Before I launch into this, here’s some rational justification, if any’s needed. I’m a sociologist; a qualified, certified sociologist. I’ve got the paperwork, and I’ve lived the role long enough to be able to identify, if I wish, as a sociologist. Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked.
I’ve been observing my environment quite closely for the last 3 1/2 years, and for some, as yet unknown reason, now is the time to make some of my observations more widely known. Ten in fact. A bit below I rave on about 10 things that I have discovered about the Brits.
And while I may be a sociologist, I am also a lot of other things, too many to list. So these 10 observations are mine, and mine alone. Much of the essence of them comes from comparing my life for the last 3 1/2 years with that which preceded it. In that comparison, and in the 10 thoughts that follow, two terms emerge that I firstly want to explain.
Brit: For me this refers to an ethnicity. For me a Brit is not defined through their national identity. ‘Britain’ as a nation has been replaced with ‘the UK’. The red and white of the national flag are the colours of ‘England’. Nationally then people with a passport are English. Being a ‘Brit’ is about your culture, the things you feel, intuite, know and do almost without thinking.
Pakeha: Another ethnic term that refers to a specific cultural group. A Pakeha is a person who embodies and displays the Pakeha culture: the language, the terminology and symbols, the dress and attitude.
Enough of all that, here we go.
- Brits are grounded. History surrounds you, literally. It is there, everywhere. You walk in the footsteps of you ancestors.
- Brits have a fierceness about them. I recently watched the movie ‘The Eagle’, and as accurate or inaccurate it may have been, the images I most recall are those of the clans behind Hadrian’s Wall. Their faces tattooed like those of a Maori tribal warrior.
- Maybe because of this, Brits do not respect the middle classes. Many Brits I think still do not wish to be identified as middle class. For this reason many of the images that dominate are those of the working class. Brits, as a group, seem to valourise this class.
- Yet you have also this ridiculous fascination with … I’m not sure what to call them … rich people? They are difficult, perhaps impossible to define in class terms, they seem to be connected as a group, simply be the amount of money they ‘earn’. Although it is beyond my comprehension how anyone, and I mean anyone, can actually earn over a million pound a year. So it is an eclectic group that includes bankers, footballers, business leaders, TV personalities and others.
- Any many of these people have become the gods of the Brits. Wayne Rooney, Jonathan Ross, Katie Price… Yet these are fallen gods, or so it is often reported. Their dark sides are often revealed to, and revelled in, by their worshippers. Where is the voice of the good? These rich gods do not speak as one. They do not preach or provide guidance. Wisdom is at best a whisper.
- Often those that do speak, and act as guides, lead their followers into a world of competition. A world of combat.
- Food. I love British food. Sausages, mash and onions. Yorkshire pudding. Jacket potatoes. Gravy. And you take it so seriously.
- Curry chips. What better symbol of the generousity, the open-heartedness of the Brits that curry chips. This is, no question, a uniquely British delicacy, and yet in its creation and design, it combines and integrates equally, the flavours of British and Indian cultures. Brits take people to heart. They have a capacity to embrace, accept, and show respect for, those who wish to learn their values, their ways, mores, language and behaviours.
- So how do you know if you’re a Brit? I don’t know but I think one of the questions that should be on the identity form is this:
If you were given sufficient money to design and build your own home would you make if from brick, wood, straw or clay?
I think that most Brits would choose brick. Me, I’d choose wood every time, I’m a Pakeha and we tend to design, build and live in wood. Wood, for us, is good. I have not yet embodied, as many Brits seem to have, the sense that brick is best. I am reminded though of the three pigs, and that leads me to my last observation.
10. Brits are not great risk-takers. They admire this trait in others, but view it with suspicion when it appears within their own ranks. Perhaps this has something to do with my first observation. Brits are surrounded by, they grow up amongst, their past. They admire those they can identify with who have somehow escaped from the cloisters of the past. Australians. It’s a love-hate relationship.
x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x
