The common man has always been there and endured it all.
“[i]I believe the new society would temporarily reject post modernism. I believe post modernism is more of a end of the road thing. Hardened (keyword hardened) poor people tend to reject touchy feely things like post modernism. Blue collar people although very often severely flawed tend to reject post modernism ... A new society very often forms from people who just previously went through calamity and thus i would call them hardened poor. Lets not get carried away arguing about the term i chose. Perhaps you have a better term or label to use for this discussion.” Christian2017
“There's no doubt that the person who thinks is superior to the person who doesn't.” jorgealarcon[/i]
‘Hardened poor people’: there’s something very interesting to me in this post of Christian2017. ‘Post modernism’ seems to have been an idea that rode right over the lives of what was once called ‘the common man’, and which the common man saw as another shibboleth they would have to endure.
I think we all know what’s meant today in using the term post modernism, just like we know, accurately or not, what we mean by ‘Kafkaesque’. In the end post modernism meant absurdity.
Recently the Labour Party in Australia lost the election they ‘couldn’t lose’. Despite their thrashing they still didn’t understand what had happened. ‘Low income, low education and Christian religion were all features of electorates which swung to the Coalition’. Stephen Long, ABC News. Not that they could know this, but they needed a scapegoat.
The ‘common man’ has always been there and endured it all. ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is one of those epic stories of their endurance. But they’ve always been marginalised, despite their numbers, by labels such as low education, low income (as if that has something to do with intelligence) and the idea that ‘the person who thinks is superior to the person who doesn't.” I don’t know what ‘thinking’ really means here, but the sentiment is against the common sense of the common man.
There’s a feeling around that the common man is no longer needed, that he’s a impediment to what we should be. Yet every group with pretensions to power use him as a tool for success and then turn away when they achieve their objective.
But the common man transcends all issues of race, gender, religion or ideology because he exists in all those categories.
What’s happening in the world is that the common man is beginning to assert himself and I hope for his success because it means our success.
Naturally this post will have weaknesses which I look forward to discussing.
“There's no doubt that the person who thinks is superior to the person who doesn't.” jorgealarcon[/i]
‘Hardened poor people’: there’s something very interesting to me in this post of Christian2017. ‘Post modernism’ seems to have been an idea that rode right over the lives of what was once called ‘the common man’, and which the common man saw as another shibboleth they would have to endure.
I think we all know what’s meant today in using the term post modernism, just like we know, accurately or not, what we mean by ‘Kafkaesque’. In the end post modernism meant absurdity.
Recently the Labour Party in Australia lost the election they ‘couldn’t lose’. Despite their thrashing they still didn’t understand what had happened. ‘Low income, low education and Christian religion were all features of electorates which swung to the Coalition’. Stephen Long, ABC News. Not that they could know this, but they needed a scapegoat.
The ‘common man’ has always been there and endured it all. ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is one of those epic stories of their endurance. But they’ve always been marginalised, despite their numbers, by labels such as low education, low income (as if that has something to do with intelligence) and the idea that ‘the person who thinks is superior to the person who doesn't.” I don’t know what ‘thinking’ really means here, but the sentiment is against the common sense of the common man.
There’s a feeling around that the common man is no longer needed, that he’s a impediment to what we should be. Yet every group with pretensions to power use him as a tool for success and then turn away when they achieve their objective.
But the common man transcends all issues of race, gender, religion or ideology because he exists in all those categories.
What’s happening in the world is that the common man is beginning to assert himself and I hope for his success because it means our success.
Naturally this post will have weaknesses which I look forward to discussing.
Comments (55)
I’m not sure what you mean there. Could you clarify it?
ONe aspect of postmodernism was the idea that there isn't high and low art, just art, which opened the door to all sorts of things not really considered art: anything from comics to soap operas to advertising to pop music. In this the common man was respected, at least un-disrespected, because his or her tastes were no longer low, they were just tastes. And this opening was also parallel but a challenge to expert tastes and values in a wide variety of fields. Sometimes, when the common man follow an authority closely (like, say, the church) this may be insulting to them. In other cases this opens the door for the common man not to listen to elite positions, for good or for ill. I don't really see postmodernism being specifically problematic for the common man. I am not particularly postmodernist, but I am not sure this is the best line of attack.
For thousands of years mythology and religion was a chief source of "art". Many archeologists would attest to that fact. In some ways anything we hold in high esteem is similar to religion, right wrong or indifferent.
I don’t think that’s enough of a description of post modernism as it relates to ‘the common man’ or anyone for that matter.
