On The Day That Thatcher Died . . . An Epitaph of Tweets

On the day that Thatcher died there were millions of tweets pouring into cyberspace. This selection of them is an archive for anyone who didn't really understand the feelings of the majority of people in Britain about Thatcher.

How dare politicians tell us we must respect Mrs Thatcher - she ruined our society - she was as loathed as Saddam Hussein, she really was. -- Julie-Ann (@BienSoeur)

Best thing the left can do after Thatcher's death is resist the coming hagiography & ensure her shameful political record is fully contested -- David Wearing (@davidwearing)

Thatcherism is undead. -- Daniel Trilling (@trillingual)

Whatever we blame Blair or Cameron for; they're only continuing that woman's work. The destruction of the welfare state is her epitaph. -- Dan Thompson (@artistsmakers)

Nothing to celebrate. The battle continues. -- Thee Faction (@TheeFaction)

@PhilosophyExp @stefanstern civility? she fucking sold it along with our other national assets -- e_p_smythe (@e_p_smythe)

@BienSoeur I can't believe the number of people mourning her loss given the social injustice and inequality she promoted. So much hypocrisy. -- Sue Hill (@SusieSpur)

The death of Thatcherism would be something to celebrate. The death of Thatcher is just... the death of an old lady. -- Holly Robinson (@holbolrob)

Watching TV news I feel like a North Korean as government and media put a spin on events that clearly doesn't reflect opinions of population -- Steven Dick (@dickmagician)

If you didn't live under a Thatcher govt pls don't get upset with those of us who did and who are NOT feeling griefstricken right now... -- Charlie Moores (@charliemoores)

Any and all Thatcher defences will be met with blockings, no exceptions -- Jim (@jcw163)

I think the hand-wringing folk fail to see that we aren't just crowing, we're all genuinely pleased -- Jim (@jcw163)

Think of her children. Her racist, disgusting children. -- Murray (@muzrobertson)

RIP, Mrs T. "Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there; I do not sleep; I am the thousand benefits cut; I am the A&E department, shut." -- Stuart Houghton (@stuarthoughton)

My dad: "I feel very sanguine about it. She may be dead but we've got these bastards instead and they're even worse." -- Ellie Mae O'Hagan (@MissEllieMae)

I have two nice, well dressed ladies in their 70s here laughing that mrs thatcher has died. She wasn't loved, she was loathed by most. -- Julie-Ann (@BienSoeur)

Busy day for Mephistopheles today. -- Drac Noise Person (@Dracnoiseperson)

Thatcher is DEAD! At last, the miners and heavy industry workers whose lives she destroyed can rejoice. -- Steve (@Cadrieu)

What bitter irony in a week when many are suffering further division & humiliation the women that started this strain of conservatism dies! -- Elizabeth (@lizzjones18)

#Thatcher may have died, but we should not be distracted from the need to fight her rancid ideology which still prevails. -- Jack Darrant (@JackDarrant)

I hope people took no happiness from the deaths of Pol Pot, Hitler, Pinochet, Marcos or Franco. That would be wrong. -- Otis B. Driftwood (@DocHackenbush)

The greatest peacetime British Prime Minister of the 20th century was Clement Attlee. -- Jacob Richardson (@jjarichardson)

As Davina would say, "Let's have a look at your best bits." To start with "No sanctions - Nelson Mandela is a terrorist." -- Mark Steel (@mrmarksteel) 

As a member of society, can I just say: "There is no such thing as Margaret Thatcher." -- Pete Sinclair (@pete_sinclair)

#Thatcher's legacy was destruction of the economy,& ppls livelihoods,3 generations of destitution & individualism over community. #NoTears -- Ed Pomfret (@EdPomfret)

I'm feeling oddly elated, and I don't know why. ;-) #NotReally #IActuallyFeelMorbidlyIndifferent #Thatcher -- Lee Hyde (@anubeon)

Interesting taboo around reactions to death. Why is it ok to have sadness reaction but not happiness? Is the dead person supposed to care? -- the greener grass (@TheSilverGreen)

So I'll try some mindfulness. I feel sad for her friends/family in mourning. I feel glad for the symbol of a tyrant's passing. I move on. -- the greener grass (@TheSilverGreen)

It shows how pathologically split we are as a culture that we can't tolerate *both* responses. Also how immature that we fear death so bad. -- the greener grass (@TheSilverGreen)

