Our anonymous blogger reflects on her attempts to have a student Christmas... and how she came to the conclusion that home-made is always best.
Gillian Love urges you to vote 'No' to the motion to replace Women's Committee with a 'Gender Equality Committee'.
Josiah Mortimer examines the causes and possible solutions of the youth unemployment... and why he thinks the Occupy movement has done something significant.
This week, I have been looking at old essays from The Tatler and The Spectator. In case you didn’t know, these papers were established in the early 1700s, mainly as vehicles for contributors to satirise ‘polite society’ and offer critiques on the fashions of the day. Among the essays I have read this weekend, there was included a denouncement of the absurdity of the Italian Opera (that the author maintained, became so popular because nothing goes so well with music as nonsense) and the necessity of a tax on vehicles in London (congestion charge, anyone?).
The importance of ‘polite’ conversation, however, was quite forcefully extrapolated on. The perfect man was said to be one who talked to please others, rather than himself, and conversation should certainly never serve to belittle one or other of the party. Astonishing, isn’t it? I wonder what they would have made of our conversation today. “Banter” would most definitely be frowned upon, it seems.
Another thing, despite what we might think, ‘blogging’ is not a Twenty-First-century invention. If Steele and Addison had lived in this day and age, no doubt they would be supporting wordpress.com like the rest of us folk with aspirations to being the next big thing. Although technically classed under the newspaper form, journals such as The Spectator and the The Tatler, often contained anything but news. Instead, they focussed on discussions of proper conduct and the coffeehouse society that flourished in the long Eighteenth-century. The modern Spectator recognises this heritage by featuring a ‘Coffee House’ section of its website, and The Tatler advertises its founding date of 1709. All things considered, though, I doubt whether the fascination with the frivolous partying and fashion of the elite was quite what its founders had in mind, and a quick perusal of The Spectator’s website also suggests a distinct fascination with news, which was certainly not advocated in Steele and Addison’s day.
Steele and Addison greatly condemned the ‘newsmonger’ and the person who allowed themselves to be distracted from their work by the pursuit of the news of the day. Having just spent a good hour or so perusing the national papers instead of doing my seminar work, I can’t help but think that they might have had a point. Twitter is especially dangerous, bombarding us with news snippets like an Eighteenth-century gossip – just enough to make us feel like we knew what’s going on, but not enough to qualify us to lecture on the subject. A jack-of-all-trades, a master of none - is that not the saying? It is certainly what I feel sometimes reading the contributions of the thousands on the Internet, or listening to the bar-side rants of the would-be social commentator.
Saying this, The Spectator and The Tatler were founded with a strict political agenda; and anything with an agenda (which is everything, by the way) should be taken with a pinch (or, sometimes a good handful), of salt. While I’m not much of a fan of ‘banter’ and would love to see a revival of people being polite to each other, such social contracts could be seen as stifling creative expression. After all, what right does anyone have to define what should or shouldn’t be said?
At the end of the day, we have to leave these sorts of things up to the individual to decide. Should I spend an hour on Facebook or twitter, tattling about inconsequential things? Or should I buckle down to my work? Go for a run? Or go and enjoy some “polite” conversation with my housemates? To be honest, who cares, right? I bet that’s what you’re thinking; and that’s fine. In fact, that’s good; you shouldn’t care about the actions of others, until you have sorted out your own priorities.
Oh, wait; am I giving social instructions now? My apologies.
What I mean to say, is that nobody can tell us what to do. You might think this is the greatest thing since the iPhone, meaning we can do whatever we want; but it’s bloody scary. It is scary because it means we have to take responsibility for our own actions. If we mess up, trust me, it is not society’s fault. It is ours.
Of course, it also means that when we do act well, contribute meaningfully to a conversation and make something of ourselves, it is entirely to our own credit. And that’s something to be proud of.
But, of course, it isn’t polite to go on about it.
You must log in to submit a comment.
