Layer 419 . . . Mental Health, Women (and Men, and Children) in Crisis, Education, Pills, League Tables, Bankers, Giffords, Palin and the Tea Party

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Time to get back to the newspapers for a dose of harsh reality . . .  for a top-up of disgust at the state of the world.

If anyone happened to read Layers 412 and 417  and thought I was over the top with my comments about miserable, burnt-out young people and the amount of mental health issues in our society, then think again.

"Is it any wonder that so many children, and so many adults, are borderline insane? And so many of them are . . . literally . . . driven insane. Or become morose, depressed, angry and resentful."

This week the Guardian carried this report:

Mental health of women in crisis

According to survey of 2,000 girls and women, around two-thirds have had mild to moderate mental health problems

by Amelia Hill

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/11/mental-health-women-crisis

Almost a third of women aged over 18 have taken antidepressants, according to research published today which its authors claim reveals "generations of women in crisis" with mental health problems.

According to a survey of more than 2,000 girls and women in England and Wales, around two-thirds have had mild to moderate mental health problems, equivalent to 15.2 million girls and women.

Penny Newman, chief executive of Platform 51 (formerly the Young Women's Christian Association), said: "Millions of girls and women are facing mental health problems and they are telling us that they are not getting the support they need."

At least 13% of women experiencing mental health problems had quit a job while 44% had taken some time off work; more than a quarter had been off work for at least a week, the research showed.

The findings into the extent of mental health problems experienced by girls as young as 12 were reached after the group expanded the medical definition of "common mental health disorders" as defined by the Department of Health.

The definition of mental health problems used in the new study includes low self-esteem, poor self-confidence, and stress.

"This term captures the range of feelings and symptoms which negatively impact on girls' and women's mental health and which can have more serious consequences if undetected or unaddressed," said Newman.

"What is most striking about these behaviours is that they are often self-destructive and hidden."

About 20% of adult women in England suffered from a common mental disorder – typically depression or anxiety – compared with about 12% of men, according to an NHS report last year.

Professor Louise Howard, head of women's mental health at King's College London, said the figures were "very interesting and relevant". She said: "There is evidence that there is under-identification of people with mental health problems that need treatment."

The research includes women with emotional difficulties as well as those with mental health problems, she added. "But any of the stresses that these women are reporting can lead to mental health problems. Depressive symptoms can persist and need treatment but some women will feel that they have to keep on coping because they have all these people depending on them."

Platform 51 works with 11,000 girls and women in schools, community centres, youth clubs, mother and baby units, and prisons across England and Wales. Its study found those they identified as having mental health problems attempt to cope with their distress in damaging ways. More than a quarter regularly drink too much and many isolate themselves from friends and family: almost a half had not left their homes for a long period and more than a quarter had lost friends.

One in five had built up debt. One in 10 had self-harmed – a figure that rises to 35% for women aged 18 to 24.

"Many women appear to be functioning normally or coping adequately with particularly difficult situations when in fact they are struggling to cope," said Newman. "But we identified many risky behaviours that girls and women engaged in as a result of mental health problems, including promiscuity, drug-taking and crime."

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, said: "This survey is shocking and covers a myriad of distress."

Colin Walker, policy and campaigns manager at mental health charity Mind, welcomed the report but said his organisation's research showed men and women experienced mental health problems such as depression and anxiety in roughly equal numbers.

"But men are less likely to speak out or ask for help," he said. "This tendency to suffer in silence is reflected by the fact that men account for 75% of all suicides."

Around one in three women with low-level mental health problems have never sought professional help, the report, "Women Like Me: supporting wellbeing in girls and women", found. Of those who did seek help, almost two thirds felt doctors were too ready to prescribe drugs.

So here's more evidence that huge numbers of people have mental, emotional, social and spiritual afflictions, who also know that getting drugs from doctors is NOT the answer to their problems.

How and why do these afflictions occur in the first place? What can possibly be done about them?

