What is our true value?

 My wife said to me I should not be bitter. It's almost like a flaw in my character, I'm careful to try and keep it at bay but it's not always easy. For I believe my value, my worth, my abilities are higher than the cards I've been dealt. Perhaps this is why I have an innate dislike for Tory governments, or for Tories. It's the same old story being recycled over and over again. A Tory politician is usually one who has been educated in a private school. The more important the school considers itself and the higher the fees it charges then the higher the value the Tory politician acquires. This is the important bit. They are given the best of life's opportunities from birth to leaving education, their expectations are that they will become wealthy, do great things and the world owes them.  Just for having them breath air the world must pay them respect. Hence it is the class system kicks in. The worth of a Tory is the worth of the stepping stones they have placed gently in front of them as they grow up. 

In the imaginary world of meritocracy, the best people for the job rise to the surface, they are smarter, they are brighter, they stand out amongst others. It can be seen in their confidence of public speaking. In the way they dress, in the language they use, their accent and the connections they have. Tories therefore represent the class system, they like to see themselves as better than other people, and then they believe they are the ones who are lifting up the poor by paying their taxes. Or as we know in today's cases not paying but rather dodging the spirit of tax paying in any way they can. From birth to leaving education they are molly coddled, given the best holidays, given the best education in which it will be one to one tutoring or it will be in small classes. It is like they are being bred into a life and life style which is close to inevitable. Money is security, it ensures they never have to worry. They always get to sleep on a bed in a warm house and have more than enough food to satiate their appetite. But what really is their worth? Being given all the opportunities or indeed opportunity hoarding doesn't mean the positions they reach is because of their value. So why might this be?

Lets compare and contrast. A working class single mother raises two children, she rents her home, she has to work and must receive Universal Credit in order to make ends meet. She loves her children very much as does every mother. But she's unable to afford them the best independent education available, so her children go to a state run school. Where the classes are of extraordinary size, 30 to 33 pupils. The class teachers can't keep track and do their best. One to one tuition is near to impossible. However it doesn't mean these children are less smart. What it does mean is they have obstacles to overcome. They may go home and find their mother is in a mood, she's had a bad day at work. Mum can't spend as much time with them as she likes but she does her best. It's difficult, very difficult. Her attention is divided as a mother and as a earner. It is not meant to be this way it just is.  The children are happy in their family and with their mum. But there is no hand up. They may spend their time doing homework but if so it's because they feel like it. But children will be children and sometimes a TV set or an electronic play console take their attention. What is their worth? It is a lot to their mother but is their potential and their ability to be the best of what they could be given a chance in these circumstances? I guarantee it is not.

So it is. Today we have self entitled politicians who never had the same realities as their poorer cousins who may have missed a meal once in a while, or never new what a holiday was. Wealth and Toryism gives Tory children not just a step up, it gives them privilege, the privilege of being rich. Yet we then go and rate those Tory rich kids as being representative of meritocracy, when they are not. For example a certain politician whose name rhymes so well with Grease-Smug had a private education and considers himself to be above the commoner. Yet Grease-Smug is not actually a bright person. Smug may well have done exceeding well in education, I don't know, but I do know that education or ability to have done well was because of the education not because of his true value. Not because he is someone I'd ever follow into battle.

In British society we have individuals who will concede the value of Grease-Smug, these hat dofters and head nodders take on a subsumed post. I is like they have decided their true values is less than this individual. They have a place in society and their place is to be lower and less worthy of this person who has been silver spooned all of their life. It is class, it is because we live in a society why has the rules of unspoken classes bound within it like the DNA we each have. But class is fake, it is an advantageous system made to keep the wealthy in the best position generation after generation.

Getting to be the best at something depends on the chances given, the education received, the opportunities available it does not depend on being truly of merit when it comes to the highest persons in society. Usually the rich persons, the ones who have made it. The more I think about it the less I actually see of any high ranked person who doesn't have a few million in their bank account. 

