Layer 508 . . . Happiness, Desert Island Discs, Kirsty Young, Contentment, Intelligences, Philosophy, de Botton and Zen

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It's Desert Island Discs Weekend. Hurrah!

Castaway: 70 Years of Desert Island Discs

Kirsty Young tells the story of the long-running programme as it celebrates its 70th anniversary and investigates what has made it such an enduring part of the radio schedule.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b8wrw

Why Desert Island Discs is still in the groove

Who are the classic radio show's most colourful castaways of the past 70 years?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9044972/Why-Desert-Island-Discs-is-still-in-the-groove.html

As part of the 70th birthday celebrations, we are all asked to choose our own favourite eight discs – results will be broadcast on BBC national and local radio tomorrow after the 70th anniversary Desert Island Discs at 11.15am on Radio 4. Will national tastes have altered yet again? Will Ralph Vaughan Williams have been demoted? We will soon find out.

Is Kirsty Young the most intelligent and attractive woman in the UK? If not, then who is? And we're not just talking intellect here. Sense of humour and sense of the ridiculous are also key.

I don't want my children to be happy just to be content and have self worth, says Kirsty Young

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9033222/I-dont-want-my-children-to-be-happy-just-to-be-content-and-have-self-worth-says-Kirsty-Young.html

The presenter of Desert Island Discs said that "life is complicated" and that her children will be "bloody lucky" if they even glimpse true happiness.

The 43-year-old, who has two daughters and two stepchildren, was speaking as the BBC radio programme, the world's longest running, celebrated its 70th year.

So what does Kirsty Young mean by 'being content'?

The presenter of Desert Island Discs has caused a stir by saying she doesn’t want her children to be happy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/9035926/So-what-does-Kirsty-Young-mean-by-being-content.html

Young knows the value of not having it too easy. Her Scottish childhood was tough; her parents divorced, there wasn’t a great deal of money, and she has in the past paid tribute to her mother for instilling in her the ambition to do better for herself.

Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, political biographer and co-founder of the campaigning group Action on Happiness, was horrified by her comments. “She is totally and profoundly wrong,” he says. “I feel sorry for her children. Every parent should want their child to be happy more than anything else in life, to achieve that sense of deep fulfilment, that they are experiencing life to the full.”

Why is Seldon so obtuse? He's talking here about being fulfilled, and experiencing life to the full. Is that all there is to happiness? Is it possible to feel fulfilled and to 'experience life to the full' ALL of the time? Is there no place in life for sadness and melancholy? Can you experience happiness whilst NOT 'experiencing life to the full'.

Seldon is in the vanguard of those credited with promoting a “happiness agenda” in government circles. His school was the first in the country to offer pupils lessons in happiness. “It is all about psychological health,” he explains, “about connectedness and engagement, about relationships, doing good, appreciating nature and art. Happiness underpins them all. At a time when we are experiencing so much mental illness, teaching youngsters about happiness enables them to see what they can be and to strive for it.” In other words, his take on happiness may mean exactly the same as what Kirsty Young labels contentment.

Doh! Lessons in happiness indeed! He's talking about enabling young people to develop all of their intelligences - personal, social, emotional, spiritual, etc. Happiness is then a by-product of all-round development and reaching one's full potential as a human being. Happiness cannot UNDERPIN this process. How the hell do you acquire happiness in the first place - especially if you're living in dire circumstances? Like in certain public schools.

Happiness doesn't cause you or enable you to develop good relationships, do good to others, appreciate nature and art, etc. Happiness is a by-product of these things.

Seldon's already been told these things - so why doesn't he listen? Especially when he agreed with those of us who were telling him that you can't actually teach young people to be happy!

This article goes on to say,

The emphasis on happiness also worries writer and mother of four Sarah Johnson. “It all sounds so easy,” says the author of The Christian Parents’ Toolkit and Parents on Parenting. “Happiness is very much a state I associated with childhood, all that living in the moment, immediacy and enjoyment. But I cannot say that, as they have grown up towards adulthood, what I have wanted most for my children is for them to be happy, over and above everything else, because that carries with it for me the implication that their lives should be about gratifying their immediate desires. As a goal in life that way only unhappiness lies.”

Seldon is keen, though, to draw a distinction between happiness and pleasure. “Pleasure is when you only think about yourself. It is always about having material satisfaction – good food, another body next to you, a smart car, and it is time-specific. It doesn’t last. But in the 10 routes to happiness that Action for Happiness has identified, serving others and volunteering is among the highest. Happiness has a spiritual value,” he stresses, “with a small s.”

