disclaimer: the friend referenced in this post has been the one insisting I post it. Go figure. Here goes:
I have a dear friend who has suffered their whole life from being, well, hell, British.
Oh, the agony.
Seriously. Repressing that much elite-ism has always come out sideways . . .
. . . all pleasure is to be publicly denied and privately indulged (they tell one another that the general population could not possibly understand their refined motivations)
. . . all the appropriate displays of shock, guilt, and shame when caught (as they always are) in their naked hypocrisy are to be cycled through, so that, again, the goodness of the general population breaks through and forgiveness is extended . . . forgiveness being recognized as when the public, in general, begins to give the elite the benefit of the doubt once more . . . which the elite promptly take advantage of . . . telling themselves that it’s what makes them so elite . . . circle jerk, anybody?
This repeats generationally for the Brits . . . both on a personal level and on the national psyche level . . . My friend described it as: “Living with a bearable amount of ick.” They went on: “People only change when the ick in their life becomes too much. I get that. But we Brits only want to remove enough of the ick so we can still bear it. We appear to like the ick. We have zero concept of play that isn’t naughty …… of joy that isn’t planned and going as expected . . . of laughter that isn’t at someone else’s expense. We’re a bit mean-spirited actually. Towards ourselves mostly. But you’ve been trying to point that out to me about myself for years . . . haven’t you?”
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