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 212 . . . The Way We Live Now and The Spirit Level

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I heard the other day that there are people from the Ministry of Children and Parents and Carers and Families and Schools and Things going around talking about the book I blogged about earlier in the year – The Spirit Level. Maybe some people are indeed starting to take notice, but what a pity New Labia didn't give a lot more thought to what ought to be the raison d'etre of the Left in politics – the need for a more equal society – for all our sakes – instead of just droning on for 12 years about “more equal opportunities”. Obviously this equality thing smacks too much of socialism to make it palatable to the likes of Blair and Brown.

So it's time for an update. Here's what Lynsey Hanley, Equality Correspondent (see also Layer 210) wrote about it in the Guardian some time ago:

The way we live now
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/13/the-spirit-level

"We are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health. If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens' incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks' holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we'd trust each other more.

Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett don't soft-soap their message. It is brave to write a book arguing that economies should stop growing when millions of jobs are being lost, though they may be pushing at an open door in public consciousness. We know there is something wrong, and this book goes a long way towards explaining what and why. 

The authors point out that the life-diminishing results of valuing growth above equality in rich societies can be seen all around us. Inequality causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives; it increases the rate of teenage pregnancy, violence, obesity, imprisonment and addiction; it destroys relationships between individuals born in the same society but into different classes; and its function as a driver of consumption depletes the planet's resources.

On almost every index of quality of life, or wellness, or deprivation, there is a gradient showing a strong correlation between a country's level of economic inequality and its social outcomes. Almost always, Japan and the Scandinavian countries are at the favourable "low" end, and almost always, the UK, the US and Portugal are at the unfavourable "high" end, with Canada, Australasia and continental European countries in between.

This has nothing to do with total wealth or even the average per-capita income. America is one of the world's richest nations, with among the highest figures for income per person, but has the lowest longevity of the developed nations, and a level of violence - murder, in particular - that is off the scale. Of all crimes, those involving violence are most closely related to high levels of inequality - within a country, within states and even within cities. For some, mainly young, men with no economic or educational route to achieving the high status and earnings required for full citizenship, the experience of daily life at the bottom of a steep social hierarchy is enraging.

The graphs also reveal that it is not just the poor, but whole societies, from top to bottom, that are adversely affected by inequality. Although the UK fares badly when compared with most other OECD countries (and is the worst developed nation in which to be a child according to both Unicef and the Good Childhood Inquiry), its social problems are not as pronounced as in the US. 

Wherever you look, evidence favouring greater equality piles up. As the authors write, "the relationships between inequality and poor health and social problems are too strong to be attributable to chance".

But perhaps the most troubling aspect of reading this book is the revelation that the way we live in Britain is a serious danger to our mental health. Around a quarter of British people, and more than a quarter of Americans, experience mental problems in any given year, compared with fewer than 10 per cent in Japan, Germany, Sweden and Italy.

Wilkinson and Pickett's description of unequal societies as "dysfunctional" suggests implicit criticism of the approach taken by Britain's "happiness tsar" Richard Layard, who recommended that the poor mental health of many Britons be "fixed" or improved by making cognitive behavioural therapy more easily available. Consumerism, isolation, alienation, social estrangement and anxiety all follow from inequality, they argue, and so cannot rightly be made a matter of individual management. 

It's impossible to overstate the implications of their thesis: that the societies of Britain and the US have institutionalised economic and social inequality to the extent that, at any one time, a quarter of their respective populations are mentally ill. What kind of "growth" is that, other than a malignant one?

What Japan and Sweden show is that equality is a matter of political will. There are belated signs - shown in the recent establishment of a National Equalities Panel and in Trevor Phil lips's public pronouncements on the central place of class in the landscape of British inequality - that Labour recognises that its relaxed attitude to people "getting filthy rich" has come back to bite it on the rear. 

Twelve years in power is long enough to reverse all the trends towards greater social and economic stratification that have occurred since 1970; instead they have continued on their merry way towards segregation.

There are times when the book feels rather too overwhelmingly grim. Even if you allow for the fact that it was written before Barack Obama won the US presidency on a premise of trust and optimism, its opening pages are depressing enough to make you want to shut it fast: "We find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, driven to consume and with little or no community life."

However, the book does end on an optimistic note, with a transformative, rather than revolutionary, programme for making sick societies more healthy. A society in which all citizens feel free to look each other in the eye can only come into being once those in the lower echelons feel more valued than at present. The authors argue that removal of economic impediments to feeling valued - such as low wages, low benefits and low public spending on education, for instance - will allow a flourishing of human potential.

There is a growing inventory of serious, compellingly argued books detailing the social destruction wrought by inequality. Wilkinson and Pickett have produced a companion to recent bestsellers such as Oliver James's Affluenza and Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety . But The Spirit Level also contributes to a longer view, sitting alongside Richard Sennett's 2003 book Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality , and the epidemiologist Michael Marmot's Status Syndrome , from 2005.

