This is beautifully written. I was also born in 1981 but in a different country (SouthAfrica) and when I moved to the UK about halfway through my life, couldn't really distinguish how life has changed because it just has, or because I was now in a new place, where things were just different. But I can fully relate to what you're saying here. And even though where I grew up is one of the most dangerous countries in terms of crime, personal assault etc., we were still allowed to play outside with our friends up and down the road, go out by ourselves etc. I shudder looking at today's children walking around with their friends whilst recording Tik Tok videos and not really being with their friends at all. Maybe as an adult generation we are not entirely innocent either. Like you I am hopeful that we will realise that no amount of consumerism will fulfil the need for human connection, that we need our communities as much as they need us and that things will change for the better.
"There is a great boon available to us which was not available in 1981 - namely, the ability to connect with like-minded people at the touch of a few buttons and the clicking of a few mice. One could add to this the ability to access knowledge and wisdom that was simply unknown to the average person born into humble circumstances in a previous era - and to tap into the entire canon of collective human accomplishment in the arts, literature, and so on, to boot."
Finding your post in my inbox in the morning is one of my consolations. Thank you.
People do seem to recognise this loss, or at least the threat it might be lost in the near future - and are acting upon it. They are increasingly organizing voluntary care groups for small village inhabitants: connecting neighbours who need or may do to a each other a service. Also, for what it's worth: kids in my street do play together all day if weather allows. They're a great bunch and they do seem to play all the same games we played when we grew up, fifty odd years ago. No, time has not stood still here, but parents are increasingly aware of the negative aspects of computer games and smartphones and they do encourage their children to play and learn without them. People or also aware of the lack of social cohesion and are working to restore some of it. Don't despear just yet - social cohesion is a necessity and people will find a way to be together again!
I live in a pocket of bourgeois security on the outskirts of a rough town. Where I am things are roughly as you describe. It's the rest of the population I worry about!
23 hrs ago·edited 23 hrs agoLiked by David McGrogan
I was an inky schoolboy going on teenager about 20 miles south* of you in the 1980s - I lived in Hawarden, just across the border in Wales. We often took the train to Liverpool where my parents had various friends and acquaintances including my god mother who lived up near Crosby. I recall the first time I took the train to/from her on my own with zero adult supervision. 2 changes of train at Bidston and Liverpool Central/Moorfields, plus a mile walk one end and half a mile at the other. Plenty of opportunities to get on the wrong train and end up at, say, New Brighton.... I was probably 10 at the time, so late 1970s in fact. As you say it would be inconceivable now for a child of 10 to be expected to do such a journey on his own and most of the reason for that is a bunch of jobsworths and Karens who would insist on calling the police if they spotted a child on their own. One reason I like living in Japan is that here this sort of thing is still standard.
Thinking about things lost, one thing that I think we've lost is the church as an anchor of the community. In Hawarden the parish church got a good 100+ people to the main Sunday service plus more at the 8 o'clock and the evening one. And many more than that at Christmas and Easter. If you didn't like that church there were a couple of different Methodist chapels, a catholic church and a few other denominations that you could attend and people did. Not that everyone attended (not even at Christmas) but enough did that it was understood and "normal". Moreover enough did that the parish priest was an actual community leader and the church was actually a center of the community (others being the pub(s) and the local footy teams from the working mens clubs, but there was plenty of overlap between attendance at all of these). Church was how your parents met Mr Jones at the newsagents and Mrs Williams at the other one and.... For all kinds of reasons people have stopped going to church, pubs are no longer filled with regulars and so on.
It seems to me we've lost that local community and community of communities thing. The internet certainly helped us lose it by making it easy for us to find people with shared interests half way around the world, but the fracturing had already started in the 1990s (probably even in the 1980s but I didn't notice being too busy growing up). I don't know how we get it back, but we need to.
*that it is South surprised me but google maps assures me that it is the case, I'd have thought South West
I'll be in Japan for a family visit in a few weeks' time and my eldest is going to have a day or two at a Japanese school. It's mind-blowing to her that Japanese kids walk by themselves to school at her age. At her school here in England it just isn't allowed.
They don't just walk to school, they cycle and take public transport as required. And take themselves from school to after school activities / friends houses etc. all on their own.