The same message is promoted by Alain de Botton in his new book, Religion for Atheists. The great faiths, he suggests, have always managed to make their followers happy, so why shouldn’t atheists do the same by establishing their own “temples of tenderness”?

But de Botton is misrepresenting religion, says Mark Vernon, the author of Wellbeing and a former Anglican priest. “Religions aren’t keen on the word happiness. It is there in what Christianity means when it uses terms like 'blessed’, but it also understands how complicated it can be. In modern terms, happiness tends to describe only if you are up or down, and my instinct would be to forget it as thin and shallow if you want to talk about spirituality.”

Which brings us back to the attraction of contentment felt by Kirsty Young and others.

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Zen

Alain de Botton is annoying. He talked this morning on Radio 4 about Zen Buddhism and about religion as though they're one and the same thing. They're NOT. There is no God and no worship in Zen Buddhism, which is a philosophy and a method of developing higher levels of spiritual intelligence. De Botton is a clever man and a philosopher, and he ought to know better.

Saturday Live - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgj4

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Layer 505 . . . Old Ideas, New Album, Cohen, Justice, Art, Education and Ecuador

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Terrific piece on Leonard Cohen in today's G2.

Sombre prophet, mordant wisecracker, repentant cad: Leonard Cohen is back with a great new album, Old Ideas – and more wit and wisdom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/19/leonard-cohen

These days, Cohen rations his one-on-one interviews with the utmost austerity, hence this press conference to promote his 12th album, Old Ideas, a characteristically intimate reflection on love, death, suffering and forgiveness. After the playback he answers questions. He was always funnier than he was given credit for; now he has honed his deadpan to such perfection that every questioner becomes the straight man in a double act. Claudia from Portugal wants him to explain the humour behind his image as a lady's man. "Well, for me to be a lady's man at this point requires a great deal of humour," he replies. Steve from Denmark wonders what Cohen will be in his next life. "I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog." Erik, also from Denmark, asks if he has come to terms with death. "I've come to the conclusion, reluctantly, that I am going to die," he responds. "So naturally those questions arise and are addressed. But, you know, I like to do it with a beat."

He had lived, and this gave his elaborate, enigmatic songs a grave authority to younger listeners who sensed that he was privy to mysteries that they could only guess at. He was neither the best singer, the best musician nor the best-looking man around, but he had the charisma and the words, and the eroticised intelligence. Perhaps because his style owed more to French chansonniers and Jewish cantors than American folk, he was always more loved in Europe than north America. An early write-up in folk gazette Sing Out! remarked: "No comparison can be drawn between Leonard Cohen and any other phenomenon."

In 1993, resurgent and well-loved but in a dark frame of mind, Cohen disappeared from the public gaze. He spent the next six years in a monastery on Mount Baldy, California, studying with his old friend and Zen master Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, whom he calls Roshi and who is now a resilient 104 years old. "This old teacher never speaks about religion," Cohen tells the Paris audience. "There's no dogma, there's no prayerful worship, there's no address to a deity. It's just a commitment to living in a community."

When he came down from the mountain his lifelong depression had finally lifted. "When I speak of depression," he says carefully, "I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse. I'm happy to report that, by imperceptible degrees and by the grace of good teachers and good luck, that depression slowly dissolved and has never returned with the same ferocity that prevailed for most of my life." He thinks it might just be down to old age. "I read somewhere that as you grow older certain brain cells die that are associated with anxiety so it doesn't really matter how much you apply yourself to the disciplines. You're going to start feeling a lot better or a lot worse depending on the condition of your neurons."

In Paris, after the press conference, I'm discreetly ushered into a back room for a rare interview alone with Cohen. Up close, he's a calming presence, old world courtesy mingled with Zen, and his smoke-blackened husk of a voice is as reassuring as a lullaby. I ask him if he wishes the long and painful process of writing his songs would come more easily.

"Well, you know, we're talking in a world where guys go down into the mines, chewing coca and spending all day in backbreaking labour. We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?"

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Excellent front page on the Guardian today. Justice!

How News Group hid the phone-hacking scandal

Judge criticises Murdoch empire as it agrees aggravated damages for 37 victims of News of the World

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/19/news-group-phone-hacking-scandal

A high court judge said the Murdoch-owned company behind the News of the World had made "an admission of sorts" that it engaged in a deliberate cover-up of evidence relating to phone hacking, on the day that the publisher paid an estimated seven figures in damages to settle 37 phone-hacking claims brought by public figures ranging from Jude Law to John Prescott.

Mr Justice Vos, the judge presiding over the hacking cases, told News Group Newspapers (NGN) he had seen evidence which raised "compelling questions about whether you concealed, told lies, actively tried to get off scot free".

