Layer 474 . . . Games, Pastimes, Winners and Losers, Berne, Reich and Maslow

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My father taught me how to play chess. He taught me the basic moves, but nothing about strategies, openings and endgames - of which I still know very little. I've never been a great one for playing games, or for pastimes. What the hell is a pastime?

My father taught me some basic things about life. He lived a very simple life - practically hermit-like and very monagamous, as far as I could see. If it turned out he'd had a secret lover I'd be completely shocked and amazed.

And yet dad was a great player of games. He had drawers and cupboards full of games. His own children were a huge disappointment to him in terms of their enthusiasm for games. It was his grandchildren who joined in with his games-playing to while away hours of companionship, having innocent fun on many a rainy weekend and school holidays. Dad would much rather play a game than have a conversation. What was the point of talking? Listening in to most people's conversations you might have to admit that he kind of had a point, even if he never expressed it as such. Inarticularcy was pretty much dad's speciality.

In terms of winners and losers - it's hard to say whether dad was one or other of these things. Having a leg blown off and almost losing your life in a war against fascists isn't exactly conducive to being a winner in the game of life. Yet having been brought back from the battlefield in Normandy and having survived horrendous injuries - you possibly learn certain things during a year or so of hospital convalescence about the preciousness of life itself, and an appreciation of its absolute value. You maybe learn that life is simply about being, and learn not to worry too much about doing or having.

Dad was a winner in that he had a beautiful and thoughtful wife who was his lifelong companion. She was feisty as hell and gave him endless brainache, but she was loyal and strong, and she took good care of him. She was full of enthusiasm, and she was brave and energetic. She gave him pride and dignity, and two children to enliven their lives and their modest household.

Dad was a winner in that he was able to retire to a beautiful part of the country and live in a part of the world he truly loved. He had enough money to live on, a decent car to get around in, and a decent home he could call his own. His lifelong work in a factory gave him dignity as well as a regular income. He also had a decent retirement pension that allowed him and mum to live out their lives well above the poverty line. He owned the home he lived in, and paid no rent to any landlord or local authority. This home that must now be sold - the last remaining contact with two good people and their decent and honourable lives.

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It's never been clear to me what's supposed to happen to people's possessions when they die. Obviously some of them are inherited and are gratefully owned by descendants - for their utility as well as their sentimental value. Some things are essentially useless but are wonderful reminders of their previous owners.

I was shocked by my sister's lack of interest in mum and dad's possessions. Her only interest was in their monetary value - and very few of their possessions had any monetary value. Therefore her attitude was - throw it all away, or sell bits if you're able. She was quite happy to give away all of mum's clothes to charity shops, keeping nothing at all for herself - not even a scarf or a cardigan. Thankfully my children, my nephews and their partners at least wanted to inherit some things as souvenirs. The bungalow had been a second home for my nephews as they were growing up, and living in various places around the county - as much as it had been for me. It was a place of stability, identity and continuity.

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During certain periods of her depression mum didn't really want me to go to stay with her at the bungalow. She'd come to rely on her meals on wheels, and she hated not being able to buy food for me or cook for me. It negated all she stood for as a mother and a provider. In the end she didn't even have the strength to clean properly or to change bed linen. Such is the indignity and loss of pride when you're old and feeble and reaching the end of your life.

I wonder now if she had any regrets - any unfulfilled ambitions, any thoughts about things she'd not done that she could have done, and maybe should have done, when she still had energy, drive and feistiness.

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Dad must have learned to play games to while away the hours as he was lying in a hospital bed, while the war in France and Germany continued, whilst hundreds and thousands more teenagers were losing their lives and their limbs in a war against fascists and their evil leadership.

Dad taught us how to play ludo and drafts and card games. He introduced us to the joys of Monopoly and Totopoly. (I get it now - it was about the Tote. Ha!) He was a great fan of dominoes and games involving picking up sticks and flicking counters into plastic cups. He was a good winner and a good loser. My sister was a habitual loser. Myself - I couldn't see the point of winning, or the taking part, and definitely not the losing. There were much better things to do - many of them involving friends and the vast amount of complete freedom available outside the house, away from parental control and the strict rules of the game; away from winning and losing.