Why do so many of us suffer from  low self-esteem, poor self-confidence, and stress? Why haven't we learned how to overcome these problems? Why don't schools and other agencies do more to prevent these problems occurring in the first place?

Well - nobody asked them to. Not in this country. On the whole. Nowhere is it a requirement to ensure that pupils acquire more resilience, self confidence, and high self-esteem. Nowhere are these things prioritised any more. Maybe in some schools here and there, where the leadership is more enlightened, but there's no expectations - not seriously - from government, bureaucrats or Ofsted, whose sole concern is with academic success and test results. It's an appalling situation.

We all let our hearts bleed about the poor sods who are cracking up all around us, in so many ways, and all we do about it is send these people to get their anti-depressant drugs to help them 'cope'. These are people who ought to have been able to develop their emotional intelligence, social intelligence and spiritual intelligence whilst at school, in order to prepare them for living in the big wide world, and all they got was pressure to achieve in exams - in order that the schools could do well in the league tables and deal with the Ofsted inquisition.

Look at these schools squealing today, as the government shifts the goal posts once again, and they suddenly find themselves failing to meet the arbitrary targets again. Not so smug now, eh? So why haven't they been doing more to fight the very idea of targets, league tables and so on? Surely not because they thought they were doing pretty well . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jan/12/1-in-6-get-english-baccalaureate

Notice how the schools are now being accused of "failing to prepare pupils for the workplace". NOT 'prepare them for living in a challenging and complex world'. Not ' prepare them for managing complex relationships'. No - we just want them to be able to satisfy the demands of employers. That'll do nicely.

Meanwhile lives are wasted and ruined, kids are getting burnt out by the age of eighteen, and they'll very likely end up stressed out, depressed and lacking in self-esteem even if they get a pocketful of exam passes.

This all makes me beyond anger.

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A good comment from Winhill:

It isn't just women, although they might be more up for admitting it. Our society is fundamentally sick.

I don't think most people realise anything else is possible. Try travelling and you find otherwise. Try going to sub-Saharan Africa for example. They may be poor, but they have a general culture which is far more kind and supportive, and they don't spend their whole time being terrified of each other like the British do.

But then, why should it be a surprise that we are sick? Values of brutal competition, insecurity and the-weak-go-to-the-wall have been deliberately inculcated by neoliberalism. As Thatcher said "economics are the method. The object is to change the heart and soul". She changed it alright.

Some people can cope with living in a brutal, insecure environment, but many can't. They just crumble.

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Our world, our society, doesn't have to be like this - relentlessly, competitively materialistic; full of greedy arsehole bankers whose stupidity and selfishness is already well-established; where mental ill-health is the norm rather than the exception.

Banks given go-ahead to pay unlimited bonuses


Ministers cave in to City and reject calls to tackle highest earners as No 10 seeks face-saving deal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/10/banks-unlimited-bonuses-ministers

Britain's banks have been given the go-ahead to pay unlimited bonuses, drawing to a close a two-year political battle to rein in the City.

After months in which a series of government ministers of all parties have threatened a toughening in the stance over City bonuses, Downing Street said the government did not intend to intervene in the pay of the UK's top bankers.

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How insane is this - Sarah Palin has accused her opponents of inciting hatred and violence . . .

Fucking insane.

In the US, where hate rules at the ballot box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time

The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords may lead to the temporary hibernation of rightwing rage, but it is encoded in conservative DNA

by Michael Tomasky

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/09/us-shooting-republicans-giffords-loughner

Gabrielle Giffords shooting reignites row over rightwing rhetoric in US

Sarah Palin at centre of storm over political vitriol after spree leaves six dead and congresswoman in critical condition

by Ewen MacAskill

The US was tonight seized by a fierce debate over whether inflammatory rightwing rhetoric was to blame for a shooting spree in Tucson, Arizona, that targeted congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and left six dead, including a nine-year-old child.

