For the middle class, the world is governed by rules and laws and these are their very source of truth and order in the world. The aristocracy, who for much of history were a military class, know better, that the law is only as good as your ability to enforce it. The working class operate in a similar situation, though the aristocrat looks to be above the law and the working class below it, both often operate on its fringes and therefore understand its limitations.
If the middle class has become boringly puritanical, it is in part perhaps because they cannot see any problem which cannot be legislated for and cannot comprehend that not all problems have a rational answer. This is epitomised in Human Rights legislation, a quasi religious concept which elevates the law above the legislator, in an attempt to give greater certainty to the rule of law. The contingency of democracy and the contingency of battle have much in common; which is why both are looked at with distain by the middle classes, as something which is unworthy of bestowing power.
The law is necessary but freedom requires the ability know where it’s boundaries lie, not in making it boundless. There is certainly something of this in our Prime Minister, who has an uncanny nack of knowing which boundaries he can cross without fear of reprisal.
The old aristocracy and the working classes united to bring down in this country the middle classes very own legislative Empire, the EU, which believes there is rule for everything, forgetting in human affairs, that the rules themselves are part of a never ending game. Which is perhaps why both the aristocrat and the working classes love competition?
The law, in theory at least and even if the outcome is not known in advance, should not be arbitrary but is a matter of its correct application. But the world does not deal in correct applications of abstract principals. It deals in singular unrepeatable events, were there is no correct outcome. The results of contests: military, economic, sporting or democratic do not conform to rules; (though they often do operate within them) rather than trying to eliminate this inconvenience truth, we should embrace it.
Freedom is frightening as its outcomes are unknown but the way the middle class seek to to fix this, by legislating away as many outcomes as possible, is a road to tyranny.
…a very insightful analysis Matthew. Perhaps another dimension worth considering is how closely the middle class more strongly reflect feminine values and modes, as we see right now with Covid: “Shut the gate, stay inside, do what mummy tells you…”
So you think trying to avoid getting sick is a feminine value, and giving the virus a sporting chance and daring it to do its worst is what men do? As a man I could almost be insulted by that 😉
I mean no insult…but that is pretty much what I do. I carry a fly swat as my one concession to “feminine values”
PS: Just to clarify, I see no correlation between feminine values and feminine gender on this issue.
And yet Baron-Cohen places systemising more in the masculine. Perhaps it is rule-following that is more an attribute of the empathising feminine, and not just rule-following but rule-seeking too.
Roissy was right.
It’s clear from war crime trials that there are times when rules should not be followed. Principles and morals come first.
Getting the principle right is more important than the letter of the law. Then you choose how to respond to the rule. Even if this leads to bad personal outcomes like dissidents or whistleblowers (Snowden, Assange) or sufragettes.
In the absence of an active rule, you still apply the principle – fairness, justice, tolerance, duty, respect, dignity – often without needing to make an explicit rule.
I would completely agree with that. Only the main problem here is not people who prefer to follow higher principles, but people who think their own convenience or freedom from constraint is much more important than any rule.
As a very middleclass person, I would normally agree with you. But in the current climate, I feel the eductaed middleclasses have completely lost the plot. The great mask curfuffle says it all. My card carrying, data scientist friends have lapped up the hysterical nonsense about wearing a mask to be kind and are having canary caniptions because restrictions have been lifted and we are being told to choose for ourselves how to live. I have lost all respect and I am embracing my working class roots with pride. The current set of rules are utter nonsense and have nothing to do with anything except politics and the exercise of power. There is no honor in complying and I am with Lord Sumption, it is now a moral duty not to obey. I don’t think a government should be leading the normally obedient to take such positions. It does not bode well for the future.
‘The law is necessary but freedom requires the ability know where it’s boundaries lie, not in making it boundless. There is certainly something of this in our Prime Minister, who has an uncanny nack of knowing which boundaries he can cross without fear of reprisal.’
Yes, we are free to break the law and then we pay the penalty if found guilty. Most law in this country is made to protect, preserve & facilitate not to curtail freedom. No, Boris Johnson doesn’t break laws. He uses privilege and wealth to protect him if he is taken to or goes to law.