It's a big thing at the start of the school year (april) when the new first year elementary school kids do their first unaccompanied walks to school (the first day or two Mum or Dad generally escorts them, sometimes one Mum for two or three neighboring households). On the walk TO school there are usually older neighboring children to convoy them. On the way back not so many but generally someone older escorts them across big roads or other points of danger
Very true about the loss of community hubs, whether they be churches, pubs, village shops....places were people met 'accidentally' or by design, to inform, swap opinions, state strong views about politics and inept politicians, to offer help ( eg DIY job), offer consolation and so on. These were face to face contacts when we could see the range of facial expressions, read cues, body language.
We have lost the old hubs but there are different networks created, but not in the same places as they were. I think when we look back and ruminate at length on what existed, then sadness can fill our minds and hearts. Here we are in 2024, the world in turmoil (wars and mass migration) the 'wokesters' seemingly having their field day, natural disasters ( of course), but the human spirit is unquenchable ; it is resilient. It has to be as it adapts to progress . 'Hope' and 'resilience' and 'kindness'....these things exist the world over. They won't be extinguished by those who purport to govern and mismanage our lives.
I enjoyed reading the Article, being a native of the Wirral and oft visitor to New Brighton....it isn't the same as it was, has lost many of its charms. Progress is both a builder and 'destroyer'. That is often hard to swallow.
local shops disappeared, gobbled up by The Supermarket (a global phenomenon). many of us just knew it was not a sign of improvement and 'modernisation' ("development"), but it happened. ugly consumerism was everything and everywhere, and we weren't told or warned. however, bringing up two children in the '90ies made us realise just how fickle all of it really is and fortunately we found/there are still many ways of getting involved in one's social circle, the neighbourhood, the town. and before one can begin addressing this alienation there needs to be the vaguely sad, permeating feeling that 'something's missing'. great post, thank you!
I think you forgot the stale food, lack of choice and rubbish service that those local shops used to give us before our world class (yes, really!) supermarkets took over!
I grew up in the 60s in the countryside around a Lancashire mill town, about 30 miles NW of Wallasey. I well remember days out at New Brighton, though Southport was probably more frequent for us. We would have thought ourselves 'middle class' (if we thought about such things), dad being a captain in the MN, mum was a 'single parent' 90% of the time. But I can easily remember childhood times without a TV, phone or central heating. We had an indoor loo, but the terraces a few yards down the road had theirs outside in the back yard, while my aunt - a few miles away in a more rural area, had an outside loo with no flush, just a big drum of disinfectant that was emptied every other week by the council (a job rather nastier than doing the bins).
By today's standards we would have been considered 'deprived', but overall it was pretty idyllic - I went to the local ("Direct Grant") grammar school (now a sad shadow of its former self), where I received an education the equal of anywhere in the country.
But the biggest and most obvious cultural difference was a homogenous population. Although I remember one family of Sri Lankan Anglo-Indians who settled in the village, the first black face I saw was as a teenager on board one of my dad's ships at Liverpool docks (he was on the West Africa run and some of the stewards hailed from there). But any tour of the north of England will reveal large towns that are now, if not majority then very substantial minority Muslim, mostly of Pakistani descent. The local mill town now has a Muslim mayor and an MP 'for Gaza'. Cultural cohesion is a distant memory that only the older inhabitants possess.
It's complicated. The society which I grew up in felt homogenous, but wouldn't have done to earlier generations - a great deal of the population (including both sides of my family) were Irish immigrants, who would have had very different mores to the locals. Integration is possible and cultural cohesion can happen - but not without a rediscovery of a self-confident mainstream.
My father's generation expected to wear (proper) hats in the street. My mother's generation generally wore skirts or dresses. And for all the good and bad parts, people 'knew their place'.
Now I regard 'truth' as an elasticated blanket - people can grab at one edge and know a part of the truth that is being pulled gently or fiercely by other people. My 'truth' which stands alongside the tenor of the essay is that people now 'know the cost of everything and the value of nothing'. We have become atoms living in a transactional society. A marriage for life and a job for life are now seen as quaint.
