Class Dismissed

This week's New Zealand Listener features a none-too-original article on happiness and how to have it; another dumbed-down take on what philosopher Alain de Botton wrote brilliantly about in his 2004 book Status Anxiety. Being in Christchurch at the time, I began to think about the way the city clings to its English heritage, and the implications of this in terms of the city's development, and the happiness of its people. Class, based on old money and the first four ships, is truly alive and well in Christchurch; meet anyone for the first time and they are bound to ask you where you went to school, and if it didn't have a sacred lawn... well, they know a little more about who you are than if they'd asked if you're an Elvis or The Beatles. Obviously this lends to feelings of inadequacy, frustration, and confusion; this is New Zealand, egalitarian dreamland, America of the Pacific... isn't it?

Other cities have their own criteria. While Auckland might have state-houses in expensive areas and be large enough that different socio-economic groups are not constantly and necessarily coming into contact with each other, our class system is based on something even more insidious; "personal" success, which nearly always ignores factors such as opportunity and background - look at old state-house John; if he can do it... This measure of worth is no better than Christchurch's; both are equally anti-egalitarian in their denial of the fact that what we are born into has nothing to do with us, yet what we do in life is largely determined by it.

It's one thing to know this, but quite another to believe it. So we go on comparing ourselves with our peer groups, congratulating ourselves on owning things they do, beating ourselves up when we don't; in one way or another, always trying to keep up with the Joneses, and keeping that class system in place.

In a few days it will be 2011, and I have some new year's resolutions for all of us. Let's stop comparing ourselves with each other. Let's stop measuring our worth by what we have and how we make money (not to mention how much), and start measuring it by what we do that actually means something; who truly loves us, whom we make laugh. Let's hang out with friends and not contacts. We're all doing the best we can in a race that was never going to be fair; let's stop pretending it was, and give ourselves a break.

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