Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass

“The social workers insisted, against her desperate pleas, that the child should stay with his biological father while she was in the hospital. They were deaf to her argument that he was an unsuitable guardian, even for two weeks: he would regard the child as an encumbrance, an intolerable interference with his daily routine of drinking, whoring, and fighting. They said it was wrong to pass judgment on a man like this and threatened her with dire consequences if she did not agree to their plan. So the two-year-old was sent to his father as they demanded.Within the week he and his new girlfriend had killed the child by swinging him against the wall repeatedly by his ankles and smashing his head. At this somewhat belated juncture, society did reluctantly make a judgment: the murderers both received life sentences.” (p. 182)Sadly, this is only one of many horrifying and depressing incidents recounted in Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass by Anthony Malcolm Daniels (writing under the nom de plume of Theodore Dalrymple). Daniels is a psychiatrist who worked at a British hospital as well as a prison. Through his work, Daniels interacted with thousands of people from Britain’s lower class. The portrait that emerges from these interactions is a life steeped in violence, drug and alcohol addiction, vandalism, theft, suicide, illiteracy, boredom, fear, and despair.Daniels argues that the majority of the blame for these horrors lies at the feet of the intelligentsia and academia. He argues that ideas are the fundamental factor shaping human life. The ideas proffered by the intellectuals have had devastating effects on those poor individuals who have swallowed them wholesale. Determinism (whether it be of the economic or genetic variety) has led to fatalism among criminals and addicts: after all, they can’t help but do what they were determined to do by factors beyond their control. Relativism has led to a willful abstention from judging any action or individual as bad or as comparatively better or worse than anything else. Daniels recounts repeatedly counseling women who have been abused by violent boyfriends to avoid getting into relationships with such types of men; the women inevitably reply that it is wrong to judge people.The following is an excerpt from one these interactions between Daniels and a young female patient who “thought the Second World War took place in the 1970s”:“‘I can look after myself,’ said my seventeen-year-old.‘But men are stronger than women,’ I said. ‘When it comes to violence, they are at an advantage.’‘That’s a sexist thing to say,’ she replied.A girl who had absorbed nothing at school had nevertheless absorbed the shibboleths of political correctness and of feminism in particular.‘But it’s a plain, straightforward, and inescapable fact,’ I said.‘It’s sexist,’ she reiterated firmly.” (p. 37)Daniels states that the hospital where he works regularly employs doctors from foreign countries who come to work a year’s stint; these doctors are usually from poverty-stricken countries. Daniels notes that these doctors are initially impressed by Britain’s generous welfare state, but this initial appraisal quickly sours. Daniels recounts how a doctor from the Philippines saved the life of a heroin addict who had overdosed; when this addict regained consciousness he immediately started verbally abusing the hospital staff. Daniels notes that this behavior did not arise from any initial confusion since it continued until the patient was discharged. Daniels writes:“My doctors from Bombay, Madras, or Manila observe this kind of conduct open-mouthed. At first they assume that the cases they see are a statistical quirk, a kind of sampling error, and that, given time, they will encounter a better, more representative cross section of the population. Gradually, however, it dawns upon them that what they have seen is representative. When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone gratitude.” (p. 136)He goes on to write:“By the end of three months my doctors have, without exception, reversed their original opinion that the welfare state, as exemplified by England, represents the acme of civilization. On the contrary, they see it now as creating a miasma of subsidized apathy that blights the lives of its supposed beneficiaries. They come to realize that a system of welfare that makes no moral judgments in allocating economic rewards promotes anti-social egotism. The spiritual impoverishment of the population seems to them worse than anything they have ever known in their own countries. And what they see is all the worse, of course, because it should be so much better. The wealth that enables everyone effortlessly to have enough food should be liberating, not imprisoning. Instead it has created a large caste of people for whom life is, in effect, a limbo in which they have nothing to hope for and nothing to fear, nothing to gain and nothing to lose. It is a life stymied of meaning.