Anyone who believes that society is the result of what we do, rather than who we are, should read these books; they should start with The Spirit Level because of its inarguable battery of evidence, and because its conclusion is simple: we do better when we're equal."
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This whole issue is really to do with spiritual intelligence. Anyone with a substantial degree of spiritual intelligence doesn't need to be convinced by masses of statistics that gross inequality is wrong and just plain idiotic - they can feel it in their souls and their bones. To turn their gaze from poverty and inequality and not give a damn about it not only means someone is greedy and callous, it means they are spiritually stupid and impoverished.

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Here's a review from the New Statesman by Roy Hattersley - http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/03/spirit-level-wilkinson-pickett

An interview with the authors, by John Crace, on “What might be the most important book of the year” - http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/12/equality-british-society -The Theory of Everything - “These two British academics argue that almost every social problem, from crime to obesity, stems from one root cause: inequality.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y36BJoelaMc

http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781846140396,00.html
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Layer 130 . . . The Spirit Level, The Decisive Moment, and the Bankers

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Start The Week this morning featured a book called The Spirit Level, by Wilkinson & Picket. http://www.thersa.org/events/our-events/the-spirit-level

Its thesis is that societies which are more equal are healthier. Sweden, Norway, Japan, etc. They have better mental health, less violence, less bullying, less obesity, less crime, smaller prison populations, less teenage pregnancy.

Societies like ours suffer from high levels of “status competition and status anxiety”. And high levels of status consumption.

We therefore have more debt, and more bankruptcies,

We must look again at issues of equality and values. What is the good life? Material standards? More time for contact with families and friends, for proper relaxation, for personal creative pursuits?

The rich must in future pay a greater percentage in taxes.

All of this is well and good, but I think it’s already been written about by Oliver James in ‘Affluenza’, a brilliant book which I'll return to. A real must-read book.

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This week’s Book of the Week on Radio 4 is The Decisive Moment: How the Brain Makes Up Its Mind, by Jonah Lehrer.

Here’s a review in the New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126962.500-review-the-decisive-moment-how-the-brain-makes-up-its-mind-by-jonah-lehrer.html

And another in The Guardian last Saturday: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/decisive-moment-element-lehrer-robinson

The Guardian quite cleverly reviews the book alongside another called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, by Ken Robinson & Lou Aronica.

Weirdly, though, this review never refers to the word “passion”, which is surely the crux of the matter. The problem for all these authors is that they can’t or don’t differentiate between passion, emotion, instinct and intuition.

“Emotions are a crucial part of the decision-making process”, says Lehrer, and it’s true that reactions such as fight, flight and freeze, which appear on the surface of things to be emotions, are key determiners of how we behave. But if we look more closely, we ought to realise that those reactions are part of our instinctual, not our emotional, behaviour. Emotions are primarily negative and stem from our social interactions - anger, greed, jealousy, etc.

Emotions are negative elements that arise from un-intelligence. Emotional intelligence consists of getting a conscious and rational grip on them, and not letting them control us. There’s nothing “intelligent” about emotions, as such - quite the opposite. Emotional intelligence arises from calmness, objectivity, restraint of the ego, and in many cases control of the instincts that are urging us towards fight or flight - although those instincts can be life-savers in certain situations.

It’s so annoying when people talk about and write books about the importance of “emotions” and “instincts” when they actually mean “intuition” and “empathy” and “passion”.

Lehrer says, “When the emotional centres in the brain are damaged or removed, mundane choices become excruciatingly difficult,” when he’s probably talking about the removal of the intuitive and empathetic centres.

He says, for example, “Shooting a film with a multi-camera set-up, as a director you don’t have time to carefully consider each decision - it’s all very instinctual - you just know how things should go”. Which is partly true, in the sense that decision-making by skilled practitioners becomes automatic from practice and experience - but he then goes and spoils it by saying “It all depends on the emotional brain.” No it doesn’t - it’s about memory, learning from experience, and about instinct and intuition. Nothing to do with flaming emotions!

“The process of thinking requires feeling,” he says, which is also true, but again he’s using ‘feeling’ as a synonym for ‘emotion’, which it isn’t. Or rather - it is, because it’s become that, in our dumb society, but it shouldn’t be!

“Reason without emotion is impotent.” Again, no! We can do very nicely without emotion. What we need in order to be potent, and to be effective, is instinct, intuition, passion and empathy, together with a well-developed intellect, and all of them working together harmoniously, preferably during periods of ‘meditation’ or reflection, rather than under pressure during an emergency.

http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/footsteps.htm

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Andrew Rawnsley wrote an excellent column in yesterday’s Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/01/fred-goodwin-pension-rbs

These bankers are lucky that they are not going to jail.

The government has been too timid about confronting these failed financiers. It's time that it showed some teeth.