The judge read out a section from the confidential court papers detailing the cover-up allegations made by hacking victims against the company's executives and directors. It included the charge that the company "put out public statements that it knew to be false", that it had "deliberately deceived the police" and had destroyed evidence of wrongdoing including "a very substantial number of emails" as well as computers.

Mark Thomson, of law firm Atkins Thomson, said: "After years of denials and cover-up, News Group Newspapers has finally admitted the depth and scale of the unlawful activities of many of their journalists at the News of the World and the culture of illegal conduct at their paper."

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Should art really be for its own sake alone?

If art museums are the new churches, perhaps they should end the veneration of ambiguity and start serving our inner needs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/20/art-museums-churches

by Alain de Botton

Try to imagine what would happen if modern secular museums took the example of churches more seriously. What if they too decided that art had a specific purpose – to make us a bit more sane, or a little bit wiser and kinder – and tried to use the art in their possession to prompt us to be so? Perhaps art shouldn't be "for art's sake", one of the most misunderstood, unambitious and sterile of all aesthetic slogans: why couldn't art be, as it was in religious eras, more explicitly for something?

Modern art museums typically lead us into galleries set out under headings such as "the 19th century" and "the Northern Italian School", which reflect the academic traditions in which their curators have been educated. A more fertile indexing system might group together artworks from across genres and eras according to our inner needs. A walk through a museum of art should amount to a structured encounter with a few of the things that are easiest for us to forget and most essential and life-enhancing to remember.

The challenge is to rewrite the agendas for our art museums so that collections can begin to serve the needs of psychology as effectively as, for centuries, they served those of theology. Curators should attempt to put aside their deep-seated fears of instrumentalism and once in a while co-opt works of art to an ambition of helping us to get through life. Only then would museums be able to claim that they had properly fulfilled the excellent but as yet elusive ambition of in part becoming substitutes for churches in a rapidly secularising society.

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Jayati Ghosh is a brilliant economist and an excellent writer:

Could Ecuador be the most radical and exciting place on Earth?

A decade ago, Ecuador was a banana republic, an economic basket case. Today, it has much to teach the rest of the world

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/19/ecuador-radical-exciting-place

Ecuador must be one of the most exciting places on Earth right now, in terms of working towards a new development paradigm. It shows how much can be achieved with political will, even in uncertain economic times.

A major turning point came with the election of the economist Rafael Correa as president. After taking over in January 2007, his government ushered in a series of changes, based on a new constitution (the country's 20th, approved in 2008) that was itself mandated by a popular referendum. A hallmark of the changes that have occurred since then is that major policies have first been put through the referendum process. This has given the government the political ability to take on major vested interests and powerful lobbies.

The government is now the most stable in recent times and will soon become the longest serving in Ecuador's tumultuous history. The president's approval ratings are well over 70%. All this is due to the reorientation of the government's approach, made possible by a constitution remarkable for its recognition of human rights and the rights of nature, and its acceptance of plurality and cultural diversity.

Consider just some economic changes brought about in the past four years, beginning with the renegotiation of oil contracts with multinational companies.

Increased government revenues were put to good use in infrastructure investment and social spending. Ecuador now has the highest proportion of public investment to GDP (10%) in Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition, social spending has doubled since 2006. This has enabled real progress towards the constitutional goals of free education at all levels, and access to free healthcare for all citizens. Significant increases in public housing have followed the constitution's affirmation of the right of all citizens to dignified housing with proper amenities.

There are numerous other measures: expanding direct public employment; increasing minimum wages and legally enforcing social security provision for all workers; diversifying the economy to reduce dependence on oil exports, and diversifying trading partners to reduce dependence on the US; enlarging public banking operations to reach more small and medium entrepreneurs; auditing external debt to reduce debt service payments; and abandoning unfair bilateral investment agreements. Other efforts include reform of the justice system.

All this may sound too good to be true, and certainly the process of transformation has only just begun. There are bound to be conflicts with those whose profits and power are threatened, as well as other hurdles along the way. But for those who believe that we are not condemned to the gloomy status quo, and that societies can do things differently, what is happening in Ecuador provides inspiration and even guidance. The rest of the world has much to learn from this ongoing radical experiment.

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Layer 39 The Consolations of Philosophy

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Life In A Box

My cat lives in a box:
These days she never rocks
Or rolls on grassy knolls;
Though she’ll sometimes stroll
When the sun is shining
But soon starts pining
For life in her box.

These days I live in a box:
Protected by doorlocks,
Avoiding the pain,
All the slings, arrows and rocks,
The shocks and the wounds
Of outrageous fortune
Outside my box.

