What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor ...daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner's job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The intelligence suffers today automatically in consequence of the attack on all authority, advantage, or privilege. These things ...are not done away with, it is needless to say, but numerous scapegoats are made of the less politically powerful, to satisfy the egalitarian rage awakened.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a nominally egalitarian society the ideal situation (socially speaking) is one in which the members of the "wrong" groups have ...the freedom to engage in literature (or equally significant activities) and yet do not do so, thus proving that they can't. But, alas, give them the least real freedom and they will do it. The trick thus becomes to make the freedom as nominal a freedom as possible and then--since some of the so-and-so's will do it anyway--develop various strategies for ignoring, condemning, or belittling the artistic works that result. If properly done, these strategies result in a social situation in which the "wrong" people are (supposedly) free to commit literature, art, or whatever, but very few do, and those who do (it seems) do it badly, so we can all go home to lunch.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »