It really bugs me when people say there is no social mobility when what they really mean is that they don’t have the guarantee of the same middle – class lifestyle their parents had.
In reality, what they bemoan is actually the existence of social mobility.
Clarissa's Blog 
Well, downward mobility is easy.
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Climbing up is always harder than sliding down. 🙂
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There isn’t the kind of social mobility there used to be in US. Most people remain at the income level where they were born. This was noticeably less true at mid 20th century than it is now.
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“There isn’t the kind of social mobility there used to be in US.”
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I think though that in terms of income charts moving up by economic class is still harder now, and the form these liberalizations have taken in terms of economics works more at the level of window dressing.
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“I think though that in terms of income charts moving up by economic class is still harder now, and the form these liberalizations have taken in terms of economics works more at the level of window dressing.”
There is no such thing as “family income.” That doesn’t exist. That is all a myth used to exploit women. Where are the charts of female income? If we look at those charts, we will see that social mobility has soared since 1950.
I’m sorry, but I feel very, very strongly on the subject of white men’s interests being presented as somehow being everybody’s interests.
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Re below, 50s, you are talking about before desegregation and 2d wave feminism. There is a lot else in 20th century. Most people I went to college with could not go to that or those two universities now (state flagships) for financial reasons and also because the public schools no longer prepare people to enter those institutions. What has improved for black people (and this is a real improvement) is that you do not have the reign of terror of Jim Crow (and it is an improvement despite the incarceration state, the extrajudicial excecutions in their current form, and so on), but I do not think it is clear that they are better off economically or have more social mobility as a whole. Women, my mother refused to finish college or develop career although she could have done, but that was the way of the 50s. It was harder to be taken seriously as a woman when I was in graduate school than it is now, but that was because we were still in shadow of 50s. But all my female relatives the next generation up and before that had educations and careers, why not? My infamous aunt, for instance, from the farm, became quite big shot civil servant with only a high school education and no connections, and this could not be done now.
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Hmmm, you are too young to know anything about Friedan’s nonsense. Most working women were always employed except for those lucky enough to enjoy their children prior to school. Marriage and family was a team effort, because it was needed…and still is. Get used to it.
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“Enjoy their children prior to school ” sounds extremely creepy. Marriage as an effort is just sad. The language you choose to speak of these things betrays a profound uneasiness with the subject.
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“This was noticeably less true at mid 20th century than it is now.”
In the 1950s the US made a huge profit on WW2, and the American economy got a huge boost that made it possible for many people to climb the income ladder fast. Nothing that lucrative happened since then which is great news to those who don’t have to die in a senseless war.
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“In the 1950s the US made a huge profit on WW2, and the American economy got a huge boost that made it possible for many people to climb the income ladder fast.”
I will never tire of repeating how much it bothers me to hear WOMEN engage in this mythologization of the 1950s.
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When we went to the accountant the last time, I actually had to raise my voice – which I never ever do – because she was going on and on and on about our “family income” and refusing to see that MY PERSONAL income was suffering to benefit MY HUSBAND”S PERSONAL income. Women need to start learning to see themselves as separate entities.
It was painfully hard to get the accountant to give me advice on what would be less harmful to my (not “ours”, MY) finances. She kept easily sacrificing me to my husband’s interests. Which I find absolutely shocking. I cannot get my doctor to talk to me about what will be good for ME, I can’t get the accountant to do that – we are all still collectively assuming that a woman is some sort of an appendage to a man or to the sanctified FAMILY.
I’m still fighting for an escape from an extremely patriarchal family, so I have a very intense reaction to these things. But at least I’m fighting.
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“I’m still fighting for an escape from an extremely patriarchal family, so I have a very intense reaction to these things. But at least I’m fighting.”
I would have seen the accountant’s face. 😀 I guess most American women are in favour of the family income.
But when did the American women got emancipated then? I thought it took place in the 1950s, but my knowledge may be gappy on this subject.
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“But when did the American women got emancipated then? I thought it took place in the 1950s, but my knowledge may be gappy on this subject.”
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Well, the universe is expanding and time is accelerating, so there is still hope :-).