I find myself somewhat surprised to have to acknowledge that all the pundits (remember the Brains Trust on BBC?) were correct to flag the risks of Consumerism. When you could expect to be able to buy *anything* then resilience and self-discipline are not required. My takeaway point is that modest hardship builds character and society, living in 'a land of plenty' undermines character and society
The wheel now turns. People are beginning to see that it will be impossible to buy the full range of they want. Certain products are no longer available on the shelves after the alleged pandemic caused firms to go bust or not restart the manufacture of less profitable brands/products. Laws aimed at making the world a better place are seen as disproportionate and punishing. Old political parties are seen as failing. It would seem that modest hardship is on the way back - and that may be a good thing.
A very enjoyable essay. I also grew up in more or less the same neck of the woods and at around the same time. And I feel a deep sense of loss for the world of my childhood, which always comes back to me, like those photos, as a time of long summer days. You’re right, that’s not coming back, and I agree, it is some kind of way forward to be honest, as bleak as that may be. In my own way of thinking, I think things will have to get considerably stranger in a spiritual sense if we are to see renewal. I think our time we were picking off the last fruit on the tree. The sap is going to taste very bitter, for us at least.
To use a Merseyside football analogy, I often think of Roberto Martinez's time in charge at Everton. For a brief period, he was made to look like he knew what he was doing, because he had inherited a very solid framework from David Moyes and was able to add some flair on top to produce excellent results. But after that things rapidly unravelled. At the moment, like Martinez in his first season at Everton, we are sustaining ourselves by clinging to the framework which Christianity provided and adding some innovation of our own. But when that collapses there will be - literally and metaphorically - hell to pay.
Beautiful writing here, David. I often consider this question, of what exactly is contributing to social and spiritual decline, and that sense of despair or loss of meaningfulness, a kind of pointlessness. From what I can tell, and you did roughly indicate as much, it has everything to do with corporate globalism and smartphone addiction. It's impossible now, without making a conscious effort, to nurture local pride of place and a sense of belonging. Branding has hollowed out realities. For instance, sports teams that used to be local (with the occasional ringer) are now simply bought and not a reflection of local talent. Working for McD's is not the same as working for a local burger joint run by your uncle. And folks with earbuds aren't social. It's a little weird now to strike up a conversation on plane, train, or subway. While folks become activists to signal their virtue, they treat the actual folks around them with contempt. Everywhere we turn, we find this pattern: in the abstract, the idea is good, but in reality, it's dehumanising.
This resonates with me, even though I was born in 1956 and grew up in a suburb of Toronto, Canada. One notable difference is that although my family background was blue-collar working class, my father was a school caretaker and my grandfather was a pipefitter, they did not "have quite a strong cultural disposition against the finer things in life". But then all four of my grandparents emigrated to Canada and presumably were more aspirational.
I am a little older than you, having been born in 1963. This perhaps gives me a wider perspective. I can remember the 1970s. They were AWFUL. Worse than today.
We have lost nothing, except perhaps our youth! The country has changed around us, and change is something to be embraced, not feared. Because change can damage or destroy the things we value - but the existence of change itself gives us hope that we can make things better as well. There is decay, but also building.
It is a duty for all of us to do everything we individually can, to change the world for the better, in a small way. By writing this Substack, you are doing something, as you are by whatever you can do in your job at the university.
The world's problems will never be "solved". The job of making things better is never done. But hope will never be done either.
In 50 or 100 years, most likely you and I will both be dead. But the world will still be here, muddling through somehow. Look up at the stars, David, and see your place in the universe.
We have lost something, but more importantly we have used what geography gave us. We had coal and iron and scientists who gave us steam power. We also had the empire for provide cotton for example. This created the industrial revolution. We now have nothing left, and Europe is much the same. Public opinion has prevented a new coal mine being opened and there appears to be no chance of fracking for gas. We are dependent on imports, food being a vital one. The government talks about growth but never defines what that means. We need exports to pay for vital imports for even basic needs. We are a country in economic decline because of geography and there is little we can do about that, and our stupid government thinks we need more people who will just add to the problem.
