The title "Harvard of the East" has always been used within NLS in complete irony. I know nearly one thousand alumni, and not one of them takes that term seriously, or treats it as anything other than a giant joke.
As anyone with a passing interest in Greek drama would tell you, the Greeks used the concepts of the "Alazon" (the vain braggart) and the "Eiron" (the underwhelming counter to the Alazon) to simulate a direct dialogue between the characters and the audience.
Dialogue that is "of Eiron", or "ironic", is meant to talk to two audiences at once, but both within the same person. The first hears the dialogue, but does not understand what it means. The second, on hearing it, is aware of the first audience's lack of awareness, and is also aware of the underlying layers to that dialogue. Irony is a little like quantum superimposition- if an object can be in two places at once in quantum physics, then irony assumes that two memetic units are conveyed, even though only a single meme is immediately apparent.
Sadly, it seems that only one audience exists within you.
As anyone with a passing interest in Greek drama would tell you, the Greeks used the concepts of the "Alazon" (the vain braggart) and the "Eiron" (the underwhelming counter to the Alazon) to simulate a direct dialogue between the characters and the audience.
Dialogue that is "of Eiron", or "ironic", is meant to talk to two audiences at once, but both within the same person. The first hears the dialogue, but does not understand what it means. The second, on hearing it, is aware of the first audience's lack of awareness, and is also aware of the underlying layers to that dialogue. Irony is a little like quantum superimposition- if an object can be in two places at once in quantum physics, then irony assumes that two memetic units are conveyed, even though only a single meme is immediately apparent.
Sadly, it seems that only one audience exists within you.