Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I think they mean best idlers.
How England Sees Itself
- Thread starter zhao
- Start date
I think they mean best idlers.
of course we are interested in goals based on luck and good fortune: the country is set up so that no matter how hard you work or how motivated you are, you'll never be able to escape your lack of privileges. Why work hard and be ambitious if the doors of success will remain closed to you forever?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Out of interest, who, in your view, is completely locked out of any chance of success? (However you understand that word, which could mean being a famous person on TV, or owning your own home.)
As you say it depends on your notion of "success" and what that means. I think in general we conflate "happiness" with "success" and I think a lot of people would be happier if they were able to escape their sense of ambition that is instilled in them through school, education, family and societal pressure etc.
I think people can overcome things if they really put their mind to it - whether that's abuse and trauma, poverty, or just the kind of embedded cultural prejudices and bigotry that you don't really understand if you're a straight white man. But for every heartwarming defeat-the-odds story you hear, there's plenty of people who just have to lower their expectations of life and what it can give them because they don't see how it can get better.
I don't drive. I don't earn enough to afford lessons much less a car. That's going to limit the jobs and work I can do. That locks me out in a way, doesn't it...
I think people can overcome things if they really put their mind to it - whether that's abuse and trauma, poverty, or just the kind of embedded cultural prejudices and bigotry that you don't really understand if you're a straight white man. But for every heartwarming defeat-the-odds story you hear, there's plenty of people who just have to lower their expectations of life and what it can give them because they don't see how it can get better.
I don't drive. I don't earn enough to afford lessons much less a car. That's going to limit the jobs and work I can do. That locks me out in a way, doesn't it...
I don't want to tell someone else's story for them but I have a friend who grew up in a tower block in a council flat, not obviously poor but like me she was never going to get a car or a laptop for a milestone birthday the way that people from the other ("good") end of town would. She went to uni and got her degree and ended up being accepted to go do a postgrad at Cambridge. She managed a year there and then left - not because the work was difficult but the culture was so alien and impossible to assimilate to. She's done really well for herself regardless - she went to Boston to lead a lab - but there's definitely a thing where coming from a working class background is something that other people who haven't lived it can really struggle to understand.
john eden
male pale and stale
Thanks @boxedjoy my partner went through something similar at Cambridge but stuck it out.
I had a fairly standard middle class upbringing I guess and I was really taken aback by some of her Uni friends. It was like a whole layer of super posh people had been revealed to me that I'd never really had anything to do with before. Some of them were good people that I would count as friends, but there was clearly a bit of a gulf between us when it came down to it. Which would have been nothing compared to the alienation for people like my partner and your friend.
Perhaps inevitably we have drifted apart from most of them. There were some differences of opinion on child rearing, schooling and crossing picket lines along the way.
I had a fairly standard middle class upbringing I guess and I was really taken aback by some of her Uni friends. It was like a whole layer of super posh people had been revealed to me that I'd never really had anything to do with before. Some of them were good people that I would count as friends, but there was clearly a bit of a gulf between us when it came down to it. Which would have been nothing compared to the alienation for people like my partner and your friend.
Perhaps inevitably we have drifted apart from most of them. There were some differences of opinion on child rearing, schooling and crossing picket lines along the way.
Simon silverdollarcircle
Well-known member
I had a similar thing @john eden . Middle class upbringing then uni fucking hell those posh people are weird.
I remember everyone asking me, as pretty much their first question after what my name was, what school I went to. Which really confused me cos it was like asking me what dentist surgery I went to or something. "Ummm, the one down the road from my house". But it was all important to them
I remember everyone asking me, as pretty much their first question after what my name was, what school I went to. Which really confused me cos it was like asking me what dentist surgery I went to or something. "Ummm, the one down the road from my house". But it was all important to them
Before I went to uni we had this school assembly where our head of year made a speech about how it was worth doing because you would go and meet people different from yourself and your social circle and it would "expand your horizons" and it was more than just the academic education you would experience.
When I got to uni and realised that everyone was: a) firmly middle-class with proper names like Catherine and Elizabeth and Marion; b) completely unfamiliar with LGBT people and I was the first gay man they had ever met in most cases - I realised quite soon that I was the challenging one in a sea of people who, on the whole, hadn't really encountered people from a background like mine.
When I got to uni and realised that everyone was: a) firmly middle-class with proper names like Catherine and Elizabeth and Marion; b) completely unfamiliar with LGBT people and I was the first gay man they had ever met in most cases - I realised quite soon that I was the challenging one in a sea of people who, on the whole, hadn't really encountered people from a background like mine.
I went to a girl's house for a party one night while her parents were on holiday and I was blown away by how big it was. Two storeys, three bedrooms and a landing in the middle of the staircase. I've lived in flats for all but two years of my life and the idea of needing or even having that much space is still a bit alien to me. I was saying how nice and lovely and grand her house was and everyone was like... "but this just seems like a regular home I don't get it?" and I remember thinking how different other people's lives must be
Pandiculate
Well-known member
I remember going to some summer school and this kid had a blazer with his family crest on it
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That's amazing, love it.
My girlfriend went to Oxford, and to one of the more notably posh/snobby colleges at that. Her parents both went to Oxbridge and worked as teachers, so she grew up in a very academic and middle-class home with about a million books, but they never had much money, and suddenly she found herself surrounded by these people whose parents were millionaires many times over (maybe even billionaires in one or two cases). She has a story about one guy, whose dad I think might have been a Greek shipping magnate, who charmingly tried to bribe his way into a nightclub (which would have been a shit one, this being Oxford after all, but never mind) by offering the doorman his jewelled tie pin, which he explained "probably cost more than you earn in a year, yah?"
I think the fact that she spoke "properly" meant these people accepted her, to an extent, more than they would have done if she'd grown up on a council estate and had a dad who worked as a postman. But she was never part of the inner circle. Not, I think, that she ever wanted to be. Most of them sounded like headcases, arseholes or a bit of both.
I have no more friends from uni, that's how alienating i found it. The only girl i used to hang out with who i still miss was a proper barnet massif north london gooner. No idea what happened to her. everyone else was uniformly terrible. one of the academic lads on facebook sent me a message saying sorry for being aggro when i was going through a bit of a meltdown even though we ain't spoken for like 6 years now, and it was like why m8? why are you fucking apologising to me? Just move on for fucks sake, if you can't control yourself around people then your professor parents ain't done a good job at rearing you. Click the hide message button and put 'im on restricted.
A nation full of superficial pleasantries. Brits just do not know how to care for people.
luka
Well-known member
this twitter profile, thats england