Giffords, 40, who remains critically ill in hospital after being shot through the head but is expected to live, criticised Sarah Palin last year for putting her and 19 other Democrats on a hitlist of districts, each shown as being in crosshairs.

"When people do that, they have got to realise there are consequences to that action," Giffords said. Palin today distanced herself from the shooting, as did leading figures of the Tea Party movement. Conservative bloggers accused liberals of seeking to exploit the attack.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/09/gabrielle-giffords-shooting-rightwing-rhetoric

Insanity Rules. OK?

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Layer 362 . . . Jabobson, Finkler, Great Novels, TED, Brain Science, Better Worlds, Meditation, Spiritual Intelligence, Extrinsic and Intrinsic Values, Mental Illness, and Inequality

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Howard Jacobson has won the Man Booker Prize for his latest novel - "The Finkler Question". Brilliant news. From the reviews I've read it's a superb must-read book.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/10/14/howard-jacobson-man-booker-prize-winner-on-receiving-the-award/

There was discussion on the Today programme last week about the state of contemporary novels. "Freedom" - Jonathan Frantzen's new novel, for example - has been widely acclaimed as a Great American Novel - in the tradition of Steinbeck, Salinger, Bellow, Faulkner, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Novel

What does it take to write a novel about the zeitgeist and about contemporary issues which also manages to be gripping, grand, profound, funny, intense, serious, etc? For example - who's writing about the "gigantic con-trick of investment banking" and its effect on the world? Who's able to write dramatised lives of "realistically rendered individuals"?

Satire alone is not enough to overcome powerlessness. Where are the signs of real rebellion? Where are the writers that can really enlighten and enliven?

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At the other extreme, on the spectrum of the uses of writing, there was an item on the Today programme which mentioned a piece of written evidence used in court - a reminder note in the defendant's own handwriting which simply said:

1) Go on the rob
2) Sell weed

The defendant's solicitor said he'd written it because he needed to 'structure his day'.

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Brain Science and a Better World

A friend sent me this reference - to explain an illness and its effects.

Jill Bolte Taylor - An Idea Worth Spreading

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

The annual TED conferences, (Technology, Entertainment, Design) held in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Oxford, bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives

Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.

Jill began her TED lecture with some thoughts about schitzophrenia - an illness and a brain malfunction that often results in delusion and aggression. .

Jill's scientific career has involved her in mapping the microcircuitry of the brain - and its chemicals transmitters.

In summary, Jill says:

We still don't know a great deal about the biological differences in the brains of schitzophrenics.

Having had what turned out to be a stroke Jill discovered that it immediately affected her  ability to process information.

"I became an infant in 4 hours".

Our cerebral cortices are completely separate - but able to communicate with each other.

They process information differently.

Therefore they think about different things, care about different things, and have very different personalities.

The right hemisphere is a "parallel processor" - and has a consciousness about the present moment. It thinks in pictures. It processes sensory information. We're all connected as a human family thanks to our right hemispheres - "perfect, whole and beautiful".

The left hemisphere is a "serial processor" - it thinks in a methodical and linear fashion. It deals with the past and the future. It categorises and organises the information it currently takes in and associates it with things from the past, plus it projects into the future and assesses possibilities. It thinks in language - not pictures. It calculates, and it tracks time and commitments. It reminds us of things we need to deal with.

The left brain also says, "I am". It sees me as separate from the energy flow around me, and separate from other people. If the brain chatter in the left brain goes silent then we can more easily perceive the energy flow surrounding us.

It can be a euphoric feeling - dropping decades of emotional baggage.

Accessing fully the right cortex can be like finding 'nirvana' - and a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people.

Is it possible to choose to bring silence to the left brain hemisphere and find the peace that's then possible? Is this a 'stroke' of insight as to how we could live our lives?

Who are we? The 'light-force power of the universe'? With two cognitive minds we have the power to choose from moment to moment how we want to be in the world. To BE in the world.