‘On the whole,’ said one Filipino doctor to me, ‘life is preferable in the slums of Manila.’ He said it without any illusions as to the quality of life in Manila.” (p. 142)The welfare state readily helps those who refuse to help themselves, but it offers no support to those who seek to better themselves. Daniels tells the stories of two different young women who worked hard to elevate themselves to a better station in life. These brave and dedicated young women received no support from those around them—only insolent jeers since any individual’s achievement would represent a refutation of the fatalism used to excuse their own lack of effort. And as soon as individual effort was extended, the “helpful” hand of the welfare state withdrew. Daniels writes:“As intelligent as she was forceful, my patient found herself a job as a clerk in a local law office and has worked there ever since. She was thenceforth charged the full economic rent for her miserable room, and all pleas to the authorities on her part to be relocated in public housing were turned down on the grounds that she was already adequately accommodated and in any case was unfit yet to manage her own affairs. As to public assistance for further full-time education, that was out of the question, since in order to pursue such full-time education she would have to give up her job: and she would then be considered to have made herself voluntarily unemployed and thus unentitled to public assistance. But if she cared to become pregnant, why then, public assistance was at hand, in generous quantities.” (p. 161)One is tempted to believe that the architects of such welfare policies construct them with the goal of keeping people in poverty.In a politically correct society, morality is inverted. Daniels observes that in such a society, criminals are the “victims” and law-abiding citizens are guilty by default; this is held to be the case due to the Marxist notion that inequality equals injustice and that those who are well off must necessarily be exploiting those who are not. Daniels provides many examples of this phenomena; here’s one: the nurses at his hospital called the police because a patient who was admitted for a drug overdose assaulted another patient. When the police arrived, they stated that they couldn’t do anything because the man was a hospital patient who was suffering. Later this same man had to be forcibly extracted from a bathroom by hospital security so that the nurses could administer life-saving medicine to him. After he was discharged from the hospital, this man filed charges against the hospital security staff for assaulting him. Daniels writes, “The police, of course, knew this man to be a recidivist criminal, a drunk, a liar, a general nuisance, and inclined to violence into the bargain: but they took his complaints seriously. Having refused to act when he assaulted the patient opposite him, they now interviewed the security men, not once but repeatedly, under caution that anything they said might be used in evidence against them. They interviewed other hospital staff to ferret out any evidence that might lead to the prosecution of the security men. As of this moment, the investigations continue, despite the fact that the only evidence is the man’s word, and that in the meantime he has committed suicide while drunk, so that he can no longer be called as a witness. The police have hinted that they might still arrest the security staff.” (p. 227-8)One criticism I have of Daniels is that he is snobbish at times. To put this criticism in philosophical terms: Daniels rejects the fallacy of subjectivism only to embrace the equally fallacious position of intrinsicism. Intrinsicism is the view that values exist independently of a valuer and inhere in objects, actions, qualities, etc. Values are not intrinsic; they are objective. Something is a value if it is judged to further an individual’s life and wellbeing. Since intrinsicists take values to be intuited, they ironically fall back into the trap of subjectivism by equating their emotional reactions with intuited value. For example, Daniels decries tattoos and piercings because the majority of prison inmates sport such accoutrement, but this is merely an association and not an objective judgment of tattoos and piercings. I personally do not have any tattoos or piercings nor a desire for any, but I certainly do not regard them as bad because there is no objective evidence that they are physically or psychologically harmful. Tattoos and piercings are a perfectly optional value for those who derive aesthetic enjoyment from them.While Daniels provides a stunning indictment against the welfare state and the false and pernicious philosophical doctrines promulgated by the left, he falls short (as all conservatives do) by failing to condemn the moral doctrine that supports the entire edifice: altruism.His book is still very much worth reading though because of the numerous, compelling anecdotes he provides.