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Aunt O was born during the First World War. The solicitor who came to the house yesterday was shocked when she told him she was born in 1915. 96 years of age and still sharp as a tack. "Oh well," she said, on learning how much it was going to cost to change her will and to set up powers of attourney. "I'll just have to get a job."

She would too, if only it were possible. Never afraid of hard work, my aunt - infirmity now afflicts her body, but not her mind. She can even cope with loss of hearing, as well as loss of mobility. She can still prop herself up on a walking frame and on her worktops well enough to cook a roast dinner for two. "Yes I know you can buy roast chicken in the supermarket - but I've already taken the lamb steaks out of the freezer!" Now be quiet.

She hadn't been allowed to get a paid job till she was 18 or 19. My Victorian grandfather had insisted that as the oldest girl in the family she had to stay at home and look after the rest of the children. No wonder she ran away from home to be with my uncle.

She manages quite well in her own home, and still does her own cleaning and washing. She has a stair lift and someone to take care of her gardens and her shopping. As she says herself, she wants for nothing.

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Eric Berne was a psychologist and the author of a seminal book called Games People Play. In it he describes the game-playing that goes on between both consenting and non-consenting adults. He also talks about people who take part in interpersonal 'pastimes'. Berne was the grandfather of what's now known as Transactional Analysis. It's worth reading about - especially if you've ever been involved in inappropriate game-playing or on the receiving end of an adult behaving like they're either a child or your parent.

To find out about what adults are supposed to be like when they become fully evolved human beings try taking a look at Layer 20 and the conclusions of another great psychologist - Abraham Maslow.

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Yet another great but little-known psychologist mentioned in the media recently - Wilhelm Reich. Channel 4's curious documentary series on human sexuality did a superficial review of his work on human sexuality with particular mention of the function of the orgasm. It's maybe time to write some more about Reich, and time to write something more about Zen, sexuality, enlightenment and well-being.

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Layer 369 . . . The Browne Report, Higher Education, Human Intelligences, Radical Thought and Designing a Better System

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Yesterday was bright and warm, and a day for walking in woods and forests to enjoy the beginnings of the very best of autumn's colours and beauty; a day to enjoy the best of the fungi season, and its amazing variety of strange and wonderful creations. It was also a day for learning the arts and techniques of photography and the brilliant things that can be done with current digital technology if we take our cameras off 'automatic' and use their capabilities to the full.

Today is dull and overcast and very wet. It's a day for work, and a day for writing. I want to write about the Browne Report on higher education, and what it advocates by way of funding universities in the future. I was going to start by saying that this is a time for all people of intelligence to write letters to our representatives in Parliament to demand that they think about Browne and denounce his findings and recommendations. However, it's obvious that what we really need is for people who are actually more enlightened to stand up and be counted, since "intelligence" in the conventional usage isn't what's meant here. After all, Lord Browne is, by common agreement, an "intelligent" man.

The problem is that enlightened people in our society are in a very small minority, and a powerless one at that. Is there any point, therefore in protesting about anything the government wants to do? Well yes - if only to recognise that any journey starts with a single step, and if enlightened people don't make efforts to spread some enlightenment then there is literally no hope for our children and grandchildren - at least as far as this country is concerned. Not only is this not a country for old people, it's not a country of, or for, enlightened people. What we have here is an appalling shambles of a benighted society.

Take the Browne Report. An article in this week's LRB points out that "much of the initial response to the Browne Report seems to have missed the point". It certainly has. (This is an 'open' article, available to non-subscribers or purchasers of the LRB at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble )

Browne's basic idea is pretty simple. Let students be fee-paying 'consumers' of degree courses that will give them the meal tickets and fat salaries which will enable them to repay the costs of their courses in future years. Courses that are likely to be related to future employment and useful passports into highly paid occupations will multiply, and those that aren't will start to disappear. If anyone wants to indulge themselves in studying the arts or anything airy fairy then they'll be lucky to find the odd course still functioning, and if they do then they'll have to pay the full cost of it.

What Oxzen wants to propose is something different to both the status quo AND to Browne - something that's centred on a fundamental reappraisal of the very notion of higher education.

