Last Wednesday evening, I had the pleasure of being wined and dined at the Chez de Havilland in the company of the man himself, Brian Micklethwait and a delegation of student bloggers responsible for the St.Andrews Liberty Log.
Spending an evening with these fine, upstanding examples of student life rather put my own persistant grumbles into perspective. Judging from what they have to say about their fellow students at that fine old institution, it has become a Seat of Unlearning. Our dinner companions, it would appear, constitute an oasis of sanity amid a vast, barren desert of addled brains.
One example that sticks in my mind, is a story related by one of the students, Alex Singleton. I believe I recall the details with reasonable accuracy but I’m sure I will hear smartly from Alex if this proves not to be the case.
It seems that St.Andrews University Student Union has its very own ‘Equal Opportunities’ Commission. Or, at least, it used to have one because our Alex managed to get himself elected to head it and then promptly proceeded to trash the entire operation and render it unusable. Chalk one up for the good guys. However, in the midst of performing this great service for mankind, Alex was approached by a diminutive fellow student who wanted Alex to take up her claim that she was a victim of discrimination because of her lack of height.
What evidence she had, if any, to support her charge, I know not, but it seems that Alex responded in the most admirable fashion by completely ignoring it.
A happy ending, yes, but not a happy tale because although this young woman failed in her attempt to rally a crusade on her behalf, she clearly expected her ludicrous claims to be taken seriously and acted upon. Who knows if she isn’t sending feverish letters to HMG demanding the establishment of a ‘Minister for Short People’.
She may succeed eventually, though not, I daresay, because she has a genuine complaint but because of the widespread acceptance, nay popularity, of ‘grievance culture’. So thoroughly has this culture permeated our society that vast state-sponsored industries have been spawned to cater to it and a raft of legislation enacted in order to address it.
As infuriating as this undoubtedly is (well, it infuriates me) I can sort of understand its attractions because, if one has failed to achieve one’s ambitions or if a life has not lived up to its owners expectations, then it must be a great deal easier, and more comforting, to blame this woe on the attitudes of others. The alternative is a critical review of one’s own choices and actions and a sober reflection as to whether or not they were the right or best choices or actions. This is a process which can be enlightening and cathartic but, for sure, also painful as it may lead some to the inescapable conclusion they they are the authors of their own misfortune.
‘Grievance culture’ is a comforting device for self-exoneration; a lazy, seductive alternative to self-audit rendered feasible in a society that is no longer comfortable with ascribing mishaps or setbacks to the mysterious vagaries of Divine Will as previous generations have done.
Everybody yearns for happiness and success but, perhaps, without an appreciation that everybody has to strive in order to have any chance of obtaining either. If one regards success as being an assigned right instead of an aspiration that requires considerable input, then success not achieved is success denied. If somebody perceives that they lack the success of others, it is all too easy to assume that they have been somehow cut out of the loop or sinned against. This is nothing less than a form of neurosis which, having been lavishly nourished by our political classes, has grown exponentially, sprouting colonies like a runaway cancer.
I cannot think of a ready means of curing this problem. Indeed, it may not be curable at all. Confronting grievance-mongers with invokations to look within or simply demanding the they ‘pull themselves together’ may only serve to reinforce their perceptions of persecution or, worse, counter-accusations that you are a part of the conspiracy to keep them down.
No, more likely that this is a psychosis of our age and it may just have to play out as other psychoses from previous ages have eventually done. In the meantime, what the rest of us can do is to rigourously insist that everyone’s life, destiny, happiness and place in the world lies in solely in their own hands and no-one elses. It may not work, at least in the short or even medium term, but it does have the benefit of being the truth and, as such, it is a message that is worthy of broadcast in any event.
Many valid observations but I would be interested to know your views on affirmative action and equal opportunities in a country like South Africa where – indisputably – many were denied opportunities unjustly.
In a society where the social schisms run so deep, the argument is made quite reasonably that corrective measures are necessary to restore the balance (skills, wealth, enterprise et al) throughout society, though particularly across racial lines. It certainly couldn’t be considered economically free but the argument goes that without it there won’t be a country and economy left if social discord is left to fester.
Putting aside for the moment laughable equal opportunities cases such as the aforementioned short-woman complex, is there absolutely no case for equal opportunities policies in circumstances that could strengthen the fabric of society? I am thinking here of admitting more non-white officers to the UK police force, for instance.
Problem with the south africa case: there’s no way of telling guilty whites from innocent, there’s no way of telling robbed blacks from indolent. And there’s no way of telling how much redistribution is fair compensation and how much is theft.
The only real solution is to let alone and protect property rights, and acknowledge that the now unblocked entrepreneurial tendencies of cultural africans will tend to even out the balance in a few years, at the expense of uncompetitive ex-elite whites who were resting on their laurels or relying on coercion for their competitive edge.
I agree, Julian, basic economic rights have to be enshrined and respected. But do you seriously believe the free market alone can redress history? It’s just too superficial to imply indolence is the reason many blacks have not enjoyed economic liberty along with political freedom. And as for not offending the sensibilities of whites who deny any responsibility for Apartheid, well, it didn’t work for post-war Germans who have had to bear a collective responsibility for the horrors of the Nazis. No-one lost too much sleep over that!
Do I serious believe that the free market can redress history? Yes. All that need happen is that black entrepreneurs should not be hampered by the government in creating their own fortunes. Repeatedly in a case where an elite has been removed from coercive power, the merchant/entrepreneur class will leave them in the shade within a generation.
No I wasn’t implying that all blacks are lazy, i was saying it would be impossible to tell which ones to whom one gives compensation would have earned it in freedom (in other words, which of them it was actually stolen from, as opposed to those who would have done no better free as unfree) – and which whites from which one takes compensation would have been just as rich without apartheid, and are thus not financial oppressors but merely bystanders.
Social engineering is not a viable option, not even for seeking laudable ends. You cannot design a just society and implement that design by government coercion – that’s what the communists tried to do, in theory at least. You cannot redress history, history is difficult to shape. We can try to make society as free as possible. That’s all that we can realistically hope to acheive.
…do you seriously believe the free market alone can redress history? – James Eedes
Since when does history require redress except when lawyers find a deep pocket to sue?
When has any people group been guaranteed a standard of living by the universe. When has anyone been able to extrapolate from thin air the potential earnings that were lost due to a political domination by one entity over another?
Life is linear. The peculiar presumption that history can be redressed is amusing.
When a person is born, they start a forward progression. They have no connection to the past. Their circumstance in the life they are born into is the product of chance. How then can a person, at the moment of his birth, already have a debt owed to him? How can he claim this debt from others who also were born by chance into their circumstance roughly the same time he was?
Very strange.