I don't agree 💯 with everything this author writes, but it is illuminating and very well written. If anyone wants to borrow my copy, I'm nearly done.

Theodore Dalrymple is a physician and psychiatrist. As a young doctor he practiced medicine in Africa and the Pacific islands. Then he returned to England and practiced in the East End of London and inner-city Birmingham while volunteering in a nearby prison. He's observed, treated, and talked to thousands of London's poor. He's noticed a few things. "It is the ideas my patients have that fascinate - and, to be honest, appall - me: for they are the source of their misery." Rather than accept responsibility for their lives they see themselves as victims of external forces. They often talk in the passive voice about their alcoholism and drug use--the beer and heroin do things to people. When they shoot someone, criminals talk about what "the gun did." They use the term addiction to "...cover any undesirable but nonetheless gratifying behavior that is repeated." The entire society is unjust and they are the victims of it. They act as they do because of their environment and background. When it is suggested that someone hurting them is similarly driven by outside forces, they become incredulous and enraged.Another common attitude is extreme cultural relativism. There is not even "correct" spelling or grammar. Because all cultures are of equal value, there is no such thing as high culture to aspire to as part of improving oneself. This is accompanied by contempt for education. There is nothing to learn that is any better than what they already know. Dalrymple wonders if this is the first time in history when upper classes are imitating lower classes in clothing, music, and language.The author notes that we no longer define poverty in terms of hunger or need. "Poverty has been redefined in industrial countries, so that anyone at the lower end of the income distribution is poor by virtue of having less than the rich. Entertainment, absorbed passively, informs them, through television and films, of a materially more abundant and more glamorous way of life and thus feeds resentment... [T]hey are deprived of any reasonable standards of comparison by which to judge their woes. They believe themselves deprived, because the only people with whom they can compare themselves are those who appear in advertisements or on television."Dalrymple describes self-defeating behavior cycles involving family violence, increasing dependency on public assistance, and pursuing immediate gratification over long-term rewards. He presents a catalogue of poverty mindset indicators that include tattoos, fast food and asocial, solitary meals, suicide attempts, gambling, and repeated requests for medical solutions to chosen behavior patterns. And on top of it all, a violent defensiveness. "[This is] English underclass life: the easily inflamed ego, the quick loss of temper, the violence, the scattering of illegitimate children, the self-exculpation by use of impersonal language."Many of the underclass's problems have their origins in ideas filtered down from the liberal intelligentsia. Uncritical cultural relativism is espoused by liberals who enjoy feeling broadminded. They "refrain from making a judgment" about the bad behaviors of others, allowing them to continue. They have taught the poor that human unhappiness comes from the artificial restraints that society places on satisfaction of appetite. Education is merely brainwashing in middle-class values. An unjust society forces people into a life of crime, therefore punishing criminals further victimizes them. "Of course, the tendency of liberal intellectuals... not to mean quite what they say, and to express themselves more to flaunt the magnanimity of their intentions than to propagate truth, is a general one."The book's comparison of entrenched poor to new immigrant lifestyles is revealing. The indigenous poor and the immigrants who adopt their ways remain in squalor. Other new immigrants maintain their work ethic, strive at substandard jobs, live many to a house, and within a few years, work their way out of poverty. The difference in outcome results from the attitudes and behaviors of individuals, not from external forces. This point is much like Eugene Robinson's comparison of African immigrants to the "Abandoned" African-Americans in  Disintegration . Dalrymple's analysis escapes the clouding effects of race, thereby achieving greater clarity.These are insights from a professional lifetime spent trying to help the poor. Too many refuse to help themselves. Those who try to escape these patterns must fight for their identities and their very lives. I highly recommend this book to anyone trying to understand poverty and what causes it.

This book has went a long way to changing my overall attitude towards my own life.It encouraged me to not allow my background to define me and create my own life without making the world sound responsible.A must read for any person born into a non privileged household.

Hard to dispute many of his findings about contemporary culture and the welfare state.Although, there is a perceptible sneer, with dashings of pomposity at times.Having been at the a$$ end of the system for a few years, his conclusions may add fuel to the fire, of those who wish to tar and feather any poor claimant or disaffected soul, beaten down by the rigours of life, when merely attempting to be, in this crazy world.As I say though, much of his writing has value imo

I like a book which stretches my vocabulary, but this one was a bit over the top for me. I have never had to look up so many words in the dictionary! Bizarrely I was OK on the Latin and French (I live in France).That being said, the book is definatley worth a read.The author has to deal with the "bottom" end of society and their lives and writes about his experiences in doing so. Most of the evidence for his conclusions seem to be based on these experiences. I feel that at times he concludes too much about those not at the "bottom" from his experiences of those at the "bottom".Total respect to the author for doing what he does. Heroic.

As a person who works in the NHS, I was suprised to find how anecdotal many of the topics were. While I do not deny the truth of what was experienced, I would have hoped to see more references and research for which some of these claims are based upon.The year now is 2022, a far cry from the 1990 entries made in this book. Upon reading them I felt a great sense of dread, and shuddered to think that it was truly as bad as this.I can say by comparison, that I have not seen such negativity in my decades worth of experience in psychiatric nursing, but I will admit in part to seeing glimpses of what was conveyed, and certainly have a story or two of my own to share.Perhaps things are improved compared to these past memories. Perhaps I am just not as well travelled or experienced to comprehend this reality. I would like to conclude the truth is likely somewhere in the middle, but certainly not as horrifying as what was described here.It would be very interesting to share an afternoon with Theodore, for I feel a direct conversation would bear more fruits of knowledge and understanding that even his creative use of language can convey in the written language.

It’s incredible that stories like tho ones found in this volume have yet to hit the mainstream. The author is a unique mix: a highly educated man, versed in literature and history, who works as a doctor in the British slums. The connection he finds between these two world, that of “high” culture and the ideas that circulate in the underclass, are not what you might think at first...!