My cat and me:
We see things similarly,
We prefer lives of simplicity,
Predictability and pleasure - you see
Epicureans are we:
Happy and free
Enjoying lives in a box.

February 2008


Hamlet III 1

To be, or not to be:
That is the question -
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune . . .

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong . . . ?

Suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is something I’ve thought a lot about these past 12months. Sooner or later I’ll make an effort to write something about them, and about the annus miserablis of 2007.

Epicurus

Alain de Botton’s “The Consolations of Philosophy” is a terrific book, and was made into an excellent TV series. And speaking of rocking and rolling, which I’m still very keen on, someone says on the back cover of TCOP, “No doubt about it, philosophy is the new rock and roll”. Really?
OK. Let’s rock.

The book begins with the death of Socrates, put to death by the citizens of Athens for failing to worship the gods, for introducing religious novelties, and for corrupting the young men of Athens. And to think that we reckon WE live in intolerant times.

He could have pleaded for his life and promised to change his ways, of course, but he calmly told the jury, “I shall never stop practising philosophy, and exhorting you, and elucidating the truth for everyone I meet.” And so he died for his beliefs and his principles. What a guy.

Now as it happens, I was born on a day that, according to a certain book I own, is The Day of Glaring Truth. This apparently means that people born on this day see themselves as representing a cause, and as such are idealists, no matter how negative the material they are revealing.

Little bit of self-revelation there. “They are not schooled or scholarly trained individuals but rather people who have learned through the hard lessons of experience. They can assume scholarly status through their own form of thorough study, and in their field they can come to be regarded as experts. It is usually difficult to disagree with their arguments since they are able to amass such an impressive body of knowledge to back up what they say.”

Their symbol is The Empress, who represents creative intelligence, and embodies mankind's dreams, hopes and aspirations. Strengths - curious and knowledgeable. Weaknesses - judgemental and accusatory.

Oh yes, j'accuse. I might change the name of my blog to The Glaring Truth.

However, I come to bury Socrates, not to praise him. What I’m interested in here is Epicureanism. And wisdom. Philo = love. Sophia = wisdom. And I'm interested in happiness. And the meaning of life.

Epicurus emphasised the importance of sensual pleasure. “Pleasure is the beginning and the goal of a happy life. I don’t know how I shall conceive of the good if I take away the pleasures of taste, if I take away sexual pleasure, if I take away the pleasure of hearing, if I take away the sweet emotions that are caused by the sight of beautiful forms.”

By ‘emotions’ I believe he was really talking about awe and wonder, and what Zen calls satori, and talking about how we can access metaphysical, spiritual, sublime revelation, and experience satori, by using all our senses.

In my view the use of our physical senses can transport us into metaphysical realms, and the greatest happiness and feelings of well-being can arise from ‘ordinary’ sensual experiences. Perhaps even looking contemplatively at a photograph, for example, let alone a great painting. Awe and wonder.

According to TCOP, at the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that most of us are as bad at intuitively answering the question “What will make me happy?” as “What will make me healthy?” It seems the task of philosophy, according to Epicurus, is to help us interpret our indistinct pulses of distress and desire and thereby save us from mistaken schemes for happiness.

Epicurus lived in a simple house a few miles from the centre of Athens, ate simple food, drank water rather than wine, and was happy with a dinner of bread, vegetables and a handful of olives. He had come to some striking conclusions, says TCOP, about what actually made life pleasurable. The essential ingredients may be elusive, but they’re not very expensive.

1. Friendship.

His house was essentially a commune, with common rooms for meals and conversations. Maybe he was the first commune-ist.

TCOP says the household of Epicurus resembled a large family, but without sullenness or sense of confinement, only sympathy and gentleness.

“In small comments, many of them teasing, our friends reveal they know our foibles and accept them, and so, in turn, accept we have a place in the world,” says de Botton.

“True friends do not evaluate us according to worldly criteria, it is the core self they are interested in; like ideal parents their love for us remains unaffected by our appearance or position in the social hierarchy, and so we have no qualms in dressing in old clothes or revealing we have made little money this year.”

A handful of true friends can deliver the love and respect that even a fortune may not.

2. Freedom

TCOP says “Epicurus and his friends made a second radical innovation. In order not to have to work for people they didn’t like, and answer to potentially humiliating whims, they removed themselves from employment in the commercial world of Athens. (‘We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday affairs and politics.’) They began what could best have been described as a commune, accepting a simpler way of life in exchange for independence. They would have less money but would never again have to follow the commands of odious superiors.”

