This makes me think of Tony Blair. Mr Contemporary Received Pronunciation himself (I learned something there) was all about the aspiration for everyone in New Britain to 'join the middle classes.' I remember thinking exactly the same at the time about 'aspiration': the shallowness and stupidity of what people are supposed to be 'aspiring' to. The notion that 'being middle class' in a Tony Blair sort of way was so obviously desirable that everyone would be onboard. And today every Tory leadership candidate today will churn out the same stuff. Growth. Aspiration. The middle classes - even as the middle classes are hollowed out by neo-feudalism.
Incidentally, I went to Oxford University, as the first from my lower-middle class aspirational family ever to go to university. I remember being scared of being outclassed by the ferocious intelligence of all the people I expected to meet there. It turned out that about 5% of the students were very clever, and the rest were mostly conformists who knew how to work. This was my first awakening ...
I think it was rooted in Thatcherism; but, yes, Blair is when it became obvious that there really was no alternative. I remember thinking - when they talked about education, the knowledge economy, and an end to boom-and-bust - 'I can see through this, and I left school at 16, how can they be serious?' But they were, of course.
Years later, when I did go to university, I pretty quickly found out why they could believe it, though I don't think the phrase 'echo chamber' was in general use at that point. I was probably quite a bit older than you were at Oxford, but the realisation that the universities were all full of 'conformists who knew how to work' was a real shock for me too. It did help me when I got over my surprise, though: I was pretty sure I could work harder than some bloody teenagers who had never had a real job in their lives :D
To be honest it didn't worry us at all. We raised our children to make choices and learn from their mistakes I suppose. My daughter decided to go on from school to university as she wanted to teach English Lit. She has made a success of her career so far although not to the school managements approval. She is a wild card in many respects and brings much more to the classroom experience than the standard curriculum for English Lit. I am proud of her efforts to impart into her students a love of reading books as opposed to txt messages. I say this as a retired bus driver and shepherd !
Fair play, that might be where he got his wisdom from then.
Your daughter should probably take management disapproval as a badge of honour: imagine someone who only did things that management would approve of in this day in age, you can be sure that isn't someone who could keep a teenager's attention!
I am not a British native but I have made regular visits to the Island since 1982. Your reflections in this piece gave words to what has become obvious to me in the landscape and its degradation, both in urban and rural settings. Thank you for these. Lucidity has its own beauty.
They started mining iron up here in 1884, before that it was timber - white and red pine - and fur. The fur trade died out in the 1880's, timber in the 1920's. In both cases because of massive over harvesting.
Minnesota iron pretty much provided the tanks, planes and ships that won WWII, and built/rebuilt afterwards. Now the mining companies estimate most of the ore playing out in 10-20 years. Between less ore and automation, jobs are going away but no one wants to admit that.
Several manufacturing interests have tried up here, but with mixed success.
If you replace London with Minneapolis/Saint Paul (The Cities) and York with Hibbing(Mn), you have described the Iron Range quite well. There are plenty up here who refuse to accept that iron mining is going away as a source of jobs, for various reasons. But few are even considering developing any kind of industrial alternative. They complain about kids leaving for the Cities and depopulating the range, and yet they have all bought into the aspiration game.
Its disconcerting how fast it has happened here in one way, but we have been in industrial decline for a century. Over there, it must feel like it has happened at the speed of light.
What a beautiful photo. It makes me wonder at the mindset of the people who built it; outwardly anyway, there seems a focus on beauty, symmetry, longevity, reverence. Sometimes, when we have gone to visit people, my wife (who is more intuitive than I am) will afterward comment on the type and position of various objects in the main room of the home, as if they literally express the spiritual or core beliefs of the people who live there, as if we’ve visited the sanctuary of a temple and not simply a living room. Sometimes one can overthink things, of course, and sometimes, well, the highway really is the hell it seems.
Yes. I don't want to whitewash the past (the monastic abuses that the reformation reacted against were real whether or not its response was appropriate); but, at the same time, something has been lost, especially now that history is barely taught. Huge parts of of the North are still dominated by sheep farming, something the monasteries were central to the development of. It shaped our history and still shapes our landscapes; but the connections have been lost and people have forgotten.
I really like your analogy with a person's house. Thank you.