This is beautifully written. I was also born in 1981 but in a different country (SouthAfrica) and when I moved to the UK about halfway through my life, couldn't really distinguish how life has changed because it just has, or because I was now in a new place, where things were just different. But I can fully relate to what you're saying here. And even though where I grew up is one of the most dangerous countries in terms of crime, personal assault etc., we were still allowed to play outside with our friends up and down the road, go out by ourselves etc. I shudder looking at today's children walking around with their friends whilst recording Tik Tok videos and not really being with their friends at all. Maybe as an adult generation we are not entirely innocent either. Like you I am hopeful that we will realise that no amount of consumerism will fulfil the need for human connection, that we need our communities as much as they need us and that things will change for the better.
Thanks. Things will work themselves out, because they always do - in the end.
"There is a great boon available to us which was not available in 1981 - namely, the ability to connect with like-minded people at the touch of a few buttons and the clicking of a few mice. One could add to this the ability to access knowledge and wisdom that was simply unknown to the average person born into humble circumstances in a previous era - and to tap into the entire canon of collective human accomplishment in the arts, literature, and so on, to boot."
Finding your post in my inbox in the morning is one of my consolations. Thank you.
People do seem to recognise this loss, or at least the threat it might be lost in the near future - and are acting upon it. They are increasingly organizing voluntary care groups for small village inhabitants: connecting neighbours who need or may do to a each other a service. Also, for what it's worth: kids in my street do play together all day if weather allows. They're a great bunch and they do seem to play all the same games we played when we grew up, fifty odd years ago. No, time has not stood still here, but parents are increasingly aware of the negative aspects of computer games and smartphones and they do encourage their children to play and learn without them. People or also aware of the lack of social cohesion and are working to restore some of it. Don't despear just yet - social cohesion is a necessity and people will find a way to be together again!
I live in a pocket of bourgeois security on the outskirts of a rough town. Where I am things are roughly as you describe. It's the rest of the population I worry about!
I was an inky schoolboy going on teenager about 20 miles south* of you in the 1980s - I lived in Hawarden, just across the border in Wales. We often took the train to Liverpool where my parents had various friends and acquaintances including my god mother who lived up near Crosby. I recall the first time I took the train to/from her on my own with zero adult supervision. 2 changes of train at Bidston and Liverpool Central/Moorfields, plus a mile walk one end and half a mile at the other. Plenty of opportunities to get on the wrong train and end up at, say, New Brighton.... I was probably 10 at the time, so late 1970s in fact. As you say it would be inconceivable now for a child of 10 to be expected to do such a journey on his own and most of the reason for that is a bunch of jobsworths and Karens who would insist on calling the police if they spotted a child on their own. One reason I like living in Japan is that here this sort of thing is still standard.
Thinking about things lost, one thing that I think we've lost is the church as an anchor of the community. In Hawarden the parish church got a good 100+ people to the main Sunday service plus more at the 8 o'clock and the evening one. And many more than that at Christmas and Easter. If you didn't like that church there were a couple of different Methodist chapels, a catholic church and a few other denominations that you could attend and people did. Not that everyone attended (not even at Christmas) but enough did that it was understood and "normal". Moreover enough did that the parish priest was an actual community leader and the church was actually a center of the community (others being the pub(s) and the local footy teams from the working mens clubs, but there was plenty of overlap between attendance at all of these). Church was how your parents met Mr Jones at the newsagents and Mrs Williams at the other one and.... For all kinds of reasons people have stopped going to church, pubs are no longer filled with regulars and so on.
It seems to me we've lost that local community and community of communities thing. The internet certainly helped us lose it by making it easy for us to find people with shared interests half way around the world, but the fracturing had already started in the 1990s (probably even in the 1980s but I didn't notice being too busy growing up). I don't know how we get it back, but we need to.
*that it is South surprised me but google maps assures me that it is the case, I'd have thought South West
I'll be in Japan for a family visit in a few weeks' time and my eldest is going to have a day or two at a Japanese school. It's mind-blowing to her that Japanese kids walk by themselves to school at her age. At her school here in England it just isn't allowed.
They don't just walk to school, they cycle and take public transport as required. And take themselves from school to after school activities / friends houses etc. all on their own.
It's a big thing at the start of the school year (april) when the new first year elementary school kids do their first unaccompanied walks to school (the first day or two Mum or Dad generally escorts them, sometimes one Mum for two or three neighboring households). On the walk TO school there are usually older neighboring children to convoy them. On the way back not so many but generally someone older escorts them across big roads or other points of danger
"I'll be in Japan for a family visit..." There it is right there, David. Our parents thought a trip to Paris was exotic.