This describes it a bit more thoroughly:
“ ... postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection of the grand narratives and ideologies of modernism ... common targets of postmodern critique include universalist notions of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and social progress. Postmodern thinkers frequently call attention to the contingent or socially-conditioned nature of knowledge claims and value systems, situating them as products of particular political, historical, or cultural discourses and hierarchies. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, and irreverence.” Wikipedia
As well, I only brought up post modernism as one of many ‘isms’ the ‘common man’ has seen and go. Though it seems reasonably clear to me that the nature of post modernism would have little relationship to his daily life, or benefit, and that he’s seen many groups who know what’s better for him fall away and he still remains.
I started what you quoted with 'one aspect' I later gave a couple of examples of how postmodernism, in more charged areas does not necessarily go against 'the common man'..Quoting Brett
And this description includes attitudes that the common man has. Skepticism about progress, rejection of many grand narratives. The common man is often cynical of politics in general. And certainly critical of the grand narratives of modernism....
from Wikipedia
Many common men and women did not like modernism and dislike the moves away from traditional art forms - and realism - and traditional ideas about religious faith. They did not do this from a postmodernist viewpoint, but from their own. Modernism is a very intellectual movement and the common man and postmodernism share a criticism of it. At least, often they do. Sometimes, as I pointed out, the common man will agree whole heartedly with postmodernism's acceptance of their tastes as just as valid as elite tastes.Quoting BrettIt is pretty much inherent in postmodernism, though some adherent may not be consistent about it, that people cannot possibly tell other what is better for them.
I understand that. I just felt that a definition needed to be a bit broader.
Quoting Brett
The common man would most assuredly be for the first part of this quote and against the last part. Those post modern ideas are a direct threat to their view of life.
Quoting Coben
I think there are more things about modernism the common man would be comfortable with than not, as your quote indicates. Though I might not agree with his being critical of the grand narrative.
Because the common man and post modernists share some dislike of modernism doesn’t mean they wish to share the same bed.
Quoting Coben
I don’t think the common man would think for one moment that the post modernist shows acceptance of their tastes. The success of low art, for instance, has nothing to do with the common man. In most cases they would be baffled by low art, or find it without value according to their outlook on life,
Of course you’re right, but that does not mean it isn’t happening right now. Refer back to my quote about the Australian elections.
I have a hard time understanding that quote. I am not sure what he is saying. I don't think postmodernism is touchy feely, quite the opposite. More detached. Ironic or distanced or perhaps just throwing stuff into their shopping cart with glee. I don't like the way the Left is dealing with recent losses. I don't think they have the foggiest about what is going on. I think unfortunately, given the lack of real options, the comman man, as you put it, has not had much to chose from. But I don't know Australian politics at all. I don't see leftist politics as postmodern. They have values, they think those are the right values. Period. Everyone is digging in with little nuance. I do think the Left cherry picks ideas from postmodernism and I do understand why the Right - and even sometimes the Left themselves - thinks they are cultural relativists, though they are not. Otherwise there would not be so much much mutual hatred. You can't virtue signal, for example, if you don't have an idea of what a virtue is.
The next quote about thinking I probed in that thread. I think it is a fairly ludicrous thing to say. Humans who are not thinking are in comas, and people in comas probably think now and then. How we think and what we think certainly differs.
I have sympathy with the OP here. I just think everything is so binary these days. So I hopped in regarding postmodernism which I think has some positive aspect, some negative ones and a lot that are really hard to track.
Quoting Brett
I thnk this is true. The contradictory use of the common person and seeing the common person as merely a mob.
No, nor do I, though they have got into bed with post modernist thought and found themselves, possibly unintentionally, far removed from their original constituency.
Nor should it be assumed that the common man votes for the right. For many years the political left represented the immediate concerns of the common man, like wages, working conditions, and general social issues. But it was the right that represented their deep seated values, like family values, institutions, morals, etc.
I can’t help thinking that the common man is looked down on by people (who I’m reluctant to define: inner city, whatever) because his life just looks so ordinary to those who need constant stimulation, constant new experiences and as a result constant change. And yet it’s the ‘ordinaryness’ that’s behind his survival against all the ‘isms’. Whatever you people might think, he is a survivor. I don’t know why his values are so shunned.