We can be 'at one' with 'all that there is'. Or we can be a single individual, separate from 'the flow', and from other people. I can be merely an intellectual and a scientist - " simply the 'we's' inside of 'me' ".

We can choose to become part of the greater "we", through allowing our right brains to have more power in our lives, by using the deep inner peace circuitry, and we can project more peace into the world, and make our planet a more peaceful place.

Which do we choose - and when?

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All of this is a good starting point for many different reflections. For example - on the role of meditation in achieving a state of nirvana or satori - by calming and reducing the activity taking place in the brain. BUT - in order to achieve a transcendental state of spiritual 'intelligence' surely BOTH hemispheres have to be calmed or emptied, rather than only the left hemisphere? In order for intuition and insight to emerge from our deep consciousness then activity needs to slow down in both hemispheres.

Isn't it bound to be the case that if we mainly calm and silence the left hemisphere and leave the right hemishere active then what we achieve is greater empathy and higher levels of social/personal/emotional intelligence? Which is all very well, and very desirable - but what we are talking about then is not metaphysical/spiritual intelligence as such - ie not satori or nirvana. We may then feel more connectedness with other people and with nature - but that in itself is by way of a social/emotional/personal intelligence, not a spiritual intelligence.

Surely Jill is wrong to say we have TWO cognitive minds? Isn't the right hemisphere more of an affective (rather than a cognitive) processor? Surely it's the WE rather than the ME processor - which is based more on feelings and empathy rather than actual cognition?

I'm sure Jill is a brilliant scientist and an amazing person, but it seems to me she is still lacking some key insights into the functioning of the brain, into the locus of our various intelligences, and into how they operate and interact.

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Extrinsic and Intrinsic Values - and Human Intelligence

In Monday's Guardian George Monbiot published one of his really important columns.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/oct/11/left-values-progressive-self-interest

The whole of this piece is essential reading, but here is the essence of it:

The left has to start asserting its own values

The progressive attempt to appeal to self-interest has been a catastrophe. Empathy, not expediency, must drive our campaigns

The punishment of the poor for the errors of the rich, the abandonment of universalism, the dismantling of the shelter the state provides: apart from a few small protests, none of this has yet brought us out fighting.

The acceptance of policies that counteract our interests is the pervasive mystery of the 21st century. In the US blue-collar workers angrily demand that they be left without healthcare, and insist that millionaires pay less tax. In the UK we appear ready to abandon the social progress for which our ancestors risked their lives with barely a mutter of protest. What has happened to us?

The answer, I think, is provided by the most interesting report I have read this year. Common Cause, written by Tom Crompton of the environment group WWF, examines a series of fascinating recent advances in the field of psychology. It offers, I believe, a remedy to the blight that now afflicts every good cause from welfare to climate change.

Progressives, he shows, have been suckers for a myth of human cognition he labels the enlightenment model. This holds that people make rational decisions by assessing facts. All that has to be done to persuade people is to lay out the data: they will then use it to decide which options best support their interests and desires.

A host of psychological experiments demonstrate that it doesn't work like this. Instead of performing a rational cost-benefit analysis, we accept information that confirms our identity and values, and reject information that conflicts with them. We mould our thinking around our social identity, protecting it from serious challenge. Confronting people with inconvenient facts is likely only to harden their resistance to change.

Our social identity is shaped by values that psychologists classify as extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic values concern status and self-advancement. People with a strong set of extrinsic values fixate on how others see them. They cherish financial success, image and fame.

Intrinsic values concern relationships with friends, family and community, and self-acceptance. Those who have a strong set of intrinsic values are not dependent on praise or rewards from other people. They have beliefs that transcend their self-interest.

