You know those children’s alphabet posters: a for apple, b for banana, that sort of thing? I recently came across an old Victorian example which, amongst some entries that would seem a little odd today (“V is for vulcan”) had the charming
I is an Irishman who climbs up the walls
Have we really moved on from the days when young children could be taught that an entire nation could be judged by a particular stereotypical activity, and not in an especially nasty way, but just as a statement of fact.
Yes, I think we have.
The Daily Express might complain about the moral decline in modern Britain, but the reality is that the lot of pretty much everyone (with the possible exception of white, middle class and upper class men who no longer have quite as much power or as many servants as in the past) has improved more in the last century than in the previous couple of millenia.
We may be a long way from where we’d ideally want to be, but it’s worth acknowledging just how far we’ve come as a society in the ways we treat women, other nationalities, homosexuals, the mentally ill, the disabled and pretty much every other traditionally unempowered group.
In many ways our modern society is one I, as a liberal, consider more moral than at any time in history.
So, although it’s easy to do down our modern society (as people have always done in their own times, typically looking back to a golden age roughly half a century earlier), we should perhaps look at the Irishman climbing his wall and feel a little pride at how far we’ve come.
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L is a Liberal who…
I will be socratic here Iain. Define a moral?
gramsci’s eyes,
“I will be socratic here Iain. Define a moral?”
The patronising bit at the end of a children’s story designed to tell you what to think.
Why _is_ the Hibernian climbing the wall, and what is that he has got in his hand? Is he a bricklayer? A chimney sweep? A second-storey man?
The past, as Hartley wrote, is a foreign country.
gramsci – I started writing a version of this article in which I attempted to define what I meant by morality and look at whether we could have said to become more moral as a society, and whether we could say that individuals today were more moral than those in the past (the answers, I reckon, are yes and no respectively).
It got a bit long and turgid – I didn’t think I could do it justice in 500 words, so you’re stuck with this vignette.
We’re still pretty ethnocentric, I think, in a way that serves the needs of the (dare I say it as a Labour supporter?) bourgeoisie.
“Chinamen and Indians *can* work longer hours than we’d find acceptable for less than we’d find acceptable. Making TVs for us is part of *their* culture!”
“Africans need authority- therefore privatising military dictatorships represent progress!”
“The Middle East is just backward. Nothing to do with our various topplings of left-wing democratic governments in favour of military rule, they’re just *uncivilised*.”
etc, etc. The dominant culture stills stereotypes others according to their perceived use and/or threat to the maintenance of the existing order that keeps that culture dominant.
“I, as a liberal, consider more moral than at any time in history”.
So , essentially this claim is without definition. It is not one that is “consider(ed)” but instead only one that is felt. That has no truth value whatsoever and is no different to that claimed by any group. The tea party thrive on that sort of consideration and is the same basis of the claims of the “Daily Express”
Colin -”The patronising bit at the end of a childrens story”. Well, if the shoes fits. You may find however that bit is designed to make you think.
“I” , as a “liberal” the most moral ever in history. Pretty big claim.
And as for gipsies …
gramsci – if you want to take my not having written down the definition as my not having one, that’s entirely up to you. Does seem an odd jump to make, though.
Think I need to dig out the picture of me on a climbing wall to counter this scurrilous remark that Irishmen can’t climb walls