Don't laugh, but in truth I am not much of a one for moaning about how things were better in my day.
Now, this assertion may make the odd reader spit out their kombucha or chai-latte all over their touch-screen. I appreciate that I can tend towards the grumpy on here, but, what I would say in my defence, is that when railing against the ills of the modern age, I generally do try to be a bit balanced. The piece on here which got some of the most attention was an one about my preference for elderly technology, after all, but I was at pains to point out the good in the new.
I don't think fruit tasted better in my youth, I bemoan not the demise of the pop man bringing shit-awful cherryade to your front door. I don't look back misty-eyed on a time when men were men and women better get the dinner on or they'll have another black eye to explain to the neighbours, and I think we can all agree that children's entertainment is vastly improved by not being presented by predatory paedophiles. Likewise I am largely in favour of improvements in medical science, fairly pro the wider recognition of human rights and generally of the view that it's better to prosecute serial sex offenders then just shrug and accept that Creepy Uncle Derek is Just One Of Those Things. People who think everything was better in the past are, not to put too fine a point on it, feeble-minded nostalgists who can't come to terms with their own ageing and the inevitability of death. Soz.
But, with that caveat out of the way, there is one aspect of the world of my youth which I mourn, and which I feel the loss of keenly every day, one thing which I feel would improve our contemporary discourse no end, and it is this. Understatement. That peculiarly British nonchalance and downplaying of events, that self-deprecation and refusal to over-celebrate which was one of the only aspects of our national character which didn't grate on every other nation on earth.
I'm not entirely sure when it disappeared entirely, when relentless positivity and over-statement became the default way of doing things. I suspect it started to fade away in the go-getting, flag-waving eighties, when enriching oneself became a patriotic act, and hang the consequences (with which we are currently living), sand-blasted by tabloid jingoism and relentless self-interest; the hedonistic nineties saw a recovery, as going on the lash and taking the piss are two great British past-times which lend themselves naturally to the deployment of understatement, the most sodden of sessions could be explained away as "going out for half a shandy, maybe a small sherry", but as we moved through the nervous noughties, and the world grew ever darker, as disastrous middle-eastern exploits were succeeded by financial crashes and the relentless grimness of the austerity years it fizzled out entirely, helpless in the face of the pious sincerity, rampant positivity and instant moral judgements of the social media age. Which is a shame, as prior to its demise an achievement would be acknowledged thus:
"You invented a cure for the common cold! That's amazing!"
"It's alright, I suppose. I did okay, can't take all the credit"
Whereas now, a workaday task is acknowledged in the following manner:
"Did you put the bins out?"
"Mate, I smashed it. I absolutely crushed it. It was epic, it was legendary."
This modern tendency to hyperbole is, I feel, rather leading our society down a fairly unsavoury garden path. I don't think it's a co-incidence that our own society, the home of understatement, is currently headed by World King Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, likewise, it's unsurprising that Worst President In The History Of The World, Donald Trump is currently in charge of the United States, somehow. In a more understated age, both these bloated airbags would be laughed out of the room, their overweening arrogance and self-regard would have the piss rightly and royally ripped our of it.
"You want to do what? You want to build a bridge to Ireland? Riiiight"
Instead of which, their high valuations of themselves are taken at face value, their right to rule accepted, their ludicrous pronouncements accorded a degree of seriousness which they really don't deserve. In an age where everyone's smashing it and crushing it, rather than just, you, know, doing it, it's not enough to do, you have to shout long and loud about it. And(and this is the particular kicker) if you get good enough at the shouting long and loud bit, you eventually get to leave out the part where you actually have to do things.
Without the ballast of understatement, discourse defaults to grandiosity, to triumphalism. The classy response to their crushing election victory would have seen a modest reaction from the Conservatives, a sober acknowledgement that the real work starts now. Instead of which we get overstater-in-chief, Michael Gove claiming (incorrectly) that both the Durham Miner's Gala and the Notting Hill Carnival would now be held in a conservative seat. A gleeful, sneering display of being a bad winner which ill befits public discourse.
(As a side note, it's a particular irony that all the dreamers, loons and magical thinkers that currently populate the right wing of British politics keep harking back to "British Values" even as they themselves embody so little of them. You know the sort of goons, the ones who invoke World War 2 at the drop of a hat, who bang on about Blitz spirit and British pluck, they were the same ones who started screaming about riots if we didn't leave the EU on Oct 31st. Which, um, we didn't and which, um, there weren't. These thin-skinned fantasists wouldn't know understatement if it coughed politely to let them know it was there).
This problem isn't confined to the right of course, prior to the election itself, the wilder shores of the Labour universe were certain that a glorious socialist paradise was just around the corner, even as the evidence started to mount up they wouldn't believe it. The Absolute Boy, Jeremy Corbyn, was crushing it, he was smashing it, evidence be damned. A more understated position is easier to row back from, in the age where everyone's crushing it, it's very easy to paint yourself into a corner. Now that what's happened has happened it is now, of course, the end of the world, the worst election result in history, in fact, the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of humanity.
Needless to say, none of these things are actually the case.
I'm not entirely sure what the way back from this sate of affairs is. The problem with carping from the sidelines like this is that you run the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, moaning about how things were better in his day, which is roughly where I came in. But I do hope, that in making this plea for a return of understatement, I might have entertained the odd reader for five minutes or so. If that's the case, I think it's safe to say that I absolutely smashed it.