Few people are all-extrinsic or all-intrinsic. Our social identity is formed by a mixture of values. But psychological tests in nearly 70 countries show that values cluster in remarkably consistent patterns. Those who strongly value financial success, for example, have less empathy, stronger manipulative tendencies, a stronger attraction to hierarchy and inequality, stronger prejudices towards strangers and less concern about human rights and the environment. Those with a strong sense of self-acceptance have more empathy and greater concern for human rights, social justice and the environment. These values suppress each other: the stronger someone's extrinsic aspirations, the weaker his or her intrinsic goals.

We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the social environment. By changing our perception of what is normal and acceptable, politics alters our minds as much as our circumstances. Free, universal healthcare, for example, tends to reinforce intrinsic values. Shutting the poor out of it normalises inequality, reinforcing extrinsic values.

The rightward shift that began with Thatcher and persisted under Blair and Brown, whose governments emphasised the virtues of competition, the market and financial success, has changed our values. The British Social Attitudes survey shows a sharp fall over this period in public support for policies that redistribute wealth and opportunity.

This shift has been reinforced by advertising and the media. Their fascination with power politics, their rich lists, their catalogues of the 100 most powerful, influential, intelligent or beautiful people, their obsessive promotion of celebrity, fashion, fast cars, expensive holidays: all inculcate extrinsic values. By generating feelings of insecurity and inadequacy – which means reducing self-acceptance – they also suppress intrinsic goals.

Conservatives in the US generally avoid debating facts and figures. Instead they frame issues in ways that appeal to and reinforce extrinsic values. Every year, through mechanisms that are rarely visible and seldom discussed, the space in which progressive ideas can flourish shrinks a little more. The progressive response has been disastrous.

Instead of confronting the shift in values, we have sought to adapt to it. Once progressive parties have tried to appease altered public attitudes: think of all those New Labour appeals to middle England, often just a code for self-interest. In doing so they endorse and legitimise extrinsic values.

Many greens and social justice campaigners have also tried to reach people by appealing to self-interest: explaining how, for example, relieving poverty in the developing world will build a market for British products, or suggesting that, by buying a hybrid car, you can impress your friends and enhance your social status. This tactic also strengthens extrinsic values, making future campaigns even less likely to succeed. Green consumerism has been a catastrophic mistake.

Common Cause proposes a simple remedy: that we stop seeking to bury our values and instead explain and champion them. Progressive campaigners, it suggests, should help to foster an understanding of the psychology that informs political change and show how it has been manipulated. They should also come together to challenge forces – particularly the advertising industry – that make us insecure and selfish.

Ed Miliband appears to understand this need. He told the Labour conference that he "wants to change our society so that it values community and family, not just work" and "wants to change our foreign policy so that it's always based on values, not just alliances … We must shed old thinking and stand up for those who believe there is more to life than the bottom line".

But there's a paradox here, which means that we cannot rely on politicians to drive these changes. Those who succeed in politics are, by definition, people who prioritise extrinsic values. Their ambition must supplant peace of mind, family life, friendship – even brotherly love.

So we must lead this shift ourselves. People with strong intrinsic values must cease to be embarrassed by them. We should argue for the policies we want not on the grounds of expediency but on the grounds that they are empathetic and kind; and against others on the grounds that they are selfish and cruel. In asserting our values we become the change we want to see.

It's good to seee George Monbiot engaging with some of the 1200 responses to this piece on CiF. Excellent, George. What we're actually talking about, of course - apart from 'values' - is social and spiritual intelligence.

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Oliver James is another excellent writer - the author of 'Affluenza'. He had this piece in the paper this week:

Why genes are leftwing

The right loves genetic explanations for poverty or mental illness. But science fingers society

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/12/why-genes-are-leftwing

When the map of the human genome was presented to the world in 2001, psychiatrists had high hopes for it. Itemising all our genes would surely provide molecular evidence that the main cause of mental illness was genetic – something psychiatrists had long believed. Drug companies were wetting their lips at the prospect of massive profits from unique potions for every idiosyncrasy.

But a decade later, unnoticed by the media, the human genome project has not delivered what the psychiatrists hoped: we now know that genes play little part in why one sibling, social class or ethnic group is more likely to suffer mental health problems than another.