This is my bitterness, my dislike. It is being valued at less than what I am. When I look around me there are people I see who are well worthy of meritorious positions. They are not Royals, they don't have the best educations money can buy but they are worthy much more than any of the Tory politicians we have in cabinet now.

Toxic parents and parenting

It seems when I look around me there are a large proportion of people had dysfunctional childhoods in one form or another. Their upbringing has come from parents who do not  have the emotional intelligence or adultness about them to actually act as adults. At times it is like children raising children. The values of motherly or fatherly love are entwined in their own self esteem, and rather than being unconditional they are fully and completely conditional. Where a child seems no more than a necessary object in their lives, one which defines them amongst their peers. A child is something which tags along, holding a hand, it is an explicit show of who they are, of their place in society.  It says "I am a mother/father and am responsible and caring." Which in reality can be quite the opposite.  A child brings other advantages as well, financial assistance, emotional , social (against fear of loneliness) and a scape goat for everything.  Financial assistance which comes from the welfare state in the form of benefits, emotional because the child can be hugged and social as it gives them a chance to meet other like minded families. Unfortunately those other families can both have good parents or toxic parents. Generally toxic parents can gravitate towards each other, but sometimes this is not the case and they will attach themselves as a friend to a normal parent. Hoping to get some acknowledgement they are the same when in fact they are not.

I can only speak for the working classes and the unemployable classes in this context. As I have no experience of the middle or upper classes but I'm sure toxic parenting has no discrimination. Having money doesn't inoculate against emotional dysfunction which can be transferred to children. Toxic parenting is does not effect all working class people or unemployables. The unemployables are particularly chastised by society and governments, because of their parasitic appearance. However, they probably return back into the government economy every single penny they get out of it in trying to make ends meet from day to day.  The same can be said of the working classes, by virtue of low wages nearly all they earn goes on being able to survive. Yet some are happy and very good parents who aspire to love and encourage their children, something toxic parents think they do but in reality don't.

Children begin life as a blank slate. They do not have any maladaptive behaviours but in Freudian terms their early years are all self-centred. Toxic parents are like this, they carry on their self-centred attitude throughout their life. Always seeking to blame other people for their plight, always thinking of what they could of been but never were and then projecting their own ambitions and inadequacies on their children. They are of low self esteem, depressed, suffer from anxiety and are mentally insular. Their imagination to get out of their own rut does not exist. They sap and sap away looking for attention at every turn because of their plight. Then the worst thing of all they take this out on their children. Who they allege to love. Children who grow up confused, who do not understand why their adult care giver says one thing but then acts in a completely different way. A toxic parent's ultimate achievement is to make their own child like themselves. This consequently perpetuates a cycle of toxicity to yet another generation. Children however are not stupid and they grow up knowing this and learning this, some will counter it in their own ways. Unfortunately their lives, emotional, physical and psychological are owned by the parent, worse still legally owned.

There comes a point in their life when they will either allow themselves to be carried along in this behaviour or fight against it. Whether as a teenager or even many years later as an adult. They recall events and know their parents was wrong. They feel aggrieved and then are put in an emotional and psychological turmoil, trying break out. Or are pulled down into the depression of their childhood upbringing. If they think about these things too much they can result in mental illness. It is all to do with their own mental resilience and capability. Coming to this point in their life they are now at a cross road.  Either they understand the toxic nature of their parent and accept it, but in doing so they will understand there are certain protective behaviours which have to put in place, they have to guard themselves and be on constant alert. As their parent gets older and more frail, they are seen pitifully but beware they will still have a vicious and spiteful tongue in their head. They further can not be trusted with grandchildren, these grand parents are seen as "nutty."  Showing love in one instance and then twisting it in another, their actions are always invidious.

The worse part about toxic parenting is that no law exists against it. When considering the acts of dictators the world may act after time.  With toxic parenting the cycle persists until it is broken. Until the child of a toxic parent knows certain behaviours are unacceptable and can not be carried forward. If they are lucky they can then escape to something which approaches normality. The experience and lessons of such childhoods however, are never forgotten.