So this all boils down to the middle-class being control freaks. They’ve always been like this, which is what makes them so good at creating and maintaining businesses, but giving them the helm in government is a terrible thing to do because they will seek to control any and all variables to the point of dicatorship.
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
Class….
I have lived an odd life of being one of the very few not assigned a class, my family being up to weird stuff all my life put us in the mix of a lot of the higher levels, yet never a regular group. Being multi-national I was never really one thing or another, and so could always mix unselfish-consciously with any kind. Later in life when I became a down and out drifter for decades this also was very good as by speaking well, accent and speech mannerisms, one is given a great deal of slack by authority and everyone, really, even if you are a street person. The lifetime trained mannerisms of shaking hands, introducing ones self, the systemic ‘good manners’ – a thousand things, quantify one – and having just the right, innate, ways and speech gives one a bit of a pass. (Orwell talks well on this in his excellent book ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’)
I have lived a great deal with the lower and under classes as well, and am right at home with them, and never had any thing but good from our class situation, I have never, ever, had it held against me.
So what I want to say on class is because I have a rare, and large, experience with class, spanning a range of cultures and nations. And so here it is:
Upper class are better than Middle Class, who are better than Lower Class, who are better than underclass. It is all true.
And here is the Key to it all. Upper Class train their children always. They eat meals at a table, with knifes and forks, water glasses, salads, wine glasses… The children are talked to, are expected to fallow conversation but not interject childish distractions. They learn adult conversation, the adults take great pains to teach concepts, manners, and discussion. Conversation grows to be on concepts, history, politics, and classics as the child ages, not just ‘what I did’.
Upper class go on holidays at points of great culture, where the children are dragged through museums, theater, Historic monuments, points of great history, great art, general aesthetics, classics, music, and so on. The adults talk to the children about this.
The upper-class children do excellent schools, and after do dance classes, tennis class, horse riding, sports, summer classes, math camp, language, mix with equally educated peers, and so on.
Middle class do a lot less of this all, but some. Lower class, almost none. The kids eat in front of a TV, with their hands or a spoon. Holidays are where they run wild at mindless resorts…
And there it is – how much effort you spend making your children sophisticated, well mannered, educated, conversational, and all rounded – and THIS IS A LOT OF WORK, but the upper class do it, as it is the only path to being upper class, and it is their duty to their children.
It takes 2 generations to move a class really. One can parrot another class if you live in it, but still are what you were formed to be. Your children can cross the class then. It is that hard. (And being class confident your down arrows mean nothing to me, I just do not care as I am so confident in my self)
David Harris
2 years ago
“Jess Phillips, like many prominent Labour MPs, comes from the comfortable ranks of the bourgeoise, her father having been a senior NHS administrator.”
Yes, and uses her (faux?) Brummie accent to fool people that she’s working class. She’s not.
That’s the beauty of Midland and Northern accents – they bestow immediate and unquestioned working-class cachet.
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Traditional conservatism was posited as an alliance between the toffs and the working classes against the bourgeoisie. This is fairly stark in Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.
Billy Bob
2 years ago
Anybody who has ever followed the England cricket team away, especially during the ashes, can testify to this. For a few glorious weeks you’ll have some lads from a northern council estate happily drinking and singing songs with a Viscount Rupert of Shropshire III. It’s a strange mix of top and bottom of society
Bill W
2 years ago
Getting rid of the grammar schools was part of the class hypocrisy.
Last edited 2 years ago by Bill W
Bill W
2 years ago
The Army has been recruiting on merit including from the middle classes for a long time. The demands of WW2 accelerated this when the Army further modernised its selection processes. The Army was using more lengthy but effective selection processes decades before they were introduced into the private sector.
Yes, but for a very long time before the Army discovered the merits of meritocracy, you needed an independent income to subsidise your officer lifestyle.
For the middle class, the world is governed by rules and laws and these are their very source of truth and order in the world. The aristocracy, who for much of history were a military class, know better, that the law is only as good as your ability to enforce it. The working class operate in a similar situation, though the aristocrat looks to be above the law and the working class below it, both often operate on its fringes and therefore understand its limitations.
