More about Devon

Of course, when I talked about Devon before I forgot one way Nathan-1784 might have left home: the bounding main!
Listne to a Westcountry accent, and then a Pirate accent.

The sea is still there.

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.

Well...

Since it seems that people have mentioned a great deal about the region they come from as well as their family, I present to you the politics of Shrewsbury and Atcham (and Montgomeryshire/Powys) in a nutshell.

My local MP, Daniel Kawczynski is notable for being the tallest MP in Parliament¹.
Lembit Opik, the crooked-smiling MP for my neighbouring constituency hit the news recently for dumping his weathergirl fiancee and instantaneously taking off with one of the Cheeky Girls. Remember, Kids - it's a meeting of minds.

I think that's about it.

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1. Only Shrewsbury's website has a cow on it.

Well, if we're all doing it...

I fear this will be a significantly less cosmopolitan tale than my fellow posters, but here goes. I'm entirely brummie, aside from my paternal grandmother who was born and brought up in Wales, at least for the first 20 years or so of her life. The net result, as she and her brother used to look after me before I was old enough to go to school, was a slight Welsh tinge to an otherwise brummie accent, a penchant for leeks, and an ability to sing 'the little saucepan is boiling on the fire' in Welsh. Other than that, it's all brum. But, we're an interesting mix unto ourselves. Living near the Black Country means that brummies from my part of the city have a fairly distinct regional dialect: not only do we all sound like Ozzy Osborne, but we have different words for stuff too. For example: the phrase "I dae want a piece from yam yow, tarra a bit.' translates as 'I don't want a sandwhich from you, good-bye.' Whilst recognising that deepest darkest Devon and its environs has a much more interesting dialect tradition, it's still pretty neat. And enough to make us the linguistic butt of many a jest. (Ye olde brummie joke (say it in the accent) - what's the diference between a buffalo and a bison? You can't watch your hands in a buffalo.) And there's a certain amount of positive identity generated when you come from a city considered one of the worst in Britain, and with a population widely considered to be a few braincells short of basic literacy. This isn't entiely innacurate, though on the aesthetic side, there has been substantial redevelopment of the city centre, and not all of it is this ugly. In reality, the sprawling suburbs of the second city are very divided: the 'haves' concentrated around Solihull, (those living within in it emphasizing the last syllable and pronouncing the first to rhyme with 'holy', the rest of us referring to the place as 'solly' (ryhme with molly) 'ull.') And the 'have-nots' sprawl everywhere else. The former vote Tory, go to the cricket at Edgbaston and recitals at Birmingham University Conservertoire. The latter vote labour, watch the footie at villa park or St Andrews (but never the twain shall meet) and occasionally get casual work washing up after fancy recitals at the university. And being such a loarge city means that the only way to have a decent quality of life means having a car. Those who don't venture from sprawling estate to sprawling estate on foot or by sometimes dangerous public transport. And by estate, I'm not referring to any of your deer and Capability Brown nonsense.

I would hope that in 20 years time, brummies have shaken off their inferiority complex and have taken advantage of the many opportunities for young people in the city. Many do live below the poverty line, and strong local councils are effective in terms of their long term strategic efforts to make education a grass roots and accessible commodity. But the rule of chav culture and inverse anti-education snobbery prevails, and in the search for an identity, more and more kids of tender teenage years turn to early Mother and Father-hood.

The story in Hamilton, from what I have learned thus far, is suprisingly similar. Stay tuned.

The culture of the red enclaves

Well, they all seem to being doing stuff about their cultures, so I get to, too. Or just ignore me. I tend just to talk for the fun of it. (Actually, at one point, I had [intentionally] perfected the art of killing conversations dead. There's nothing more fun to do than create a whole series of awkward pauses amoung people who normally get on really well. It also exposes a person for who they are remarkably well.)

Well, we know I come from the midwest and the south. Except, in the south, I came from Raleigh (the capital) and one of the boomiest (is that a word) cities in one of the areas with a ridiculously high PhD count. So really, I came from a cosmopolitan south (heck, our local art museum is one of the best places of Egyptology outside of Britian).

But, boy, can I tell you about the midwest. I lived in the Quad Cities (which is quite liberal, and is "blue" Iowa), but then I moved to Illinois. My dad's family's from Northern (red) Iowa, and they sure know their culture. Aside from the wide variety in their diet (my uncle swears and yells when they "ruin" the salad by putting tomatoes, carrots or anything that's not iceberg lettuce in it, my father had never had lasagne until he went to university and the only vegetables that they eat are what they grow - corn, peas, green beans, beets, lettuce. Oh, and the might buy potatoes. If you want fruit, you get an apple or a banana. Oranges are for Christmas, if you're lucky - not that they can't afford or get variety, but why would they want to? Apples is fine for them. My sister was asked if my brother was a vegetarian because [despite eating 2 steaks and some chicken] he didn't eat some pork tenderloin), northern Iowans have a lovely sympathy for other cultures. Because Iowa schools are very, very uniform throughout the state, the Iowa exams are used for a significant proportion of US standardised testings. However, this makes people think that, instead of providing a very good base mean, median and range, this means Iowa is the best. People from central Iowa honestly can't think of why people, after going to Iowa State and University of Iowa people are leaving the (very) flat, (very) dull, (very) average state.

Of course, I didn't live in Iowa but for 3 years, I lived in Illinois, one of the bluest states that's elected 2 of the 3 black senators since Reconstruction and is overrunning with Dems in their state house - the incredibly unpopular Democratic Governor was recently relected by 10% against a very competent Republican (who had pretty much unanimous support in the press). The reason for that is Chicago (60% of Illinois' population), which is overwhelmingly Democratic. The rest of the state is as red as northern Iowa. And guess where I lived?

That's right. I lived in a place (Peoria) where people wonder why other people don't want to live in Peoria. I lived in a place where Bradley University (never heard of it? Really... that's odd. People here put it in line with Northwestern, Duke and Georgetown, so it must be famous) is highly respected. I lived in a place where it's not that uncommon to find someone who hasn't gone more than 45 minutes in any direction.

There's mighty great arrogance in these places. Not because they've seen the world, and don't like what they see. Not because they've been told that they're the best. Not because they're confident in what they do. They're arrogant because they don't need anything. The saying "if it plays in Peoria, it'll play anywhere" fits Peoria (and northern Iowa, but there's no significantly sized market to speak of) very well. The people here just are creative enough to realise they need things. They make do. They settle for what they have. Only if there's shining benefits to novelty will the people of Peoria embrace it. And because they are content (not necessarily happy), they assume that everyone else should be too. And so when people from "foreign" places (read Chicago, St. Louis or anywhere 3 hours or more away) don't settle, they assume that the people aren't getting a lifestyle as good as theirs. So, naturally, they get arrogant. And believe me, arrogance is rife in this little community.

However, Pete's completely right. Our generation is changing. The arrogance is less common amoung those that are younger, especially in Peoria. It seems that the internet and other such communicative devices have opened the world for some. And yet many, many are still the same.

As for the other attributes, belligerent is spot on for here, and there ain't nobody who has a stronger work drive than those of the red parts of Iowa and Illinios - they're the good ol' "pull yourself up by the boots" Reaganites and those who feel they owe their companies the best work, regardless of time or money.

Dear god, I wrote a lot. And I didn't even make my point.

The lesser known American culture war (beyond the Blue and Red)

Since there are so many regions, it's difficult to pinpoint American cultural traits. What makes it even more challenging is the fact that Generation Y idealizes traditionally non-American values.

John Wayne and Robert Redford generally exemplify the traditional male American model. Assertive, confident, hard-working, and willing to laugh (despite often dire circumstances), their characters showed Americans what to aspire for (saying hello to your neighbors). Of course, the translation of values is rarely perfect; assertive can become belligerent (GIVE ME MY GODDAMN FOOD), confident shifts to arrogant (foreigners are worse than me in every possible way), hard-working means work-obsessed, and willing to laugh can turn into either 1) too stupid to do anything but laugh or 2) despair.