Assuming it is out of the question to hang, draw and quarter Sir Fred Goodwin, pluck out his intestines while they are still warm and wriggling, stuff them into his greedy mouth and then display his severed head on a spike at the Tower of London, could we settle for shooting him instead? Yes, I know, I'm going soft.

Politicians can use whatever adjectives they like to deplore this banker and his wretched ilk for demanding gargantuan rewards for abject failures. The issue is, what is to be done about it? Bankers are hated by the voters, universally pilloried in the media and their excesses have been condemned by every political party from the SWP to the BNP and all points between. And yet still they don't give a damn.

Exhortation and condemnation is wasted breath unless it is accompanied by action. Even though the bankers are now supplicants to the taxpayer, the government is still showing them far too much reverence. Having been in thrall to the erstwhile masters of the universe for a generation, the political class has still not entirely shed its deference to the fallen money changers.

Even though the banking system is now effectively nationalised, Gordon Brown wants to keep his distance from managing it. That leaves the government with responsibility while still being highly hesitant about exercising control.

Ministers mutter that contractual obligations make it all very difficult. Yet it should not be beyond the capacity of the politicians to cut through the legal thicket. This is one of the advantages of being the government: if the law is an ass, you can change it. Had RBS been any other sort of business, it would now be bust. But for the billions poured in by the taxpayer, this bank would be kaput. There would be no pension honey pot for Sir Fred to stick his paw in. If the law is the problem with stopping him, then the law can be changed.

The voters have seen things more clearly. Their fury with the feckless financiers has cut through the complexities that fog the minds of ministers. The bankers behaved with an arrogant recklessness which broke their own businesses and devastated large sections of the economy.

Now they are getting bailed out with everyone else's money. Bankers should be grateful if they still have a job and relieved that they have not been lynched. They should not be slurping up enormous bonuses and vast pensions. End of story.

The politicians have lacked the clarity of that anger. Even after the bankers had wrecked the financial system, ministers were hesitant about putting them in their place.

If Sir Fred was bothered about what everyone thought of him, he would have long ago left the country to live the rest of his life caring for the destitute of Mongolia. Men like Fred the Shred do not feel shame. They feel only for their wallets.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Barack Obama has had a clearer eye about what he is dealing with, and therefore a firmer grasp of what needs to be done. The president, being new to office and of a younger generation than Gordon Brown, is not trapped by the past compromises with casino capitalism which were made by the prime minister and other centre-left leaders of his vintage. Obama did not hesitate. He crisply told bankers that their salaries would be capped and that they could forget about pocketing any more bonuses until the taxpayers had got their money back.

In his speech a few days ago to both houses of Congress, the new president gave a compelling and unflinching account of the vices of the bubble years. "The fact is our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he told America. "We have lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity." He used the pulpit of the presidency to tell his people that they had arrived at a "day of reckoning".

I recommend that the prime minister watches Obama's address to Congress. That succeeded because he gave a candid account of what went wrong during the bubble years and that allowed him to be persuasive about how it can be put right. How does Gordon Brown follow that? He could do a lot worse than copy it.

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Charlie Brooker’s column is better than ever today, cynical, funny and very angry, and relates to what I was saying in Layer 129 about people waking up to reality. It also sits with what Andrew Rawnsley is saying about bankers and politicians. Here’s a couple of Charlie quotes:

It's all over. The politicians have finally shut us out of their game for good and we have nowhere left to turn. We're not part of their world any more. We don't even speak the same language. We're the ants in their garden. The bacteria in their stools. They have nothing but contempt for us. They snivel and lie and duck questions on torture - on torture, for Christ's sake - while demanding we respect their authority. They monitor our every belch and fart, and insist it's all for our own good.

Straw wrote, "If people were angels there would be no need for government . . . But sadly people are not all angels." That rather makes it sound as though he believes politicians aren't mere people. Maybe they're the gods of Olympus. Maybe that's why they're in charge.

Thing is, they could get away with this bullshit while times were good, while people were comfortable enough to ignore what was happening; when people were focusing on plasma TVs and iPods and celebrity gossip instead of what the politicians were doing - not because they're stupid, but because they know a closed shop when they see one. But now it looks as if those times are at an end, and more and more of us are pulling the dreampipes from the back of our skulls, undergoing a negative epiphany; blinking into the cold light of day.

Consequently the police are preparing for a "summer of rage". To the powers that be, that probably just means more tiny monochrome blobs jumping up and down on the long-distance monitor for their amusement. Should it turn out to be more visceral than that, they'll have no one to blame but themselves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/02/charlie-brooker-politicians

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Gary Young’s column today is one of his very best:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/02/obama-administration-ambitions

It's about to get nasty: time for Obama's movement to get moving.
On Monday he held a bipartisan fiscal summit where he pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. On Tuesday he addressed both houses of Congress for the first time, promising the nation: "We will recover, we will rebuild." On Thursday he produced a budget that set out to redistribute wealth, heal the sick and save the planet. On Friday he stopped the war. On Saturday he threw down the gauntlet to special interests and lobbyists. And on the seventh day he rested.

