Oh, we're affluent all right. Life can be very good.
Life IS very good, for me at any rate. Or it is now.
The Christmas lights illuminate New Street and Corporation Street, the shops are thronged (Aside from Premier Brand shops, expensive coffee shops and recruitment agencies, there's not a lot else in the main thoroughfares of the former Workshop of the World).
Gaudy Groundhog Day tackiness shouts to the world, there's still sterling to be spent in the dear old UK.
And that might seem normal to you. It might not bother you. When I was twenty, it didn't bother me much either.
But it's a sham. It's a soulless society and what we sweep under the carpet is too awful to think of.
Let's forget the rest of the world, for once. Let's just take a look at this, one of the richest, most successful, most prosperous countries in the world.
We're lucky to live here. It's about as good as it gets.
I'M lucky. I live here and I am lucky enough to be in a position to benefit from living here.
I wasn't born in Nechells to a mother addicted to crack who couldn't say for sure which of her punters caused my birth.
There is a whole class of people for whom, apparently we have no work. Our society is SO perfect, it doesn't actually need everyone's efforts.
Or, employing Chinese Labour Camp interns, is cheaper than paying the minimum wage in the UK.
The first generation of sink estate heroin addicts, who reached adulthood in the eighties, is dieing off. Now their children roam the streets.
For them, school had no point. They haven't the skills or the talents to fit the only types of jobs the UK still has to offer- jobs that can't be done elsewhere.
Theirs is a world where no one ever cared, kept in sink estates by a society which can only offer them £55 a week and a council flat.
But still expects them to follow rules made by the propertied classes for the propertied classes.
They have nothing to lose.
What have we to offer them? Why SHOULD they obey the rules made for the benefit of us, the wage-earning classes?
Do we really think £55 a week buys them off?
Come on. They have seen their own parents die of addiction to the nastiest toxin the world has seen, their whole community blighted by it, and still they opt to take it. Because dieing young in the cotton-wool wrap of heroin, is better than living to old age in a world that doesn't care.
They have TVs, they have DVD players, they have (shoplifted) DVDs. They go on YTS programmes, the New Deal and other useless government initiatives used by whoever is in to convince us the problem is being tackled. It can't be.
We have created a whole class of human misery, alienated beyond our comprehension.
It's easy to bang on about not being harsh enough on crime, but look for God's sake, drive through Nechells, through Aston, through Washwood Heath. Read the graffiti, FEEL the menace.
A land of teenage girls pimped for crack, a land of armed youths gunning eachother down.
They chose this, did they?
Nobody chooses that. Not if they have proper choices.
It is a world where sexual abuse and violence are the norm.
And it's not just in our cities. It's everywhere. Because nobody cares.
Nobody cares beyond what's on their own TV screen, where Eastenders and the News have equal reality.
But I bet you, within a mile of every one of you, a child is being abused TONIGHT. One in ten children in the UK is sexually abused at some point in their life.
Within ten miles of every one of you, a life will be lost to heroin this Christmas.
I was brought up in a reasonably affluent household and got used to seeing all this as somehow unreal, as I guess most people do. These are the underclass, a different breed, an evil, idle breed of criminals.
No. They are not as lucky as you and I. Most of them are not as intelligent, charming or good looking as we are. They lack the talents we do. But are human beings really trash?
What sort of society is it that has a bottom rung so horrific?
Our society is warping, breaking and twisting people and spitting them out. And that's here, here in the UK. I've seen it. I've known some of these people. And when you do get to know some of them, broken by their twenties by a childhood of abuse, addicted to crack or heroin, no use to man nor beast, no Einsteins, but certainly no Monsters, tragic wrecks of human beings, you cannot help but feel anger.
It is looking that in the face and seeing it, that truly opened my eyes for the first time. That recognition. Realising that these WERE PEOPLE, just like me. Just as capable of love and laughter, of cheering on a football team, of enjoying a pint.
And somehow the glitzy lights and the Starbucks and all the material crap they bribe us with, seems hollow.
There's just too much wrong.
I think that's why I party so hard. It frees me in a sense. Because I can't change the world. There's nothing, nothing I can do. But my impotence to do anything really does crush me.
