Just a note, before I get started, here. I have made a promise to myself to avoid a confrontational style of writing on this blog. For the most part, I've adhered to that standard. I'm going to make an exception today, however. I've found that setting the cat among the pigeons is actually quite a good way to get people to rethink the way they see the world. Being meek and humble doesn't accomplish that as quickly.

Furthermore, I see that the nature of British debate these days is fairly brusque, and so I don't feel too bad about entering the fray with the same sort of approach.

If you've been following the news in the UK in recent months, you'll know that that a secessionist political party - the Scottish National Party - has gotten itself a majority in the Scottish parliament. It's interesting to see the machinations in another country when there is a movement afoot to split it up into its component regions. At the same time that the UK seems to be considering pulling up stakes and leaving the European Union, Scotland is considering splitting from England and Wales and becoming it's own independent nation again for the first time in 300 years. I find it fascinating to see how British people identify themselves as English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish first and as Britons only secondarily. It's inspirational to me to see the renaissance of the ancient languages of Scotland, Ireland and Wales - and to even see television and radio programming produced by the BBC in those tongues.

However, I don't wish to talk today about the possible political breakup of this European island nation today, but instead about a loss of social cohesion and personal contentment and the generous spirit over the last century in this once-great nation.

I have devoted a lot of time over the past couple of years, to watching BBC television programming through the internet at their Iplayer website. The BBC focuses quite heavily on history. The UK, much like other nations like Italy, sees itself as having an identity rooted in the past.

After watching several programs about how children were raised in the UK in the early 1900s, and many more programs about how children are raised today, it strikes me that the UK is dying from within. Even though the UK suffered through two wars in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century (and a season where children were sent out into the countryside to live with strangers so they wouldn't suffer from the bombings of the cities) - it seems to me that the country had a very sound pedagogy - and a set of good ethics about how parenting ought to be done. Children received a lot of guidance and nurture.

In contrast to that, I remember seeing a series of films (the "Seven Up series" by Michael Apted) which started off by following prepubescent children in school in the 1960s... I was shocked by the how childcare and education seemed to have fallen apart. All of a sudden, you see authoritarian patterns emerging - which draw on the idea from earlier years of children conforming to common standards, but where nurture is suddenly missing, and where in its place we see only unreasonable demands. The poorer London schools in the early 1960s were simply zoos. The children had mass brawls on the playgrounds, and the teachers did not think it meet to step in at all to protect the children from each other. The wealthier schools were run like military academies with lots of corporal punishment (in many cases, administered by appointed fellow students).

Then, we see the anti-establishment movements led by university students in the 1960s which spread like wildfire all over the world - even to the Far East and places like Japan. This was a culture war, where people ostensibly fought for individual freedoms and campaigned against the structures of social mores and customs which their parents had adhered to. It's not surprising that those children raised in the dysfunctional schools of the 1960s, and who heard the anti-establishment cries of their older siblings who were at the university should get a very jaded view of traditional values. Every generation of parents since, seems to have resolved to raise their children in quite a hands-off manner.

Interestingly enough, the USA, across the Atlantic from Europe, has really benefitted from a society which values individualism more. The 1960s movements - the Civil Rights movement, the anti-establishment sentiment, and the peace movement - were boons for us. It really is in our cultural genetic makeup in this country to think and live that way. It suits us a lot better to be glib and casual and carefree, than to be buttoned up and living in a "Leave it to Beaver" kind of society.

Unfortunately, I think the UK has a very different genetic makeup - and consequently the culture war which started in the 1960s ended up making it a very ill society, today. The intellectual passion of those wonderful bright-eyed children of the early 1900s has served the country well for a long time. The BBC is a tribute to their sensibilities about the world. The tradition of critical thought, and analysis is very much alive in Britain - but, for how much longer? It's interesting how shocked Britons were at the attitudes of the young London rioters this last year. Those are the kind of human beings that British families are churning out of their homes in their late teens. It's not like Edwardian times anymore, now is it? Kids are neglected in the UK. Their parents work too hard and have no time for them. There isn't a sense that parents need to be in charge, and set boundaries, and guide the children. Instead, the children are left to puzzle things out for themselves, in a crazy world.

British culture has developed a decidedly selfish streak. Comedy in the UK is marked by derisiveness and raucousness. Debate about the topics of the day tends to be biting and cold, rather than genteel and elegant.

So, what does the future hold? Well, I think that the light of the torch of the intellectual tradition of the UK is going to burn ever dimmer as it is carried on the road further into future decades. I don't think that today's youth, or even today's middle aged Britons have much of an appetite for the kinds of high-brow things that the BBC produces. The "most popular shows" queue on the Iplayer shows you what mainstream Britain values. I think the UK will soon become a hollow shell of what it once was. It will need to go through "a dark night of the soul" and will need to do some very earnest soul-searching.

Meanwhile, what does it mean for the rest of us in the anglophone world? Well, it represents a sea change. The UK has been a shining tower - a light on a hill - for all English-speakers for a long time. Other Commonwealth countries like the Australia, Canada, and New Zealand fawn over the UK, and the deep-thinking nature of Britons has been a perfect compliment to the more down-to-earth everyday reasoning which is prominent in those nations. British accents are still associated here in the USA with intelligence. Geographically, Washington DC is fairly close to London. I think a lot of British frames of reference about the world rub off on our politicians on Capitol Hill.

There will be a niche for a new brand of intellectuals which opens up. We'll have to see who they are.

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As kind of a postscript, I want to deal briefly with one thing that I see as common misconceptions that people have about social cohesion. It's common for people to believe that homogeneity of ethnicity helps to create an even keel for society. The Japanese, for example, believe earnestly in this notion. I think Edwardian Britain would have been prone to think this way, as well. The EDL in the UK, and the KKK in the USA still cling desperately to this idea. However, I believe we in the USA have disproved that theory. We have become a truly multicultural society which is easygoing, friendly, and happy. It's kind of odd, because the flashpoints of heated debate in a country are amplified in a nation's mass media and soon seen to characterize that nation, overseas. A nation may have worked through 90% of its problems in regards to an issue, and still be unsatisfied with its own progress. Consequently, abroad, foreigners still think that the country is characterized by the problem.

As I see it, there's a lot less similarity between the American black person, and the British black person than there is between people of various ethnic backgrounds within either of those countries. Skin color does not make us who we are. What we believe, and how we see the world, and how we relate to the world define our character. There are commonalities of mindsets and approaches to life that are prevalent from border to border within a country, because of the nature of its mass media, and because of the social expectations people have of each other in school, in the workplace, and out in public.

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I also want to point you to a case study of a modern education system in a very unique society - Japan. I just finished reading a book written by a guy from the US state of Georgia who went to Japan and taught for a year in a rural school there, north of Tokyo. I think there are a lot of similarities between Japan's school system today and the nature of the fabled "grammar schools" of the UK in the early twentieth century. We in English-speaking countries today are liable to look at both things as strict, uncompromising, and overbearing. We are likely to heap scorn on it. However, looking closely at Japanese schools, I don't believe anyone can help but see that in actual fact, it's not an authoritarian system. Japanese students may be the best of the best when it comes to math and science - however, teachers focus much more on how to be happy and how to be a caring person of good character than they do on academic subjects. From what I've seen, it's not a hard-nosed system, at all - in the way it's reputed to be. Nor were the grammar schools of the early 1900s in the UK.