Very true about the loss of community hubs, whether they be churches, pubs, village shops....places were people met 'accidentally' or by design, to inform, swap opinions, state strong views about politics and inept politicians, to offer help ( eg DIY job), offer consolation and so on. These were face to face contacts when we could see the range of facial expressions, read cues, body language.
We have lost the old hubs but there are different networks created, but not in the same places as they were. I think when we look back and ruminate at length on what existed, then sadness can fill our minds and hearts. Here we are in 2024, the world in turmoil (wars and mass migration) the 'wokesters' seemingly having their field day, natural disasters ( of course), but the human spirit is unquenchable ; it is resilient. It has to be as it adapts to progress . 'Hope' and 'resilience' and 'kindness'....these things exist the world over. They won't be extinguished by those who purport to govern and mismanage our lives.
I enjoyed reading the Article, being a native of the Wirral and oft visitor to New Brighton....it isn't the same as it was, has lost many of its charms. Progress is both a builder and 'destroyer'. That is often hard to swallow.
local shops disappeared, gobbled up by The Supermarket (a global phenomenon). many of us just knew it was not a sign of improvement and 'modernisation' ("development"), but it happened. ugly consumerism was everything and everywhere, and we weren't told or warned. however, bringing up two children in the '90ies made us realise just how fickle all of it really is and fortunately we found/there are still many ways of getting involved in one's social circle, the neighbourhood, the town. and before one can begin addressing this alienation there needs to be the vaguely sad, permeating feeling that 'something's missing'. great post, thank you!
I think you forgot the stale food, lack of choice and rubbish service that those local shops used to give us before our world class (yes, really!) supermarkets took over!
I think what you’re saying is what I said in the post: we have nicer stuff. Nobody is disputing that!
Thanks!
I grew up in the 60s in the countryside around a Lancashire mill town, about 30 miles NW of Wallasey. I well remember days out at New Brighton, though Southport was probably more frequent for us. We would have thought ourselves 'middle class' (if we thought about such things), dad being a captain in the MN, mum was a 'single parent' 90% of the time. But I can easily remember childhood times without a TV, phone or central heating. We had an indoor loo, but the terraces a few yards down the road had theirs outside in the back yard, while my aunt - a few miles away in a more rural area, had an outside loo with no flush, just a big drum of disinfectant that was emptied every other week by the council (a job rather nastier than doing the bins).
By today's standards we would have been considered 'deprived', but overall it was pretty idyllic - I went to the local ("Direct Grant") grammar school (now a sad shadow of its former self), where I received an education the equal of anywhere in the country.
But the biggest and most obvious cultural difference was a homogenous population. Although I remember one family of Sri Lankan Anglo-Indians who settled in the village, the first black face I saw was as a teenager on board one of my dad's ships at Liverpool docks (he was on the West Africa run and some of the stewards hailed from there). But any tour of the north of England will reveal large towns that are now, if not majority then very substantial minority Muslim, mostly of Pakistani descent. The local mill town now has a Muslim mayor and an MP 'for Gaza'. Cultural cohesion is a distant memory that only the older inhabitants possess.
It's complicated. The society which I grew up in felt homogenous, but wouldn't have done to earlier generations - a great deal of the population (including both sides of my family) were Irish immigrants, who would have had very different mores to the locals. Integration is possible and cultural cohesion can happen - but not without a rediscovery of a self-confident mainstream.
A powerful essay.
My father's generation expected to wear (proper) hats in the street. My mother's generation generally wore skirts or dresses. And for all the good and bad parts, people 'knew their place'.
Now I regard 'truth' as an elasticated blanket - people can grab at one edge and know a part of the truth that is being pulled gently or fiercely by other people. My 'truth' which stands alongside the tenor of the essay is that people now 'know the cost of everything and the value of nothing'. We have become atoms living in a transactional society. A marriage for life and a job for life are now seen as quaint.