In the course of a regular presidency, any one of these might be seen as a bold project. To tackle them all in one term seems ambitious to the point of foolhardiness. To announce them all in one week lies somewhere between the audacity of hope and the pugnacity of hubris.

But then this is no regular presidency - a function not just of the man but the times. "You never let a serious crisis go to waste," his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, told reporters after the election. And this crisis is serious.

This is the planet’s only real hope - that Obama uses the Shock Doctrine against its originators, and moves very quickly to change the things that need changing. As described above, he’s certainly not hanging around.

Domestically he has committed himself to a paradigm-shifting budget that marks a decisive break with more than a generation of neoliberal policies. The notion that taxes can go up as well as down, that the government has the ability and duty to do good, and that tackling inequality has moral values challenge the core assumptions that have dominated political culture in London and Washington for almost three decades. It is an agenda that Labour had a mandate to deliver - and wasted.

Those who point to the troop surge and recent elections in Iraq as evidence that the invasion was a success are trying to put lipstick on a pig that has been slaughtered, gutted and turned into chops. The war has killed more than 1 million Iraqis and caused 4 million to flee their homes - half displaced internally and half externally. It has strengthened Iran in the region and created a generation of Islamic fundamentalists worldwide. On every front, by its own tawdry standards, it has been an unmitigated disaster. Its failure is not just humiliating for America's neocons, militarists and Republicans but for the useful idiots who gave them cover, including the British government.

Bush certainly broadened and sharpened disdain for US foreign policy and mobilised huge numbers against it. But he did not invent American imperialism, he just revealed its limits. Those who claim he tarnished America's great reputation abroad were apparently unaware that in vast swaths of Central and South America, the Middle East (with the exception of Israel), the Arab world, and parts of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, it was already pretty grubby.

Obama's budget is a different matter entirely. Its signature elements involve tax increases on families earning more than $250,000 (£175,000), the introduction of a universal healthcare system, an economy-wide carbon-trading system, and grants for low-income students. In short, it intends to address the growing inequalities in American society.

Conservatives are in ideological retreat and organisational disarray. The system they cherish - capitalism - is collapsing around their ears and taking their mantras with it.

The left is better organised than it has been since the 1960s. It has a popular president, controls both houses of Congress, has a grassroots presence and - thanks to eight years of Bush - fire in its belly. A group of leftwing bloggers, unions and other activists have just teamed up to form a leftwing pressure group within the Democratic party. The blogosphere has done for the left what talk radio did for the right in the 1990s - provided the base with a platform and organising potential to put pressure on its leadership.

This week was busy - the weeks to come may also get nasty.

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Jackie Ashley’s column is also worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/02/labour-policies-opinion-polls

The parties must end this mood of confusion and drift.

On all sides there is everything to fight for. The dominance of the City types is over, and ideology matters again..

Layer 76 To Market, To Market.

Driving through the Cotswolds the other week I saw it was market day and stopped off to take a look around. The day was sunny and warm, the locals were out with their bags and their trolleys, greeting one another in slow voices and mellow accents.

The village square was quiet and peaceful, surrounded by fabulous old buildings whose honey stone seemed to glow in the morning sun. The old coaching inn was open for breakfasts and coffee. If I hadn’t already stopped off in a sunlit lay-by for coffee and a bacon sandwich from a mobile caff, I’d have been straight in there.

Compared with the Saturday market I’d been to in the Dordogne a couple of weeks ago, this market was tiny. Stalls selling fruit and veg, general hardware, shoes and boots, plants and garden equipment, bread and cakes, pies and pastries, and some very tasty-looking local and French cheeses - and that was about it.

Clearly this market was an important part of local life, and brought people together from the surrounding area - as had the market in St Foy, only on a much bigger scale. I can’t even remember the last time I was at an English country market, and this seemed to be quintessential England. It’s a blessing to have the time to ‘stand and stare’, and take a few photos, out in rural England.

What more could anyone want or need from a market? Here we were with the international money markets just about ready to implode, crash and burn, and everything was going on just as it has for - centuries?

So what would my perfect market be like? What else might it need? Just a few things:

• A large number of stalls selling fabulous, irresistible foods ranging from curries and stews to French savory filled crepes and Chinese stir-fries.
• A hog roast.
• Stalls selling high quality meats, including various sorts of game - rabbit, pheasant, duck, wild boar and venison.
• Various small cafes with tables and chairs in the sun, inviting you to sit down and watch the world passing by.
• Various pubs with ditto.
• A canal on which is moored a Dutch barge selling Thai curries, cakes and coffee, with tables and chairs, etc etc.
• Various restaurants - Turkish, Italian, Argentinian, even a pie and mash restaurant.
• A stall selling brilliant old vinyl records at sensible prices.
• Stalls selling hand-made craft items, photos, paintings, etc.
• Stalls selling truly exotic fruits and vegetables.
• Throngs of people of every age, colour and background, including lots of bizarre looking characters, lots of very cool and funky people, creating a genuine buzz in a laid-back and hassle-free style.