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50s were actually very bad decade for this. But before that clampdown you had a lot more freedom, think of bluestockings, all my relatives with college and graduate degrees and careers, political work, secret networks to arrange for abortions and birth control, all sorts of things. Of course not so much in South. But the rumor about women not working is very much exaggerrated.
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The question is whether the median female income today is higher than the median female income back in the 1950s. I think the answer is so obvious that there is really nothing here to debate.
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Why are you fixated on 50s exclusively? More fundamentally, I think you are mixing up two questions.
1- is income of women better now or in 50s? Now, obviously.
2- is there now more social mobility than [exactly when]? (different question and needs to be approached in more complex way)
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“Why are you fixated on 50s exclusively?”
“is there now more social mobility than [exactly when]?”
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I believe the big issue is actually that it is harder to escape actual poverty, or rise from the working class, than it was in various points of 20th century.
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I see myself so much as a separate entity that I just think the world is mad. Seriously, it surprises me when I visit a doctor and they attempt to manage my health as if that were not my own to manage. I imagine they must have become so used to waiting rooms full of neurotic people who want others to act in a firm way to make them feel better about themselves. I very much avoid entering the conventional realms of existence because of the onslaught to my mind when I have to suddenly realize the world is mad.
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“I see myself so much as a separate entity that I just think the world is mad. Seriously, it surprises me when I visit a doctor and they attempt to manage my health as if that were not my own to manage. ”
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I went to the doctor last a few years ago. I said I was getting almost constant menstrual aching and that this was making me very stressed. The doctor took my blood pressure and said it was very high and that I should see a cardiologist. I explained that the reason it was high is that I had almost constant menstrual pain and that I wanted to address the gynecological issue first. It was very, very difficult to make them understand that I had a form of reasoning. In the end, I wasn’t able to convince them. I got a cardio referral which I ignored and a gyn referral which I took up. But I did find this attitude toward me rather frightening.
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“It was very, very difficult to make them understand that I had a form of reasoning. In the end, I wasn’t able to convince them. ”
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We are very similar. I had the idea of sitting them down and saying, “Well did you know I am also a doctor? Only of a different sort from you?”
But then I realized this would not work either.
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“But then I realized this would not work either.”
I hope you get help for the menstrual pain!
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This was a long time ago and the Mirena device was a partial solution although as the hormones wear out I am finding I have similar sensations. Probably too much information, but there can be a lot of pressure from intestinal fullness, which to menstrual bloating and pain. I just need to really, really watch my digestive health as I am working with thin margins….
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I am with you all the way.
8 years ago I bought the house we live in. I bought it, the loan is 100% in my name, but since we live in a state with common property it belongs to my husband as well, which is fine. However, it makes me livid every time we get any formal documents about the house to see that it has been filed as Husbandfirstname Lastname and Mylastname, Firstname. Why is the dude always the default?!
I am also with you 100% about women working. Friends who are a couple were complaining a few weeks ago how the guy’s parents never liked any of his girlfriends and would always find something wrong with them. They asked me what my requirements would be for the future wives of my sons. I said I had only one requirement — the girls/women need to earn their own salary (and ideally have a career they love). I don’t care where they come from, I don’t care about the race or age, heck — I don’t care if they are women! — but they need to be economically independent people.
I feel very very VERY strongly about this.
My younger two sons are little, but I think my eldest son has definitely gotten the memo. 😉
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“They asked me what my requirements would be for the future wives of my sons. I said I had only one requirement — the girls/women need to earn their own salary (and ideally have a career they love). I don’t care where they come from, I don’t care about the race or age, heck — I don’t care if they are women! — but they need to be economically independent people.”
Sorry, but I find it horrible when someone sets up any REQUIREMENTS of his or her kid’s future spouse. That’s patriarchy at its best that you want to fight that badly.
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but I find it horrible when someone sets up any REQUIREMENTS of his or her kid’s future spouse.
Fair enough, although I think you are being too literal. As a parent you will have opinions of your kids’ romantic choices, that’s what the requirement means; it’s not like you could or should have a say one way or another, it’s their life and their choice.