My previous job allowed me to bike to work in four minutes and walk in ten. Then the company moved a town over and I had to drive. It was a beautiful drive along the foothills and it was only 20 minutes with little traffic.
I hadn't put it together until now, but I would still drive like the driver's you describe. Trying to pass everybody. Until it dawned on me...why do I want to get to work 3 minutes sooner and be a jerk in the process. So I slowed down.
Near the end of my tenure there I found myself driving *well* below the speed limit. Actually, I didn't want to get to work at all. Aspiration will kill you. I like hope a lot better.
When I was much younger, I used to cycle like those drivers. Not clever, really: all the extra risk and you're never going to go all that fast anyway!
When I was commute-watching, my first assumption was that it would be mostly young men who drove like that. At least on my route, it wasn't. The majority were men well into their middle age, and there was a large minority of women too. 'Boy racers' have their own, slightly different style of bad driving, and they don't want to be caught in rush-hour traffic!
Hope over aspiration, I like it. Here in the US, the South as a region, and all of its various subregional identities have been seriously eroded in short order. But they are still there, under the layers. I usually say that it simply requires patience, waiting them out.
Thanks. I like the simplicity of the linked post and the way you caught a moment. It's not unusual for people to comment that the North of England and the South of the US have a lot in common and I think there is an element of truth to it. Not the weather, though, obviously.
Yep, not the weather. Nor the ingrained class structure that you have. But reading James Rebanks and you, and I see that there are plenty of commonalities. Certainly, the rural traditions and landscape that promote a certain self-sufficiency and an enduring identity. And the decayed industrial core that served the administrative center of an empire. I think of mining and textiles here in the South. We were the training ground for mapping out how to use and discard a people, although perhaps many generations after the same happened in your neck of the woods.
Another fine piece FC&F. Which has fired me up to make a comment.
My son many years ago on gaining 3 good A Levels at school bitterly disappointed his teachers by declining to go on to university. He decided he wanted to work with his hands and joined the RAF. He now has a loving family and a job he enjoys as an aircraft technician though no longer in the forces. He told me awhile ago that he'd dodged a bullet by declining to go to university as he knew it was not what he wanted from a job. Ambition can be a demanding mistress for many.
And another thought on the words of Christopher Lasch ' Meritocracy drains talent away from the lower classes and thus deprives them of effective leadership'.
Thanks Richard. I think your son must have been quite wise for his age, although I'm sure it must have worried you at the time.
As I mentioned in another comment, I went to university as a mature student. After awhile, I felt quite sad for a lot of the teenagers. Most of them were there without any clear purpose, and hardly any of them had enough context to understand what a rare gift a university library card and a little bit of time can be if they come to you at the right time in your life.
I spent over a year trying to get my hair stylist to accept the fact that her daughter wanted to drop out of college and follow in her mother's footsteps. I thought there could be no greater compliment to the mother than a daughter who wants to be like her. Maybe because I was a teacher for four decades, the mother trusted my advice that went against her own judgment. I don't know, but my stylist finally allowed her daughter to leave the university. The girl will start to learn how to cut hair this fall. She is 'over the moon' with excitement.
So many young people here in the uk were persuaded initially by the New Labour govt of Tony Blair. Many would go on to gain meaningless degrees and a mountain of debt. For my son it was a wise decision for him. As for my daughter it was a 'means to an end' so to speak. The writer Mathew Crawford has written extensively on the value and dignity to be found in manual work.
The loud young man is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan) calls an “intellectual yet idiot” (IYI). Academia is filled with IYIs writing papers for one another, doling out credentials to similarly half-educated blockheads. They never start businesses or risk their lives (and their fortunes) for anyone else since they have no skin in any game. They are quite literally paper tigers, people who look good on paper, make a lot of noise and threaten other people with some kind of cancellation. But they are cowards. Useless people! In a real emergency, one needs to stand as far away as possible from an IYI.
Well, he was young, drunk, and his assumptions merely echoed those of his society. I wouldn't want to jump to too many conclusions about him otherwise.
