Amazing (long) read, highly recommend

I like Works in Progress. A lot. It's a serious outlet for long-form journalism, and it (usually!) features writers whose minds are oriented correctly toward the future. (its editor-in-chief lost his mind during 'rona, so I've stayed away from reading/subscribing or even attempting to contribute... but I'm often very tempted)

What's the Key For Success?

Work hard, long hours, education, 5am, cold plunges, diversity, pay your politicians well to avoid corruption blah-blah?

No, no:

The elites of Victorian Britain operated differently. Their schools and universities were not terribly academic and had very little STEM. As adults, they got up late, drank a lot, and spent a remarkable share of their waking hours partying. They loved feasting, sports, holidays, dancing, and dressing up. Contrary to their stodgy reputation, they were probably a lot of fun.

the elites of nineteenth-century Britain were, by their own lights, extremely successful. For much of the century, Britain was the richest country on Earth. Its companies dominated global commerce, industry and finance.

In Defence of Debauchery

• SCHOOLING: while strict (early age, regulated times, single-sex away from family, corporal punishment), the values the English Victorian elite cultivated at boarding school were remarkably progressive: loyalty, internationalism, studies of the arts -- Latin and Ancient Greek --

Amazing:

There was resistance to the teaching of science, not because Victorians were hostile to science in principle, but because they thought it irrelevant to the kind of moral and cultural formation that a school for gentlemen was supposed to provide.
(By contrast, girls were not usually taught classics, meaning that, rather surprisingly, affluent Victorian girls generally followed a more modern curriculum than their brothers.)

While not obviously successful, it cultivated valuable skills:

...The most that can be said for Victorians’ classical education is perhaps that, like schooling in any difficult subject, it trained students in self-discipline, memorization, and applying rules.

And this we could definitely learn from today:

Under such circumstances, it is perhaps unsurprising that the share of time spent in the classroom was relatively modest. At Rugby School, weeks were divided into three ‘full days’, three ‘half days’, and Sunday. On a full day, students spent about five hours in the classroom, compared with maybe two hours on a half day. [AND, importantly:] They also tended to be shorter than those of contemporary elite schools in France, Germany, or Italy, where the curriculum was normally more academically rigorous.

"Victorians thought extremely highly of sports, believing that they instilled team spirit and endurance, fostered mutual loyalty, channeled energy and competitiveness, and taught men how to win and lose graciously."

One Loretto School headmaster described the school's priorities: 1) character, 2) physique, 3) intelligence, 4) manners, 5) information. First time brawns > brains, eh

• UNIVERSITIES: Not much studying, plenty of "teambuilding"

I found this observation interesting:

Oxbridge tutors believed overwhelmingly that the purpose of an undergraduate degree was not training for work nor even preparation for academic research, but rather a general moral and intellectual formation that would fit students for any professional role they might later pursue.

also:

Fellowships were opened up to laymen in the later decades of the century, but Oxford and Cambridge did not become world-leading research institutions until they were transformed by German scholars fleeing Nazism in the 1930s. The dominance of Oxbridge in British culture was unusual: these institutions educated a much larger share of the elite than was the case for any two institutions in any other country

Fuck, these peeps just had great lives. (In some respects, Oxford life these days is very similar!)

• ADULTHOOD: Busy-busy-fucking busy bee... but not in the way you think

"One virtue that upper-class Victorian education signally failed to inculcate was early rising. Although Victorian schoolboys and university students got up fairly early for chapel, the day of an upper-class Victorian adult started late."

Fuck yeah! Den loves victory #1590741

The great statesmen and prime ministers back then "breakfasted at 9 am" or hosted a "social breakfast starting at 10.30 am (claret was served), continuing till about noon." A-M-A-Z-I-N-G

Also, not that different from today (minus the frock)

general, however, Britain’s elites were slow to suburbanize, and in 1914 most still lived in centrally located row houses and walked to work. Every day a great herd of frock-coated men emerged from Belgravia and Mayfair and poured through Covent Garden to their offices in Parliament, Whitehall, the Inns of Court, and the City.

If you've noticed the drinking at every goddamn meal, you're not alone. It's pretty disturbing, an entire nation run by high-functioning alcoholics.

The Victorians loved drinking and drank a lot by modern standards. Men drank more than women, but women drank a good deal too: one conduct guidenoted that‘young ladies seldom drink more than three glasses of wine at dinner but married ladies, professional ladies, and those accustomed to society, and habits of affluence, will habitually take five or even six, whether in their own homes or at the tables of their friends’.

...and the partying, until the wee hours. Plus, for some odd reason Americans call this "Irish exit" (or French goodbye):

And they were hardly just for entertainment:

the social events of the Victorian elite were notable for their lack of segregation by age or sex. A Society ball discharged the functions of both a teenage house party and a business networking convention: in fact, itwas both a teenage house party and a business networking convention. [...] Unmarried young people (and their unfortunate parents) might go to three or four balls per week, while other Society members would go to one or two. But the other nights were scarcely less busy. Opera, theatre and concerts were important, especially opening or gala nights.

Fuck, dudes kept busy.

An MP might miss dinner for a late sitting of Parliament, but still drop into a soirée at 10.30pm, turn up to a supper party at 11.45pm, and then arrive at a ball at 1am. From February to July, the Victorian upper class led a remarkably nocturnal existence, with bedtimes in the small hours and the mornings something of a write-off.

"All else being equal, rich and powerful Victorians must have been less productive for spending four hours a day in the office rather than twelve. But the creation of a single ruling Gemeinschaft may have had compensatory advantages."

Domestic and international (geo)political implications:

This obviously had advantages for Britain. The elites of the American South had a very different identity to those of the North, and ultimately led the country into civil war. Spain, Italy and France suffered from incessant conflicts between urban bourgeois and rural nobility. Germany was riven with strife along geographical, religious, and class lines. Some of these tensions existed in Britain, but except in Ireland, the elite finessed them peacefully.

"Would modern societies work better if their local and national government were conducted by a tight-knit community of extremely rich and successful people?"

The author thinks not... but a kid can dream, longing as we do for the best moment in (modern) Western civilization: the Victorian era.