> working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics
I'm curious to what you mean by this
I can't pinpoint exactly "what I mean" but basically traditional values. More willing to accept the fact that men and women are going to find each other attractive, that you probably don't want your wife or husband to have a "platonic" friend of the opposite sex that they meet up with one on one, etc etc.
Whereas the highbrow view is more like - okay but if we accept those things then women can't work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes. We want women to be able to work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes, anything else is unacceptable, so we should sanitise all of the interactions and punish everyone for being human and then we might be able to make it work, sort of kind of but not really, everyone will be miserable but we pretend.
It’s a great exercise in personal growth for coping skills.
No thanks, Ill take anything that isn’t involuntary labor
Because that is what it is. Nobody gets sent to Afghanistan as part of conscription.
And, in my opinion, it has been some of the most valuable education I have got and something I'd definitely recommend my kids and my friends do if offered the opportunity.
Similarly, in France some engineering schools required an internship in a factory to learn the perspective of blue-collar workers that the student might eventually manage but at 8 weeks only I don't think it gives as much perspective as what my German friends had.
You should be more careful with such statements as that's more exception than rule. If you're country goes to war, and it's not just some peace keeping mission, you can bet that whoever is at the time in army could be sent to the frontline.
If we end up in an attack on our homelands thats another thing.
But even then no ordinary conscript that reads HN (ok, possible exception for russians, but even they try to maintain a veneer of "voluntary" on it when they send conscripts) will be sent to abroad.
We didn’t have any conscripts in Afghanistan because we don’t have any conscripts at the moment. I can say that there were a lot of people that were deployed in the Middle East when they didn’t want to be. Especially for second and third tours. I personally have a friend who was told he was going to be on a ship in the Navy who ended up in Iraq.
Of course?! We've had a volunteer army for the last half century?! How can you claim professional service members are being conscripted and sent to conflict?
Same goes for Taiwan and Israel.
Germany does not at the moment but can reintroduce it at a moments notice, and also they are taking steps to encouraging voluntary conscription like service.
Probably more 1st world nations, these were just the ones from the top of my head.
And involuntary restrictions of basic freedoms like what and when to eat and where and when to sleep.
My parents hated it, and I don't think I have ever met anyone who remembered that experience fondly for any reason. If anything, the kind of stories that people tell about it seem to imply that it was more divisive than uniting - the rural folk who were doing that as a permanent job were both resentful of "city slickers" and annoyed at the fact that they can't do it "properly", while the students would very quickly tire of being yelled at and start treating their hosts with contempt.
I think it's the betwixt and between dynamic: working class folk know they're living on what they have coming; upper class folk know they're living on what they have; but middle class folk, no matter how they live, are only middle class folk if other middle class folk agree they are — hence the insecurity, and at one reason for the conformity.
(in the UK, I think U vs non-U started as a joke, yet was popularised by exactly the people it had been meant to be taking the piss from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English )
GP indicates another trichotomy- past, future and present orientation..
>Now they hide, not merely from envy and revenge but from expose journalism much advanced in cunning and ferocity since Veblen's time, and from an even worse threat, virtually unknown to Veblen,foundational mendicancy, with its hordes of beggars in three-piece suits constantly badgering the well-to-do.
Update for XXI to take into account (YC vs) “fakers” & the finally selfaware 4th estate
(the proles aren't any less status conscious than the outer party; what else could explain tracksuit chic and luxury brand revenue? "Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children.")
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPpjU1UeAo (the video features a nice 20' day sailer, but is a little short on horses)
EDIT: * διαίρει και βασίλευε, known in our times as "let's you and him fight". The brits played this game well during their imperial period, but looking at the world map of frozen (and hot) conflicts, maybe they played it too well.
(I might assign the labels differently though: working class is future oriented [live in expectation of what you have coming]; upper class is past oriented [live on what you already have]; middle class is present oriented [performative in the now]. The first two are economic; the last social. bien-pensant/What would Mrs. Grundy think?)
I got the impression that the highly educated types are wrong in a lot of ways, and the blue collar labourers are wrong in completely different ways, so I took the intersection of their worldviews and now ...well I'm probably wrong in every way ;) We can but try.
Couldn't agree more!
What is wrong from the view of each? (As someone who interacts both with phds and high school graduates on a daily/weekly basis I find the differences interesting).
Biggest surprise for me was the sense of community that seemed present in the lower earners.
I will say that, at the root of it all, we are who we orbit.
I was once in an environment where, depending upon how I was dressed, I would either be addressed in english and called "Sir" or addressed in spanish and called "Paisano".
Why was the community surprising? (I mean, my mental model is that most dyadic social interactions can be approached with either authority or community, so I'm not surprised that groups without much authority tend to play the community card instead)
This isn't just a UK thing. Seems fairly universal at least across the western world.
I find the same (also in the UK) from having lived in (and grown with) a non-western culture. One that is also uptight (much more so in many ways, and definitely sexist) but in a different way.
> Whereas the highbrow view is more like - okay but if we accept those things then women can't work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes. We want women to be able to work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes, anything else is unacceptable
I am quite surprised at the extent to which gender stereotypes are pervasive. At a bonfire last weekend kids were being sold illuminated toys, and all the little boys had swords, and the girls had unicorns. My daughters would have wanted swords (they are teen and adult) but I have realised that is unusual.
I’ve also seen this. There’s more of an acknowledgment: that people will be attracted to each other (or not),the status/dating games people play will be out and open. It will be acceptable to talk about physical/sexual qualities of your coworkers, etc. That when you are in physically close proximity you might see each others sexual parts and comment on them. It will be understood that after a breakup people will be less amicable.
You can also see this in literature: look at Les Miserables. In the factory they talk about sexual fantasies of the foreman. Whereas in the context of the upper classes it’s talked about in context of love/romanticism.
Contrary to popular believe, I find this much healthier. Emotions expressed can be dealt with and moved on. Emotions suppressed grow and fester. If it’s normal to talk about who’s is attracted to who, then everyone is aware of the sexual exploits of the general manager. Therefore people know where to set boundaries. If it’s hush hush kept quiet then the exploits of the Gm can grow.
The dynamic works when flirting is within a social circle because bad behavior risks your social status in the group and it works in bars because you're equals, around friends, and can just leave. At work, at least in an office, is kinda the worst combination. I've seen it work well outside of office settings because there aren't as complicated power dynamics— we're all equally in the shit in the kitchen.
pretty much all weird gender dynamics happen in upper class and posh environments. You won't find women on a farm afraid to get their hands dirty or men afraid to stitch something. People just do the jobs that are necessary. The entire idea that women are too pristine or fragile to do any work is basically an upper class fantasy because no working class household can afford to operate like this.
Whether its the military, manufacturing or agricultural environments, anywhere that's sort of blue collar or practical people aren't obsessed with their differences that much. I grew up in a rural environment and as kids boys would play with girls, as teenagers we'd go skinny dipping, there'd be none of the weird neurotic and insecure interactions I encountered when I went to university. There's entire categories of stereotypes and boxes highly educated and "high status" people invent to separate themselves in, not just along gender lines.