Please try to read the full LRB article, but here's a few quotes from it:

The discussion has focused narrowly on the potential financial implications for the individual student.

But the report proposes a far, far more fundamental change to the way universities are financed than is suggested by this concentration on income thresholds and repayment rates.

Essentially, Browne is contending that we should no longer think of higher education as the provision of a public good, articulated through educational judgment and largely financed by public funds (in recent years supplemented by a relatively small fee element). Instead, we should think of it as a lightly regulated market in which consumer demand, in the form of student choice, is sovereign in determining what is offered by service providers (i.e. universities).

What is of greatest significance here is not the detail of the financial arrangements but the character of the reasoning by which they are justified. Britain’s universities, it is proposed, should henceforth operate in accordance with the tenets of perfect competition theory.

The report proposes a huge, almost unimaginable, de facto cut in investment in higher education. It then says that it hopes to see this enormous shortfall made good by the fees students will be willing to pay to those institutions that convince them they are worth it (principally by enabling them to earn a higher salary). It is in reality a disguised voucher scheme. Students will be able to borrow the cost of the fees, on somewhat subsidised terms, and they are then expected to go and spend them on the ‘service provider’ of their choice. The report proposes that what universities teach will henceforth be determined by their anticipation of consumer demand.

This proposition is obviously false. Children may be best placed to judge what they want to get from the sweetshop, but they are not best placed to judge what they should get from their schooling. University students are, of course, no longer children, but nor are they simply rational consumers in a perfect market.

Individuals often need to be told by someone who knows that a particular line of study is worth pursuing whether at the time they want to or not.

The Browne Report, in keeping with the ethos of market populism, shies away from anything that might seem to involve a judgment that one activity is more worthwhile than another: all you can go by are consumer preferences, what people say they think they want. But at certain moments the report is forced to fall back on other criteria which then reveal the hollowness of the central premise.

The only social value the report seems able to think of is economic: [some] subjects contribute directly to the economy, it is alleged, and so we must have them.

Browne implies that other subjects, especially the arts and humanities, are just optional extras. If students are willing to cash in their voucher to study them – perhaps because, for some unexamined reason, they are thought to lead to higher-paid jobs – so be it; but if they’re not, then there’s no public interest in having them. Despite the occasional (very occasional) mention of, say, ‘culture’, the logic of the report’s proposals gives such values no independent standing. Overwhelmingly, the general statements announce, with startling confidence, the real point of higher education: ‘Higher education matters because it drives innovation and economic transformation. Higher education helps to produce economic growth, which in turn contributes to national prosperity.’

This report displays no real interest in universities as places of education; they are conceived of simply as engines of economic prosperity and as agencies for equipping future employees to earn higher salaries.

Only courses that lead to high-paid jobs will survive, so universities will make sure they provide the graduates that high-paying employers want.

It is no good deluding ourselves that simply leaving 18-year-old applicants to cash in their vouchers at a university of their choice will lead to a more intelligently conceived provision of diverse, high-quality institutions. It may just lead to a few private jets and a lot of Ryanairs.

[This is] a calculated attempt to reshape higher education in this country by subjecting it to ‘the discipline of the market’.

What is at stake is whether universities in the future are to be thought of as having a public cultural role partly sustained by public support, or whether we move further towards redefining them in terms of a purely economistic calculation of value and a wholly individualist conception of ‘consumer satisfaction’.

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Where to begin with all of this? Take this phrase - "universities will make sure they provide the graduates that high-paying employers want".

Stupid employers may think they want young people who's sole achievement has been to study a narrow range of subject matter for three or four years, and do well in timed examinations.

Smart employers have begun to recognise that these graduates are often people who are self-obsessed and have few contributions to make to their businesses - and hardly any of those will be down to the university course itself. (See previous references to Goleman, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, etc.)

The universities themselves, and the civil service, look for recruits who have first or second class degrees, and Masters degrees, and who can help perpetuate their systems - but smart employers know they need people who are creative, who have good people skills, who are empathetic, who are intuitive, and who can think outside the box.

Our university system is stupid, and based on the idea that for three years of their lives intelligent young people are willing to forget all other interests and developmental needs in order to obsessively study a very narrow range of subject knowledge.

