“The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.” Colin Wilson
The pressure to conform is the embalming fluid that mummifies societies. It gives humans the staying power to make sure that this cold, unfeeling world stays the same from one century to the next, no matter how desperately they may want it to change. You don't have to be a philosopher to know that. You could be a boarding school survivor. There we were, led around by the nose morning, noon and night, not a one of us dragging his heels or kicking up a fuss. Lining up for parades like clockwork. Filing in and out of classrooms and chapels. Learning whatever they wanted to teach us, when and where and how they wanted to teach it. Studying, playing, eating, sleeping, waking, showering at the strict times of their choosing.
A marvel of synchronized activity! All those callisthenic formations on Founder’s Day were a flash in the pan compared to the rigidly organized paces they put us through day after day, week after week, month after month, March through November. What mysterious mechanism could make us so docile? What pied piper had us following this hypnotic tune? Consider the odds! There we were, four or five hundred strong, miles from anywhere. They were fifteen or twenty masters, tops! David and Goliath were not so badly mismatched! Yet we remained their dutiful little robots, bobbing our heads each time we ran into them. Good morning sir! Good afternoon sir! What good little boys we must have been to let a handful of them run the show like a well-oiled machine!
Were we content by any chance with our lot? Would you be if you were dragged from home and whisked to a glorified orphanage-cum-bootcamp? The truth is we were homesick as hell. Why didn’t we put up a fight? Not necessarily with machine guns like the students in the 1964 film If, that savage satire of English public school life. A Gandhi-style revolution with sit-downs, non-violent protests, peaceful demonstrations, would have done just fine. Where was our spunk, our courage, our spirit of fair play when we really needed it? Was there nothing left in us of that rambunctious spontaneity and playful exuberance that comes so naturally to boys? Had the school regimen killed it all off?
One crisp fall morning we were massed in the quad, doing jumping jacks on the barked commands of a PE master. Feeling a tad frisky, I clowned around in the harmless way boys do when craving attention. It must have spoiled the orderly spectacle of that Hitler Youth Rally. The PE master got off his perch and headed straight for me. The crunching sound of his feet on gravel seemed to go on forever. Standing before me at last, he administered a ringing slap to my face.
Did I reel with hurt and shame? I’d have to be made of crushed rock not to. But what if I wasn’t the only one? What if every witness to that assault resonated with my pain? What if they were shocked enough to sit down en masse, refusing to go on till things changed? What if boys began boycotting classes, taking vows of silence until the masters gave in? An apology for starters - then a ban on corporal punishment. What if an outraged student body rose up and flexed its muscles for regime change? From now on we have a greater say in running our school. Optional uniforms, relaxed schedules. A choice of earlier or later meal seatings. We decide what, when and how we want to learn. We communicate with our parents when we feel like it. And so on… until a paramilitary-run orphan asylum turns into something more akin to a pleasure cruise ship.
What nipped this solidarity movement in the bud? What kept us imprisoned in our lonely shells, helpless to come together to change our corner of the world? We all know the secret of British rule. Divide and conquer. God knows, there was enough of that. The student body was divided into four Houses and pitted against each other every which way. That wasn’t the root of our failure to unite though. It was the stigma attached to feelings. Tears sprung to my eyes when I was struck. But that stiff upper lip never wavered. Just as I got a grip, everyone around me did too. I didn’t break - neither did anyone else break ranks. I held it together because there was nobody to hold me. So we all held it together and soldiered on. For the biggest taboo of all was to make a scene. If every last one of us was equally terrified of that, how could we sit down to make a mass spectacle of ourselves? If our worst fear was to be branded a sissy for raising a fuss, how could we raise a collective fuss? Solidarity as fellow feeling poses no threat if every fellow is in charge of cracking down on his feelings.
I used to cry myself to sleep the first week of the new school term. As a group we could never join hands to cry ourselves awake out of our stupor. You want an empire on which the sun never sets? Drill generations of boys to always let the sun go down on their anger and anguish and shame.
