If you have ever stopped and wondered where is this world going to, whatever happened to human decency and worried just how far would new fashion impress kids to follow piercing/tattoos/self-mutilations, Theodore Dalrymple is a man for you. Under this witty pseudonym, this English prison doctor and psychiatrist writes essays that cover extraordinary wide range of subjects, mostly current affairs and the state of modern society we live in. The titles of his books (collections of essays published in magazines) explain his point of view: "Our Culture, What's Left of It", "Litter: How Other People's Rubbish Shapes Our Life", "The New Vichy Syndrome. Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism", "Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline". In short, here is an cultured, educated man looking at the world around him, completely unimpressed by fashions or trends but seeing our values eroding into parody and materialism, violence and criminal being the way of life for surprisingly big majority of people he gets in contact on daily basis.
"Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass" (2001) is a somber look at certain grey underclass of England. Here we are talking about huge amount of people (mostly, but not exclusively immigrants) who live off social support, demand their rights, never lift a finger to actually find a job and spend their lives in a vicious status quo situation, surrounded with criminal and all sorts of vices. Since Dalrymple meets these people trough his work every single day, he knows perfectly well what is he talking about and can easily recognise behavioural symptoms, scenarios and cliches they are falling into. This is a segment of society very far removed from any kind of security or even proper job - most of the guys are burglars, their "wives" giving births to numerous multi-racial babies and alcoholism, drugs and prostitution are just as common as suicides, beatings and murders. Its absolutely fascinating read but also a depressing one, because author rightly points at so many things that we are all aware of so at the end you wonder where does this all lead to, what kind of world do we live in.
- where previously people from lower classes always tried to copy and emulate style of cultured, moneyed and educated classes (in order to show they had style) today is completely other way around: educated, even comfortable middle-classed people follow fashion trends of low-class criminals, their clothing and speech patterns, because this is cool
- kids who stand out in a crowd for their love of art/literature/education go trough hell of abuse, bullying and all sorts of torture because they don't fit in
- certain segment of population actually believes in violence, criminal and materialism as main goals in life. Young guy gets into a fight and than gets killed because his friends taunted him for not having newest trainers.
- most of his prison patients are consistently blaming everybody else (society, government, lawyers, policemen) for their lives and actions, without ever thinking that they are responsible
- majority of young, abused unwed mothers are constantly following same behavioural patterns and basically replacing one wife-beater with another for fear of being left alone (children are basically just a necessary evil and nuisance but important for getting social money support)
- instead of being helpful, welfare mostly creates sub-class of people who can't be bothered to work and most of them feel it is right to steal from those who have (and work for it)
- multi-rational immigrant families often bring their own values with them but often never completely assimilate and create very twisted reality and expectations for their children (arranged marriages, girls beaten up for wanting education and so on). Example is a desperately unhappy (pre-arranged) marriage that parents prefer to a divorce that would embarrass social status of the family.
Everything Dalrymple writes about is true and you can't help but thinking about the state of the world in which good behaviour, proper speech and education is frowned upon. His observations about Blackpool (once a cosy vacation spot, now place to get drunk and vomit in the public) is hilarious - nowadays it seems is socially accepted that having fun means misbehaving in public, in a way that previous generations would never do. There was a certain way of behaviour that previous generations cherished as polite and its almost completely gone today, not just showing one's ass in the public but even keeping thoughts, secrets and psychosis inside instead of spilling all out for TV viewers around the world. Its all very interesting but ultimately depressing after a while and though I share many points of view with the author, it kind of just frustrates me because we are aware of this overall trend downhill and facts that kids are basically ignoring culture & education, but what to do, where are the suggestions and answers?
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