My sons already do or will know well enough how I feel about able-bodied people who don’t want to work, so there there are hardly surprises there.
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“As a parent you will have opinions of your kids’ romantic choices, that’s what the requirement means; it’s not like you could or should have a say one way or another, it’s their life and their choice. My sons already do or will know well enough how I feel about able-bodied people who don’t want to work, so there there are hardly surprises there.”
I know the bullshit propaganda of narcissistic parents very well, thanks.
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I know the bullshit propaganda of narcissistic parents very well, thanks.
Whatever, aglaonika. But I take it you are not a parent.
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“Whatever, aglaonika. But I take it you are not a parent.”
I was dead sure that would be your next “argument”. Narcissistic parents always argue with this :-). And if I had kids, you’d say they would end up as criminals/junkies/anything. Child-beaters also always use the same “argument”. Congrats on your ad hominem though, you must be a real intellectual. I’ve had the same type of mother, you can’t really show me anything new. 😎
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“I was dead sure that would be your next “argument”. Narcissistic parents always argue with this :-). And if I had kids, you’d say they would end up as criminals/junkies/anything. Child-beaters also always use the same “argument”. Congrats on your ad hominem though, you must be a real intellectual. I’ve had the same type of mother, you can’t really show me anything new.”
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OK, friends, let’s cool it. We are all good people, proud immigrants, and feminist women here.
Apparently not — aglaonika says I am a child beater and a non-intellectual, also apparently her mother. Amusingly accuses me of ad-hominem attacks.
But I am delighted she got to demonstrate her newfound proficiency making emoticons with glasses.
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“Apparently not — aglaonika says I am a child beater and a non-intellectual, also apparently her mother. Amusingly accuses me of ad-hominem attacks.”
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Thanks, Clarissa.
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@xykademiqz
“Apparently not — aglaonika says I am a child beater and a non-intellectual, also apparently her mother. Amusingly accuses me of ad-hominem attacks.
But I am delighted she got to demonstrate her newfound proficiency making emoticons with glasses.”
No. I told you had a similar argument as the child beaters I had the luck to know, which is not at all the same as if I said you were a childbeater. That argument was this: “Whatever, aglaonika. But I take it you are not a parent.” Well, this is an ad-hominem. A personal circumstance which is used to marginalize someone else’s opinion. When someone’s opinion is marginalized because she’s childless is the same thing as when someone is marginalized because she is an immigrant. I hope you understand my former frustration from this point of view more. Ad-hominems make me very frustrated, as they’re non-arguments from where I can’t defend my point any more.
The things I said were rude insults but not ad-hominems as I didn’t question your right about forming an opinion. Sorry for the insults (about your non-intellectuality and that I compared you to my sorry mother), but I didn’t call you a childbeater, I wrote this: “Child-beaters also always use the same “argument”.” Which is true, as whenever I’ve tried to suggest to a child-beater to not to beat his or her kids (which is a common and well-respected act in my native country), I always got the “Shut up because you’re not a parent”. Parents who did the same were shut by “Shut up because your kids will end up as criminals”. I mentioned it in my prev. comment because it clearly shows what’s my problem with this kind of “argument”, but you’re right, I didn’t explain it very well indeed. Sorry that I didn’t make my point clearer. I also commit sometimes ad-hominems btw, and constantly have to pay attention to get rid of them, so I don’t really think you’re a non-intellectual just because of that.
Thanks for the compliment on my sunglasses-drawing skills though. 😎
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@clarissa
My insults are my mud, it’s not your fault that I committed them on your blog. Sorry for trolling your blog, her prev. comment about the requirement (or opinion) towards the employment status of someone’s kid’s spouse reminded me something both my mother and partner’s mother committed to screw up our relationship in a time when both of us were in the need of understanding (which was an unsuccessful attempt, although both of us were unemployed for a while). I didn’t call her a child-beater though, I only labelled this kind of endeavour patriarchal and expressed my dislike towards it.