Observation: "the left" being warned re family in grief. "The right" allowed to parade Thatcher's legacy in front of every family she broke -- the greener grass (@TheSilverGreen)

Thatcherism has led to the tragic premature and ignored deaths of many thousands of people over 30 years. Let us remember them today. -- AdamRamsay (@AdamRamsay)

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This was surely the sweetest and most innocent tweet of the day -

Am I the only one who doesn't know who Margaret Thatcher is or what she's done wrong? -- Carissa Fairhurst (@CJFairhurst)

And finally, whilst I have some respect for Phillip Blond - the Red Tory - this is ridiculous. It's probably the vaguest and blandest thing he could think of saying about Mags:

The thing I liked most about Mrs Thatcher was that she had a global vision for Britain - she knew we mattered and wanted to make us matter -- Phillip Blond (@Phillip_Blond)

Here's the thing, Mr Blond - everybody on this earth matters. Thatcher didn't think the working classes mattered because they didn't, on the whole, like her, agree with her, or vote for her. So who is this "we"? As for her aspirations for Britain - she was full of ridiculous and untenable "global visions" - none of which were rooted in any kind of reality. Thanks to her privatisations, deregulations, etc, Britain and its financial system, as well as its manufacturing sector, became completely busted.

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Suzanne Moore's thoughts this week:

At least in Thatcher's day we knew what we were up against

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/10/thatcher-we-knew-what-against

She and her spawn clung like zealots to the idea that the market would somehow step into towns stripped of industry. And the ultimate free market did fill the void all right. Heroin flooded into decimated "communities".

This nostalgia is to do with activism being thrilling. She was all you wanted in a hate figure: pro-apartheid, a shrill-voiced, demi-wigged prig whose veins flowed with some repulsive idea of respectability.

She absolutely performed gender as it suited her, switching from housewife to warrior queen to grandmother. The whole housekeeping model – though incorrect – still underpins the logic of the cuts.

Thatcher, though, did not invent Thatcherism: Keith Joseph, among others, shaped it and credit must be given to cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall, who deconstructed this mixture of post-Fordism, aspiration and hegemony. I was working at Marxism Today when this was happening and many of those people became ultra–Blairites, for the analysis of Thatcher's appeal resulted in New Labour. When I started working there, "the project" was revolution. When I left, "the project" was New Labour.

What matters now is that in these ultra-conservative times, oppositional culture bafflingly appears to have little to coalesce around but tax and toffs. Maybe because what remains of her agenda is privatisation that is so internalised, it is immoral. By this I mean that a loathing of those who have little, who are weak or uncertain is justified by a political discourse which says we can longer afford the weak. The Thatcherite fetishisation of strength enables the coalition to trample on the already broken. We are saving money apparently because some humans are not worth saving. That's just housekeeping.

Cameron will exploit her in death; grief, like nostalgia, is a commodity after all. A politics of utter selfishness, certainty and greed is meant to have won the day.

Thatcher dies alone. But in the Ritz. Joyless.

Layer 512 . . . Meditating on Happiness, The Hedonism Archetype, The Nihilism Archetype, and The Happiness Archetype

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How To Become Happier

Now where was I? Oh yes - happiness. Or rather - how to become happier.

In Layer 509 I said I was reading a new book by Tal Ben-Shahar, which is called 'Happier'.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2012/01/layer-509-happier-rat-racers-top-of.html

Here's a few more quotes from the section on the Rat-Race Archetype.

The reason why we see so many rat racers around is that our culture reinforces the belief [that 'one big break' will finally make us happy]. 

We learn to focus on the next goal rather than on our present experience and chase the ever-elusive future our entire lives. We are not rewarded for enjoying the journey itself but for the successful completion of a journey. Society rewards results, not processes; arrivals, not journeys.

Once we arrive at our destination, once we attain our goal, we mistake the relief we feel for happiness . . . the negation of stress or anxiety. The absence of pain is but a momentary relief from an essentially negative experience.

The Hedonism Archetype

A hedonist seeks pleasure and avoids pain. She goes about satisfying her desires, giving little or no thought to future consequences. If drugs produce a pleasant experience, she takes them; if she finds work difficult, she avoids it.