This result had been predicted by Craig Venter, one of the key researchers on the project. When the map was published, he said that because we only have about 25,000 genes psychological differences could not be much determined by them. "Our environments are critical," he concluded.

Politics may be the reason why the media has so far failed to report the small role of genes. The political right believes that genes largely explain why the poor are poor, as well as twice as likely as the rich to be mentally ill. To them, the poor are genetic mud, sinking to the bottom of the genetic pool.

Instead, the Human Genome Project is rapidly providing a scientific basis for the political left. Childhood maltreatment, economic inequality and excessive materialism seem the main determinants of mental illness. State-sponsored interventions, like reduced inequality, are the most likely solutions.

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Another interesting Desert Island Discs -

Kirsty Young's castaway is the founder of Storm model agency, Sarah Doukas. "I'm a terrible old rocker" she says, "I always knew my life would be unconventional."

Sarah hated school, and dropped out before A levels, in spite of ( or because of ) being sent to expensive private schools.

Excellent choice of music too. Especially Cohen, and Caetano Veloso   — Cucurrucucu Paloma (Alberto Iglesias & Vicente Amigo - Hable Con Ella)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v6dnq


http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article841790.ece
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Layer 30 Destructive Emotions, Driving Passions, Dangerous Ideas.

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We can’t really get to grips with the idea of emotional intelligence unless we sort out our understanding of the emotions themselves - their nature, origins and components. We need to recognise that the emotions are not just elemental forces residing within us, but rather they are complex entities that contain elements of several aspects of ourselves, our psyches.

Certainly an emotion such as jealousy is made up of a combination of knowledge, feelings and imagination. Collins defines feeling jealous as ‘suspicious or fearful of being displaced by a rival’, often involving being resentful and vindictive.

When I’m jealous I know that someone I feel passionate and possessive about is spending time with someone else and enjoying their company. I imagine the object of my affections might like the other person more than they like me, and may even stop seeing me in order to be with the third party. I have no way of knowing whether this is true but I feel bad about the situation, and I imagine I will feel even worse if my fears are realised.

An emotion like jealousy cannot exist without the interplay of the three planes of experience - knowing (ideas), feeling (passions) and imagination (projections). It’s clear that emotions cannot be located within any one of the intelligences or modes of experience. They are in essence the opposite of intelligence, although they may originally have served as a primitive survival mechanism - in the case of jealousy, for example, something that perpetuates the pair-bond by imposing exclusivity and behaving aggressively towards potential interlopers.

Insofar as pair-bonding as a cooperative partnership helps to ensure the well-being and survival of the offspring then jealousy may have had and may still have an evolutionary purpose. Though we may wonder whether exclusivity rather than inclusivity is an efficient process for more highly evolved and more complex species and communities such as humans. Where injury or death is the outcome of jealousy, for instance, we must surely ask ourselves whether this particular emotion is something we need to reign in, control, and perhaps eliminate from our experience.

We may refer to certain assaults as ‘crimes of passion’, for instance, but passion (or libido) can be seen as a force for good in our lives, and therefore to blame assaults on passion is not logical or appropriate. Jealousy is the emotion driving so-called crimes of passion, and we need to see passion and the emotions as distinct and separate.

Besides, assaults are driven as much by ideas as by passion. We have our heads filled with simplistic and often ridiculous ideas which cause us to have warped understandings about ourselves and our behaviour. Ideas rooted within our culture, for instance, serve to regulate our behaviour and our emotions.

People within our society often take it as a given that they should seek retribution and revenge if someone is unfaithful, or if someone shows us ‘disrespect’, or someone steals something (or someone) that ‘belongs’ to us. Many cultures and sub-cultures sanction the use of violence in such circumstances, and the idea of honour can create a very fixed idea that someone would rather die or suffer injury than passively suffer an insult in silence. Yet in other cultures passivism and non-violence are the dominant ideas that regulate behaviour.