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“I bought it, the loan is 100% in my name, but since we live in a state with common property it belongs to my husband as well, which is fine. However, it makes me livid every time we get any formal documents about the house to see that it has been filed as Husbandfirstname Lastname and Mylastname, Firstname. Why is the dude always the default?!”
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What women do that?
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My parents never had a middle-class lifestyle. They had something, but it wasn’t that.
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You are not American, this is not the type of whining that is accessible to you. 🙂
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It’s amazing how often people have assumed that I was comfortably middle class though. They even almost convinced me of it. People do lack imagination, it seems. But I come from a background where there was a lot of psychological violence due to the imminent threat of poverty or disaster. I’m from a place of very mixed fortunes. Thing is, while I was in Africa, a strong propaganda campaign was being run by tabloids like The Guardian, depicting me as having lived it up in the lap of luxury. I had no idea. In fact emotionally I was undernourished and on the skeletal side of lean. Psychologically speaking, that is not a luxurious middle-class situation. But I have been accused of all sorts of things, including having nefarious character traits, because other people have wanted to maintain their illusion that I was well-to-do.
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“It’s amazing how often people have assumed that I was comfortably middle class though.”
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I think it had more to do with the propaganda thing though. It was said by resentful British tabloids that people from my culture had simply superimposed themselves at the top of a society unfairly and had no merit for they had not had to work their ways up. That was the image, of a self-aggrandizing group of people without substance. That was false. We had a lot of substance but mostly military substance. In fact even I — I am not so much of a person who could easily enter the intellectual class, because something in me does not resonate well with it. But military mannerisms delight me. It’s really what and who I am.
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Scary, isn’t it. How many people even know what greasy mealy even is.
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greasy mealy? Corn with butter on it?
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Well don’t ask me what was going on then. After all,I was only there and experiencing it. I’m tired of caricature-like depictions of a complex era involving the lives of real people. Gosh there were even middle class blacks and career women in those times. Imagine that!
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“Gosh there were even middle class blacks and career women in those times.”
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Actually I think something else is meant by social mobility: do people escape the class in which they were born? I think the big moment of social mobility for persons of color and women was in latter 20th C not now, and that at present social mobility has decreased for all.
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No kidding. Thanks for the information.
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Sorry. My remark is for Clarissa, not Z. I find this all very annoying. Sorry. Why be in this country, why even talk about this country in such simplistic terms? It’s like you don’t believe America exists, except to point out that we don’t really exist or something.
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“Why be in this country, why even talk about this country in such simplistic terms?”
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Come, come. I was going to post a rebuttal, but then I said to myself, “Why waste this on her blog? I’ll put it on my own blog instead.”
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“Come, come. I was going to post a rebuttal, but then I said to myself, “Why waste this on her blog? I’ll put it on my own blog instead.””
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Lots of Americans think this simplistically or much moreso. Remember my psychotherapist who thought I was delusional to imagine that both my grandmothers and several of their sisters had gone to college! And then claimed it was highly unusual and probably pathological! But if you look at their graduation programmes there are lots of women in the classes — they look like lists from now, actually. Fewer in my father’s PhD graduating class, but they were there, and it was a PhD not a BA, and it was the 50s.
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Hmmm. Even before the advances of the ’70s, a woman from a working class family in the late ’50s, early ’60s (like my mother) could work nights, weekends, and summers and earn enough money to live frugally, pay college tuition, and graduate debt-free in four years. That’s a lot harder to pull off now.
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Exactly. I think OP mixes 2 issues. It is true that someone like me has less guarantee of middle class income than my parents had. A different question is ability of lower than middle class people to raise class status — there is also less guarantee of that. Reasons for both problems are related but they are 2 problems or 2 epiphenomena.
OP appears to refer to those people (white men?) who blame difficulty of remaining in middle class on greater accessibility to middle class professions for women and POC. That attitude does exist, and it is true that there is less blatant discrimination in middle class job market. However it remains true that it is harder to stay in middle class and harder to get into it overall. Although if you are a member of a traditionally excluded group barriers to your group as such have been lowered.
Complex situation.