Now, this assertion may make the odd reader spit out their kombucha or chai-latte all over their touch-screen. I appreciate that I can tend towards the grumpy on here, but, what I would say in my defence, is that when railing against the ills of the modern age, I generally do try to be a bit balanced. The piece on here which got some of the most attention was an one about my preference for elderly technology, after all, but I was at pains to point out the good in the new.
I don't think fruit tasted better in my youth, I bemoan not the demise of the pop man bringing shit-awful cherryade to your front door. I don't look back misty-eyed on a time when men were men and women better get the dinner on or they'll have another black eye to explain to the neighbours, and I think we can all agree that children's entertainment is vastly improved by not being presented by predatory paedophiles. Likewise I am largely in favour of improvements in medical science, fairly pro the wider recognition of human rights and generally of the view that it's better to prosecute serial sex offenders then just shrug and accept that Creepy Uncle Derek is Just One Of Those Things. People who think everything was better in the past are, not to put too fine a point on it, feeble-minded nostalgists who can't come to terms with their own ageing and the inevitability of death. Soz.
But, with that caveat out of the way, there is one aspect of the world of my youth which I mourn, and which I feel the loss of keenly every day, one thing which I feel would improve our contemporary discourse no end, and it is this. Understatement. That peculiarly British nonchalance and downplaying of events, that self-deprecation and refusal to over-celebrate which was one of the only aspects of our national character which didn't grate on every other nation on earth.
I'm not entirely sure when it disappeared entirely, when relentless positivity and over-statement became the default way of doing things. I suspect it started to fade away in the go-getting, flag-waving eighties, when enriching oneself became a patriotic act, and hang the consequences (with which we are currently living), sand-blasted by tabloid jingoism and relentless self-interest; the hedonistic nineties saw a recovery, as going on the lash and taking the piss are two great British past-times which lend themselves naturally to the deployment of understatement, the most sodden of sessions could be explained away as "going out for half a shandy, maybe a small sherry", but as we moved through the nervous noughties, and the world grew ever darker, as disastrous middle-eastern exploits were succeeded by financial crashes and the relentless grimness of the austerity years it fizzled out entirely, helpless in the face of the pious sincerity, rampant positivity and instant moral judgements of the social media age. Which is a shame, as prior to its demise an achievement would be acknowledged thus:
"You invented a cure for the common cold! That's amazing!"
"It's alright, I suppose. I did okay, can't take all the credit"
Whereas now, a workaday task is acknowledged in the following manner:
"Did you put the bins out?"
"Mate, I smashed it. I absolutely crushed it. It was epic, it was legendary."
This modern tendency to hyperbole is, I feel, rather leading our society down a fairly unsavoury garden path. I don't think it's a co-incidence that our own society, the home of understatement, is currently headed by World King Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, likewise, it's unsurprising that Worst President In The History Of The World, Donald Trump is currently in charge of the United States, somehow. In a more understated age, both these bloated airbags would be laughed out of the room, their overweening arrogance and self-regard would have the piss rightly and royally ripped our of it.
"You want to do what? You want to build a bridge to Ireland? Riiiight"
Instead of which, their high valuations of themselves are taken at face value, their right to rule accepted, their ludicrous pronouncements accorded a degree of seriousness which they really don't deserve. In an age where everyone's smashing it and crushing it, rather than just, you, know, doing it, it's not enough to do, you have to shout long and loud about it. And(and this is the particular kicker) if you get good enough at the shouting long and loud bit, you eventually get to leave out the part where you actually have to do things.
Without the ballast of understatement, discourse defaults to grandiosity, to triumphalism. The classy response to their crushing election victory would have seen a modest reaction from the Conservatives, a sober acknowledgement that the real work starts now. Instead of which we get overstater-in-chief, Michael Gove claiming (incorrectly) that both the Durham Miner's Gala and the Notting Hill Carnival would now be held in a conservative seat. A gleeful, sneering display of being a bad winner which ill befits public discourse.
(As a side note, it's a particular irony that all the dreamers, loons and magical thinkers that currently populate the right wing of British politics keep harking back to "British Values" even as they themselves embody so little of them. You know the sort of goons, the ones who invoke World War 2 at the drop of a hat, who bang on about Blitz spirit and British pluck, they were the same ones who started screaming about riots if we didn't leave the EU on Oct 31st. Which, um, we didn't and which, um, there weren't. These thin-skinned fantasists wouldn't know understatement if it coughed politely to let them know it was there).
This problem isn't confined to the right of course, prior to the election itself, the wilder shores of the Labour universe were certain that a glorious socialist paradise was just around the corner, even as the evidence started to mount up they wouldn't believe it. The Absolute Boy, Jeremy Corbyn, was crushing it, he was smashing it, evidence be damned. A more understated position is easier to row back from, in the age where everyone's crushing it, it's very easy to paint yourself into a corner. Now that what's happened has happened it is now, of course, the end of the world, the worst election result in history, in fact, the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of humanity.
Needless to say, none of these things are actually the case.
I'm not entirely sure what the way back from this sate of affairs is. The problem with carping from the sidelines like this is that you run the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, moaning about how things were better in his day, which is roughly where I came in. But I do hope, that in making this plea for a return of understatement, I might have entertained the odd reader for five minutes or so. If that's the case, I think it's safe to say that I absolutely smashed it.
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