Two fine factors defining English society
Brexiting. A series on being English. # 01
English people entertain a superiority complex that goes back at least two thousand years. And they have corroborated it. Especially in the late 19th century when Britain undisputedly was the most powerful nation in the world, having dominion over the largest empire this planet had ever seen, comprising 25% of the landmass and population of Earth. (See map of 1901 below.) In 1810, English shipping tonnage was, at 700,000 metric tonnes, higher than that of Germany, France, Russia and The Netherlands combined. At its peak, just before WW I, almost half of all foreign investments by all nations combined, were British. In the 1890's Britain controlled 44% of all of the investment money in the world.
England used to be, and to a very large extent still is, run by people from Oxford University, politically, and Cambridge, scientifically, and from some lesser known universities like Aberdeen, more businesswise. For instance, all of the British prime ministers until this day (2017) have studied at Oxford. As people outside of England may have noticed, an English person coming from these
quarters of study considers himself or herself to be absolutely superior to any other person, especially those who happen to be born outside of England and therefore have not been able to internalize the fruits of selective breeding over many generations, and, to top it all, the benefits of having been at Oxford or Cambridge. In addition to this, most politicians were in fact members of the landed gentry class, people who considered themselves as being put there by God's own decree and therefore, as a matter of course, being litterally and figuratively, in their own estimation, the pinnacle of English society. In the Victorian and Edwardian Era (1830 -1913), they owned 80% of all the land. Exploitation of the oversea dominions and renting out land to the industrialists of an ever booming industry provided them with immense wealth by the end of the 19th century. They led a life of glamour & glitter with all the personal power stemming from controlling the House of Lords that in its turn controlled all available power that the immense empire had to offer. They were convinced that they could stand up to anything and that anything they wished to achieve, was within their reach. And, for a short while, it was.
This is the first and most ostentatious factor. They kept their circles closed for 'fine breeding'. And thus felt they were born to rule, by nature. They were certainly not born to be ruled by foreigners, being themselves descendants of invaders that came to rule Britannia. The First World War, however, pressed home that they were not as good as they thought, and by a long shot not even as powerful as they thought, that they were going to be relegated to a second class power if things continued in the same vein. The loss of the majority of their sons jeopardized the continuity and estates of their families. The cost of keeping the estates started to surpass income. Servants handed in their resignations. And oh horror oh horror, even prime ministers pushed for social reforms to help the people instead of just the happy few who never ever had cared for them, convinced it was all 'set stations in life' pre-ordained to last forever. All this happened within the span of one generation (1900-1929). The totality of that shock was so immense that many of them are still in denial till this very day. For instance, I do not believe that there are many members of society, or the House of Lords, if any, who do not think they are at the zenith of what mankind can produce in terms of quality of good people. To adhere to Brussels is simply an imponderable.
The second factor is less obvious but it makes the first factor relevant. It is still very much in place. The second factor is the continuous efforts of many a family in England to 'move up' in society in general by emulation of the class above them, or even the one above that. Only this makes the way the upper class thinks and feels relevant. When this second factor is absent, like in many European countries, the landed gentry and their admirers have receded into political irrelevance, Not so in England. It is funny to find customs that only make sense in circumstances with domestic staff, being rigidly adhered to in a family of a simple engineer. Like a buffet board along the wall in a dining room although the house is too small to host a special dining room and the dining room as such being too narrow for a sideboard. English houses have more rooms per 1000 square feet than elsewhere in Europe. However small its size, an English house tends to have as many small rooms as possible rather than a more spacious single room, like in The Netherlands. The reason is the emulation instinct of the English.
This penchant for emulation may be very old but the ostentatious show of pleasantness of belonging to the upper-classes, kept up with great care by BBC television series, is a big incentive. That the image projected outwardly may be different from the realities experienced by actual members of that higher circle, is overlooked. Actually, one tries not to emulate the actual class but the image of that class. And for this reason alone, emulation tends to fail. But it makes for good business in marketing and advertising, and television shows. For instance, the strict adherence to some unwritten code as to what is to be considered 'decent' and 'indecent' with regard to sex in the lower classes is absent in the very social classes that the lower classes try to emulate. There are codes everywhere but the codes imagined are just that, fine and entertaining figments of imagination, kept up for real in order to keep the multi-layered society well-ordered. Another example is the unsurpassed English (not British!) sense of humour. A large part of the laughter is generated by the vain efforts of ordinary men trying to emulate some imagined codes of behaviour of higher class and then when they fail, do anything to avoid feeling embarrassed. Fawlty Towers is nothing but that.
