How to meet genteel upper class Americans?
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Anonymous
Not sure how true this is, but I've heard of people getting into the JL in a "less competitive" city only to transfer their membership to a more "competitive" southern chapter for years now. Same with sororities: pledge, say, KKG at a "lesser" school and then transfer to Alabama, Clemson, wherever. |
Anonymous
So wack. |
Anonymous
Read Lords of Discipline if you need to be disabused from this idea. These people will abuse you so subtly you won't even realize you were had. |
Anonymous
You really, really need help. |
Anonymous
Have you seen the southern genteel thread? It's all about overlapping social organizations that you're probably not in. You could try to get your foot in the door with one but it's immediately apparent if you don't also belong to a bunch of the social clubs (garden, book, country, supper, more prestigious non-profit/civic organizations (e.g., museums, etc.), etc.) that they belong to. Ask yourself - what do you have in common with these people? If the answer is, you don't know or not much, then it's an exercise in futility because it will become immediately apparent that you are not within the same overlapping social circles. I see the same thing with people who think just because they attend a local private school or prestigious college, that they'll be immediately enter the halls of the upper class (or their kids will). It doesn't work like that. Sure there's a chance that you make friends with these families but unless your social interests cross consistently, you're unlikely to be on their radar. |
Anonymous
| OP, try Waffle House at 2:30 am. |
Anonymous
Yes. Everyone reading in this thread has seen it. |
Anonymous
Best answer in thread. |
Anonymous
That's absolutely not true. Why do you think this, if you're not trolling? |
Anonymous
What a load of drivel |
Anonymous
| Around here, I'd start with hobby farms in Leesburg. |
Anonymous
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Whenever I read threads like this (and many of those on DCUM), I'm reminded of CS Lewis' The Inner Ring:
https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/ I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. There are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. If you are a candidate for admission you probably don’t call it anything. To discuss it with the other outsiders would make you feel outside yourself. And to mention talking to the man who is inside, and who may help you if this present conversation goes well, would be madness. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hag-ridden by the desire to get inside that particular Ring which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that “Society,” in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings, and snobbery therefore only one form of the longing to be inside. The desire which draws us into Inner Rings is another matter. A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous…Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the moment you enter your profession until you are too old to care… If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an ‘inner ringer.’ I don’t say you’ll be a successful one; that’s as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in—one way or the other you will be that kind of man. And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by a desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see that other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion; if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain. This is surely very clear when you come to think of it. If you want to be made free of a certain circle for some wholesome reason—if, say, you want to join a musical society because you really like music—then there is a possibility of satisfaction. You may find yourself playing in a quartet and you may enjoy it. But if all you want is to be in the know, your pleasure will be short lived. The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic. Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be “in.” And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow’s end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one. And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself, once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you. Naturally. In any wholesome group of people which holds together for a good purpose, the exclusions are in a sense accidental. Three or four people who are together for the sake of some piece of work exclude others because there is work only for so many or because the others can’t in fact do it. Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence. The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it. |
Anonymous
No, I think PP is exactly right. I was invited to join a charity group connected to a children’s hospital a few years ago. I was one of maybe two or three women out of approximately 25 who, 1. Wasn’t in a sorority in college, and 2. Has kids in public school. Almost all of these women were also in one of two local garden clubs and also the country club. The meetings were completely exhausting for me and I dropped out after a few months. People were nice to my face, but it was clear they had no use for me socially. I could do far more good for the hospital just staying home and writing a check. |
Anonymous
NP here. Why was it exhausting? |
Anonymous
Just having to make small talk in a loud room packed with women with perfect hair/clothes and big smiles. Every week felt like a sorority rush event. I’m just over that stuff. |