The hedonist errs in equating effort with pain and pleasure with happiness.Without a long-term purpose, devoid of challenge, life ceases to feel meaningful to us; we cannot find happiness if we exclusively seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalji, whose work focuses on peak performance and peak experience, claims that, "the best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile." A struggle-free, hedonistic existence is not a prescription for happiness.

The Nihilism Archetype

A nihilist is a person who has given up on happiness, who has become resigned to the belief that life has no meaning. This person captures the state of being chained to the past - their past failures to attain happiness.

Such attachment to past failures has been described by Martin Seligman as "learned helplessness". Such thinking leads to despair. 

The rat racer, the hedonist, and the nihilist are all, in their own ways, guilty of a fallacy - an inaccurate reading of reality, of the true nature of happiness and what it takes to lead a fulfilling life. 

The rat racer suffers from the "arrival fallacy" - the false belief that reaching a valued destination can sustain happiness. 

The hedonist suffers from the "floating moment fallacy" - the false belief that happiness can be sustained by an ongoing experience of momentary pleasures that are detached from a future purpose. 

Nihilism is also a fallacy, a misreading of reality - the false belief that no matter what one does, one cannot attain happiness. This last fallacy stems from the inability to see a synthesis between arrivals and floating moments, some third option that may provide a way out of one's unhappy predicament. 

The Happiness Archetype

Instead of asking "Should I be happy now or in the future?" we should ask, "How can I be happy now and in the future?"

Students who truly love learning, for instance, derive present benefit from the pleasure they take in discovering new ideas, and future benefit from the ways in which those ideas will prepare them for their careers. 

To expect constant happiness, though, is to set ourselves up for failure and disappointment. 

The rat racer's illusion is that reaching some future destination will bring him lasting happiness; he does not recognise the significance of the journey. The hedonist's illusion is that only the journey is important. The nihilist, having given up on both the destination and the journey, is disillusioned with life. The rat racer becomes a slave to the future; the hedonist, a slave to the moment; the nihilist, a slave to the past. 

Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on the way towards a destination we deem valuable. 

Meditating on Happiness

Research . . . reveals the profound effects of regular meditation. Make meditation a ritual. Set aside between ten minutes and an hour each day for meditation. Whenever you feel stressed or upset or when you simply want to enjoy a moment of calm or joy, you can take a few deep breaths and experience a surge of positive emotions. 

Is that really so? Or is it a surge of positive feelings? Does the distinction matter? Should we continue to reflect on this potentially important issue?


My son tells me he has no time for all this 'self-help' stuff. He's dismissive of the whole genre - positive psychology and all. Never having been a reader of self-help books myself I'm sympathetic to his point of view, but on the other hand the whole 'happiness' movement is obviously in the zeitgeist, and it's a subject worthy of study - if only to critique what various psychologists and self-help gurus are saying, and to reach sounder opinions ourselves.

I've no idea where this is going with Tal Ben-Shahar, but I'll carry on with the journey and report back in future blogs.


Website: http://www.talbenshahar.com/

Bringing Happiness to Life

"You will find a whole range of online courses, books, live lectures and workshops, as well as products through which I create a bridge between the Ivory Tower and Main Street — translating the rigorous research conducted in universities into accessible material that most people can apply in their personal and professional lives."

Tal consults and lectures around the world to executives in multi-national corporations, Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and the general public. Topics include leadership, education, ethics, happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, and mindfulness. He is the author of the international best sellers Happier and Being Happy, which have been translated into 25 languages.

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Layer 425 . . . Education, Facts, Knowledge, Feelings, Gove, Gradgrind, Idiocy, Pedagogy, Ritalin, Curriculum, Intelligences, Zen and Lifelong Learning.

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"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"

Thomas Gradgrind-Gove - Hard Times

http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/hardtimes.html

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Prescriptions of Ritalin as a controlling drug for UK children are currently running at 600,000 per year. A pundit on the Today (R4) programme thought that there's no problem with this -  if the end result is that there's an "increase in educational performance". No need to discuss what we mean by "educational performance" of course - we all know and agree that it simply means improved test and exam results in pursuit of arbitrary targets and league table scores.

So there we have it - there's no need to concern ourselves with moral, ethical, social and psychological issues - just focus on the child's ability and willingness to "settle down", become more passive, submit to traditional schooling and cramming for tests, and just say alleluyah for hitting the test and exam targets.

