In our over-credentialled times, we have come to expect that an “expert” will have some sort of formal qualification. A medical expert on TV will, we assume, be a doctor. A financial expert will have jumped through the regulatory hoops required by the government of their jurisdiction. What, however, of the lady I saw the other day who was introduced to the audience as a “lifestyle expert”?
Perhaps one of the country’s newer universities (Cambridge, for example) has started offering a course in “lifestyle studies”. Perhaps the Office of Lifestyle Regulation has deemed her a fit and proper person to offer lifestyle advice to the public. Or perhaps she just decided that, contra some recent politicians, Britain has not had enough of experts and decided to award herself the title.
If, of course, it really is a title. For titles separate, they sort the sheep from the goats. They elevate (a TV producer is unlikely to have a “lifestyle apprentice” on speed dial). But there is, if you think about it, no-one who is not a “lifestyle expert” for the simple reason that everyone is an expert on their own…
Be that as it may, “lifestyle expertise” seems to be one of the economy’s growth areas, there being no shortage of those willing to share their insights with a needy public. For a fee. Even the more tangential members of the House of Windsor have got in on the act, offering helpful tips to allow their patrons’ customers to share in their glamorous and, most importantly, correct, lifestyles. For such advice comes with the heavy implication that one not only might want to ape the adviser, but that one should. They know the right way to do things. How to eat, how to dress. And everyone wants to do the right thing.
Christmas may be the season for goodwill to all men, but even it is not immune. The Times recently gave its readers a handy list of “Rules” for the festive season. Not suggestions, not hints or tips, but Rules. A festival of peace and goodwill has become (or has been transformed) into a minefield of etiquette. When does the tree go up? When can one wear a Christmas jumper [never]? Do you have to kiss your elderly female relatives?
Had Mary and Joseph been subject to the advice of a lifestyle expert that first Christmas, the shepherds and Wise Men would have been left outside cooling their heels, waiting for the new parents to rustle up the eggnog and finger food they had been told the event required. Not that it would have mattered much for, as the latter wended their way back East, they would doubtless have found something to complain about. Something not quite right. “Did you see the state of the stable? I could never have had guests round to a place like that. And the child? Well, I know you’re not supposed to criticise people’s parenting, but really. None of mine would have been allowed to get away with that…”
Back indoors, the guests’ clothes would, no doubt, have been a topic for discussion. The shepherds could have made more of an effort (M&S are doing a very nice LBD this year) while the Wise Men, in their silks and finery, were, no doubt, just showing off. The Premier League footballers of the Ancient World.
For while some elements of manners have a strong practical basis – double-dipping is an excellent way to spread whatever seasonal ailment you have acquired – much of etiquette has a far less noble aim: separating the sheep from the goats.
On the one side, those who know the Rules: polite, well brought up, our sort of people. On the other, those who don’t: the rude, the rough, the wrong sort. We are not like them. We are, and we may pretend to be pained by this thought, better than them.
For in its inimitable way, a group of status-seeking hairless monkeys has contrived to make a festival of Universal Brotherhood into another front in its eternal struggle to find ways to look down on its peers. The more wide-ranging the etiquette, the more faux-pas one can commit. The more others can tut. The more they can take comfort in the fact that they know better. That they are doing the Right Thing. That they know the Rules.
We may tell ourselves that we live in more egalitarian, less stuffy times, but there is little practical difference between a middle class Victorian lady sneering at her guest for not eating jelly with a knife and fork and a Times reader sneering at their neighbour for putting their tree up in November [the Rules say December 6, so December 6 it must be]. No harm is done but, we have arbitrarily decided, some things are just not done. Not by our sort anyway. They must be “one of them”… Times change and we do not change with the times.
This may, of course, not be entirely consistent with the Christmas message but humanity has never wanted to find consistency wrapped up under its tree. What it really wants from Santa (and everyone else) is admiration and validation. The desire to excel and be distinguished above others which drove Achilles to rampage over the plains of Troy merely redirected to turkey trimmings and gift wrap.
“Those who matter don’t care, those who care don’t matter”, a waspish saying attributed to various waspish figures, but one containing an air of truth. We may no longer be an aristocratic culture, but enough remains of those ways that we retain a subtle hankering for effortlessness, sprezzatura, an unconcerned ease, the Corinthian Spirit. Savoir-faire, not Apprendre-faire. Those who do what feels natural, not what they have been told is right. Those who have flair, not a checklist. The more one tries to show one is not at the bottom, the more one reveals one is not at the top. Just ask Hyacinth Bucket.
Christmas, we are told, is a time for togetherness. Our rules create separation. It is a time of rest we have turned into a hamster-wheel of status-chasing. Perhaps we should give it a rest and remember the words of a German who if he was not, doubtless to his disappointment, the Anti-Christ, was certainly the Anti-Christian – “You have your way; I have my way. As for the right way, it does not exist.”
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
If you enjoy The New Conservative and would like to support our work, please consider buying us a coffee or sharing this piece with your friends – it would really help to keep us going. Thank you!
The act of demoting others has the effect of promoting oneself which is surely the whole point.
The MSM terms ‘expert’ and ‘influencer’ are freely interchangeable, and are as meaningful as the old ‘X bosses’, when anyone from an organisation interviewed was accorded this inaccurate accolade. For example, a British Tourist Board Brand Manager referred to as a ‘Tourism Boss’ oblivious to the fact that they are a lowly Quango worker who’s questionable expertise and influence if dispensed with altogether would have zero effect on British Tourism.
Even more annoying than being advised by an idiot with delusions, frequently self-declared expert status, are the now (USA speak import?) ‘How to XYZ’, with XYZ being things normal people simply do without thinking
This sounds like the crap we get used to hearing since Blairs time at the helm I have always believed that assassination was too quick for him he should die of the most painful cancer known to mankind.