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I think I liked it better when everyone was being silly...
For the record, my "3 for 2" comment was precisely to say that Jonathon Coe books were a part of a recent 3 for 2 offer at Borders, which was the last time they impinged on my head (having an uncorrected proof of "House of Sleep" from my beautiful and talented sister, I had never seen the cover before, and so was more noticey than at other times), and thus Sound's response was presumably along the lines of "w00t! Inexpensive good books!". Not, as I believe our tennis-reporting tabloid friends would say, a Federer case.
However, familial privilege. As Nick has described, one of the happy things in our world is that we don't have to end up where our ancestors started. My parents were the first of both their families to go to University, and they both faithfully expect myself and my sister to surpass them, in whatever way we choose. Which is pressure, but also an enormous show of faith in a world where these things can happen. Possibly my perspective may be skewed by a lengthy conversation about how the Brahmin class functions in Bengal this evening, but there is a fluidity and at least a sniff of meritocracy about our particular word which is hopefully to be encouraged.
On the other hand, there is presumably little dissent to the idea that certain people,perhaps by dint of the advantages conferred on them by heredity or nationality or personal resources, are "better off" than others. Lyra has proposed that these advantages should to some extent be "levelled off" by the legislated redistribution of "unearned" wealth - beyond what is already levelled in investment tax, stamp duty and the like. Biodynamo (or possibly BioK9 - forgive an old man's poor memory) has suggested that a *universal* standard of living rather worse than that currently enjoyed by us fellows typing away at our expensive computers in countries with a largely functional telecommunications system and the personal means to purchase services from it, but rather better than that of many we share a globe with, could be maintained by globally redistributive methods. Being no econonomist, I cannot comment on these theses. I can only posit that ipso facto, the possession of these privileges makes us, on a global level "over-privileged" at least in comparison to a statistical mean. Arguably we must compare ourselves against what steps we have taken to change that world for the better.
And, lest we forget, to be born English is to be already a winner in life's lottery (bonus points for naming *that* reference). Or, indeed, one should thank the gods that one is born human and not an animal, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian and an Athenian rather than any other Greek (likewise, although that one is both misquoted and a piece of piss).
Now, simply to feel guilty about that, or indeed to embark on a campaign of guilt-inducement against those who seem to have yet more of the winning numbers than oneself may seem to be a less than constuctive response. But, conversely, to compare such sniffiness with an accusation of Nazism is perhaps less than litotic.
Or, to quote myself for a change, which is the bone, and which the shoulder? Who is the dog, and who the owner?
Personally, I find the intrusion of autobiography into these discussions as fundamentally unlikely to be productive as the introduction of greased penis into cyber-ear that seems to crop up about as often lately. As an outrigger to which, you two seem to be developing a level of personal emnity entirely transcendent of the rights and wrongs of any particular case being argued. Have you considered meeting for a drink in some establishment neither contaminated by the bourgeois Boreas or the Trustafarian Euros?
[ 13-03-2002: Message edited by: The Haus under the Ocean ] |
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