Apex of a New Low.

When most people think of the Glaswegian Skyline they imagine the University towering above the city with 18th century townhouses sitting on a ridge overlooking a city with roots reaching as far back as the River Clyde. But if you were to happen onto Maryhill Rd. you would see something entirely different altogether. The sky is dominated by 7 chunks of concrete thirty stories tall. These towers are the brainchild of a civil engineer and an optimistic city council. They were designed to be the homes of the future. Flats for the people that were too good for the people… or that was the hype. The reality was subsidized housing for hundreds of people with only one lift and one set of stairs. The reality was a nightmare. To see them now is too be really confused. There are huge scars of black soot, the evidence of fires and splotches of brown, green, and yellow, evidence of I don’t want to know what. These towers are now being torn down and the people moved to housing designed by someone who understands humans. But they stand for something exceedingly wrong with the government; which is at the same time paternal and removed.

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Having read C. Wright Mills I have come upon an idea which appears to explain the scottish state of child-likeness, (by this I mean their acceptance and even desire for a paternal government). Mills rather inelegantly calls it “idiocy” meaning as Plato says that the completely private man is an idiot. Meaning: the completely private man can have no understanding of his stake in society as a whole and is therefore unable to exact change through his personal agency.

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The scots lack the sense of personal agency which I identify with adult behavior or being grown up. They act as though their actions have no bearing on the state of their lives, hence the emphasis on council housing… responsibility free housing, being cared for by the paternal state from the “cradle to the grave.” This is abhorrent to me.

Precisely what I have gathered through my leisurely observations on the bus is that when you have a child you are no longer your own person. Children change everything. It is almost as if there are no rebels with children, for when you have a child you will do whatever it takes to care for that child, including follow the system. It is the most important thing in the world; and personal agency is necessary to care for children in an empowering way. (meaning, that in my mind, children raised by children (people with no agency) develop patterns of behavior and consumption which are bad for society economically and politically.) Parents with agency raise children with agency and these children have behaviors which translate into positive benefits for society, (assuming of course that the personal beliefs of a majority of voting citizens of a nation should be the guiding force and measure of success of that society.)

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