If the middle class has become boringly puritanical, it is in part perhaps because they cannot see any problem which cannot be legislated for and cannot comprehend that not all problems have a rational answer. This is epitomised in Human Rights legislation, a quasi religious concept which elevates the law above the legislator, in an attempt to give greater certainty to the rule of law. The contingency of democracy and the contingency of battle have much in common; which is why both are looked at with distain by the middle classes, as something which is unworthy of bestowing power.
The law is necessary but freedom requires the ability know where it’s boundaries lie, not in making it boundless. There is certainly something of this in our Prime Minister, who has an uncanny nack of knowing which boundaries he can cross without fear of reprisal.
The old aristocracy and the working classes united to bring down in this country the middle classes very own legislative Empire, the EU, which believes there is rule for everything, forgetting in human affairs, that the rules themselves are part of a never ending game. Which is perhaps why both the aristocrat and the working classes love competition?
The law, in theory at least and even if the outcome is not known in advance, should not be arbitrary but is a matter of its correct application. But the world does not deal in correct applications of abstract principals. It deals in singular unrepeatable events, were there is no correct outcome. The results of contests: military, economic, sporting or democratic do not conform to rules; (though they often do operate within them) rather than trying to eliminate this inconvenience truth, we should embrace it.
Freedom is frightening as its outcomes are unknown but the way the middle class seek to to fix this, by legislating away as many outcomes as possible, is a road to tyranny.
…a very insightful analysis Matthew. Perhaps another dimension worth considering is how closely the middle class more strongly reflect feminine values and modes, as we see right now with Covid: “Shut the gate, stay inside, do what mummy tells you…”
So you think trying to avoid getting sick is a feminine value, and giving the virus a sporting chance and daring it to do its worst is what men do? As a man I could almost be insulted by that 😉
I mean no insult…but that is pretty much what I do. I carry a fly swat as my one concession to “feminine values”
PS: Just to clarify, I see no correlation between feminine values and feminine gender on this issue.
And yet Baron-Cohen places systemising more in the masculine. Perhaps it is rule-following that is more an attribute of the empathising feminine, and not just rule-following but rule-seeking too.
Roissy was right.
Very interesting analysis. I am still all for following the rules rather than making a lifetime project of fluoting them.
It’s clear from war crime trials that there are times when rules should not be followed. Principles and morals come first.
Getting the principle right is more important than the letter of the law. Then you choose how to respond to the rule. Even if this leads to bad personal outcomes like dissidents or whistleblowers (Snowden, Assange) or sufragettes.
In the absence of an active rule, you still apply the principle – fairness, justice, tolerance, duty, respect, dignity – often without needing to make an explicit rule.
I would completely agree with that. Only the main problem here is not people who prefer to follow higher principles, but people who think their own convenience or freedom from constraint is much more important than any rule.
I believe it was Douglas Bader who said rules were for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools – very much a male perspective.
As a very middleclass person, I would normally agree with you. But in the current climate, I feel the eductaed middleclasses have completely lost the plot. The great mask curfuffle says it all. My card carrying, data scientist friends have lapped up the hysterical nonsense about wearing a mask to be kind and are having canary caniptions because restrictions have been lifted and we are being told to choose for ourselves how to live. I have lost all respect and I am embracing my working class roots with pride. The current set of rules are utter nonsense and have nothing to do with anything except politics and the exercise of power. There is no honor in complying and I am with Lord Sumption, it is now a moral duty not to obey. I don’t think a government should be leading the normally obedient to take such positions. It does not bode well for the future.
On this one I am all with your friends.
Probably the most cogent and thoughtful comment I’ve seen on UnHerd.
‘The law is necessary but freedom requires the ability know where it’s boundaries lie, not in making it boundless. There is certainly something of this in our Prime Minister, who has an uncanny nack of knowing which boundaries he can cross without fear of reprisal.’
