Class

Really interesting topic and questions.

My parents were born into working class backgrounds. They were part of the baby boomer generation, which in places like England may have offered a diverse range of ways to be come upwardly mobile if one wanted to make a better life for their own kids etc. However, in this strange wee place many doors - most of the civil service for instance, and many businesses and trades- were largely shut to Catholics, and so a much narrower range of ‘become middle class’ avenues existed. One of those was teaching. My parents became teachers, so did my aunts and uncles. I never really thought about it much growing up, why they’d all be in this exact same profession. Some of them aligned well with it vocationally (my dad, my mum - she was in special education), but at least one aunt and one uncle clearly were counting the days. Either way it was stressful as all hell. 

Anyway, In broad social-economic  terms I was therefore born into a not long established middle class situation, with my parents having secured a mortgage in a modest but nice house in a decent street, pulling in a decent wage or two (for a time my mother didn’t work, but I’m sure her three kids were exhausting enough) etc. Though my parents never let themselves get into that ‘I’m alright Jack’ mentality that can happen so easily when comparatively comfortable. I remember my dad would call people like Scottish singer Lulu a disgrace for being a Tory - ‘they forget when they hadn’t an *** in their trousers’ he’d say. 

Anyway, I now live in a small bungalow that I can only afford with Co-ownership financing, I work in a modest job that I love and wouldn’t change for the world (couldn’t in fact - so very, very few other things would fit me and not burn me out), and I will never be rich - nor want to be. But I’m not supporting a child or a partner. If I were, maybe ‘working class’ would be a fair descriptor. As it is, I’m probably kind of lower middle class in a fuzzy hard to pin down way.  I don’t honestly care how I’d be framed. I pay my bills, do my best, and try to be kind or at least do as little harm as possible. That’s all that matters. 

To quote the Doctor (back when he was a young man in an  old man’s body, the early black and white days) ‘I am a citizen of the universe, and a gentleman to boot’. Or so I’ve been told by many, one or two have maybe seen something more sinister), and while it’s been projection (holding the shadow of their past trauma in a way that deepens my own) it’s hard not to feel deeply hurt by it. And once or twice fully destroyed. But true class is remembering to honour (even when it’s extremely hard to recover) who you really are when you know you only want to be kind, so I’ll just keep authentically ‘doing’ me. And people can judge me as they will. 

I think that’s always likely to be a gap between rich and poor. But aristocracy is no guaranty of wealth anymore. Poverty is very real and the poor tend to have poorer health and less options.

1. What class were you born into? Working class, my family became more middle class as I grew older.

2. What class are you now? I thought I was lower middle class but on doing this survey,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_5093/index.stm

It said that I am part of the "Precariat

This is the poorest and most deprived class group. According to the Great British Class Survey results, lots of people in this group ... ".

Rather than just three classes (Working class, Middle class and Aristocracy), the BBC survey said that there were seven.

However the NRS mentioned herte on Wikipedia has six classifications:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade

and breaks the working class into Skilled working class (Skilled manual workers - they can earn good money) and Working class (Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers).  These classifications are useful to politicians trying to attract key groups of voters, for example higher earning  people might want to reduce the ammount of tax that they have to pay and vote for a lower tax party.

3. Do you believe in 1 and 2? - It still exists.

4. ie Do you think class exists? - To a lesser degree than before.

5. Do you think you can move class? -  If an ordinary person can get a well paid job or profession for example become a doctor.

Great answer Martin. I long to live in another country.  France seems like it might be going in a direction that ends with the overthrow of President Macron.  I've also been getting back into French Cinema this year.  I'm just bored of the UK. I think there are many aspects of the UK that may never change.

I love this answer. Your Dad sounds like a great guy. Although i recall you talking about his troubles and that they were similar to my own Dads.

Thank you.

I just did that BBC test.

It was difficult as it asked who you socialise with and I tend to try to avoid doing so.

However, I know a few people.

So, I came out as 'technical middle class'.

