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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27241 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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There's probably something to that, but it explains too much.

We let our towns and cities collapse, and any new building was and is poor copies of Brutalist or modern architecture. 'Development' meant, in the 60s and 70s, knocking down the old buildings and selling on the sites for massive profits.

Part of it definitely is that the attitude was "we lived in thatched cottages when we were peasants without a pot to piss in, but we've moved on from that" since such housing was not seen as quaint 'cottagecore' but stark reminders of poverty and deprivation. In Dublin, the elegant Georgian terraces had become inner-city slums.

But part of it definitely also was because the British being in charge, and being the ones responsible for everything, down to the local landlords, took away initiative from the locals. You had no power to do anything for yourself, so you became used to not doing anything. Somebody else would make those decisions, decide what should and shouldn't be done, what should and shouldn't be repaired and in what manner.

All of this is true in Britain too, just replace "the British" with "the government". To the extent that beautiful areas remain, it's because rich second-hand homeowners and large landholders were able to stave off the 60s/70s socialists and vandal developers.

I suppose you can rescue it with @2rafa's theory that the British colonised ourselves first. There is something to that. But in general I think it's more unusual to have nice, clean well-maintained spaces than the reverse. You (we) need a theory of upkeep, not a theory of decline.

Do you or @2rafa have a link to the self-colonization post?

I don’t. I do recall suggesting that one of the reasons I think British elites are relatively nonplussed about mass immigration is that they don’t really consider themselves the same people as the native working class and don’t care if they’re replaced by other peoples they’ve ruled over before, but I’m not sure if that’s what they’re referring to.

Sorry, perhaps it was a take from somewhere else. It lines up with

British elites are relatively nonplussed about mass immigration is that they don’t really consider themselves the same people as the native working class and don’t care if they’re replaced by other peoples they’ve ruled over before

so maybe that's why I attributed it to you. The idea is that the ruling method which British elites use at home resembles that which was used in the empire - quelling a restive native population by dividing it (often ethnically) and elevating sympathetic puppets with little real support to speak for each of the tribes. The tribes can then be kept busy fighting among themselves while the rulers make inconsistent promises and play arbiter.

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