Therefore if you're studying science or technology or history or mathematics you can completely forget about increasing your systematic understanding of human psychology, spiritual enlightenment, politics, art, literature, music, emotional intelligence, human groups or pedagogy. Is this really what we still want?

As for becoming fully three dimensional - higher education doesn't even set out to help people to become the sort of people that Abraham Maslow, for example, or the Buddha, talked about. (See Layer 20 - Fully Evolved Humans)

Other countries are beginning to understand that the revolution we need in every stage of education is for its content to be determined by the curiosity and drive of individual learners, and for learning to be a process that's creative, active, social and stimulating. Digital technology allows learners to progress at incredible rates, providing they're driven by a love of learning for its own sake, a passion for self-development, and a thirst for knowledge and skills.

The fact that our universities are becoming stuffed full of young people who are there for purely instrumental and material reasons, or because it's better than actually working for a living, or because they can't think of anything better to do, or because their parents and teachers thought they should be there, is pathetic.

However, this idea that the purpose of education is to make people fit for future employment and fit to be useful cogs in some sort of national drive towards wealth-creation is by no means confined to higher education. A few years ago I was in a meeting where experienced Primary teachers and Primary headteachers were asked to define the main aims of education. I was appalled to hear the two (male) headteachers in the room both saying that the main point of learning in primary schools was to prepare young people for a life of work.

After all these years of New Labour's trashing of a school system that used to focus on the needs of the learners themselves I guess we now have to be grateful when we sometimes hear some teachers merely saying they're preparing kids to do well in tests and exams, without also banging on about the needs of employers. What if employers just cared about having 'workers' who were trained to be silent automatons - would it still be OK to design education around these sorts of stated aims?

And does anyone really think that the ability to get high grades for essays and the ability to do well in timed tests are in themselves good indicators of someone's fitness for employment? What makes someone a good inventor? What makes someone a good leader? What makes someone a good team player? What makes someone a good problem solver? What makes someone resilient, determined, thoughtful, innovative, persistent, reliable, trustworthy, etc? The list is endless.

What we do know is that thousands of graduates are hopeless egocentrics who think they owe nothing to anyone and have no obligations to anyone, or anything. They often have fucked up materialistic value systems, no caring about the wider world, and no intention of paying taxes if they can possibly avoid it. In other words, moral and ethical vacuums.

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Another important point to make is that university academics are, for the most part, no damned good either in this struggle, since they too have vested interests and are incapable of radical thought.

Even the author of this piece in the LRB - Stefan Collini, professor of English at Cambridge - only seems to worry about "a public cultural role" for the universities, rather than a role that allows every student to fully develop all of their intelligences across a broad range of subjects and become fully evolved human beings, capable of creatively enriching their societies and communities in a number of ways.


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Here's another plug for The New Learning Revolution, by Dryden and Vos.

Plus -  Pedagogy of Freedom . . . Ethics, Democracy & Civic Courage by Paulo Freire
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Layer 366 . . . Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Sheer Genius, More Rooney, Zen, Spiritual Intelligence, Stupid Bankers, Regressive Cuts and Hitting the Poorest

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Michael Mansfield was on Desert Island Discs this week, and chose a Pink Floyd track as his number one record. Someone's like or dislike for the Floyd is a very good indicator of musical taste and intelligence.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vc504#synopsis

This week on Sky Arts there was another showing of "David Gilmour: Remember That Night - Live at the Royal Albert Hall." I've seen this 90 minute programme several times now, but what struck me this time was the sheer joy that his fellow musicians get from playing alongside the genius of Dave Gilmour. There's a quality to his playing, and a quality to his guitar tones and sounds, as well as the quality of the melodies and his singing, that brings smiles to the faces of the other band members when Dave's in the middle of one of his long solos. And they're not just smiles of enjoyment - there's a kind of disbelief and a delight that someone can be so brilliant, so expressive, so able to command your whole attention and send your soul & spirit soaring into another dimension. Comfortably Numb has arguably the best guitar solo of all time.