Surprised 

I think it's wrong though, as I don't do either of these things in the description, so no idea where that came from:

Enjoy emerging culture such as going to the gym and using social media

Autists are class-immune! 

It called me elite for having a mortgage and I'm common as muck so clearly something's gone wrong somewhere!

battybats said:

I'm common as muck

LOL.

Yes, I don't think that survey is very accurate ....

I suppose you could call going to the gym culture. BEEFCAKE!

I am rather Francophile by inclination.

Shardovan said:

But true class is remembering to honour (even when it’s extremely hard to recover) who you really are when you know you only want to be kind, so I’ll just keep authentically ‘doing’ me. And people can judge me as they will. 

Nice

Good on you.  Some great movie Directors,  Writers, Philosophers and Footballers have all been French.  I intend to learn more about the French.

I suppose you could call going to the gym culture

More than that, emerging culture.

Bizarre!

That bbc one is such a blunt tool. 25 thousand increments for salary?! Im right on the fringe of where one of those starts . Also, I can’t answer their binary ‘rent or buy’ question as i have a half rice half chips arrangement for that. 

I've seen Pumping Iron so i'm culturally ahead of the curve.  I think a Sociologist would say that virtually everything is culture.  But i might be wrong as i am not a Sociologist.

The question is, is there really a middle class any more?

I think there's a lot to be said for the idea that that most people now are in relatively vulnerable positions, and mostly have to sing for their supper. There isn't the security of a job for life etc now. Teachers tend to be lackeys. Junior doctors are low paid. Even lawyers now have to juggle a lot just to survive. That's what I heard of some e I visited in Italy not so long ago. Her mother was ill, she spent a fortune on care, if the temp work didn't keep coming in, she would have to sell her mother's house. There weren't the month-long holidays in August enjoyed by Italian middle class when I went out to stay with a lawyer's family to teach their kid a little

The other 1% are very I'm all right Jack.

What I don't understand is how easy it is to bamboozle so many people. Most working class people take on board everything the papers say, and keep on voting for the very party that is destroying the NHS, and eroding human rights here, there, everywhere.

My mother was a nurse. My father's father worked for a department store, but my father was bright and got a degree in economics, started off as a buyer, then became a lecturer in economics.

I think that Britons can be very naive and trusting.  Also it is no longer fashionable to be even interested in current affairs. There's a thousand distractions in this modern world.

A very insightful podcaster recently said that if you look at mass shootings in America as a symptom of evolution’s inevitable and needed trajectory, it shows as clear as day how the middle class is in an existential crisis, sensing its impending and irreversible redundancy. Young, white males especially see what was once a clear path ahead - the comfort of purpose, prestige, steady jobs in white collar bricks and mortar industries - vanish into opaque uncertainty, and they impotently resent it. In some, the rage spills over. Catastrophically. But uselessly. 

What evolution once needed for measured progress towards the coming utopian future - a very stable majority middle class- it no longer needs at the forefront for the next phase. What it needs now is the privileged investing and inventing/innovating  elite, and the hard grafting, too busy surviving to get annoyed enough to shoot bullets, ‘lower’ class, to forge momentum. The suburban-dwelling joggers with nice early retirement packages are going the way of the dodo, steadily. It’s disconcerting, unnerving. But ultimately in service of a better future we won’t live to see. Where technology forged in a new societal dynamic iteratively levels the playing field until concepts of class, fixed gender, race, precise fixed constant delimitations of any kind are foreign concepts and just the rumours of history. 

All will be well. Just not for us. Not in any of our lifetimes. Or the next generation’s. Or the next dozen. Or the next one hundred. But eventually… There’s peace in knowing that. But we can only glimpse the knowledge,  the churn of necessity will pull us back into forgetting. Because to get future-kind there, we must suffer. It just is as it has to be. 

That was my result too, the average age of this group to be 52 - charming! Reading the other desctiptions, i actually identify mostly with "new affluent workers"