[the scholarship boy] is unhappy in a society which presets largely a picture of disorder which is huge and sprawling, not limited, ordered, and centrally heated; in which the toffee-apples are not accurately given to those who work hardest nor even to the most intelligent; but in which disturbing imponderables like 'character', 'pure luck', 'ability to mix', and 'boldness' have a way of tipping the scales.
R. Hoggart, The uses of literacy (1957), 270
Their education is unlikely to have left them with any historical panorama or with any idea of a continuing tradition ... a great many people, though they may possess a considerable amount of disconnected information, have little idea of an historical or ideological pattern or process. Their minds rarely go back beyond the times of their own grandparents
R. Hoggart, The uses of literacy (1957), 167
This is written about the working class, but does seem to be about all people. Maybe that was not so in the 1950s.
In general most working-class people are non-political and non-metaphysical in their outlook. The important things in life so far as they can see, are other things. They may appear to have views on general matters - on religion, on politics, and so on - but these views usually prove to be a bundle of largely unexamined and orally-transmitted tags, enshrining generalizations, prejudices, and half-truths, and elevated by epigrammatic phrasing into the status of maxims. As I remarked earlier, these are often contradictory of each other; but are not thought about, not intellectually considered.
R. Hoggart, The uses of literacy (1957), 86
