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 j4 | |
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Really, this has to be one of the most depressing threads I've read since internet discussion forums were invented. In other news, this morning as I was on my bike, waiting to turn right on to the Botley Road, a bloke leaned out of the window of a passing car and bellowed at me, just a huge animal roar, a shaggy head hanging right out of the window to shout better. It was loud and close and sudden enough that it made me jump (though hopefully not visibly, and certainly not enough to make me fall off a stationary bicycle). Why do people do this? I just don't understand. I grok the getting-a-reaction thing, but they were gone too fast to see a reaction (though I suppose I could have shaken my fist at them as the car sped off). And no, "because they're idiots" is not an answer; the world is full of idiots and not all of them bellow at people out of car windows. It feels as though the world has got a lot more hostile, more aggressive and bristly and jostly. More people shouting and swearing over the tiniest thing. From an accidental jolt in a crowd to "fucking fuck you" in the space of a second; rights and rants and heaps of hate. I don't want to overdramatise it, I don't want to speculate about causes, I'm not taking a holiday to Daily Mail Island, but sometimes it feels like the world's awash in misery and stupidity and violence, and any way to retreat from it feels like escapism, and there is absolutely no way to change it or fight it or lessen it. Has it always been like this? Have I only just noticed? And 'having my say' here is probably part of the problem, or at least it's certainly not part of the solution. Current Mood: where did it all go wrong
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In reverse order, you having a moment on your LJ is part of the solution, because you're not being ranty and horrible to inappropriate recipients, just bewildered and sad.
I don't think really the world is more awash in misery and stupidity and violence: think back to the "golden age" of Elizabeth I, and consider the stocks, public executions, bear-baiting (badger-baiting), heads on pikes, the rack, the collar, the boot, hanging 12 year olds for the theft of a loaf of bread, child labour, bugger-all medical care outside the monasteries, death in childbirth, smallpox, leprosy, the Plague, laws against what clothes you were allowed to wear, glass tax, indentured servants, press-gangs, and the beginnings of the slave trade. Fast forward to the Victorian era and child prostitution, cancer of the scrotum in six year old chimney sweeps, no recourse at law for raped women unless they had two men to vouch for her (sound familiar??), maiming industrial accidents with no compensation from the employer and no social care other than from charitable societies, the Poor House, domestic violence being given lower fines than dangerous driving of a carriage, no married women's property or suffrage, food and drink adultered by lethal chemicals, untreated sewage everywhere, urban poverty, drug addiction, alcoholism, and women finishing shirts (for example) for one penny the dozen doing piece-work at home. Juveniles under 16 could no longer be executed from 1908 with the Children's Charter.
Progress, at least in the UK, then...
I'm sorry you were roared at. That sucks. And I find that life goes through awful phases where Society seems to be falling apart. Which is why I recited that litany of historical woe: I know it well, I use it to remind myself that things were objectively worse in general for a greater proportion of people than they are now...
{j4}
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*nognognog* What you said.
individuals with deeply personal choices to make, which is where transformation actually lies,
I have noticed (with much dismay) that a seemingly large number of people do not seem to make a connection between their actions and the consequences, for themselves and for others, of those actions. It isn't that they are shirking responsibility or trying to blame others, it's that they don't see the connection in the first place, as if they've given up on looking at the world and trying to make it better or never learned to do that in the first place.
I have no idea where this comes from, or indeed whether it's just imagined.
Personally, I can't define my 'class': some of my not-distant ancestors were peasant farmers and immigrants, some family members are manual workers, some are professionals, I grew up with not much money but lots of education.
Me, too, at least to an extent (although much of the perceived scarcity of money when I was a child was due to unfortunate spending and investment decisions rather than lack of income).
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The BBC do not appear to cater for me, either: economically I am very conservative indeed, but somewhat left-wing in my social views and very liberal indeed in what are quaintly called my 'moral' beliefs. Apparently, I must be a raving lefty in all things - means of production to one-legged gay skateboarding lesbian armadillos and the rest of it - or a verkrampt right-wing servant of capital with the whole Ayn Rand agenda foaming out of my ears. The concept of a thought-out set of views, rather than a tribal allegiance, is incompatible with the BBC presentation of politics-as-Punch-and-Judy, and this poisons all their coverage of public policy and business.
So what is there to say about the current BBC coverage? It's another sort of human zoo - or a safari, with upper-caste BBC suburbanites wearing all-too-visible pith helmets (drenched with patronising politeness and prejudices to keep their delicate brains from overheating) as they venture into the fightening and alien jungle of post-industrial England.
I expected little better from them: documentary televison is an underfunded branch of entertainment and we should be glad it still exists at all.
someone foments and fosters these divisions.
Would that it was Old Nick indeed. An observation from the Reconstruction era and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, the anti-Jewish violence in Russia and Poland, or from the formation of the nastier 'street politics' end of the Unionist movement in Ulster has shown that it is consistently the landowners and the industrialists who finance and shelter the organisers of inter-ethnic or inter-racial violence in the slums.
Uneducated men are easily manipulated, and all too easily set at one another's throats when they see a 'race to the bottom' in their conditions of employment. With careful media manipulation - and well-targeted violence against union organisers and 'communist agitators' - they will never question why it is that the competition is so harsh, and they are trapped in an ever-worsening market.
It's closer to home than you might like to think: a close look at who attends the Monday Club's dinners might tell you something about our overclass and the political and legal umbrella thet the BNP - and others - have enjoyed. Admittedly that umbrella is fragile - laws are enforced and the Police are improving - but money and a sense of political legitimacy are made available from on high to violent criminals in Dagenham and elswhere.
Bet you won't see that on the BBC.
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