The presenters on our flagship news programmes allow their pet pundits to get away with this stuff. No wonder we're such a fucking dumb nation.

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Confirmation, finally - as if it were needed - that Michael Gove is completely and utterly stupid. He's also an elitist and an evil bastard. He's demanding that the National Curriculum be reduced to a focus on "facts and knowledge".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9367000/9367626.stm

This man presumably has access to the huge body of work which tells us that Gradgrindism ("Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts") is not only futile, not only alienating, not only pointless, not only ridiculous - it's also counterproductive in the 21st Century in a huge number of ways. He's either not read about, or doesn't understand, the need for a New Learning Revolution.

The sole point of Gradgrindism is to sort out the academic goats from the non-academic sheep, and determine which of our children will go to university (if indeed that's what they want to do) and which of them will go to the elite universities. It has no other purpose.

It doesn't serve the needs of commerce and industry, which need individuals with imagination and creativity, and people with their social and emotional intelligences working effectively. 

It doesn't meet the needs of society in general, which also needs all of the above.

It doesn't meet the needs of individuals - to become rounded people who are capable of reaching their full potential, to become lifelong learners who enjoy learning for its own sake, to become active citizens, to become fully evolved human beings, etc.

It's profoundly depressing that an arrogant and ignorant little jerk like Gove is now calling all the shots in English education.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-20-fully-evolved-humans.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/05/layer-44-eyes-and-ears-of-community.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/05/layer-48-eevnin-stannad-standards-evil.html

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Chapter II — Murdering The Innocents

THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir — peremptorily Thomas — Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, sir!

In such terms Mr Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.

‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’

‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.

‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’

http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/hardtimes/2/

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I had an interesting chat with my son. He's very certain that when it comes to decisions and actions we should always trust our instincts. He's very against doing what anyone else suggests or advises.

He thinks we should all be in touch with our instincts, and prioritise them above the demands and wishes of those around us - our families, our society and the prevailing culture.

Leonard Cohen, of course, said, "I don't trust my inner feelings . . . Inner feelings come and go."

To this, my son says - when your feelings change, you should change with them. And deal with the consequences. (I'm sure Len would agree with him about that - his essential point about not trusting inner feelings was to do with the impermanence of the things we associate with 'love'.)

I think I know what my son's getting at. Ultimately we all need to develop a Zen attitude of spontaneity, authenticity, acting-without-acting, living without fear or anxiety, seeing each life experience as a positive from which we can learn something and from which we can continue to develop ourselves. Ultimately we must look within ourselves for our direction and our decisions, and not allow ourselves to be directed by others or by the prevailing culture - as long as our decisions and our actions don't harm others unnecessarily and inappropriately.

Where I disagree with him is in his referring to what I'd call a Zen attitude and a Zen life as simply 'following our feelings' or 'trusting our instincts'. This blog has discussed at length, in previous Layers, the importance of developing a distinctive 'instinctual intelligence', and also the need to become, through meditation, fully aware of our true selves - our personal intelligence. It's also focused on the need to develop other intelligences, which I've referred to as 'spiritual intelligence' (intuition, etc) and 'social intelligence' (empathy, etc.) If all of those intelligences are working well and working collaboratively, together with our intellect, then we can also become 'emotionally intelligent' and become more able to control our destructive emotions.

It's not mere pedantry or a matter of semantics to clarify and separate out these various intelligences, and to see 'instinctual intelligence' as simply a component of our whole psyche, so that someone who acts 'spontaneously' solely on the basis of 'instinct' is seen to be acting without the benefit and input of all of his/her intelligences. In essence our hard-wired instinctual intelligence just prepares us for flight, fight, freeze and sex. (Although various skills, such as driving and playing a musical instrument, can also become more or less 'instinctual'.)

Words matter. Concepts matter. Intelligences matters. Developing (and using) all of our intelligences matters very much indeed. But don't expect Michael Gove and the coalition government to understand any of that.

What a pity that their pal Anthony Seldon can't help them to see the uselessness of an Education Secretary and an education system that value "largely worthless pieces of paper" and very little else.


Charles Dickens satirised the living daylights out of a school system that killed children's curiosity and reduced children to being passive memorisers of so-called facts and knowledge - and that was way back in the 19th Century, before computers and the Internet were even imagined. The ridiculous Gove still doesn't, and won't ever, get it. The man is an absolute joke.
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