This is the best description of moral bankruptcy I have read lately. It is from the Daily Mail – which snobs consider is only fit for oiks.
And of course as I strolled down its steep streets I noticed these days there are no butcher’s shops, but quite a few places selling croissants. I doubt if anyone much reads the inscriptions in the town or on the hefty monument on the hillside above) to the Protestant martyrs burned to death there in the reign of Bloody Mary, for we don’t mention that any more, do we?
I also found myself one of a tiny but cheerful congregation for Prayer Book Evensong at a rather handsome church. This description is intended to give an impression, rather than to be a Booth or Rowntree-style piece of social investigation, so please don’t take it too seriously.
And the thought formed in my mind that such places (I live in one myself, but am and always have been very conscious of my reasons for doing so) help to keep alive an illusion. By setting a distance between ourselves and the big cities, we of the educated elite can continue to live peaceful, orderly, prosperous lives largely untainted by the surliness, squalor and petty disorder which are always round the corner in the Metropolis and the remains of our big industrial cities. Plus, there is usually a branch of Waitrose.
And I think this is one reason why our governing elite is so unconcerned about our descent into the Third World. They are very happy with the more relaxed morals, the abandonment of any attempt to bring up children with rules, or compel them to undergo a serious education. They’re pleased by the disappearance of dour Protestant Sundays, by the longer licensing hours and (let’s whisper this) the collapse of any attempt to enforce the drug laws.
And if this is having bad effects, they can, in a little paradise such as Lewes, keep them along way ff. they can, in short, enjoy all the benefits of a third World life, without paying the price.
Of course this won’t last. There’s a serpent in every Eden, and, I’ve no doubt, a dark side even to smiling, prosperous Lewes. One mother at the event I addressed complained about how drug dealers hung around outside her son’s school every day, and authority did nothing about it (no surprise to me).
In his matchless autobiography ‘I, Claud’, Claud Cockburn repeatedly quotes a diplomat whose response to imminent decline or disaster was to say happily ‘In between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well have a glass of champagne’, which in a way sums up the attitude of the British liberal middle class, drinking chilled New World Sauvignon Blanc as England crumbles all around them.
It is not only the elite who live in a bubble. The upper middle class do as well — sending their children to the same schools or a reasonable facsimile thereof, living out of town, and only meeting the other side of town professionally.
As I write this, I am describing myself. I live in a nice suburb. My church is full of nice people. My boys go to a nice school, with its drug problem hidden,. And bullying is equally hidden. This is deliberate. When trouble come, the wise are not there. I live in a University town, on a island in the South Pacific… well away from the big town where I grew up… precisely so I am in that Bubble.
But the disaster is coming, and the church will need to care. People who are still functional will have to do the caring. So set up your networks… support your local growers, tradesmen, shops. For when the disaster comes (and here I am talking about the state walking away from its socail contract with people in the name of austerity) you will not be seen as accountable for preserving your bubble but instead you will need to deal with the pain of the vulnerable.
But the elite seem to think that moving down that path will not burst their bubble. This is a cowardly position — while twittering away on tolerance or why I am narrow minded (as the right on locals firmly tell me I am, in the hope I will shut up) — pretending that you will be immune form the consequences of your policies… is futile.
Thinking we can be immune from this, sipping a nice Otago red after dinner while our society implodes? I’m not that delusional. I’d rather avoid the collapse, in my region, in my nation, in the world. But I have limited power. The elite are much more invested in the bubble.