This makes me think of Tony Blair. Mr Contemporary Received Pronunciation himself (I learned something there) was all about the aspiration for everyone in New Britain to 'join the middle classes.' I remember thinking exactly the same at the time about 'aspiration': the shallowness and stupidity of what people are supposed to be 'aspiring' to. The notion that 'being middle class' in a Tony Blair sort of way was so obviously desirable that everyone would be onboard. And today every Tory leadership candidate today will churn out the same stuff. Growth. Aspiration. The middle classes - even as the middle classes are hollowed out by neo-feudalism.
Incidentally, I went to Oxford University, as the first from my lower-middle class aspirational family ever to go to university. I remember being scared of being outclassed by the ferocious intelligence of all the people I expected to meet there. It turned out that about 5% of the students were very clever, and the rest were mostly conformists who knew how to work. This was my first awakening ...
I think it was rooted in Thatcherism; but, yes, Blair is when it became obvious that there really was no alternative. I remember thinking - when they talked about education, the knowledge economy, and an end to boom-and-bust - 'I can see through this, and I left school at 16, how can they be serious?' But they were, of course.
Years later, when I did go to university, I pretty quickly found out why they could believe it, though I don't think the phrase 'echo chamber' was in general use at that point. I was probably quite a bit older than you were at Oxford, but the realisation that the universities were all full of 'conformists who knew how to work' was a real shock for me too. It did help me when I got over my surprise, though: I was pretty sure I could work harder than some bloody teenagers who had never had a real job in their lives :D
To be honest it didn't worry us at all. We raised our children to make choices and learn from their mistakes I suppose. My daughter decided to go on from school to university as she wanted to teach English Lit. She has made a success of her career so far although not to the school managements approval. She is a wild card in many respects and brings much more to the classroom experience than the standard curriculum for English Lit. I am proud of her efforts to impart into her students a love of reading books as opposed to txt messages. I say this as a retired bus driver and shepherd !
Fair play, that might be where he got his wisdom from then.
Your daughter should probably take management disapproval as a badge of honour: imagine someone who only did things that management would approve of in this day in age, you can be sure that isn't someone who could keep a teenager's attention!
I am not a British native but I have made regular visits to the Island since 1982. Your reflections in this piece gave words to what has become obvious to me in the landscape and its degradation, both in urban and rural settings. Thank you for these. Lucidity has its own beauty.
They started mining iron up here in 1884, before that it was timber - white and red pine - and fur. The fur trade died out in the 1880's, timber in the 1920's. In both cases because of massive over harvesting.
Minnesota iron pretty much provided the tanks, planes and ships that won WWII, and built/rebuilt afterwards. Now the mining companies estimate most of the ore playing out in 10-20 years. Between less ore and automation, jobs are going away but no one wants to admit that.
Several manufacturing interests have tried up here, but with mixed success.
So, yes, it does feel like light speed.
If you replace London with Minneapolis/Saint Paul (The Cities) and York with Hibbing(Mn), you have described the Iron Range quite well. There are plenty up here who refuse to accept that iron mining is going away as a source of jobs, for various reasons. But few are even considering developing any kind of industrial alternative. They complain about kids leaving for the Cities and depopulating the range, and yet they have all bought into the aspiration game.
Its disconcerting how fast it has happened here in one way, but we have been in industrial decline for a century. Over there, it must feel like it has happened at the speed of light.
What a beautiful photo. It makes me wonder at the mindset of the people who built it; outwardly anyway, there seems a focus on beauty, symmetry, longevity, reverence. Sometimes, when we have gone to visit people, my wife (who is more intuitive than I am) will afterward comment on the type and position of various objects in the main room of the home, as if they literally express the spiritual or core beliefs of the people who live there, as if we’ve visited the sanctuary of a temple and not simply a living room. Sometimes one can overthink things, of course, and sometimes, well, the highway really is the hell it seems.
Yes. I don't want to whitewash the past (the monastic abuses that the reformation reacted against were real whether or not its response was appropriate); but, at the same time, something has been lost, especially now that history is barely taught. Huge parts of of the North are still dominated by sheep farming, something the monasteries were central to the development of. It shaped our history and still shapes our landscapes; but the connections have been lost and people have forgotten.
I really like your analogy with a person's house. Thank you.
My previous job allowed me to bike to work in four minutes and walk in ten. Then the company moved a town over and I had to drive. It was a beautiful drive along the foothills and it was only 20 minutes with little traffic.
