Writing in The Globe and Mail, Dalrymple reports the creeping approach of crude behavior among the French. Et malheureusement, my Provencal retirement dreams are so far into the future…
The Skeptical Doctor
Dedicated to the work of Theodore Dalrymple
In Britain, middle class intellectuals have long romanticised the working classes as authentic individuals, unfettered by social restraint and a sense of duty – a stark contrast to what they preceived as their own stifling, buttoned-down existence.
This perception formed the basis of a long campaign against traditional values, so that intellectuals might live the kind of egotistical existence they envied in their social inferiors. They adopted working class patterns of speech, copied their clothes and celebrated their tastes. Equally, they presented anyone who even acknowledged that a hierarchy of values existed as elitist. In doing so, intellectuals could present themselves as compassionate, equality-minded people, they could purge their middle-class guilt and pursue a life of hedonistic egotism.
In France as in Britain, this attitude is filtering down to the people that the intellectuals sought to emulate. It’s little wonder, then, that the kind of resentful, self-absorbed attitude so prevalent in Britain is becoming the norm elsewhere too.