And this is exactly what Broadway market has to offer. That’s Broadway, Hackney, just off London Fields, not Broadway, Worcestershire, the Cotswolds.

I’ve been shopping in Broadway Market since first moving to Hackney in the mid nineteen seventies, and it just gets better and better. OK - it’s lost its old working-class-only character, but if it hadn’t been reborn with parts to appeal to the gentrifiers and the incomers then it would surely have died anyway, since most of the traditional stalls had closed down as the locals went off to the supermarkets for convenience, quality and lower prices.

Last Saturday just about everyone was walking around dressed for summer, since the cloudless sky and mid-autumn sun had raised temperatures to the low twenties. It felt better than anything we’ve had these last two lousy so-called summers. There seemed more stalls and shops open than ever, and it was getting to be quite hard to move up and down certain parts of the street as there were so many people.

And so, dear blog readers, if you don’t already know Broadway market then go down there and hang out. And if you do know it - don’t forget it’s there, and keep on enjoying it. But don’t tell anyone else about it. It’s almost too popular already.

And don’t worry about the prices. Of course they’re too high, but you don’t have to actually buy anything. And if you do, tell yourself it’s worth it for the whole wonderful spectacle of cool, funky, laid-back people, some of them quite pretty and sexy, just hanging out and grooving together.

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I was very heartened by an item on wonderful Radio 4 this morning about Groovy Old Men. It seems there’s a new section of the population with a more positive, upbeat and altogether more joyful attitude than Grumpy Old Men. Suits me. Something to aspire to.

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Another item on R4 concerned memories of one’s very first Blues Moment - the first time you hear some low-down, grooving and grab-you blues and you just go - “WHAT on earth is THAT?!”

With me it was maybe “Boom Boom” by John Lee Hooker, and playing live it was maybe the original Fleetwood Mac blues band with Peter Green, or one of John Mayall’s mid-sixties bands with either Eric Clapton or Peter Green on guitar - not that Mayall ever name-checked his hired hands in those days. Not that I even cared who they were, these incredibly gifted young axemen. I was happy just to be blown away by music that clearly came from another planet to the one I’d always known.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mayall
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QeOKj5XdVAE&feature=related The Supernatural, with Peter Green on guitar, my all-time favourite blues instrumental.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mLVAoFal7vA&feature=related Contemporary version of The Supernatural by Peter Green’s current band, The Splinter group.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MWKfoP_LDlE&feature=related The Gary Moore version.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nFh3hK6Cy9c All Your Love - Mayall’s Bluesbreakers - a live performance on video.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmh0AcrKczc&feature=related Steppin’ Out - Mayall and Clapton.

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But let’s face it - it hardly seems to be right and proper to be going on about markets and music when what’s been happening in the world is so mind-numbingly horrendous and appalling. The money markets and the whacky world of banks and high finance are the focus of everyone’s attention, and somehow more terrifying than the Black Plague, Aids and Bird Flu put together.

And what can Oxzen possibly say about all of that? All one can do is pay attention, try to understand what the fuck is going on, and try to imagine the possible consequences, especially for the poor, the sick and the needy. Depending on which pundit you listen to the world is facing Armageddon and going to hell on a handcart, and the very foundations of our so-called civilisation are crumbling and collapsing.

On the other hand, “When you got nothing you got nothing to lose”, as His Bobness sang, all those years ago. The hardest hit will surely be the wretched souls who’ve been enticed and seduced into buying property and shares they can barely afford, who will just have to stand and stare incredulously as their hard-earned savings and investments shrivel and disappear.

The smart rich, meanwhile, including the fat cats, financiers and bankers whose greed and lack of scruples brought about this situation in the first place, will have made damn sure that their bonuses and profits are squirreled safely away in foreign vaults and tax havens. And now, thanks to the government, thanks to us, they’re not even going to lose their jobs, their directorships, their property portfolios, their fat-cat lifestyles.

Out and about at the weekend there was still no sign of any marching, charging people; no barricades, no mobs looking to lynch the tycoons and the bankers from the nearest lamp-post.
Well there’s a very big temptation to say, I FUCKING TOLD YOU that capitalism is inherently nasty, brutish, corrupt, stupid, immoral and destructive. Thatcher, Keith Joseph, the Friedmanites, the Monetarists, the Freemarketeers, the Globalisers, the Big-Bangers, the Deregulators and the Neo-Conservatives were, and are, all mad, deluded or downright lying scumbags. And now you’re gonna believe us.

But what’s actually going to HAPPEN? Exciting, innit?