Yes, we are free to break the law and then we pay the penalty if found guilty. Most law in this country is made to protect, preserve & facilitate not to curtail freedom. No, Boris Johnson doesn’t break laws. He uses privilege and wealth to protect him if he is taken to or goes to law.
So this all boils down to the middle-class being control freaks. They’ve always been like this, which is what makes them so good at creating and maintaining businesses, but giving them the helm in government is a terrible thing to do because they will seek to control any and all variables to the point of dicatorship.
Class….
I have lived an odd life of being one of the very few not assigned a class, my family being up to weird stuff all my life put us in the mix of a lot of the higher levels, yet never a regular group. Being multi-national I was never really one thing or another, and so could always mix unselfish-consciously with any kind. Later in life when I became a down and out drifter for decades this also was very good as by speaking well, accent and speech mannerisms, one is given a great deal of slack by authority and everyone, really, even if you are a street person. The lifetime trained mannerisms of shaking hands, introducing ones self, the systemic ‘good manners’ – a thousand things, quantify one – and having just the right, innate, ways and speech gives one a bit of a pass. (Orwell talks well on this in his excellent book ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’)
I have lived a great deal with the lower and under classes as well, and am right at home with them, and never had any thing but good from our class situation, I have never, ever, had it held against me.
So what I want to say on class is because I have a rare, and large, experience with class, spanning a range of cultures and nations. And so here it is:
Upper class are better than Middle Class, who are better than Lower Class, who are better than underclass. It is all true.
And here is the Key to it all. Upper Class train their children always. They eat meals at a table, with knifes and forks, water glasses, salads, wine glasses… The children are talked to, are expected to fallow conversation but not interject childish distractions. They learn adult conversation, the adults take great pains to teach concepts, manners, and discussion. Conversation grows to be on concepts, history, politics, and classics as the child ages, not just ‘what I did’.
Upper class go on holidays at points of great culture, where the children are dragged through museums, theater, Historic monuments, points of great history, great art, general aesthetics, classics, music, and so on. The adults talk to the children about this.
The upper-class children do excellent schools, and after do dance classes, tennis class, horse riding, sports, summer classes, math camp, language, mix with equally educated peers, and so on.
Middle class do a lot less of this all, but some. Lower class, almost none. The kids eat in front of a TV, with their hands or a spoon. Holidays are where they run wild at mindless resorts…
And there it is – how much effort you spend making your children sophisticated, well mannered, educated, conversational, and all rounded – and THIS IS A LOT OF WORK, but the upper class do it, as it is the only path to being upper class, and it is their duty to their children.
It takes 2 generations to move a class really. One can parrot another class if you live in it, but still are what you were formed to be. Your children can cross the class then. It is that hard. (And being class confident your down arrows mean nothing to me, I just do not care as I am so confident in my self)
“Jess Phillips, like many prominent Labour MPs, comes from the comfortable ranks of the bourgeoise, her father having been a senior NHS administrator.”
Yes, and uses her (faux?) Brummie accent to fool people that she’s working class. She’s not.
That’s the beauty of Midland and Northern accents – they bestow immediate and unquestioned working-class cachet.
Traditional conservatism was posited as an alliance between the toffs and the working classes against the bourgeoisie. This is fairly stark in Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.
Anybody who has ever followed the England cricket team away, especially during the ashes, can testify to this. For a few glorious weeks you’ll have some lads from a northern council estate happily drinking and singing songs with a Viscount Rupert of Shropshire III. It’s a strange mix of top and bottom of society
Getting rid of the grammar schools was part of the class hypocrisy.
The Army has been recruiting on merit including from the middle classes for a long time. The demands of WW2 accelerated this when the Army further modernised its selection processes. The Army was using more lengthy but effective selection processes decades before they were introduced into the private sector.
Yes, but for a very long time before the Army discovered the merits of meritocracy, you needed an independent income to subsidise your officer lifestyle.
I think it is widely accepted that until the (1870s) Cardwell reforms, things were very different. A long time ago.
Yes although nothing changed dramatically – read about the travails of Sir William Robertson – until the mass conscription of WW1 and especially WW2.
A great essay with a LOL last line; thanks for the belly laugh.
.