For several years, ever since I married him, I've been trying to explain to my resident Brit , a/k/a my husband, why I believe British society is more livable than American society. Most Americans have grown up brainwashed to think that 'equality' and a 'classless society' are better than societies with strata (that is to say, those with well-defined populations of people of noble birth, ordinary people, and the untouchables).
Perhaps you haven't noticed; American society is classless, but in a whole different sense. Its underclass (yes, we have one) has been elevated to become heroes. We glorify trashy young women like Britney Spears. We spend endless years debating whether O.J. Simpson offed his wife and her friend. We seem to have invented the rent-a-cop, now showing (double feature!) at an airport near you. Try as they might, in my recent travels in Britain, I did not find a single one so obnoxious as the most professional among the so-called security personnel at U.S. airports.
It is in the dealings between groups of people that the superiority of British manners and ways of life to U.S. manners and ways of life is most pronounced.
Take George W. Bush, for example. This is not going to be Bush-bashing in the usual sense. It is, however, going to bash the idea that someone who portrays himself as the common man (the moronic laugh, the giggly shoulders) is good for the country, or any country. Why would any intelligent person want someone so laughably ordinary to lead the once-most-powerful nation on earth? Wouldn't one want a person with a little more education than the norm? Wouldn't one want this when the lowest common denominator of human conduct is extolled in any number of implausible survival and reality shows?
The American public has become so dumbed down that it doesn't understand that if one is led by idiots, then one is an even bigger idiot.
Of course, one will hear in England that Gordon Brown (the Prime Minister, roughly equivalent to our president, for those who would fail Jay Walking) is a dolt, a puppet of America's puppet regime, and so on. In fact, he is not of noble birth. Prime Ministers generally are not. But England has its royalty to protect it from the excesses of the untutored, even when they manage to ride a monkey's coattails into office. (I didn't refer to any particular monkey, and, indeed, Brown's predecessor was more like a lynx, if one is shopping for comparisons.)
The royals have a duty to become educated concerning all the issues concerning their subjects. Fortunately, because they don't have to spend time getting elected or accept bad-faith monetary support as elected officials do, they are free to actually seek to understand what's needed by the population, rather than what they need to line their own pockets or get elected again.
Granted, the royals do get richer, via the lands they own and investments made, not to mention taxes. So one must look to another aspect of human life to explain why it is that a stratified society (royals, nobles, squires, and so on) is preferable. That aspect is noblesse oblige. While it is certainly true that there are ignoble nobles who care not a fig for anyone but themselves, by and large, they are aware of a duty to comport themselves in at least acceptable, if not admirable, ways. They know the eyes of those less blessed is upon them. As a result, it seems to me, even the lowliest Brit is prone to accept responsibility for his own actions, something that can certainly not be said of the lowliest in the United States. You can debate that; or you can pick up a newspaper and read the blacksploitation articles and so on.
By now, perhaps, you are--if you are a standard-issue, PC-conscious American--steaming. Well, steam on. Because the truth is, one needs a top level of society, engaged in studying the great works and with money enough to actually live a balanced, thoughtful and ethical life based on them, to show the rest of us how it is done.
One day years ago, I realized a main difference between Americans who get ahead (usually those who began ahead) and those struggling was this: the upper classes in the United States (read preppies) do not berate each other for kicks, as do the working and lower middle classes. In preppy households, the 'rank out' is unknown. Nor have I ever seen it done in England, not once. Not in uppercrust households, not in the middle or working class households I've known. This has proven to me that, at least in terms of human conduct, the trickle-down theory works quite well.
We all enjoy the Horatio Alger sorts of stories about those of modest beginnings who become wealthy. It seems to me those sorts of stories must have been all the rage in Britain in about 1066, or even earlier. It takes a few generations to sort out the aggressive, self-aggrandizing, inhumane behavior that is often the source of the amassing of great wealth by those who started penniless.
In the United States, we also have the problem of media that paints so-called heroes as much better than they are. Tiger Woods, who is so squeaky clean in the U.S. press, is somewhat blemished abroad. Nasty disposition, I've read over there. Is this befitting someone who has so much talent and earned so much money and influences so many others? We don't need to delve further into O.J. Simpson. Nor need we dissect the short, unhappy life of Anna Nicole Smith.
Sir Paul McCartney, on the other hand, has been through the wringer of late and steadfastly refused to stoop to his ex-wife's level. He seems a thoroughly nice man. He was, yes, born a commoner. But he was elevated, via his talent and personal integrity, to knighthood. Her Majesty doesn't knight the benighted. So, one might say, Sir Paul has become, from small beginnings, an essential factor in England's stratified society, and one who, moreover, carries on the tradition of noblesse oblige. He had to learn it someplace: I submit it was by watching the uppercrust, and emulating them until he became one of them.
And therein lies the value in a stratified society. One needs a certain number of those who accept that they are responsible to live a decent life in return for their fortunes; in short, they attend to the niceties of human intercourse. (And yes, I did throw that in so that the unschooled would titter.)
It is not impossible for up-and-comers from the American hodgepodge to achieve this, to develop a sense of noblesse oblige that might help ease the conduct of a frazzled society, but such folks are truly difficult to find in America. The Kennedy family? Well, to a point. Possibly to the point that, despite his own personal shortcomings, Ted Kennedy has been a steadfast voice for humane causes in Congress. But the Kennedy family is tragic, and has always been. Maybe it is not far enough away, yet, from the rum-running days of its modern founder to have transmuted the aggression completely; that family traces its modern history only to old Joe's exploits during Prohibition (itself a prime example of how raw American society can be; anyone for a repeat? Thank MADD...a group of people who certainly could benefit from some noblesse oblige.)
Who are the American peers? What families or groups might make a counterpart to the nobles and knights of Britain? The corporate captains? Enron's Kenneth Lay, for instance? Hardly. We have no Sir Richard Bransons, making a safe, affordable airline, Virgin Atlantic, for everyone. I hasten to add that his "First Class" cabin is called, shamelessly, thank goodness, Upper Class. It seems to me that the occupants of those bigger, softer seats, provided with champagne and filet mignon before they doze in comfort across the Atlantic, are less resented by the hoi polloi in economy (Virgin Atlantic's counterpart to coach) than similar passengers are on U.S. carriers. Or maybe it's my imagination.
But I don't think so...and I've studied both sides at close quarters.
No comments:
Post a Comment