Not.
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All I can say about it is that you must read two books, one old and one new, to get some perspective on what we might call Selfish Capitalism, to use Oliver James‘ expression: James’ ‘Affluenza’, and ‘The State We’re In’, by Will Hutton. And it’s very interesting how much in demand these guys suddenly are, as commentators on the current craziness. See below for extracts.

Hutton wrote ‘The State We’re In’ back in 1995, and how much attention did Blair and New Label pay it? Er, none. And yet it describes precisely how unregulated capitalism has been fucking up the entire planet. Newrotic Labour have so much to answer for. The bastards. Have they ever suggested that unregulated capitalism was corrupt and evil? Have they ever argued for a proper world-wide system of regulation, even? No. Never. Not ever.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2006/jan/01/healthandwellbeing.features

It’s very interesting how the Right has laid into James in book reviews, etc. Quite predictably. The guy was very brave to have launched such a wholesale critique of bourgeois attitudes and lifestyles, and of course the people he’s talking about as being sick don’t like it. Hence their rage and bile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Hutton
http://www.rcgfrfi.easynet.co.uk/marxism/articles/f124-swi.htm

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And finally . . . The best and funniest bit of the farcical England v Kazakstan game last week was Capello’s reaction to the ludicrous punt made by Ashley Cole to gift Kstan their goal. The manager was totally gone in rage, incredulity and frustration! He did a hilarious little dash from touchline to bench, with his little fists clenched and his face contorted. Well Fab - you should have taken note of Oxzen’s advice in the last blog, and I quote:

“Ashley Cole used to be capable of making speedy, timely and skillful forward breaks, but he’s become erratic and considerably slower in thought and action, probably because he’s distracted and under-motivated a lot of the time. I’d drop him for good.”

Please, please Fabio - do it now.

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From ‘Affluenza’

“My focus is on why we are so fucked up, not with dangling a false promise of the possibility of happiness. In short, my new theory is that the nasty form of political economy that I call Selfish Capitalism caused an epidemic of the Affluenza Virus, accounting for much of the increase in distress since the 1970s. (pages xvii and xviii)

By Selfish Capitalism I mean four basic things. The first is that the success of businesses is judged almost exclusively by their current share price. [!] The second is the strong drive to privatise public utilities, such as water, gas and electricity, or, in the case of America, to keep them in private hands. The third is that there should be as little regulation of business as possible, with taxation for the rich and very rich so limited that whether to contribute becomes almost a matter of choice. The fourth is the conviction that consumption and market forces can meet human needs of almost every kind. America is the apotheosis of Selfish Capitalism, Denmark the nearest thing to its Unselfish opposite. (page xviii)

My main point is that the extent to which a developed nation is Selfish capitalist and infected by Affluenza is crucial to the well-being of its inhabitants. (page xx)

I contend that most emotional distress is best understood as a rational response to sick societies. Change those societies, and we will all be less distressed. (page xx)

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From ‘The State We’re In’

I do not accept that inequality, social distress, centralisation of government, privatisation of the public realm, abandonment of society to the market and enfeeblement of Britain’s civic culture are the necessary downpayment for a better tomorrow - or that the future promises to be as rosy as the Right foretells. More of the same promises to be nothing but more of the same, with a weakening of the ties that bind the country together, a steady deterioration in the underlying economy, and a delegitimation of our political system. (page xii)

A reappraisal of Britain’s financial system, the exercise of ownership and control in Britain’s companies, and their pattern of decision-making is overdue - for the sake of every form of British business. (page xviii)

[It was overdue in 1995 when he wrote this, or even in 1945, and it’s FUCKING overdue now!]

Social inclusion, a well-functioning democracy and a high-investing business system supported by a long-termist financial sector are not optional extras; they are interdependent and fundamental necessities. We should not rest until we have them. (page xxv)

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Layer 74 Be Strong, Education and Affluenza

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The peace of the riverside café was broken by a sudden outburst over in the corner.

“Be strong”, is what she kept saying to her pathetic little scrap of a 5 year old, as he wept and moaned, needing her comfort and attention. Her friend and her friend’s little daughter looked on, somewhat bemused, somewhat embarrassed. The child was an obvious poser, an attention-seeker. His reaction to something quite minor was clearly borderline hysterical.

Most parents would have said either ‘calm down’ or ‘be quiet’, but this lispy blond mum in a pink sweater and blue jeans kept saying, as she put her arm around him and patted his little blond head, “Be strong”.

I have never, ever, heard a parent speak like this to a child. Strong? What’s that about? What strength? What kind of message is that? He's a pathetic, weak, small child!

Now in terms of Transactional Analysis, “Be Strong” is one of the 5 controlling “scripts” that bedevil and subvert people’s lives - people who then spend years acting according to the command of some distant voice they heard long ago, following an instruction that they continue to try to carry out for the rest of their lives. To their own considerable cost.