If these two factors are not well understood, one will find it nigh impossible to do good business. An awkward example of how things cango horribly wrong was when the CEO of KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines, a well-run highly profitable airline) tried to negotiate with the board of British Airways about a possible merger. He treated his high-brow interlocutors the same way he treated his board members in The Netherlands, a country that is as egalitarian as there ever was one. Also, the unlucky CEO had not had the benefits of centuries of experience in foreign conquest, ruling vast dominions with a handful of people, which had resulted in a fine bag of one-upmanship, or ploys, plays and perfidies needed to obtain one's aims - all taught in great depth at Oxford and Cambridge, of course. I have been told the CEO was played like a child in kindergarten. He came back sulking, feeling wronged like a schoolboy who unjustly had been flunked for an oral in his best subject.
quarters of study considers himself or herself to be absolutely superior to any other person, especially those who happen to be born outside of England and therefore have not been able to internalize the fruits of selective breeding over many generations, and, to top it all, the benefits of having been at Oxford or Cambridge. In addition to this, most politicians were in fact members of the landed gentry class, people who considered themselves as being put there by God's own decree and therefore, as a matter of course, being litterally and figuratively, in their own estimation, the pinnacle of English society. In the Victorian and Edwardian Era (1830 -1913), they owned 80% of all the land. Exploitation of the oversea dominions and renting out land to the industrialists of an ever booming industry provided them with immense wealth by the end of the 19th century. They led a life of glamour & glitter with all the personal power stemming from controlling the House of Lords that in its turn controlled all available power that the immense empire had to offer. They were convinced that they could stand up to anything and that anything they wished to achieve, was within their reach. And, for a short while, it was.
This is the first and most ostentatious factor. They kept their circles closed for 'fine breeding'. And thus felt they were born to rule, by nature. They were certainly not born to be ruled by foreigners, being themselves descendants of invaders that came to rule Britannia. The First World War, however, pressed home that they were not as good as they thought, and by a long shot not even as powerful as they thought, that they were going to be relegated to a second class power if things continued in the same vein. The loss of the majority of their sons jeopardized the continuity and estates of their families. The cost of keeping the estates started to surpass income. Servants handed in their resignations. And oh horror oh horror, even prime ministers pushed for social reforms to help the people instead of just the happy few who never ever had cared for them, convinced it was all 'set stations in life' pre-ordained to last forever. All this happened within the span of one generation (1900-1929). The totality of that shock was so immense that many of them are still in denial till this very day. For instance, I do not believe that there are many members of society, or the House of Lords, if any, who do not think they are at the zenith of what mankind can produce in terms of quality of good people. To adhere to Brussels is simply an imponderable.
The second factor is less obvious but it makes the first factor relevant. It is still very much in place. The second factor is the continuous efforts of many a family in England to 'move up' in society in general by emulation of the class above them, or even the one above that. Only this makes the way the upper class thinks and feels relevant. When this second factor is absent, like in many European countries, the landed gentry and their admirers have receded into political irrelevance, Not so in England. It is funny to find customs that only make sense in circumstances with domestic staff, being rigidly adhered to in a family of a simple engineer. Like a buffet board along the wall in a dining room although the house is too small to host a special dining room and the dining room as such being too narrow for a sideboard. English houses have more rooms per 1000 square feet than elsewhere in Europe. However small its size, an English house tends to have as many small rooms as possible rather than a more spacious single room, like in The Netherlands. The reason is the emulation instinct of the English.
This penchant for emulation may be very old but the ostentatious show of pleasantness of belonging to the upper-classes, kept up with great care by BBC television series, is a big incentive. That the image projected outwardly may be different from the realities experienced by actual members of that higher circle, is overlooked. Actually, one tries not to emulate the actual class but the image of that class. And for this reason alone, emulation tends to fail. But it makes for good business in marketing and advertising, and television shows. For instance, the strict adherence to some unwritten code as to what is to be considered 'decent' and 'indecent' with regard to sex in the lower classes is absent in the very social classes that the lower classes try to emulate. There are codes everywhere but the codes imagined are just that, fine and entertaining figments of imagination, kept up for real in order to keep the multi-layered society well-ordered. Another example is the unsurpassed English (not British!) sense of humour. A large part of the laughter is generated by the vain efforts of ordinary men trying to emulate some imagined codes of behaviour of higher class and then when they fail, do anything to avoid feeling embarrassed. Fawlty Towers is nothing but that.If these two factors are not well understood, one will find it nigh impossible to do good business. An awkward example of how things cango horribly wrong was when the CEO of KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines, a well-run highly profitable airline) tried to negotiate with the board of British Airways about a possible merger. He treated his high-brow interlocutors the same way he treated his board members in The Netherlands, a country that is as egalitarian as there ever was one. Also, the unlucky CEO had not had the benefits of centuries of experience in foreign conquest, ruling vast dominions with a handful of people, which had resulted in a fine bag of one-upmanship, or ploys, plays and perfidies needed to obtain one's aims - all taught in great depth at Oxford and Cambridge, of course. I have been told the CEO was played like a child in kindergarten. He came back sulking, feeling wronged like a schoolboy who unjustly had been flunked for an oral in his best subject.
So, it is all-important to understand the culture or cultures from which your interlocutor in a negotiation hails.
This is the first blog article that gives an analysis of the forces behind Brexit. It is those same forces that are to be well understood and reckoned with when doing business with the English or when simply trying to love them.
The Philosopher of Culture, Amsterdam, March 24, 2017, 14:10 CET
This is the first blog article that gives an analysis of the forces behind Brexit. It is those same forces that are to be well understood and reckoned with when doing business with the English or when simply trying to love them.
The Philosopher of Culture, Amsterdam, March 24, 2017, 14:10 CET
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