Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Is British society more selfish today?
Today this article on the BBC website tells us about a man who died in Essex when his dog pulled him out suddenly onto a road causing a collision with a car. The driver was more concerned it appears to get the mans details after his pet's lead caused damage to her vehicle. The man, in his 60s, went home but began feeling unwell and died later in hospital from a head injury.
Separately Bill Bryson is bringing out his new book about UK life called the Road to Little Dribbling. This is 20 years after his last book on the UK, Notes from a Small Island. In a recent interview Bryson said;
''The UK had become a greedier and sometimes less polite place - a more ''screw you Jack'' society. If you went into a bar 20 years ago everyone would know who was next to be served. No one would dream of being served before the guy next to you if he was first. Now, it's very much every man for himself ''.
Here on HOL we have a new discussion about a homeless person where the person posting said, I am a compassionate person (or at least I'd like to think so) but I do not want to have to encounter this supposedly homeless petson's little encampment on my journey to and from work every day.
Is the UK a more selfish society in general than say 20 years ago? If so what has caused this change?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Ha! .... You've been over here a fair time from OZ Osbawn. Have you noticed a change since you landed in these parts and made it your home, as Bryson says?
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No, immigration (internal/external), it's not down to that Osbawn. It's probably more to do with there being less of the community in existence across many parts of the country & that includes outside of the big cities that you mention. Harringay however is a pretty good example of a community in my experience (if one chooses to tap into it), especially within an international city like London.
People are commuting longer distances and working less within their local area. Generations of families increasingly live away from each other due to careers & other reasons. One of the fastest growing types of household is the 'single' household across a number of adult age categories. Community, looking out for people around you does matter. Being irritated by someone sleeping on the street within ones own area isn't community minded.
What Bryson says maybe true to a certain extent (using his pub example) but it won't of course be very popular.
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1979, continued 1997
. Today, if we look at the reaction to Corbyn's conference speech in the comments section the selfish bile coming out of there is quite incredible. A nation divided?
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I don't know if you can judge compassion from comments posted online. 20 years ago there wasn't the facility to do this and people didn't have the opportunity to so easily turn the stuff going on into their heads into text.
I don't know if there was any more or less compassion back whenever but haven't people always thought that? Read a Jane Austen novel and its full of adult characters bemoaning the terrible behaviour of young people compared to when they were young before the Napoleonic Wars.
And if you want to see a real lack of compassion to begging look at the punitive approach taken by the Victorians.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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lol John D .. your loyalty to the Thatcher dictatorship does make me laugh.. Have you forgotten all those wets in her government..? All those men afraid to tell her the truth..?
The main point of her dictatorship was to shaft the working classes for the benefit of people who think like you.
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I'd agree that Social Media platforms allow people to show real feelings to a much wider audience, maybe hiding behind a pseudonym, not available to them 20 years ago as you say. But that doesn't get away from rude or uncaring behaviour face to face, such as that women hitting that man with her car or Bryson's pub example. And I don't think we're talking inter-generational here (re Jane Austen novel).
What is good to see are the people taking on the attitude of the person who has posted about the homeless person here on HOL.
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Again I'm not sure. My uncle Jackie was a police officer from the 50s to the early 70s and he, along with most other officers, wouldn't intervene in violence against women when it was considered a "domestic". Women were simply expected to put up with being beaten by their husbands. I remember my Mam tutting at the sight of the woman a few doors down from us regularly appearing with bruises on her face but she would never have dreamed of calling the Police because it was somehow not real violence. My own aunt died (well before was born) after suffering years and years of violence from her husband. He of course was never prosecuted.
Attitudes to what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour change but I don't think the underlying humanity or lack of it alters.
By the way, I would hope that the fact that they appalling actions of the driver in the story you highlighted have made it into the national press is an indication that behaviour like this is not tolerated. If it were, it wouldn't make headlines.
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Very good points. Attitudes do shift/change, both for better in some areas & maybe slipping in some others. And yes, the BBC article got a lot of attention but maybe for it's sensational headline more than anything else.
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Permalink Reply by Betty Careless on
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I think we've moved back to the Victorian concept of deserving & undeserving 'poor'. If we can label as many people in poverty as possible as 'undeserving' addicts, 'professional beggars', economic migrants etc. etc. Then we can assure ourselves that they are the architects of their own misery & absolve ourselves of the need to help - in fact further than that we can work ourselves up into righteous indignation that they're cluttering up our lovely streets & disturbing our view.
We seem to have lost the imagination (or ability to listen) to be able to empathise with how someone may have ended up as an alcoholic begging outside a bank on Green Lanes. It is important that people take personal responsibility for their lives but we seem to have lost the empathy & humanity as a society to see people as fellow human beings who might just need a bit of help & support to get their lives back on track & become tax paying, flat white buying, internet commenting, parts of our community.
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