The others are:

Be Perfect
Hurry Up
Please Me
Try Hard

I’ve had many a chat with people - adults and children - whom I’ve worked with, trying to persuade them to slow down, please themselves, stop trying to be so bloody perfect, to work less hard and allow themselves to show some element of what they would see as weakness.

It’s important to recognise that we have these scripts located within ourselves, unconsciously driving and directing our lives, and to understand the harm we do to ourselves when we live according to their internalised dictats. We should also understand what we need to do in order to liberate ourselves from them, for our own sakes, as soon as we can.

It’s often helpful to assume we’ve adopted and internalised two or three of them, unbeknownst to ourselves, and try to assess which ones. We can then get to work on getting rid of them.

Which does NOT mean that we should NEVER try hard, hurry up, be strong, please others, or aspire to doing something perfectly, even if BEING perfect seems pretty unreasonable.

There’s nothing wrong with trying hard when we want to achieve something for ourselves, but there’s a lot wrong with forever aiming to show other people how incredibly industrious, tireless, determined and aspirational we think we should be.

Likewise, there’s nothing wrong with hurrying up when something’s important to YOU, but everything wrong with living life at a relentlessly frantic pace, and aiming to always keep pace with someone else’s expectations.

It’s good to want to please someone when the urge comes from within yourself, but very bad to be forever trying to impress and please others in order to gain their approval, receive rewards, etc. It’s also bad to expect other people to always be aiming to please YOU.

To be forever thinking you should be perfect (in your eyes and other people's), and always be ‘strong’ (i.e. not weak; completely self-sufficient), can only lead to a life of dissatisfaction and probably mental and emotional illness. Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to improve ourselves in various ways, or that we shouldn’t do our best to overcome weaknesses of various sorts. It’s the absolutes that are the killers.

All of this is an argument for balance and integration, for inclusion of positive and negative, which we all contain - of yin and yang, as eastern philosophy would have it.

These are interesting fields for further study - Transactional Analysis and eastern philosophy. Useful starting points might be Zen, Taoism and Confucianism.

But why were these kids in the café not in school, anyway? The whole city was supposed to have started the Autumn term. Ah yes, of course - but not the private schools, which clearly these two kids would have attended. Be stwong darling - it’s almost time for school to begin. And what an awful lot he’s already learned from his sweet, devoted mother.

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Affluenza

In Oliver James’s excellent book he describes the phenomenon of Affluenza - its causes, symptoms and antidotes. For various reasons this isn't the right place to detail what these are, but halfway through the book he has a chapter called “Meet Your Children’s Needs [Not Those of Little Adults]”, and another called “Educate Your Children [Don’t Brainwash Them]”.

Surprisingly he doesn’t mention Transactional Analysis, but he does describe very well the millions of children who desperately strive to Be Perfect, and then become depressed, disillusioned and stressed when they don’t get 100% and straight A’s in exams.

They’ve adopted their parents’ values and scripts, but very often also the norms and values of over-aspirational and competitive peer groups, especially the girls.

“The scientific evidence shows that the methods employed for the transmission of values from parent to child . . . are a prescription for Affluenza. Parents do it in two main ways. A controlling pattern uses rewards, threats, deadlines and hectoring words, pressuring them to think, feel and behave in conformity with parental dictates. Love is conditional upon achievement of goals laid down by the parent - there is no love for the child who does not achieve them. By contrast, supportive care takes the child’s perspective, minimizing pressure and encouraging the child to find out for itself what it wants: self-determination by the child is valued.”

“The child does not realise the demand [i.e. the ‘script’] has been introjected because the process by which the parental dictate has become the child’s compulsion has been going on from before it had words with which to question or analyse it.”

“Supportive nurture has a completely different outcome. In place of pressure, there has been affection and encouragement for what the child wants, and into its own chosen mix the child has welcomed some of what the parent wants. For self-regulation, it has ‘identified’ with them, rather than introjected - made an active choice. . . If this child is a hard worker and high achiever, it has chosen to be so of its own accord; its self-esteem does not depend upon how it is ranked against other pupils, or on living up to parents’ or teachers’ standards.”

Or living according to Government or Local Authority ‘Standards Agendas’ for that matter.

“The inner compulsion driven by introjection is absent, as is the fluctuating and fragile self-esteem, because nothing is contingent on the performance of externally provided goals. The child may be upset if it does not live up to its own standards, but at least they are its own, not someone else’s.”

“Experience will have taught them that the price of love is success, starting with school performance, and usually involving an equation between money and exam success, as in ‘work hard to be able to get a good job and earn a good salary’. The kind of parents who are controlling are . . . likely to have Virus values themselves and to seek to pass them on to their children. If the family is living in a Virus-stricken society, those values will be even more likely to be inculcated in a people-pleasing child who strives to conform to them.”

To combat all of this, James suggests the following 'vaccines':

1. Disentangle your parents’ values from your own.
2. Identify introjected values.
3. Scrutinise how you were persuaded by your parents to accede to their wishes.
4. Colonise your inherited values.

