Pigs Make Sties
London, its Underclass, and their Free Will
I am nursing a theory that London is not a city, nor a people, but a temperament of nastiness, which one can possess regardless of one’s race or nationality. The city does not produce monsters — it needn’t — but rather serves as a meeting point for the world’s very worst to congregate. It does not corrupt, but houses the corrupt. The counting houses of China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are empty, and all the devils are here.
Very few come to London in good faith, or for love of the city. The motive, as many times as you might turn it over, always turns out to be purely economic. The wealthy come to gobble up property, and the poor come to work the poorly-paid service or office jobs which they cannot find in their own country, all the while despising their new home, which so little resembles the heat-soaked paradise or charmingly rustic eastern countries which they hail from.
It is on the poor of London that I wish to draw my focus. I had previously entertained the idea that the general coldness, aggression and lack of social cohesion that is to be found amongst London’s underclass might be explained by something which works upon its inhabitants from their arrival in the city, either by birth or choice, which ground them down slowly into the spiritually impoverished, somewhat materially improved London creatures which they end up as. I believed that the hostility which London’s poorest show toward one another might be explained by their being composed of peoples from disparate nations being forced to live together, able only to communicate with one another in a rudimentary, practical English, the superlative flourishes of the language altogether done away with.
But none of this is present in the northern cities, where immigration is comparable to that in the Capital. That northern friendliness, like the hostility of London, is in no way limited to the native Britons. I have been surprised to find that the good manners, warmth and sociability is to be found just as readily in the non-native population, who employ northern turns-of-phrase with a naturalness that would be impossible for a Londoner like myself to adopt.
There seems to be an inherent goodness in the people who populate, whether by birth or by choice, certain places, and the inherent evil in those who choose to occupy others. It is rare to find an amicable Northerner in London, or a cold Southerner in Manchester. A Mancunian who has chosen to make London his home has done so because he was born nasty, and he has sought a home which is propitious to his nastiness. Equally, an honest Londoner will escape the city with the first chance that is presented to him.
When we talk of the “poverty” and “deprivation” of certain places in England, we assume a material distinction. If we say that a person is “poor” or “deprived” we assume that the person is poor in money, and deprived of material wealth. But London, for all its material wealth, is the poorest in spirit, and the most deprived of good character. The underclass of London, despite the ample financial support received by the state, remain culturally in the gutter. Their supposed material poverty, compared to that of a working-class person even fifty years ago, is relatively non-existent. What they are deprived of is a good education, religion, and culture, which may once have given some semblance of meaning and direction to even the most desperately poor person’s life.
I wish to avoid characterising them as victims, because this is the root of the problem. But it should be made clear that London’s underclass have been profoundly affected by a nihilistic materialism concocted by their superiors who, with good schooling and familiarity with high culture in hand, have, unlike their poorer counterparts, sufficient cognitive tools to weather the storm of their own making. The poor are not so fortunate. When they are told that their alcoholism, anti-social behaviour or stupidity is not their own fault, but the natural result of material conditions which have been thrust upon them, they are happy to accept a theory which relieves them of any personal responsibility.
This determinism, which here constitutes a sort of logical empathy, is of course entirely correct. It would be futile to argue that the intervention of “free will” is the only distinction between a salaried, white-collar clerk choosing not to beat his wife and an unemployed benefit claimant choosing to do so. The explanation is material. But should we really be giving this kind of dangerous knowledge to the poor?
We may have underestimated the extent to which a perfectly sound theory, which ought to be the spectator to a decadent society, would leap upon the stage and begin playing a part within it. Knowing that one is subject to an infinite number of material conditions which determine one’s behaviour, and that free will is an illusion, is merely another factor which causes the underclass to degenerate. It is said by some that, although free will does not exist, we are forced to live as if it does. The underclass have proved this to be categorically untrue.
Paradoxically, it is necessary that we maintain the illusion of free will in order to create propitious material conditions upon which the underclass might crawl out of the gutter. This presents some moral difficulties, since the majority of people tasked with dealing with the underclass - social workers, government officials, teachers - are middle-class enough to know that the people they are dealing with are, like themselves, slaves to fate, and they are more disposed to empathise with these people rather than castigate them.
Empathy is the natural and correct reaction, but the practical (and truly kind) approach is to be unforgiving in one’s outlook, and draconian in one’s punishment. Even a pig can be house trained if you treat it like a bichon frise.
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