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“Hmmm. Even before the advances of the ’70s, a woman from a working class family in the late ’50s, early ’60s (like my mother) could work nights, weekends, and summers and earn enough money to live frugally, pay college tuition, and graduate debt-free in four years.”
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Well, yeah–but affordable public higher education made social mobility available to women in a way then that it isn’t available now–and my mother wasn’t an isolated case. She could ignore social pressure to marry and start a family because college was accessible to her even without her family’s financial support. The students I see in a similar position to my mother aren’t bucking that kind of social pressure, but they are having to work long hours that give them little time to study and they will be starting out with an enormous debt burden when they graduate.
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“The students I see in a similar position to my mother aren’t bucking that kind of social pressure, but they are having to work long hours that give them little time to study and they will be starting out with an enormous debt burden when they graduate.”
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This is true of institutions like yours and mine — if I am not mistaken mine is still the cheapest public institution in US. At state flagships and public ivies … Good Enough Professor works at state flagship and I went to public ivy … the reverse has happened. I and also people much poorer afforded the public ivy and more importantly, could get into it having gone to non elite public schools. The place is now far, far less accessible and barely even markets itself to the population it was originally created to serve. Much harder to get into as a person of color and very hard to afford if you are not outright rich. So, again, complex set of shifts.
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Yet we have already determined that women’s income has soared since then. What more do we need to know?
I don’t believe that the myth of the prelapsarian bliss of the 1950s (or 1970s) serves the goals of people like me: women, immigrants, people who come from real poverty, people whose starting point is an absolute zero, even in terms as basic as the language. I think this myth serves the purpose of keeping us down. I have never seen this myth voiced by anybody who doesn’t come from very comfortable backgrounds. And I cannot get rid of the feeling that it is the dislike and rejection of us that ultimately informs this myth, even if its proponents are passionately convinced that they are the champions of the dispossessed.
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And also — wait. You are saying, in other words, that the assertion that antipoverty programs like Head Start worked when they were strong, somehow keeps you down now? I do not understand how. Or that mentioning that real wages have been higher in the past, “keeps women down” now? Again, I do not see how.
But in the OP you claim lack of social mobility means diminished status of middle class (i.e. my professor’s salary does not buy me the standard of living my father’s professor salary bought him; our lack of raises since 2008 has decreased my buying power given inflation, etc.). But what it actually means is unlikelihood of anyone getting out of the class their parents were in. It is not just about the middle class. The majority stay where they started.
Again I do not see how mentioning this — that relatively few people actually change socioeconomic classes — is harmful to those who do.
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“my professor’s salary does not buy me the standard of living my father’s professor salary bought him.”
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I went to school with people from very well-to-do upper middle class families that to my eyes look enormously rich. And now, years after graduation, they are all making enormous efforts, struggling, trying to figure things out. Nothing is being handed to them, nothing. I see this with extreme surprise and shock. This is the greatest social mobility I’ve seen or heard of anywhere. And that’s a great achievement of this society . Elsewhere this is an impossible dream.
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Ah. I’m teaching at a uni where the declining number of black students is a sore point and the numbers of female faculty, while growing, are still not what they should be in a number of departments. Since we’re working in the same state system, I think we’re seeing certain hierarchies being reinforced. Elite institutions like mine, while ostensibly “public,” favor out-of-state students who can pay more tuition over the social mobility of in-state students who do less for the institution’s bottom line. “They are adults. It’s normal to work at their age.” Right. But it’s a lot easier to optimize your education if you’re working 15 – 20 hours per week, not 40. And 15 – 20 hours/week was enough to cover a frugal lifestyle AND tuition in the early to mid-C20 at a state institution, when the social mobility afforded by higher education was seen as a shared public good. It’s not enough now, when state support for higher education has fallen sharply and tuition has risen equally sharply to compensate for that fact.
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Precisely.
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Interesting debate here!
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Prelapsarian bliss, you have got to be kidding. There is a right wing myth about the bliss of the 50s, yes, and it is ridiculous and serves bad ends. And many women have come into the workforce since the 50s, yes. But once again: I went to a public Ivy that was full of children of barefoot immigrants and so on, and the same people can now only afford to go to the much lesser kind of institution I now teach at. This doesn’t point to “prelapsarian bliss” but to widening gaps.