I hadn't put it together until now, but I would still drive like the driver's you describe. Trying to pass everybody. Until it dawned on me...why do I want to get to work 3 minutes sooner and be a jerk in the process. So I slowed down.
Near the end of my tenure there I found myself driving *well* below the speed limit. Actually, I didn't want to get to work at all. Aspiration will kill you. I like hope a lot better.
When I was much younger, I used to cycle like those drivers. Not clever, really: all the extra risk and you're never going to go all that fast anyway!
When I was commute-watching, my first assumption was that it would be mostly young men who drove like that. At least on my route, it wasn't. The majority were men well into their middle age, and there was a large minority of women too. 'Boy racers' have their own, slightly different style of bad driving, and they don't want to be caught in rush-hour traffic!
I found that a surprisingly large percentage of aggressive tailgating was done by women. A bit disconcerting.
Eventually I would just pull over and let them pass.
That's what I usually do. If I needed to be anywhere that fast, I'd set off earlier!
Hope over aspiration, I like it. Here in the US, the South as a region, and all of its various subregional identities have been seriously eroded in short order. But they are still there, under the layers. I usually say that it simply requires patience, waiting them out.
http://www.wingedelmfarm.com/blog/2015/06/27/the-south-is-a-neolithic-fort/
Thanks. I like the simplicity of the linked post and the way you caught a moment. It's not unusual for people to comment that the North of England and the South of the US have a lot in common and I think there is an element of truth to it. Not the weather, though, obviously.
Yep, not the weather. Nor the ingrained class structure that you have. But reading James Rebanks and you, and I see that there are plenty of commonalities. Certainly, the rural traditions and landscape that promote a certain self-sufficiency and an enduring identity. And the decayed industrial core that served the administrative center of an empire. I think of mining and textiles here in the South. We were the training ground for mapping out how to use and discard a people, although perhaps many generations after the same happened in your neck of the woods.
Another fine piece FC&F. Which has fired me up to make a comment.
My son many years ago on gaining 3 good A Levels at school bitterly disappointed his teachers by declining to go on to university. He decided he wanted to work with his hands and joined the RAF. He now has a loving family and a job he enjoys as an aircraft technician though no longer in the forces. He told me awhile ago that he'd dodged a bullet by declining to go to university as he knew it was not what he wanted from a job. Ambition can be a demanding mistress for many.
And another thought on the words of Christopher Lasch ' Meritocracy drains talent away from the lower classes and thus deprives them of effective leadership'.
Thanks Richard. I think your son must have been quite wise for his age, although I'm sure it must have worried you at the time.
As I mentioned in another comment, I went to university as a mature student. After awhile, I felt quite sad for a lot of the teenagers. Most of them were there without any clear purpose, and hardly any of them had enough context to understand what a rare gift a university library card and a little bit of time can be if they come to you at the right time in your life.
I spent over a year trying to get my hair stylist to accept the fact that her daughter wanted to drop out of college and follow in her mother's footsteps. I thought there could be no greater compliment to the mother than a daughter who wants to be like her. Maybe because I was a teacher for four decades, the mother trusted my advice that went against her own judgment. I don't know, but my stylist finally allowed her daughter to leave the university. The girl will start to learn how to cut hair this fall. She is 'over the moon' with excitement.
So many young people here in the uk were persuaded initially by the New Labour govt of Tony Blair. Many would go on to gain meaningless degrees and a mountain of debt. For my son it was a wise decision for him. As for my daughter it was a 'means to an end' so to speak. The writer Mathew Crawford has written extensively on the value and dignity to be found in manual work.
The loud young man is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan) calls an “intellectual yet idiot” (IYI). Academia is filled with IYIs writing papers for one another, doling out credentials to similarly half-educated blockheads. They never start businesses or risk their lives (and their fortunes) for anyone else since they have no skin in any game. They are quite literally paper tigers, people who look good on paper, make a lot of noise and threaten other people with some kind of cancellation. But they are cowards. Useless people! In a real emergency, one needs to stand as far away as possible from an IYI.
Well, he was young, drunk, and his assumptions merely echoed those of his society. I wouldn't want to jump to too many conclusions about him otherwise.