The title of this blog is no accident.
Because the whole thing has to go, it's rotten to the core, this society of ours.
And that thought is always there, always in the back of my mind, always a barrier to my really enjoying anything at all. I can't forget, never.
I guess most people want to fall in love, have a nice house, raise a family. That's their priority.
And I guess that DOES sound nice to me, too.
But it's not the most important thing in life to me.
If I had it, I would walk out on the lot, if I thought it would bring the revolution just one day closer.
Till then, I guess all I can do is blog.
But that's a start.
PS A lot of my favourite blogs have slowed down in posting of late. Come on people, get blogging! Stop wasting time on other stuff.
PPS I'm sure my hypocrisy might seem obvious, in that whilst I have kept this blog ticking by in terms of posts, my blog visiting of late has been ATROCIOUS. I hope to rectify that over Christmas and start treating blogging again with the seriousness it deserves.
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20 comments:
Some of us are blogging.
There is a class at the top with an invested interest in a lack of socio/economic mobility. And it exists all over. To them, somebody has to be at the bottom, somebody has to keep the stores open and running, somebody has to manage business day to day and take the fall when things aren't going according to "projections".
Education is a number one factor, at least on this side of the pond. The education you receive reflects the geography of a given area. Detroit students receive a terrible education. I know, because I tutored college English for a long time. The students who made it to college from Detroit were often amazed at all the nuances of writing that their teachers never bothered to teach them. Same thing in history, math, you name it, and it was neglected. Of course, I taught them all I could and I still hope it was enough.
If a person does not know to expect better, they won't. It's sad and simple. And the upper class knows it.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
[G. B. Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903]
Good post, though, Crushed.
There are other things you can do beside blogging but I can't encourage you to do them because most of the fun ones which have some impact involve firearms and are illegal.
You make a lot of good points but I still can't agree with you totally on this.
A lot of people are born into bad circumstances, or perhaps into a forgotten part of society but they still have the choice. They don't have to steal, but they do. There are a hundred things they could do to change there lives and a lot of them choose not to. I know that if I chose to not work and to sign on for every benefit going I would be lot better off than I would be if I had a job. So where is the incentive to work in the first place?
There are plenty of people who come from run down estates can rise above all that and make something for themselves. So why not everyone?
I thought Aston was a slum when I went, but apparently I only went to the nice bit!
I agree most of us spend all our lives caught up in frivolity.
Things may well be bad for the people you speak of. But it is a relative badness. They have their physical needs met to a standard absolutely unheard of 70 years ago, probably even 50 years ago.
It seems much of what they are lacking, (apart from intelligence in many cases) is meaning to their lives. Even as things have physically improved, there seems to have been a corresponding ‘spiritual’ deterioration. It is arguable that this is the direct result of social changes pushed through by the paternalistic left for ideological reasons, together with some of the physical improvements.
The government likes to bandy the (now newspeak) term ‘community’ at every turn as they have destroyed much of the sense of community and solidarity that the British once felt.
One can’t quite call it a conspiracy, more an antipathy to all they rightly, or wrongly, lumped together in a package that they hated called: empire, anything not left patrician or working class, respect, etc...
It begins to seem they may have misidentified some of their targets and thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Just because someone you don’t like has a good idea, it doesn’t automatically make it a bad idea, many people seem to forget that, or never work it out.
I misread your capitals WERE PEOPLE for WEREPEOPLE - as in werewolves. Very telling
The question is would the revolution make a difference to the lives of those you are talking about. I suspect not. Probably just bring us all down down a notch or two or more, except for those who always rise to the top, no matter what.
James- I know, but there seems to be less of it going on. Admittedly, the season so far is preventing me from too much visiting.
Xmas day I'll be bored senseless by 2 PM, so I hope SOME people will be blogging.
Eric- Sometimes I think the underclass IS deliberately sustained, kept in their slums like ZOO animals, so as to encourage us to stay on the treadmill.
They are almost a seff-contained social community. The barriers between us and them are like the Berlin wall.
Sean- I'm not so sure. I think over time, power HAS devolved, in a way downwards. We no longer have open slavery, women have rights to their bodies, there is consensus concerning what brutal acts we can commit on others and with what justification, things have improved since the Romans fed people to lions.