Yes there is more access to some professions for women and “minorities” but income for those same professionals has been depressed. And note that in science, for instance, where you now have whole labs staffed by women and immigrants, where did the white men go? Up, to higher paying jobs. And it is not really controversial that people who start out poor in US nowadays are not able to change socioecomic classes as easily as they are in Europe.
And I must say: “poor immigrants” are not the ones who come with an education and visas and entry to Ivy League PhD programs. You have said there are no poor in the U.S. but I don’t know that you have looked at the conditions of people working in the fields lately — or in some of the construction camps outside the towns. Or of people who do not come in speaking English or reading easily. People without visas. Etc.
Over 20th century in terms of situation of people of color, the poor, working classes, women, immigrants of different types, etc., have undergone a complex series of shifts. The programs starting in the Depression to alleviate poverty, which yes initially favored white people, and which varied and changed in different ways, did nonetheless work to a large extent to promote social mobility. I would suggest that this is why they have been decimated.
Again re women: yes we now occupy certain professions and more women have paying jobs. Wages in those professions, in terms of real dollars, have decreased, however. This is a complex panorama and not an either-or thing. And I really doubt most people who experienced 50s or 70s would tell you it was a world of “prelapsarian bliss.”
From my P.O.V., the main way those times seemed comparatively more hopeful was that there was still time to change practices to stop a full on ecological disaster, and now time has run out. In that way the past does seem full of possibility and future in a way that the present does not, but this is not particular to US. 60s were also very heady worldwide, desegregation, liberation movements in Africa, etc., and one had the perhaps illusory sensation of increasing freedom. That sensation kind of shut down, at least for me, by the early 70s given what was going on internationally (ex. Ezeiza incident, Pinochet, more) and the way the economy started to look (cf. 1971 crisis, oil crisis, etc.).
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Topic: “Social Mobility”. “It really bugs me when people say there is no social mobility when what they really mean is that they don’t have the guarantee of the same middle – class lifestyle their parents had.” Clarissa, you weren’t in America during that era of “social mobility”. All those who decry the lack of opportunity for women in the post-WWII era might well remember that daughters of WW II veterans were provided opportunities for higher education unheard of in previous decades. My wife’s father was a WW II vet. He took advantage of the GI Bill coming out of the war. He made sure that his FOUR daughters had the opportunity to get a college degree (social work, library science, bus. ad., {one didn’t make it} ). It should be remembered that all (vast majority) of the “girls/women” who went to college in the ’60’s did so with their fathers paving the way. It was a good thing to happen. It is also something that should be remembered. That first generation of college educated women need to thank their fathers. Their fathers need to give their daughters a kiss.
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Something else occurs to me — many of those who have very fond memories of 60s and 70s are thinking of the soundtrack: it is when a lot of really famous rock, soul, R&B albums came out, one after the other. There were also a lot of really significant films with amazing cinematography. It was such a thaw from McCarthyism and all. When you had those things and especially early on, when in the streets they were saying “we shall overcome” it did seem that things were on an upswing.
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I blame American Grafitti, the first movie I’m aware of that used (sort of) period popular music in the way it did. It also made the time seem much more appealing than it really was.
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Yes, this is my problem. I haven’t watched any sappy movies about the 1950s, 1060s, 1970s, 1980s, etc. 🙂
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You should. If you actually care to learn about the society you’ve thrown your lot in with (at least until greener pastures beckon somewhere else). You should start watching American movies from the 1930’s onward.
American movies are what opera and literature are in Europe, the history of consciousness and social ideas, even if you don’t find them all enjoyable they’ll give you a better sense of what motivates Americans.
A nice one to start with might be Mildred Pierce (1945 w/Joan Crawford) and then compare contrast it with the TV miniseries.
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I never saw it because it sounded so … meh. But now I think I should. It is about that period in v. early 60s where things were still kind of like 50s, right? I will look it up.