They bought an allotment near their house, just outside the old Dipylon gate, and grew a range of vegetables. “Their diet was neither luxurious nor abundant, but it was flavoursome and nutritious,” says TCOP. Epicurus said, ‘The wise man chooses not the greatest quantity of food but the most pleasant.’

“Simplicity did not affect the friends’ sense of status because, by distancing themselves from the values of Athens, they had ceased to judge themselves on a material basis. There was no need to be embarrassed by bare walls, and no benefit in showing off gold. Among a group of friends living outside the political and economic centre of the city, there was - in the financial sense - nothing to prove.”

3. Thought

“There are few better remedies for anxiety than thought. In writing a problem down or airing it in conversation we let its essential aspects emerge. And by knowing its character, we remove, if not the problem itself, then its secondary, aggravating characteristics: confusion, displacement, surprise.”

De Botton says there was much encouragement to think in the Garden, as Epicurus’s community became known. Many of the friends were writers. “There must have been unbroken opportunities to examine problems with people as intelligent as they were sympathetic.”

They were especially concerned to analyse their anxieties about money, illness, death and the supernatural. The spiritual aspect of life seems to have been a key issue. Epicurus argued that there is nothing but oblivion after death, and that ‘what is no trouble when it arrives is an idle worry in anticipation’. It’s senseless to worry about a state one will never experience. “There is nothing dreadful in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.”

Wealth in itself should not make people miserable. “But the crux of Epicurus’s argument is that if we have money without friends, without freedom and an analysed life, we will never be truly happy. And if we have them, but are missing the fortune, we will never be unhappy.”

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Social injustice and economic turmoil may deny us prosperity, but this may be foregone without great regrets if we have the things that are essential for happiness.

Epicurus divided our needs into three categories.

a ) Natural and Necessary.

Friends . . . Freedom . . . Thought

Food . . . Shelter . . . Clothes

b) Natural but Unnecessary

Grand house . . . Private baths . . . Banquets

Servants . . . Meat . . . Fish

c) Neither Natural nor Necessary

Fame . . . Power

Happiness is thus dependent on some complex psychological goods, but relatively independent of material ones. These ideas are provocative for those who equate happiness with the fruition of grand financial schemes, and misery with a modest income.

“Money’s capacity to deliver happiness is already present in small salaries and will not rise with the largest. We will not cease being happy with a greater outlay, but we will not, Epicurus insisted, surpass levels of happiness already available to those on a limited income.”

To illustrate this point de Botton suggests we look at the need, or otherwise, of renting an expensive villa for holidays. It’s possible to spend money on a villa and still not be happy, especially if we feel isolated and friendless. Whereas we can be happy in a tent if we’re with someone we love and feel appreciated by.

True needs may seem very different from confused initial desires. “The possession of the greatest riches does not resolve the agitation of the soul nor give birth to remarkable joy.”

De Botton says, “Objects mimic in a material dimension what we require in a psychological one”.

He also says, “Our weak understanding of our needs is aggravated by what Epicurus termed the ‘idle opinions’ of those around us, which do not reflect the natural hierarchy of our needs, emphasising luxury and riches, seldom friendship, freedom and thought. It is in the interests of commercial enterprises to skew the hierarchy of our needs, to promote a material vision of the good and downplay an unsaleable one. And the way we’re enticed is through the sly association of superfluous objects with our other, forgotten needs.”

A jeep instead of freedom. A house instead of friendship. A swimming pool instead of thought and conversation.

De Botton points out that we receive little encouragement to attend to modest gratifications - playing with a child, conversations with a friend, an afternoon in the sun, cheese on fresh bread.
Lucretius wrote verse extolling the virtues of simplicity and inexpensive things.

“People may recline in company on soft grass by a running stream under the branches of a tall tree and refresh their bodies pleasurably at small expense. Better still if the weather smiles on them, and the season of the year stipples the green grass with flowers.”

In sum, we need a home (“a hut”); friends; to avoid superiors, patronisation, infighting and competition; we need time to think and mediatate and enjoy conversations; basic clothing; a sense of humour and spontaneity.

All of these are seen as requirements for Zen living as well.

De Botton concludes: “Happiness may be difficult to attain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.”

How come I never heard about Epicurus, let alone Zen, when I was in secondary school? And how come these philosophies are not required study in the National Curriculum?

The Consolations of Philosophy. Penguin 2001.

http://www.alaindebotton.com/philosophy.asp


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The full Shakespeare text:

Hamlet III, 1

To be, or not to be:
That is the question -
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
To die: to sleep;
No more: and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep; perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil;
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong . . . ?