A hopeless generation?

Our parents were told they could have it better than past generations.  And they did.  Technology and standards of living have increased dramatically in the last century, even the last sixty years.  The effects on society have been enormous, and some more positive than others.

But in the last thirty or so years things were moving so fast that we borrowed to get more and more, both as a country and as individuals.  Now we're left in a country that's deep in debt, but just as seriously a country with a high level of personal debt- huge mortgages, credit cards, loans, even student loans, with all problems, financial and stress related, this causes.

Even for those who've avoided debt as much as possible the dream of life continually improving seems unlikely.  I know so many people who've graduated in the last few years and struggle to get even a low skilled job, let alone one requiring a degree.  Perhaps the picture is skewed because of where I live, but youth unemployment is a rising political issue.  As is the older generation who will need-and expect- increasing levels of expensive care, which my generation will have to pay for.  Will we have it better than past generations?  I doubt it.

And yet on TV we see people endlessly having fun, doing exciting things.  Is it any wonder if we want to escape our dull, hopeless lives, to win fame, celebrity, and that we'll often go to extreme lengths such as humiliating ourselves in front of millions on X factor or Big Brother to get it?  But even that is shallow.

The future used to seem shiny and exciting, a world of robot servants and hovercars and interstellar travel.  Now we bitterly consider what a mess we've made of our own planet rather than thinking about colonising others.  The future doesn't seem to contain much hope now.  Certainly not the immediate future of cash-strapped Britain.  Perhaps that's what we were hoping our politicians will deliver in this election- a reason to hope in the future.  Perhaps it's too early to say whether that hope was entirely in vain.


So where are we to find our hope for the future?  At this point I should go all Christian and give the answer; "in Christ."  And it's true, of course.  I do believe it.  But that's not to disown responsibility for the future of planet Earth and its inhabitants.  That hope in Christ has got to affect what we do on Earth, not just what will happen to us after death.  Because of that hope, it's up to us, the people of Christ, to look at the world around us and work out how we can make it a better place, a place of hope.

What class am I?

Class seems to be reasserting itself as a topic of political debate after a decade of being told the class system is dead.  But what is class, these days?  What divides people?  Is it all about money?  If so, presumably the 'upper class' consists of high-earning, high profile figures like footballers, pop stars and TV celebrities, as well as top bankers and businessmen (and women, although probably fewer of them).  That's quite a variety, and suggests that there are many ways of rising to the top of society.

But further down perhaps it's not so clear.  Is class purely about money, or does the type of work you do, the education you have, how you choose to spend your money, play a part too?  When we say 'middle class' we often mean consumer choices more than mere household income.  Middle class brings up the image of someone who has a mortgage and a savings account, is part of a 'traditional' family,  works in an office or is part of a 'profession' as opposed to a 'trade'- doctors, lawyers, bank managers, teachers- sends their children to uni, reads 'literature,' drinks wine and goes to the theatre.  Working class brings up the image of grim concrete council estates, baseball caps and hoodies, listening to rap and dropping out of school at 16 to work in a shop- if you can get a job- or to have a child.  Yet these are both stereotypes, and while I guess there's some truth in them, it's not the whole truth.  

I've always been slightly confused in terms of class.  My mother is a teacher, her father was a printer with some connection to the civil service- middle class, but probably at the lower end.  My father and his father were office workers, again lower middle class.  Before that the family were skilled craftsmen- blacksmiths, shoemakers, wheelwrights- and were at the upper end of village society, but could still count as working class.  My father left school at or even before 16 to work on a farm, before moving into office work.  I doubt he ever considered that any of his children would go to university.  My mother had a scholarship to a private school before going to teacher training college.  Even though I have been to a good uni and am culturally 'middle class'  (I like Gilbert and Sullivan for goodness sake!  How middle class is that?) I'm still doing the same kind of work as my father did, and earning less money than many 'working class' people.  

There's one clip I seen several times now where John Prescott asks a girl what class she thinks she is, and she says "middle class."  He says that he (and probably most people) would have described her as working class, but her reply is that: "I don't work."  Perhaps in a recession that's led to the loss of jobs across all classes of society, from bankers to office workers to retail and manufacturing we can realise that the kind of job you have and the amount of money you earn isn't something that should pigeon hole you.  I'd like to think that.  I suspect we won't.  The difference is that if you've been struggling to make ends meet even when you're working, you've got nothing to fall back on when your job goes.