But we're nowhere near a real communal democracy.
Paul- Well, thing is, it would just be me, and I can't really do it alone.
But if you are pointing out that the sonner SOMEONE starts to get things on hand on that front, the better, yes, I'm inclined to agree.
Speaking as someone who derives at least part of their ideals from Michael Collins...
Oestrebunny- Ok, let's face it, people aren't created people.
Or start equal. Look how far ahead I started. I can get with buggering up my life and coming back and jumping right back in to the professional establishment.
They can't. They have to born bright and have huge drives of energy to escape the gravity of the underclass.
Few born there get those endowments.
Fact. That's just reality.
A lot of them are no use, being frank, for the sort of jobs most people reding this do. They're not smart enough, quick enough,, they're no good at social nuances, they tend not to look as good aesthetically.
Most of them have a cat in hell's chance of being economically viable.
Twenty years ago there were hordes of jobs doing extremely menial factory jobs, no skills needed. They could earn the way.
Now? Now it's cheaper to use Chinese prison labour.
Ed- Aston is nasty. Pure and simple.
Parts of it, are on a par with the West Bronx- and I REALLY am not exagarrating.
Fortunately, I live miles away.
Phil- That's the point, they have no meaning.
They are offically stamped REJECT by the system, useful as consumers, but useless as producers.
What a message to give millions of people!
Gledwood- I'm sure you can see where I'm coming from.
We have such an excluive attitude towards the outcasts of the ghettos, in our society 'Hackney' and 'Lambeth' are names asscoaied with 'underclass'. How must it feel to wake up and look at, and see your landscape tarred that way?
jmb- Yes it would. Because we'd distribute the labour that needed tobe done equally. Everybody would do an equal amount of work, and get an equal share.
> Because the whole thing has to go, it's rotten to the core, this society of ours.
And that thought is always there, always in the back of my mind, always a barrier to my really enjoying anything at all. I can't forget, never.
It's good that you remember it. 'Cos to care is the first step to making a difference. Go make a difference, CBI. It's not impossible... :-)
Some interesting observations made and I would like to point them out and follow them along a little:
1. For them, school had no point. They haven't the skills or the talents to fit the only types of jobs the UK still has to offer- jobs that can't be done elsewhere.
The explanation, AFAICT, is related to:
2: Theirs is a world where no one ever cared, kept in sink estates by a society which can only offer them £55 a week and a council flat.
You say "can only offer", but that offer is enough for a number of people to raise kids (increasing what they get) and not bother about their education. What is more important is that a hard core minority drag down the other poor people, infecting them with the true poverty in the UK - the poverty of ambition. Poor people surrounded by such entropic souls are those with a high chance of multi-generational poverty.
3. But still expects them to follow rules made by the propertied classes for the propertied classes.
Until 1997, most rules benefited all. The real issue is that there is no real consequence to them NOT following the rules. No private landlord that will kick them out. No Charity that will stop their handouts. They have "entitlement" in law, which means the taxpayers have a non-negotiable obligation, i.e. a form of indentured servitude. As you say...
4. The have nothing to lose
If they had something to lose, they would wish to keep it. If you give people something they cannot lose they will not respect it. People have always aspired. Socialists and other Authoritiarians love levelling down, love an underclass of dependent serfs to patronise. Capitalists are mostly just interested in hiring the enough skills for as little money as possible so they can beat their competitors and earn more cash.
In the past we had satanic Mill Owners, now we have one National Mill Owner who decides what charity is given paid by the sweat of our labour, without our consent but they are the grinning parasites in the photos getting the credit.
5. Nobody cares beyond what's on their own TV screen, where Eastenders and the News have equal reality.
It really does seem like a conscious effort by the MSM to keep people down, arguing, grasping, lying, cheating, insecure and most of all suspicious of each other. Make everyone hate each other and then the State appears to be your friend.
An extremely powerful post, Ingsoc. It's left me reeling and a ruminating for the festive period.
You're astonishing sometimes.
See you in the New Year.