I find myself somewhat surprised to have to acknowledge that all the pundits (remember the Brains Trust on BBC?) were correct to flag the risks of Consumerism. When you could expect to be able to buy *anything* then resilience and self-discipline are not required. My takeaway point is that modest hardship builds character and society, living in 'a land of plenty' undermines character and society
The wheel now turns. People are beginning to see that it will be impossible to buy the full range of they want. Certain products are no longer available on the shelves after the alleged pandemic caused firms to go bust or not restart the manufacture of less profitable brands/products. Laws aimed at making the world a better place are seen as disproportionate and punishing. Old political parties are seen as failing. It would seem that modest hardship is on the way back - and that may be a good thing.
That's how I see it, more or less, but my worry is that the hardship won't be all that modest....
A very enjoyable essay. I also grew up in more or less the same neck of the woods and at around the same time. And I feel a deep sense of loss for the world of my childhood, which always comes back to me, like those photos, as a time of long summer days. You’re right, that’s not coming back, and I agree, it is some kind of way forward to be honest, as bleak as that may be. In my own way of thinking, I think things will have to get considerably stranger in a spiritual sense if we are to see renewal. I think our time we were picking off the last fruit on the tree. The sap is going to taste very bitter, for us at least.
To use a Merseyside football analogy, I often think of Roberto Martinez's time in charge at Everton. For a brief period, he was made to look like he knew what he was doing, because he had inherited a very solid framework from David Moyes and was able to add some flair on top to produce excellent results. But after that things rapidly unravelled. At the moment, like Martinez in his first season at Everton, we are sustaining ourselves by clinging to the framework which Christianity provided and adding some innovation of our own. But when that collapses there will be - literally and metaphorically - hell to pay.
Beautiful writing here, David. I often consider this question, of what exactly is contributing to social and spiritual decline, and that sense of despair or loss of meaningfulness, a kind of pointlessness. From what I can tell, and you did roughly indicate as much, it has everything to do with corporate globalism and smartphone addiction. It's impossible now, without making a conscious effort, to nurture local pride of place and a sense of belonging. Branding has hollowed out realities. For instance, sports teams that used to be local (with the occasional ringer) are now simply bought and not a reflection of local talent. Working for McD's is not the same as working for a local burger joint run by your uncle. And folks with earbuds aren't social. It's a little weird now to strike up a conversation on plane, train, or subway. While folks become activists to signal their virtue, they treat the actual folks around them with contempt. Everywhere we turn, we find this pattern: in the abstract, the idea is good, but in reality, it's dehumanising.
McGilchrist might have something to offer here..... on the 'abstract' versus 'reality' point.
Aye... was thinking of him. I think Dostoyevsky made a similar observation.
Thank you for this.
Shocked to hear you were only born in 1981 - you sound older than me (born 1957!!!)
Conspicuous by their absence. Brown faces in those pics.
I wish. That's a lovely article, beautifully written, and I wish.
This resonates with me, even though I was born in 1956 and grew up in a suburb of Toronto, Canada. One notable difference is that although my family background was blue-collar working class, my father was a school caretaker and my grandfather was a pipefitter, they did not "have quite a strong cultural disposition against the finer things in life". But then all four of my grandparents emigrated to Canada and presumably were more aspirational.
Take heart. There is no need to despair.
I am a little older than you, having been born in 1963. This perhaps gives me a wider perspective. I can remember the 1970s. They were AWFUL. Worse than today.
We have lost nothing, except perhaps our youth! The country has changed around us, and change is something to be embraced, not feared. Because change can damage or destroy the things we value - but the existence of change itself gives us hope that we can make things better as well. There is decay, but also building.
It is a duty for all of us to do everything we individually can, to change the world for the better, in a small way. By writing this Substack, you are doing something, as you are by whatever you can do in your job at the university.
The world's problems will never be "solved". The job of making things better is never done. But hope will never be done either.
In 50 or 100 years, most likely you and I will both be dead. But the world will still be here, muddling through somehow. Look up at the stars, David, and see your place in the universe.
We have lost something, but more importantly we have used what geography gave us. We had coal and iron and scientists who gave us steam power. We also had the empire for provide cotton for example. This created the industrial revolution. We now have nothing left, and Europe is much the same. Public opinion has prevented a new coal mine being opened and there appears to be no chance of fracking for gas. We are dependent on imports, food being a vital one. The government talks about growth but never defines what that means. We need exports to pay for vital imports for even basic needs. We are a country in economic decline because of geography and there is little we can do about that, and our stupid government thinks we need more people who will just add to the problem.