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The middle class are damned if they do, damned if they don't by the author's argument. They are at once chastised for "inoculating" themselves from working cla
by UVB-76 12y ago
The middle class are damned if they do, damned if they don't by the author's argument.
They are at once chastised for "inoculating" themselves from working class culture, and for embracing it.
- Det_Jacobian 12y agoThey're not embracing it, they're consuming it. Embracing another culture is altruistic. Narcissism is looking at another culture and considering whether to "inoculate against" or "experience" it as a feature of your own life. The twenty-somethings are filled with a sense of meaninglessness because their lives are meaningless. They allowed their careers to define who they were, and are now surprised when the market created a large, ticketed carousel for them.
- xorcist 12y agoI love this comment. Most people don't change the world, and apart from the few that do, it is completely natural to get stuck between meaningless things. At least until you have kids. That's what most people derive meaning from.
- Fomite 12y agoThis. They're not adopting, or becoming part of a culture, they're indulging in it as spectacle. If you bought your Mason Jar specifically to drink out of, you have missed the entire cultural context.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- 001sky 12y agoBritish "middle" class and american "middle class" are really distinct concepts. I wonder how many people commenting on this thread are confusing / conflating them?
- vinceguidry 12y agoI'd be interested in a treatment of those differences. As far as I know, a middle class is simply the class of people that earns enough money to be able to buy a house, save for retirement, and generally shield themselves from the chaos of lower class struggle.
- chrisseaton 12y agoIn the US middle class means middle of the income range. In the UK it means a particular social and cultural outlook. It's almost a kind of weird extra dimension of the political spectrum. Hard to explain but you absolutely know it when you see it.
- ripb 12y ago>The middle class are damned if they do, damned if they don't by the author's argument. And yet if the middle class ask their representatives to scale back the very same social programs that provide the uber cool, uber cultural working and welfare classes that the author is idolizing here they are demonized in the extreme. Sure, the middle class give the working and welfare class schools, access to universities, free healthcare, lots of cash welfare, houses to live in cost free and lots more, but don't you know that they're literally the devil incarnate? Who do they think they are to have parties in warehouses? That's what we do when we've claimed our welfare for the week! Those damned culture vultures!
- the_af 12y agoThe middle class "give" the working class access to universities and free healthcare? Um, what?
- ripb 12y agoWhat are you taking issue with? Keep in mind we're discussing the UK.
- the_af 12y agoThe middle class cannot give what is not theirs to give. What if the working class stopped working?
- ripb 12y agoTheir taxes are theirs. It's through generosity that social programs are created and paid for through the general revenue. Although admittedly it has now backfired, as it's now easier to have children on welfare than it is for many working would-be parents. The working class WILL stop working and in the very near future, as basic jobs such as checkout staff, or taxis, become automated. It's an impending crisis.
- pjc50 12y agoWell, what if the middle class stopped working? Have we forgotten the teachers strikes? Admittedly it doesn't have the same immediate effect as the miner's strike turning the lights out. But healthcare and education are very stereotypical middle class occupations.