PS, have posted a funny on my blog about policing in dark places. ;-)
I think one of the moments that shook me most was seeing a man I grew up in a small town with on the streets of the big city I now live in with those broken, empty eyes. Having know the way he was before, how alive, made it so poignant to me.
I agree, the underclasses are seen as crucial for the sustainment of the upper class. If the position of the lowest class was to improve, it would devalue a lot of what the upper class uses to distinguish and separate itself from the rest of us.
It's almost a cliche to come here and agree that society is heading right for the darkest places ever envisioned by philosopher or layman. But it's true, we aren't just on our way, we're almost there.
Fine post, Crushed. I have seen them too, and worked with them and I agree - they didn't have what the lucky ones like you and I would call a "choice". I am disturbed by the fact that you would sacrifice your own happiness for the "revolution", though. - OK, I know somebody has to, but it smacks a bit of the stuff dictators are made of. Sorry.
I must say I strongly disagree with eric1313’s “the under classes are seen as crucial for the sustainment of the upper class.”
Unless I have misinterpreted his comments he appears to be mired in socialist politics of the middle of the last century.
One should not confuse ‘upper class’ in the old fashioned sense with the political classes who are ‘upper’ in the sense they rule us. The underclass are necessary to the patrician political classes and they are a very different kettle of fish.
They don’t need them to feel different.
Class warfare is just something those advertising themselves a flavours of the left use as an ‘opiate of the masses’ to sucker people in, like a magician distracting you with his right hand while he is actually doing something else with his left.
The underclass they have helped create and maintain are the excuse they do and will, use to take away your rights and liberties.
Eve- There's only a certain amount we CAN do. But acknowledging the ptoblem- which at a societal level, is the wastage of human energy contribution, is a start.
Roger- I like this point 'Socialists and other Authoritiarians love levelling down, love an underclass of dependent serfs to patronise. Capitalists are mostly just interested in hiring the enough skills for as little money as possible so they can beat their competitors and earn more cash.'
Yes, that sums up the problem.
Your last paragraph as well, is true, I think.
Divide and rule and bribe us with washing machines.
E-K- I think it's the whole relative poverty, as against absolute povery argument.
In material terms, we will always get richer as a whole, becausewe can always improve the infrastructure so that it delivers more for our efforts.
But it hides the fact that we need more consumers than producers, therefore we create a class that consumes but doesn't produce.
Princess P- Loss of hope. Take away someone's dignity, hope soon disappears also. We all need know we belong, to be told you have no place, is a soul killer.
Eric- Indeed, we create Hell, so that the rest of us will strive for capitalist heaven, complete with MBNA card and a new kitchen.
We ARE almost there, but they hope we are too busy watching Big Brother to notice.
Welshcakes- Yes, but it's one of those paradoxes.
I wouldn't REALLY be sacrificing my own happiness, because all other happiness is shallow and brackish by comparison (for me, anyway).
Phil- I think Eric is right, but so are you, it's just you are seeing it in left-right terms, another one of those false sliding scales they use to streamline ideas.
Upper in this sense, means those in control of the infrastructure/power matrix.
Your last two pragraphs are not only bang on the mark, they tie in nicely with Eric's comment, and indeed, I think we are all singing from the same hymn sheet to a certain extent on the overall principles here.
Crushed Re “Phil- I think Eric is right, but so are you, it's just you are seeing it in left-right terms, another one of those false sliding scales they use to streamline ideas.”
Surely you mean the other way round to some extent?
I was arguing Eric was being sucked in by the old class warfare, left right, model that the political elite like to use as a distraction and to get people to vote for them.
Though there is a left/right element to their ‘branding’ so it is still a convenient label.
They, the political elite, use justifications and talk up bogy men (some admittedly are actually a really threat) to take firmer and firmer control of our freedoms and intrude further and further into aspects of our lives that they should never be allowed to.
I could develop this at length but time gallops on…
Crushed said: "But it hides the fact that we need more consumers than producers, therefore we create a class that consumes but doesn't produce."
Yes, and the means the State uses to fund that is via redistribution, which has evolved from being a good intention into our enforced collective road to hell.
Thus those producing are taxed so that others can consume what they are making.
This is an example of how the National Mill Owner operates.
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