I'll enjoy the last episode tonight. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/dow ... ason2.html
But, alas, in a class system all people, high and low, live in boxes. Few flourish.
I had one experience with the old money class system in Duluth. My law partner invited us to dinner at his club http://www.kitchigammiclub.com/index.php?cat=HISTORY and thereafter to take a bus to the symphony. At table, we were interrogated about our families. I explicitly described my commoner background. I almost laughed out loud, though, when my quiet wife briefly responded: "We Oddens are from North Dakota." The experience was mildly embarrassing, but I remember it..
Downton Abbey
Re: Downton Abbey
Thinking about Downton Abbey, this afternoon I wondered: Do any English aristocratic families and estates still exist?
I found an informative article. Here are the concluding paragraphs:
"There is little public sympathy when old landed estates go under the hammer. The sense of duty that owners cite is often anathema to outsiders. Kick Kennedy wrote of her husband Billy’s belief that “duty must come first. He is a fanatic on this subject, and I suppose just such a spirit is what has made England great, despite the fact that Englishmen are considered so weak-looking, etc.” Sixty-five years on, such a creed looks even more puzzling, probably making sense only to those raised to accept their centuries-old code.
Equally, the wish to preserve things for the male heir is at odds with today’s concepts of sexual equality. Who can blame a subsequent wife if she wishes to break some icing off the cake, to satisfy her sweet tooth? Why should she care that she is ruining an entity that has survived for generations in a family that has concentrated exclusively on the boy child from the husband’s first union—in her case, probably with a woman whom she loathes?
One first wife, married to her lord for a quarter of a century, puts the other side of the argument: “My ex-husband and I lived very frugally, in order to preserve everything for our son. But now my ex is married to a young floozy who thinks nothing of selling farms and family paintings that have been in the family for generations—something we would never have dreamt of doing. Sadly, as he’s got older, he’s forgotten what his role is, and thinks it’s enough to pander to the asset-stripping whims of a woman who probably doesn’t understand what she is doing, and, if she does, most definitely doesn’t care.”
Wars, famines, plagues, and economic depressions—the remaining estates in Britain have survived them all. But asset-stripping stepmothers? Aided, if the marriage does not work, by some of the most wife-friendly divorce courts in the world, which do not accept pre-nups as legally binding? These might just be the final days for many historic British landed families."
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/feature ... acy-201001
I would suggest that a society needs a sense of duty, and an array of defined conventional duties, if it is to survive. I mean duties defined by custom, tradition, and convention, not just by the criminal law. There are Hmong people in my apartment complex. They are very friendly and helpful to me. My pharmacist is Hmong. I recently asked her, after citing my experience, if her culture valued a duty of respect for old people. She said 'yes' but also that the Hmong people in the building probably found you to be a non-threatening friendly American!
What does that say about the ordinary American?
I found an informative article. Here are the concluding paragraphs:
"There is little public sympathy when old landed estates go under the hammer. The sense of duty that owners cite is often anathema to outsiders. Kick Kennedy wrote of her husband Billy’s belief that “duty must come first. He is a fanatic on this subject, and I suppose just such a spirit is what has made England great, despite the fact that Englishmen are considered so weak-looking, etc.” Sixty-five years on, such a creed looks even more puzzling, probably making sense only to those raised to accept their centuries-old code.
Equally, the wish to preserve things for the male heir is at odds with today’s concepts of sexual equality. Who can blame a subsequent wife if she wishes to break some icing off the cake, to satisfy her sweet tooth? Why should she care that she is ruining an entity that has survived for generations in a family that has concentrated exclusively on the boy child from the husband’s first union—in her case, probably with a woman whom she loathes?
One first wife, married to her lord for a quarter of a century, puts the other side of the argument: “My ex-husband and I lived very frugally, in order to preserve everything for our son. But now my ex is married to a young floozy who thinks nothing of selling farms and family paintings that have been in the family for generations—something we would never have dreamt of doing. Sadly, as he’s got older, he’s forgotten what his role is, and thinks it’s enough to pander to the asset-stripping whims of a woman who probably doesn’t understand what she is doing, and, if she does, most definitely doesn’t care.”
Wars, famines, plagues, and economic depressions—the remaining estates in Britain have survived them all. But asset-stripping stepmothers? Aided, if the marriage does not work, by some of the most wife-friendly divorce courts in the world, which do not accept pre-nups as legally binding? These might just be the final days for many historic British landed families."
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/feature ... acy-201001
I would suggest that a society needs a sense of duty, and an array of defined conventional duties, if it is to survive. I mean duties defined by custom, tradition, and convention, not just by the criminal law. There are Hmong people in my apartment complex. They are very friendly and helpful to me. My pharmacist is Hmong. I recently asked her, after citing my experience, if her culture valued a duty of respect for old people. She said 'yes' but also that the Hmong people in the building probably found you to be a non-threatening friendly American!
What does that say about the ordinary American?