“To put it briefly; it is now the custom to say that most modern blunders have been due to the Common Man. And I should like to point out what appalling blunders have in fact been due to the Uncommon Man. It is easy enough to argue that the mob makes mistakes; but as a fact it never has a chance even to make mistakes until its superiors have used their superiority to make much worse mistakes. It is easy to weary of democracy and cry out for an intellectual aristocracy. But the trouble is that every intellectual aristocracy seems to have been utterly unintellectual. Anybody might guess beforehand that there would be blunders of the ignorant. What nobody could have guessed, what nobody could have dreamed of in a nightmare, what no morbid mortal imagination could ever have dared to imagine, was the mistakes of the well-informed. It is true, in a sense, to say that the mob has always been led by more educated men. It is much more true, in every sense, to say that it has always been misled by educated men. It is easy enough to say the cultured man should be the crowd’s guide, philosopher and friend. Unfortunately, he has nearly always been a misguiding guide, a false friend and a very shallow philosopher. And the actual catastrophes we have suffered, including those we are now suffering, have not in historical fact been due to the prosaic practical people who are supposed to know nothing, but almost invariably to the highly theoretical people who knew that they knew everything. The world may learn by its mistakes; but they are mostly the mistakes of the learned.”
Yes, imagine you would. It sounds like you’re saying that ‘the common man’ doesn’t know who he is and what he’s doing and why. Consequently someone else must do it for him.
Quoting Brett
Quoting Noblosh
Quoting Coben
Quoting Coben
Quoting Brett
Quoting Coben
Quoting Coben
Quoting Brett
Quoting Brett
Quoting Possibility
I'm not certain, but I think this thread may be the most pitiful I've read on the forum. Condescending, ignorant, naive, arrogant, disrespectful. Pitiful. Have any of you ever worked for a living? Do you know anybody who isn't isn't affluent or college educated?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8TmfBHfiUk
Oh, don’t be so boring and sanctimonious.
So, have you worked for a living? Do you know anybody who isn't isn't affluent or college educated?
It's not the disrespect that bothers me the most, it's the ignorance and arrogance.
What ignorance and arrogance?
And if I give you my work history would you believe me?
First - Have you ever worked for a living? Where you actually had to live off what you made? Do you know anybody who isn't isn't affluent or college educated?[/quote]
Of course I’ve worked for a living. Does that satisfy you?
I’m not your enemy here.
What is it that makes you ask this?
Chill.
Personally, I don’t like to use the term ‘common man’. What I was referring to was how I interpret the term in relation to the attitude of those who use it. Yes - it can be condescending, arrogant and disrespectful. The term often implies that the person using it does not see themselves in it. It is a way of being self-reflective without including the self. It connotes pity rather than compassion, and implies that the author’s ability to comment on this aspect of being human elevates him from being one of them. In truth, unless we are continually self-reflective, this term refers to all of us most of the time.
So I don’t agree that there is an ‘uncommon man’ as such, either. It’s only in those moments when we think about who we are and what we’re doing that we become ‘uncommon’ - a bit like Heidegger’s authentic mode of being.
You're not my enemy. Just tell me your experience with the "hardened poor" and the "common man" that gives you the credibility to pontificate on his life.
Of course it can be used that way. But I’m not using it to be “condescending, arrogant and disrespectful”. So let’s drop that angle and continue with the discussion in the terms it’s meant.
I was civil, if blunt. Some posts call for raised voices, rhetorically speaking.
Quoting Possibility
I was mostly with you until the last sentence, which dips back into the condescension I referred to.
I’m hardly pontificating on his life.
However if it makes any difference you I’ll give you some of my work history:
Worked on a construction site
Worked as a cleaner at a girls’ school
Drove a van delivering mail
Cleaned out animal compounds at a marine park
I don’t think this proves much, but hopefully it satisfies you.
However I have to say it seems extremely patronising to do what I’ve just done.
For how long? Did you have to live off the money you made - pay for your housing, food, car, heat, power, health care? Raise kids?
Come on.
I'm patronizing or you're patronizing? I just want you and the others to show you have some credentials to talk about the "common man."
It feels very patronising of me to make that list.
And why should I have to show you credentials to talk about the common man?
Are you satisfied?
I don't see it that way - I just want you to show you have a basis for your comments. During a philosophical discussion, it's reasonable for one party to question the basis of a statement by the other. In this case, I'm being more aggressive because you are being disrespectful and condescending - patronizing - to people you don't seem to know or understand. All I'm asking is that you show me I'm wrong.
Maybe you’re just surprised that someone who’s done those jobs can write and spell.
That’s being very disingenuous. I told you I feel patronising because I had to name the common man jobs I’d done to prove I know what I’m talking about, to satisfy you. I wasn’t being patronising before that. Nor have any of my comments been disrespectful or patronising.
Wrong about what?
How is it condescending? I’m certainly not saying that having to live off the money I make and raise kids (both of which I am currently doing) renders me incapable of self-reflection. I am ‘common’ and inauthentic when I fail to reflect on, question and critically examine who I am and what I do. This is not just a matter of circumstance, in my opinion - it’s a matter of awareness, not necessarily affluence or college education.
