Theodore Dalrymple

Finished Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple a few days ago. Enjoyed it, if that’s the right word. I read quickly, without taking notes, so I can’t get into too much detail, but here are a few reactions.

Dalrymple is a psychiatrist in Birmingham, where he practices in an inner-city hospital and, part-time, in a prison. The book is a collection of essays originally published in magazines, primarily City Journal, that describe his interactions with his patients and proceed to infer from these interactions certain generalizations about these people’s lives. The subtitle of the book is “The Worldview that Makes the Underclass,” and while the term “underclass” is easier on an English ear than an American one, it does capture Dalrymple’s intent better than any American equivalent could. These people are poor, but only in government’s definition (specifically, England’s essentially socialist government). As measured against history and, more importantly, against current economic conditions in much of the rest of the world, these people’s level of economic comfort, in many cases provided government programs, is far above basic. They are not, in a vast majority of cases, homeless. There is no official policy of discrimination against them the way there was in, say, the Jim Crow American South (often quite the opposite, Dalrymple argues). So perhaps “underclass” is an apt term to capture the general cultural and moral decrepitude he describes.

The book is not prescriptive. It is neither a scientific report nor a policy paper. Dalrymple merely describes his experiences, sometimes citing individual cases, other times describing his observations in the community (to his great credit, he lives among those he studies). His argument is essentially this. The vast majority of the underclass finds itself in the position it is in not through any sort of misfortune, unfairness, or circumstances beyond its control. On the contrary, its predicament is a direct result of specific moral choices. It is enabled – nay, encouraged – to believe that it is acceptable, and even desirable, to make such choices by pervasive government policy that deemphasizes individual responsibility in favor of being provided for by society as a whole in the name of fairness. This policy was, for decades, promulgated by liberal intellectuals, both in academia and politics. The net result is a moral and intellectual collapse that goes far beyond the loss of “traditional values” and permeates one’s very notion of right and wrong.

Some of Dalrymple’s claims and examples do come across as faintly ridiculous. In a chapter dedicated to tattoos, he claims that in his experience, there is a universal correlation between tattoos and criminality. He seems to recognize the silliness of his suggestion – the tone of the essay seems to say, “look, I know it sounds crazy, but I can’t help it – this is what I see in front of me every day” – but a reality check would have still been useful. I personally have an acquaintance who, while tattooed, is a hard worker, a dedicated mother and a loving wife, and another who, while far less tattooed than the first, is a promising scientist and a dedicated researcher. My sample size is smaller than Dalrymple’s, I realize, but it still shows that it pays to slow down now and then when making generalizations.

On balance, however, Dalrymple’s observations are sharp, informative, and successful precisely because while he does, to a point, blames (correctly, I believe) the members of the underclass for making the choices they make, the bulk of his blame is reserved, also correctly in my opinion, for the rotten intellectual climate among the social elite that made these choices possible in the first place.