, but I'll say it anyway, as this is a blog post not an essay: one of the most seductive features of mythical Golden Ages is that in them, everyone seems to know who they are and where they belong. My mythical Golden Age (a 60s English childhood fading off at the edges into a very selectively drawn Edwardian or even Victorian pastoral) is certainly like that. In that kinder, mellower Hovis past, if you were dumb you knew you were dumb, and were correspondingly humble and didn't say or do much, other than doffing your cap occasionally. If you were smart, you went to Jura, spat blood and wrote books. What you didn't get is... I was going to say something catty about Business School graduates, but I'd better be careful. Ahem. What you didn't get is people like me. People who generally feel they don't get it, whether because of never having got to grips with Higher Mathematics or for whatever other reason, but who are unable ...