My father was forced out of school at 13, spent time living on the street, etc before raising five kids on a meagre postman’s salary - rain, hail or shine for 30 years. He spent much of his spare time educating himself - before the internet - and continually reflected on who he was and what he did. He was hardened poor, and yet most ‘uncommon’.
I think you might be misunderstanding the use of the word ‘common’ here.
If you had read the article by Chesterton you would understand.
I think you’re viewing the word as used by the British as a synonym for ‘uncouth’, ‘rough’, ‘impolite’.
No, I don’t think I am. Chesterton refers to the ‘Common Man’ as the uneducated, but then says the ‘Uncommon Man’, the supposedly educated aristocracy, have been the ones responsible for making the mess by being ‘unintelligent’. He’s setting up a contradiction, and you can interpret it one of two ways. Either the ‘Common Man’ is subject to a case of the blind leading the blind (in which case the dichotomy is false), OR it isn’t education that distinguishes this dichotomy, but making use of the increased awareness from what education/experience they have.
Yes, and for my whole adult life and part of my non-adult life, much of it working class work, and yes, i know lots of people who are not college educated though for me the comman man would include many people who go to college. I consider most people the common man - though it's not a term I usually use.
No he doesn’t say that.
He said that ‘the mob has always been led by more educated men’ and ‘more true ... to say that it has always been misled by the educated men.’
He is not saying that ‘the mob’ is uneducated, just that they have been led by ‘more educated men’. These so called ‘educated men’, the ‘well informed’, are the ones he holds due for ‘the catastrophes we have suffered’.
So he is not saying the ‘common man’ is uneducated, and he is also asking, what do we mean by education, if those ‘more educated men’, ‘well informed’ men make such catastrophic decisions?
There is a key phrase in that essay: ‘the prosaic practical people’. Prosaic I read as: ordinary, everyday, straightforward, unadorned, literal, factual.
These might be said to be the qualities of ‘the common man’, qualities that have no time for abstract ideas that fail to put food on the table, imbue morality in their children, or give cohesion to society on a day to day basis.
How and why do they survive centuries of nonsense?
I have a very selfish reaction to people on one level. How much can I be myself around them and what happens if I am? And then also how would I be viewed, even if nothing in particular happens, if I was fairly open. All groups have norms, so all groups judge and on some things - for every major group with would even include things I just can't categorize as dangerous - they can judge very harshly. Wrong clothes, wrong way of standing, wrong beliefs, expressing the wrong emotions, wrong leisure activities are some areas. So when we say the common man, I get a vague picture of people with conservative social values and the norms that go with that. They can come from various economic classes, but share a kind of patriotic, men are men, women are women, set of perhaps even neo-classical values- talk of character. In relation to them I feel constrained in ways I do not in relaiton to other groups, with, often, the added issue of potential violence. I am not gay, for example. But it still feels like a box. Now don't get me wrong other groups have, I think very pernicious boxes they want you in, but for example in my public schooling, I was under the thumb of the common man. Very traditional values, very traditional ideas about child rearing - though corporal punishment was no longer legal in schools. Other groups can economically punish, socially ostracise, label - at least through most of my lifetime - but the direct in the room attacks would primarily be indirect and not physical. So I have issues both with the comman man's very binary reactions and with the very blunt dangers one experienced especially when young. And, again, this is not a class issue for me, though more of the comman man is not middle class, they are in there also. The midwest is filled with commen mon in all classes for example.
For me his values are shunned because he shunned me. Now there were not in my past all these confrontations with violence. A couple. But one plays the game, just as one would play the game in a corporate environment with its bizarre values and economic punishments ready at hand.
If we take a kind of God's eye view, we can look at these people as victims or at least marginalized. But for me growing up on the ground, they were authority figures and if I was not careful, they would put me in my place and with great hatred, a hatred generated by those very values. I do not see them as the primary problem. I see certain elite groups as the primary problem. Here whole countries can be devastated by the elite needs for power and more more more in various ways.
I have also been in very leftist environments and then there are other aspects of myself that can be judged harshly. There are no major groups where I can be myself. I have to be on guard. So it is not that the common man group, which we probably should define, is the only one ready to enforce norms. And lefty groups perhaps anarchist ones today what gets called the alt.left, are much more violent than when I hung out with them. The political radicals and the hippies for example could hang out. That must be more problematic now. The anarchists I knew got along well with working class people, homeless people and had a nuanced take even on religious people. Idon't think I was just lucky. I think something has changed. Everyone seems to feel justified in leaning toward violence and binary thinking.
