Millenial Musings

 The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. Men must be bribed to build up and do good by the offer of an opportunity to hurt and pull down. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour 'righteous indignation'- this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats - Aldous Huxley

 The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction... and the distinction between true and false... no longer exists - Hannah Arendt

For we knew only too well: Even the hatred of squalor Makes the brow grow stern. Even anger against injustice Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness Could not ourselves be kind. - Bertolt Brecht

 Some, whenever they see any good to be done, or evil to be remedied, would willingly instigate the government to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear almost any amount of social evil, rather than add one to the departments of human interests amenable to governmental control - John Stuart Mill

 "Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear."     — Hannah Arendt

  In a fascinating recent study, LSE Assistant Professor of Sociology Sam Friedman explores a curiously British phenomenon, middle-class professionals insisting they are working-class. In the most recent British Social Attitudes survey, 60% of people identified as working-class, whilst 47% of those in professional and managerial jobs consider themselves working-class, despite the actual estimate of the working-class to be around 25% of the population. What is going on here? Why are Britons, unlike their European and American counterparts, set on maintaining a fiction of humble origins? Upon reading Dr Friedman’s study my mind was immediately cast to a now-infamous Question Time segment in Bolton involving a certain Mr Rob Barber. Protesting Labour’s new tax policy (higher taxes on the top 5% of earners), Mr Barber claimed the policy won’t be affecting billionaires but people like himself, who ‘aren’t even in the top 50% of earners.’ His acrimonious speech didn't quite have the desi...

Since hearing about the tiffany problem, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. The problem, coined by writer Jo Walton, refers to the tension between historical fact and the popular perception of history. The example Walton uses is that of the name Tiffany. Whilst most people assume Tiffany is a modern name, conjuring up images of Audrey Hepburn singing Moon River, it actually has a long pedigree, found as far back as 12th century Britain and France as a variant of Theophania (Greek for God’s appearance, taking the name from the Feast day Epiphany celebrated by Christians, though having Greek origins).  Part of this of course is that Tiffany was a common baby name in the 80s at number 11 most popular in the U.S. Yet it also speaks to the ways in which most of us view history in concrete blocks with clear distinctions between different periods. We think of things that are still with us today as modern when there is a large amount of continuity between different eras. Jo Wal...