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Opportunity Cost of an Oxbridge Arts Degree?

Per The Economist, the lifetime opportunity cost of an Oxbridge arts degree, as opposed to an Oxbridge Econ degree, is 500,000 pounds Sterling. In The Happy Tutor's case, he computes his own forgone earnings since the Renaissance at well over 2 b pounds Sterling. Yes, that is offset by the great intangible value of the wisdom literature with which his Dumpster is well provisioned. As Morals Tutor to the world's wealthiest, he computes that the money he has lost is offset, in the larger view of things, by the value to the body politic of the wisdom that he has passed on to Kings and Queens, Senators and Fine Ladies, Builders of Empires, Presidents and their Heirs, and most recently our once and future Queen, Audrey, she who will inherit a controlling interest in the World's Stock and Trade. "When money is the measure of all," says Tutor, "Wisdom goes for a bargain  price." The Holy, like Tutor, take vows of poverty, which helps when working with the wealthy who pay only for Results. As for chastity in Wealth Bondage that too comes at a price. No moral judgement here. Wait! Wisdom is free for a moment. May I get you towel? 

Lessons from the Sordid Lady Ghislaine Maxwell Saga for The Most Trusted Advisors to Dynastic Wealth

Dearest Jack (not your real name, nor your actual gender of choice, nor actually a friend of mine since the work we do is both beyond reproach and highly confidential),

 

As a Fellow Oxonion (not your real College) thought you might find this interesting: Jeffrey Epstein ‘Friend’ Ghislaine Maxwell Has More Skeletons in Her Family Closet Than a House of Horrors. I certainly found it of interest from an Oxford perspective. Certain people, whether noble or just wealthy inheritors, or up and comers like young Clinton or Boris, so smart, educated, and privileged that they create a world above the world for only their higher kind to live in. C.f. Dr. James Grubman’s Island of Wealth (Strangers in Paradise: How Families Adapt to Wealth Across Generations) where the best and most accomplished people, meaning the richest, emigrate from the old country of dreary toil and middle class manners, mores, and scruples. Those entering wealth island must stay on wealth island, for to be sent back to where the rest of us live is disgrace, like being rusticated or "sent down" from Oxford, as you can very well understand, Jack (not your real name, or preferred gender, nor did you go to Oxford, and were sent down as I recall from Cambridge, actually - not). 

 

Audrey, our once and future Queen, who shall inherit 51% of the world economy, might well go to Oxford, too, as did Tutor, in the Middle Ages, which were a lot less Dark, let alone Barbaric, than now.  Audrey, too, like maybe Ghislaine, has Real Dad issues.

 

That reminds me, George Eliot wrote a great work of philosophy, Romola, disguised as a novel. In it Tito Melema, a bright lad without a character as yet formed, is washed up on the shore of Florence in the age of Machiavelli, who served as Most Trusted Advisor, for a time, to the Medici Family. An opportunist, as we all are, and as we should be, since what else is there but getting ahead and staying ahead, Tito becomes, bit by tiny bit, a moral monster. 

 

Mentoring Audrey, who is now trying to clip Rex’s nails with Big Momma’s nail clippers, is humble work on which the future of our world depends.

 

Tutor is confessing to himself his own sins, as best he can. It may not be a valid confession, but with no other priest in the Castle, it has to do. As Audrey chases Rex around her room, and Big Momma bankrupts Brazil, Tutor is lounging on the floor of Audrey's bedroom, mentoring or babysitting, by just leaving his charge alone, his feet propped against the wall, repenting himself of the thousands of wealthy young women who, back in the day in Wealth Bondage, when he was Dungeon Master to the Stars, he took such pleasure in disciplining for their moral instruction and delight.

 

And, what does Tutor repent? His own pleasure, yes; he should not have gotten so carried away. A Dungeon Master must first master himself if he to master the Wealthy. But more than that he repents himself of their pleasure. An artist must, per Horace, "delight and instruct," but the shrieks of giddy delight. How was that helpful, really?

 

Meanwhile, Audrey has wrestled Rex onto his back, all four paws meekly raised. "Good boy, Rex," murmurs Audrey. And he is a good boy. Audrey rescued him from the so-called "Shelter." He owes his life to her. He would lay his life down to protect her against all harm. "May these tender moments form her soul," says Tutor to himself, "then we might send her to Oxford without risking her immortal soul." 

A Contemporary Staging of the Bacchae

An amphitheater carved into mountain rock, facing the sea, bordered by wild forests; at the focal point an altar on which a trembling goat is sacrificed, "Send her back," or "Cut its throat," or "give us Barabbas," it really doesn't matter the slogan as long as the crowd becomes as one and blood is shed in ecstatic commemoration of community. A body politic needs an intact skin. Hence, in Greece, scapegoats, often disabled people or strange ones, were kept in dorms for just such a time as this. When  the city was sick the scapegoat was given a good meal, then taken to the crossroads and burned alive, commemorating boundaries, between health and sickness, sanity and insanity, here and there, us and them.  

Who is speaking here? The sacred orator in the skin of a goat is not speaking to inform. Utterances in art are neither true nor false. All art is a lie. He is testing, testing, testing. Whose blood? He is clothed as goat-footed Dionysus, misunderstood later as Satan by Christian apologists, who would repress our earthly nature. The high priest is trolling to incite.

In the woods outside the city, the mothers and maidens maddened by wine, ritual, and their own crowd-feeling, tear flesh, whether animals or men, into gobs and strew the pines with raw meat. The play ends with Reason's severed head, the head of a King who ruled the city, held as a trophy by his mother, crazed on rhetoric, herself unseeing.  The arts and history are daughters of Memory. We recall in repetition what we always were, and will be again, until silence after loud noise. We are in this together, until the bitter end. 

Media change, but human nature is as inspired or possessed as ever once it was. Jesus, ritual goat, must we forever slay thee, eat thy flesh and drink thy blood to save our souls? Couldn't we pick on someone else?