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50s are considered ideal by a lot of people. Actually a strong metaphysical presence –meaning strong gender essentialism — can be ideal for the middle brow, middle-classes (often the same thing) as it gives them very clear instructions about identity roles, so that there is not angst or emotional tension in fitting in. Also the money coming in was worth more, for less effort, than it is today (Mike has researched this).
But still — pretty bland from the perspective of anyone not middle-brow.
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Ask him about McCarthyism, beatniks, civil rights, nuclear testing, the Rosenbergs, for starters.
Don’t mention that about real wages having been higher because Clarissa does not believe it. 😉
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“It is about that period in v. early 60s where things were still kind of like 50s”
It (the movie American Graffiti) seemed really great at the time but I have no idea how it’s aged. But it was a key factor in the mid 70’s 50’s nostalgia mini-craze (that also led to Happy Days).
A weird thing is that it’s set only like 11 years before it’s premiere but it seemed like much longer, for jr and sr high school students at the time it was like some kind of mythic past.
This might be because by the time it reached a lot of towns in the US the 1973 oil crisis was ramping up and those kids driving around for hours to pass the time already seemed pretty exotic.
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I think things really changed in that period. Only 11 years but it still seems longer.
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Whereas 1994 doesn’t seem that much different from 2014. Intellectually I know it is, but so much of what used to show the passage of time in terms of the looks of fashion or cars or interior design seems to have stalled at around 1990* and all the changes now are more subtle and are about digital technology.
I really need a new laptop but am terrified of having to deal with Windows 8 since handheld devices have replaced the keyboard/mouse as the primary digital experience to the great detriment of convenience (for work).
*I think there are a number of reasons for this and one is the ramping of diversity/multiculturalism as an absolute value.
Most innovation is driven by rebellion. But in a multicultural setting rebelling against your elders is indistinguishable from disloyalty to your subsection of society.
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“I really need a new laptop but am terrified of having to deal with Windows 8 ”
http://www.classicshell.net/
You can configure your laptop to have the classic windows 7 layout, including the much-missed ‘Start’ button. I have a touch screen windows 8.1 laptop, and this works brilliantly.
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There is also general mentality. I was a child but I can remember the 50s type atmosphere, the Kennedy assassination … it seemed that the first big shift was in 1964, Beatles and long hair, and there was a lot that happened politically, and then again 1968 when it all got darker. By 1973 we seemed to be entering a 3d era. So it is as though there were 3 eras crammed into 11 years. Whereas the only shifts I can see really since 1994 is economy bubble then crash, and 9-11 attitudes … things don’t look/sound completely different in the way they do if you compare 1962 and 1973.
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“her prev. comment about the requirement (or opinion) towards the employment status of someone’s kid’s spouse reminded me something ”
For what it’s worth, I thought the word choice ‘requirement’ was very unfortunate* and although she backtracked and tried to explain I can totally understand how it could set someone off.
I’m glad you’re back.
Not criticism – communication in non-native languages (besides the most superficial level which is all most people get to) is very tricky.
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Not criticism – communication in non-native languages (besides the most superficial level which is all most people get to) is very tricky.
This sounds very condescending.
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I live in a second language environment and get things wrong in terms of tone and register all the time.
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“communication in non-native languages (besides the most superficial level which is all most people get to) is very tricky.”
Yes, it is :-). Many years ago I had a quite embarassing situation when I used the word “abuse” instead of the word “misunderstand” in French. I wasn’t very good in French, and my dictionary actually was full of false information – as I learned this word from there. So I wanted to say to the French colleague: “You misunderstood me.” Instead I said: “You abused me.” It was actually quite hard to come out of that situation. Reading literature on the new language can help a lot.
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“I can totally understand how it could set someone off.”
Yep, but I overreacted it indeed.
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I knew we would all find common ground in the end because we have too much in common not to. 🙂
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“There is also general mentality. I was a child but I can remember the 50s type atmosphere, the Kennedy assassination … ”
I remember that! Oddly enough I don’t remember the changes of 1968. That is, I lived through that time but don’t remember it as traumatic as it was to many others. The early 70’s changes are also vivid to me. So I don’t know what’s up with 68
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