I suppose the main point for me in this is that the common man survivor group is not just on the wrong end of judgments but also judges. And on the ground on the street in bars at pta meetings at city councile meetings, whereever, you can be putting your ass on the line just beind outside whatever the relevant box is, and find yourself in danger on the way to your car or walking home from school. Or on the less physical level looked at with hatred for things that are merely different, not even threatening these people in any practical way.
I have worked alongside these people for much of my worklife. I know how to navigate this. And I am not fraidy cat in the physical sense. I can throw a good punch and they tend to respect me - of course I am not showing my full self to them. So it's not like i have been a victim. But that I even have to waste time over what I consider trivia - though also on more major issues - hiding part of me or even my natural way of being and thinking, leads me not to either see that as simply put upon by elites. But often as people allowing themselves to be used by elites and by ideas that contain incredible hatred and self-hatred in them, and as wanting to enforce boxes and norms on others.
I want to add all that to what seems like your implicit perspective in the op and thread.
Yes, I understand. I’m not trying idealise them. I’m trying to work out why they are still there, still strong and determined. Is it their values? If so should we consider those values more than we do?
Quoting Coben
As I wrote previously, I was asking my questions about work so I could understand what credibility you had to discuss the "common man." You two have given me what I asked for and I'll take your opinions on this subject more seriously.
They don't have another option.
What I was meaning is that they’ve done so without giving up their values.
What credibility does one need to discuss any subject?
Suicide: what do you need?
The existence of God
What is freedom?
I am sure some don't, though I see a lot disappointed: in God, in life, in their country...and changing. The mass may stay the same but individuals can shift when presented with enough experience that seems, at least, to counter their values being right.
Sorry. Carry on.
I’m using them as two distinct ideas, as terms with very broad meaning which we understand. Their only connection is as broad terms.
That’s quite true, but as you say, the mass may stay the same. Individual have always moved away from their roots and started a new life. Of course it doesn’t necessarily mean they abandoned their original values, nor that those values fail to find a place in their new life.
No, but either way we have a large group and the group continues. It does slowly change its beliefs. The mob in Rome (cause I think that's what the Romans might have called the common man) likely had other expectations and values. I think one quality of the common man is that they consider their beliefs to be on good authority and they are not cynical about them. IOW you might have someone else who professed to have this or that value, but it is Machievellian or a front, but not with the common man. And unlike certain parts of the well educated classes they are less like to proudly assert their open mind - and assertion I consider mixed, so this isn't me judging the common man. I think this steadfastness and certainty in relation to their values may be a strength - I mean it can cause problems as well, since whatever the problems with an asserted open mind, a closed mind is also a problem. But despite the problems it can cause being hard in one's values, it also can make one very tenacious. And less neurotic.
So my question is, have or have not these values shaped the world. And if they have is the world a better place or not, and if they have shaped the world then why is the ‘common man’ not in a better position as a result? Or is he in a very good position after all? If these values are not responsible for the world as it is then why is the opposition fighting against them?
Yes, their values have shaped the world. I don't think for the most part they are the creators of these values. They are taken from traditions and everyday lived out. There is a delay between the making of these values and their application and belief by everyday people. And some of these ideas were made to consolidate power.Quoting Brett
1) If the ideas are partial truths and untruths, then there is only so much use an everyday person can get out of them.
2) often the very ideas they hold are not even in their best interests or are part of oppressive systems. I think parts of religious beliefs are like this, though there are all sorts of secular beliefs also. The everyday person has been told what is possible, what their place is, how to get ahead, what learning is, who has the right to decide, who they should listent to....etc. A lot of this might not be in their interests, but they will often fight for it. In WW1 the type of shell shock was bizarre. The men lost control of their bodies, often completely. Of course it was a horrible war and trauma is a given, but I think the severity of the emotional trauma had to do with two things: the mathematical cold ludicrousness of that war coupled with all the noble values attached to war that everyday people were less likely to be skeptical about. They weren't just shocked by bombs and death, they were shocked that there was nothing noble at all going on - they were value shocked and suddenly were face with cognitive dissonence about patriotism, leaders, God, and so on. It was simply too much. In later wars there was more cynicism, even if the goals seemed good.
That’s true, and it’s offered opportunities for oppression or manipulation. But I would also assume that there have been times when it’s all they had and it’s what got them through.
I don’t think they are the creators of these values, but they have lived them most consistently and for the longest time, and at risk of sounding naive, they are the the core values that have got us this far.
It’s true that the war and technology shook people up and tested those values, and there was cynicism, however those values did not die as a result, even though other ideas about values emerged. As I said, those original values endured, until now.