Our generation prefers men to be less traditionally Amerimasculine (the values in the above paragraph) and "unique." We do not idealize the hard-working; we prefer those who got rich quick. Our heroes are Chris Moneymaker (the amateur poker champ) and reality TV instacelebs. Apparently - I have not seen this poll with my eyes, and God only knows if I can trust the radio - a majority of Americans in my generation said that the most important thing to them was fame. We reject 9 to 5's and middle class jobs as boring, below us, and So Yesterday. Sites like MySpace allow us to cast ourselves in whatever unique sense we want, trendy people desperately argue that "they were doing this before..." and YouTube and blogs let us present ourselves to the world as non-TV instacelebs using any persona we choose. We want to be famous and have exciting, unique jobs, but we want them now. We don't like the idea of putting in 1 second of "9-5 drudgery." We rail against the idea of middle class suburbia (even though we grew up in it). In this way, we're also a hyperimage based culture. It's all about being famous, having people notice you, standing out, appearing to be cool. Eye contact is going out of style like small pox, assertive is suddenly scary, and people hate - HATE - the idea that someone can insult/laugh about their opinions (just read all of the hate mail for somethingawful.com's Your Band Sucks segment). Our new values are being "different," getting noticed, accepting relativism, and above all else, "not selling out" (to the Man, the record label, or really anything). I'm not exactly sure why, but we also love acting sad/whiny; my guess is that it's another way to get noticed.

It makes me wonder how Americans will be perceived around the world 15-20 years from now. Following the Great War, Americans - I think - were stereotyped with the traditional values; currently, we have the bad version of the traditional values. Who knows what we'll be known for in the future?

Culture 2.0

There are two inputs into my brain-stew today¹.

Firstly, English schools have been told that when you're talking about diversity, it's OK for white folks to have an ethnic identity too. In addition, the thinking is that we need to do better on teachin' people to be British. I approve of the list of things they've boiled Britishness down to: not breakin' the law, minding your own business and it not being our place to judge.

Me, I know what my culutral and ethnic heritage are. Three of my four great-grandfathers were blacksmiths and the fourth was called John Smith. I'm a Devon boy, which means I have an accent that is like Devon cheese: mild to rustic. The ideal of the Devon man as a "good ol' chap"- not to be confused with good ol' boy- is the one I grew up with. The good ol' chap is a friend to all, generous with money, hard-working, profoundly unpretentious, and skillful. I know I'm not the last, but I'm doing my best to be the others.

Migrant workers from Poland and the Baltic states have integrated amazingly well into the part of Devon I'm from. There aren't many people down there who aren't from there- I remember the first time I saw someone who was not ethnically English, at the age of nine. Now there are a large number of Poles in Okehampton, and what you hear everywhere is "Say what you like, they work hard". There is a general feeling that some sons of Devon could learn a lesson from the new arrivals rather than spending their time haging around outside village-hall discos in shell-suits, drinking Woodpecker cider.

Secondly, I've had good news and now need to take action on it². I feel, vaugely, that the appropriate thing I need to is to "git'r'done", or something. I know there are people who know exactly how the phrase should be used, but wish everyone would stop saying it. It occured to me that a litmus-test of culture is the set of words you understand. Obvious? Perhaps.

As a Devon boy I know crush as a noun, swale as a verb, and the distinction between something that is lush and something that is a properjob. However, my parentage also gives me duppy, ignorant meaning aggressive or truculent, and the proverb that duppies know who to frighten.

However, In the past week I've heard more words by ZeFrank than by my parents. I also know the significance of phrases like Sportsracer, street-chicken and power-move.

My education at Oxford gave me quad, Bumps, hacks and so on, not to mention the white bronco, Cinco de Mayo or conscious clichés like Shelob queen of the Spiders³.

As a geek I can describe situations according to their saving throws and might instruct someone to take twenty on a certain task.

Sometimes terms can be familiar without having had any direct contact, nor the slightest desire to.⁴

These words are shibboleths, badges, banners.

The point is that had I been born five hundred years ago, I would probably have spent my whole life in the company of the same few hundred people. I wouldn't have one set of friends for whom the codewords include Dan Merino, former Quarterback of the Miami Dolphins and other friends who don't know what a quarterback is or why dolphins would have one. This is a phenomenon of the social mobilty of the modern age, but it's really gone critical with internet. Some of the recognisably distinct cultures I'm a touched by of are British (Devon), Physics, Mansfield College, Barbados and US (blue).

On the off-chance that sociologists haven't gotten around to it yet, I'm going to call this either "polyculturalism" or "Venn-culture".

1). I really hope people start using "brain-stew" to describe a set of poorly-thought-out ideas.
2). Riddles in the dark.
3). I mean, I have no idea of Shelob is the queen on spiders, or just a really big one. It might be like calling Phil The Power Taylor the King of Men.
4). I estimate that I recognise about 3/4 of the terms on that shirt, not to mention im in ur base verbing ur nouns, g2g, series of tubes, OMGWTFBBQ and dozens more.