Under this 4th heading he writes:

“ Having disentangled what you really care about from what you were forced to value, you are then in a position to choose. (e.g. Realising that it’s unimportant whether you replace your car with a brand new one, or keeping the house spotlessly clean.) The key is to start work on finding out what really matters to you, not your parents [or ‘society’], and colonise for yourself.”

Chapter 8, Educate Your Children (Don’t Brainwash Them), begins with this paragraph:

“In most of the developed world today, you learn in order to earn. Especially in English-speaking nations, education has been hijacked by business. The goal is to create good little producers and consumers, whereas it should be an enquiring mind, capable of both scholarship and a playful, self-determined and emotionally productive life. The result is Virus distress.”

“Wherever you look in the English-speaking world, a new obsession with exam performance is to be seen. Compared with previous generations, schoolchildren are menaced from ever-younger ages by assessment.”

“The yoking of the wagon of education to business and to money-making, once limited to America, is now found throughout the English-speaking world. . . . The legislation for the new city academies, personally promoted by Tony Blair, effectively permits wealthy individuals to run state schools, often with strongly Selfish Capitalist values and sometimes tied to strong religious convictions. The curriculum of the State system is being increasingly divested of subjects which will not contribute to the economy . . .”

“The key message is that the purpose of education is not to find out what has intrinsic interest for you, but to work hard at school for long-term financial reward. . . . [This] is a prescription for the absence of flow during work, for low self-esteem and a host of other problems. Ironically, on top of that it is death to the capacity to think imaginatively - the foundation of our economic future if the ‘skills economy’ is as important as politicians are always telling us it is.”

By contrast Danish children are "by far the most positive about going to school, and the least likely to be in a hurry to leave".

And the reason? They don’t regard school as something that gets in the way of their “real” lives, and they don’t have teachers who pressurise them to “work hard”.

“The official rhetoric is that education is for creating good citizens rather than economic performance, very different to that of other countries.”

Certainly very different to England, where measurable test performance is all, and almost nobody has cared very much whether children become “good citizens”, whether they have high degrees of social and emotional intelligence, whether they espouse decent values that enhance everyone’s wellbeing, including their own, and whether they have any proper spiritual development or intelligence. The prevalence of teenage gangs and knife crime is an indicator of how well our schools have been developing citizenship and emotional intelligence.

“This rhetoric is reflected in the [Danish] pupils’ emphasis on learning to function well as part of a group. The curriculum is crafted to encourage them to find subjects that interest them and to be pursued in ways that also achieve this. In terms of fostering intrinsic rather than Virus motivation, this ought to result in confident, creative and autonomous children.”

Isn’t it enough to make you want to weep that our children’s education isn’t being driven by the same set of values and assumptions? If not, just think how you and your family and friends would feel if it was your child who was the target and victim of teenage thugs and killers, who think that it's cool or even necessary to carry a knife, who think that it's essential to punch, kick and stab anyone who shows you 'disrespect' or dares to enter 'your' territory.

“The Danish system’s strength is in its emphasis on emotional literacy. Social skills are very valued, recognizing emotions as important.”

“The Danish approach offers an important vaccine which also serves them well economically. In this respect, like the other Scandinavian countries, they are imaginative and innovative. The grinding obsession of parents and government in [most other] developed nations with children’s exam performances is unjustified on economic grounds, and absolutely indefensible in terms of emotional wellbeing.”

“Modern education has been sold under a false prospectus containing three untruths. The first is that it will bring meritocracy, which it has not; and the pretence of it, requiring absurdly long hours devoted to passing mind-sapping, pathology-inducing exams, is hugely harmful to our children’s well-being. The second is that by enabling people to rise up the system, it will confer wellbeing, which it does not. The third is that exam results are crucial for our individual and national prosperity, and that is simply not true.”

“The truth is that in all the countries I visited, except Denmark, education is used mercilessly to put the needs of employers and economic growth ahead of those of children and emotional well-being.”

“The education systems of the English-speaking countries, which puport to be giving children opportunities to become richer than their parents, are actively hostile to the flourishing of creativity and emotional development.”

“Blair presented education as increasing ‘opportunity’ and encouraging ‘aspiration’. What is really meant by these words is ‘to make money, become as rich and famous as the folk on TV’, not to have the intrinsic satisfaction of identifying and pursuing one’s authentic interests, which is the goal of Danish education.”

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My recommendation is that everyone should read this important, stimulating, original and enlightening book - available in Vermillion paperback for a mere £8.99. It’s a key sociological, psychological and philosophical text, but is also clear, engaging, and jargon-free.

As Will Self said in his review, “Oliver James is our foremost chronicler of what ails us. Affluenza should be mandatory reading for everyone, but especially those in politics, business and the media who are intent on upping our society’s dosage of toxic affluence”.
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