Comments on: The Old Boys of '99: Another Perspective

By: Pearl

Pearl — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:11:45 +0000

Like this look at the other views. The purely precentage breakdown puts a new perspective on it.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:32:11 +0000

@Bean — It’s an interesting idea to think that true old boy systems have been around a while. Perhaps in the form of freemasonry.

@Xibee — Actually, he initially spelled it “Occam’s Razor” (which I had never seen spelled this way before), but changed it to Ockham’s.

I like your idea of a sheltered proximity and shared experience, and I think it makes a great deal of sense. John touches on it when he dispels the myth of a network, but leaves things as the simple answer being the truth. I’d never thought about it the way you present it before.

By: Xibee

Xibee — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:18:53 +0000

1) Thanks to John re: enlightening me to the alternate spelling of Occam’s Razor;
2) There is in fact an Old Boy network in most such schools. That old boy network has never been about a group pooling to promote a croney; but rather a more subtle medium of shared experience, which leads to those in power promoting others to power because — that’s simply who they think of first; those known to them from their school. It’s a sheltered proximity that does the work. Thus the Old Boy network is not manufactured thoughtfully, but is more often than not the petrie dish of an incestuous or nepotistic (Is nepotistic a word? I’d better look that up, these are Canucks I’m dealing with…) think-tank. John neglects the point that the total of others outside the school make that empowered percentile even smaller in the eye of the general public — and the high incidence of empowered positions that more suspect.

By: Bean

Bean — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 11:08:35 +0000

Oooh. Interesting to finally hear from the John we have heard so much about. It’s a logical argument, but perhaps John just prefers to think that old-boy-systems too closely resemble conspiracies to be credible. The fact is that true old boy networks have been a feature of politics and other networks of power since the days of the first republic. While the normal people among us are likely to snort and imagine they are the work of paranoid fiction, history tells us a different story.