Not only are our prisons full of people who commit assaults because they believe that it’s right and proper for them to do so in certain circumstances, we also imprison people whose behaviour is conditioned by the dominant idea that it’s necessary and justifiable to steal something in order to possess it or in order to obtain money.

Clearly the existence of poverty is a key factor in regulating the emotions and therefore regulating behaviour. We currently have a government that once pledged itself to be tough on the causes of crime, but which has done little to tackle those causes.

Poverty is a key cause of crime, and poverty is clearly a relative concept. The people who commit crimes in our country in order to gain something materially and financially are clearly much wealthier than people elsewhere who are literally starving and without possessions, and yet do not commit crimes. Crime is also much higher within countries where people who are unemployed or on low incomes feel themselves to be impoverished in comparison with others in their society and community whose standard of living is much higher. The gap between the poorest and the richest sectors in our society is increasing, not decreasing.

Anger and resentment coupled with an idea that theft and assault are in some circumstances justifiable and necessary are the fuel that drives actions that are considered by most of us to be anti-social, immoral and unethical.

Morals and ethics are maintained in part by the idea that theft and assault, for instance, are in all circumstances bad and unacceptable. Even the very poorest in our society usually desist from the temptation to steal or carry out muggings because they believe such behaviour to be wrong, and in all circumstances they are deemed unjustifiable.

Children who grow up in cultures, sub-cultures and families where crime is seen as acceptable are clearly at risk. Exposure to primitive ideas and modes of thinking, and to adults whose emotions are unregulated by ethical and moral beliefs, is highly toxic to such vulnerable children and young people. Unless we prevent such negative influences governing the thinking and behaviour of our youth then we cannot expect the mere threat of punishment and retribution by mainstream society to have a deterrent effect. In such circumstances prison and fines for criminal behaviour are seen as merely part of life, which can happen to you if you’re ‘unlucky’.

Schools and teachers have a crucial role to play in developing emotional intelligence - in combatting dangerous ideas, and helping young people to develop strategies for dealing with destructive emotions. If emotional intelligence is not being developed in the home and the community, then it's only in the schools that it's going to develop, and will only do so where enough time and enough skilled teaching are devoted to it.

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Short-term ‘fixes’ for crime are bad investments. Government needs to act consistently on two broad fronts in order to create a better and happier society.

1) Social Justice. Through the redistribution of wealth, not necessarily by taking money and wealth away from the better-off sections of society, but through fiscal policy, a higher minimum wage, higher tax credits, etc, and slowing down the growth in the wealth of the better off, we can and should create a fairer and more equal society. We should all welcome this if we care at all about social justice, community cohesion, reduction in crime, and creating a generally happier society where there are lower levels of mental and emotional ill-health, and higher levels of moral and ethical conduct.
2) Education. The basic curriculum needs to consist of learning personal, social, and emotional skills, and developing the social, emotional and spiritual intelligences, as well as developing thinking skills and the acquisition of various forms of knowledge - scientific, mathematical, linguistic, artistic, musical, etc. Children also need to learn how to learn - how to pursue their own learning agendas - and above all learn to love learning for its own sake. They need commitment to their own learning in the broadest possible sense, and as such, commitment to the pursuit of higher levels of ethical and moral conduct and towards being of service of others, which can be characterised as enlightened.

Needless to say, such a social policy agenda, and such an educational agenda, are not currently on offer, even though the rhetoric of government is towards more social justice and better education. To the contrary, the general perception is that lives are more stressful and less happy, that communities are more dangerous, that crime (including cyber-crime and so-called white collar crime such as fraud and identity theft) is more prevalent, that drug-taking and binge drinking are increasing, that childhoods are more toxic, that schools are increasingly exam factories that fail to address the real educational needs of children and fail to develop all of their intelligences or their creativity or foster a genuine love of learning, etc. Something needs to change, and radically.