JoeP Posted November 5, 2004 Share Posted November 5, 2004 Originally posted by timo Venger, Of course I watched it! I might resent the "fame" it gave to the bloated, slatternly evolutionary failures on the screen, but their grotesque lifestyles and complete lack of civilisation fascinated, as well as repelled me. You must know what I mean here; a kind of enjoyable revulsion?! Bring back the Ducking Stool for these vile temptresses, burn their hovels to the ground and use their deformed offspring for medical experiments. Sort of car-crash TV.... You kow it's bad to watch it and that there's probably a special corner of purgatory where you'll spend time for watching it, but it's SO compelling... What's really tragic is that society as a whole condones and implicitly supports this behaviour by providing housing, looking for 'reasons' why these people are members of the 'underclass' (other than them being a bunch of slackers) and generally making it possible for this essentially parasitic behaviour to be rewarded. BTW, someone mentioned Darwin some posts back - there's no 'direction' in Darwinian thought - just the blind process of those that are best suited to the environment in which they find themselves will survive and thrive and spawn the next generation, which would hopefully carry on the same genes. I'm not an expert on Social Darwinism but I guess that we've created a society that is more supportive for people with these social and cultural attitudes to breed than it is for other members of society to breed, so we'll end up with that sociological niche being filled. You know, today I think I'm in my Atilla The Hun mode... Joe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NatalieSheff Posted November 5, 2004 Author Share Posted November 5, 2004 yeah like trisha! gees how the other half live!! (says me who laughs her head off at jerry, jerry jerry!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timo Posted November 5, 2004 Share Posted November 5, 2004 Natalie, please feel free to cheer "hear hear to Timo" any time you wish! I am honoured that such a gorgeous creature would lend support to my views, expressed as always, in good faith. Let we gentle web-surfers, the beautiful people, unleash an outraged scream of hatred against the evolutionary failures of the dependency culture; the "chavs" and "chavesses", slack-jawed oafs and louts, improvident, feckless teenage grandparents etc. Rewarded by an overly generous benefits system, the Underclass multiplies daily like some insidious virus. Its values are those of the prison system ["never grass" etc], and its lack of shame fathomless. Instead of dying out like some vestigial, fossil people in a remote enclave, the likes of the TV programme we saw are thriving due to the punitive level of taxation forced upon the bulk of us. Workfare instead of Welfare might be worth a shot. Keep wiggling, Nat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
max Posted November 5, 2004 Share Posted November 5, 2004 While I agree with your sentiments timo about the problems society is facing due to the explosive growth of this under-class I feel I must disagree with it's cause. On other threads where the subject of chavs has arisen most people agree that this culture is almost exclusively an import from the USA. Shell suits, baseball caps, day time tv, customised cars (cf Dukes of Hazard), etc., etc. Pretty much a clone of what US politicans have described as trailer park trash. In the USA they have limited welfare and the disenfranchised rely mostly on their equivalent of workfare plus they have a fairly low tax regime. See the dichotomy here? We can either blame the rise of chav on American influence or an overly generous welfare system but not both. Just my thoughts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NatalieSheff Posted November 5, 2004 Author Share Posted November 5, 2004 it seems like some people lose the will to live - by live i mean, get educated, earn money, travel etc... theres no way i could sit on my butt 24/7, claiming ben (unless, i had being made redund, or had a serious ill, or other good reason). there's more to life, than petty little problems, or who bonked who, or "you talking to me" syndrome. Kids are dying etc out there and although we cant change the world, we can appreciate our own and not waste it ok, ive done now! ps X timo! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timo Posted November 5, 2004 Share Posted November 5, 2004 Max, Thanks for your interesting views here. I respect your opinion here, but I disagree with your point re the cause of "Chav" behaviour. If we are talking seriously about the causes of an Underclass [some of my previous comments are mischevious]; there are both structural and cultural explanations for its existence. Without getting too academic, some authors like Charles Murray argue that the Underclass choose to belong to a dependency culture- they have agency. Others, like Dahrendorf argue that causality lies in the impact of social structure upon society, i.e, unemployment, deregulation, a global network of production and exchange etc. As to whether the behaviour of the Underclass is caused by the influence of American low/popular culture or by the cynical, work-shy "members" taking advantage of an overly generous benefits system- why do we have to have a unitary, reductionist "absolute" explanation anyway? With respect, Max, maybe the phenomenon cannot be reduced to a single cause. I think causality, in this case, is due to a cluster of variables; a combination of many different causes, some of which are structural, some of which are cultural. In other words, USA Coca-colonisation AND human agency in the form of "Chavs" taking advantage of tax-funded benefits are BOTH part of a cluster of inter-related causes. Regards to you, mate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeP Posted November 5, 2004 Share Posted November 5, 2004 Originally posted by max See the dichotomy here? We can either blame the rise of chav on American influence or an overly generous welfare system but not both. Just my thoughts. Nah....we can have our cake AND eat it! Seriously, I think that socially we've created our own underclass / chavs / whatever but they've taken on board cultural references from all sorts of places. Some aspects of British working class culture, some from the US, some elements of Hip-Hop ('bling'), etc. Joe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NatalieSheff Posted November 5, 2004 Author Share Posted November 5, 2004 wish i had some bling bling or even just a bli bli Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
max Posted November 5, 2004 Share Posted November 5, 2004 Yeah, just me oversimplifying again. I think we've probably had the equivalent of chavs since the dawn of man. You can just imagine them with their go faster woad stripes painted on the side of their saxosaurases greeting the civilising (?) Romans: Roman: We have come to conquer your land, bring you schools, running water and other things mentioned in Life of Brian Chav: Whatever Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timo Posted November 5, 2004 Share Posted November 5, 2004 Joe, I always enjoy your thoughtful postings, and this one has made me think. Who is "we" ? Are you referring to "society" here? I don't think society can be classed as a social actor with the ability to formulate and act upon decisions. To say that it did have such agency would be to engage in reification. If "we" is society, then society is a collectivity. Surely, only individual people [social actors] have the agency [free will] to "create" an Underclass? As I said previously, I personally think the sub-group was created by a cluster of cultural [down to choice], and structural [outside of human agency] causes. We can theorise as to causality, but ultimately we need some strategies to curtail the insidious growth of this class. Max makes a valid point re the presence of a huge US Underclass despite Workfare. I am tempted to suggest a eugenic solution, but I am genuinely afraid of where that might lead... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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