From Layer 138 -

Having just listened to an hour and a half of David Gilmour and Rick Wright and co on Sky Arts 1, Remember That Night, performing Pink Floyd classics such as High Hopes and Comfortably Numb, cranked up loud through the hi fi, I’m Zenned and blissed out . . .

See also Layer 45.

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Rooney's still in the news. His biographer, Hunter Davies, said on the radio yesterday that he clearly needs "therapy". Not quite, Hunter. As Oxzen was saying a few days ago, he needs to take time out to start working on his soul and his spirit through relaxation, contemplation and meditation. He needs to find his Tao, and a Zen approach to life.

Back in 1961 Alan Watts published a book called 'Psychotherapy East and West'. In it he describes two different approaches to achieving beneficial changes to consciousness and attitudes to self and society.

"The disciplines of Buddhism and Taoism are concerned with changing the consciousness of normal, socially adjusted people. It is increasingly apparent to [Western] psychotherapists that the normal state of consciousness in our culture is both the context and the breeding ground of mental disease. A complex of societies of vast material wealth bent on mutual destruction is anything but a condition of social health.

Buddhism, in common with Taoism in China, is not a culture but a critique of culture, and an enduring non-violent revolution or 'loyal opposition' to the culture with which it is involved. [The aim is] to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unneccessary offence to his community; to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world. A Chinese Buddhist text describes the sage in words that strongly suggest Riesman's 'inner-directed' or Maslow's 'self-actualising' personality:

He walks always by himself, goes about always by himself;
Every perfect one saunters along one and the same passage of Nirvana;
His tone is classical, his spirit is transparent, his airs are naturally elevated,
His features are rather gaunt, his bones are firm, he pays no attention to others.

Maybe this is the special magic of Dave Gilmour - 'His tone is classical, his spirit is transparent, his airs are naturally elevated'. To the Nth degree.

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There was a discussion about bankers and banking, and about imposing some new special taxes on them, on an R4 Today programme this week in which someone said, "We shouldn't penalise an industry in which we excel". Penalise! Excel!

It's incredible, really. Our 'excellence' in banking has brought this country to the dire state it's in. Our entire banking system was only saved from bankrupting itself and from crashing and smashing our entire financial system thanks to the injection of billions of OUR money into the coffers of the very people whose "excellence" caused the crisis. These people now expect to carry on paying themselves even more billions in bonuses, and they regard any attempt on our part to recoup our 'investment', as it were, as an outrageous interference and an unjustified 'penalty'!

They clearly don't give a shit about any aspect of our society other than what they can get out of it for themselves, and they also have the nerve to threaten to fuck off to Switzerland and take their businesses with them if we even attempt to get them to contribute towards the national wellbeing. Can anybody say why we didn't nationalise the lot of them - at the point where their shares were worth next to nothing? We could have done it so easily.

Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse did a brilliant sketch on their BBC programme this week in which two stupid bankers sell to one another several times over a single worthless piece of paper - eventually raising it's 'value' to several million pounds - before finally finding some other sucker (banker) who can be conned into thinking it's worth what they say it is and who then agrees to buy it. That's the way to do it! Sheer excellence. Investment banking at its very best.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v36y1
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Spending review: banks appear to have wriggled off the hook

Government accused of 'going soft' on banks with a charge that would raise no more than £2.5bn from the industry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/22/spending-review-banks-off-hook

The day after George Osborne announced swingeing cuts to public services and welfare benefits, the government was expected to announce payback time for Britain's banks – blamed by many for the country's parlous economic state.

But despite unveiling details of a levy on bank balance sheets, the government was yesterday accused of "going soft" on the banks with a charge that would raise no more than £2.5bn from the industry.

Unions were swift to attack the plans, dismissing it as "a pathetically small amount" to demand from the banks.

Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who sits on the Treasury select committee, criticised the government for "going soft" on the banks and having a lack of ambition on the bank levy. "In the spending review, there were no new measures to ensure that those who caused the crisis pay their fair share towards paying down the deficit and the draft bank levy legislation published today falls far short of the decisive action we need and is an insult to those losing benefits and local services", he said.

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As for the coalition's claim that they have spread the misery 'fairly' and 'progressively', and that the wealthy will pay more than the less well off - anyone with half a brain can see that this is complete crap.

It's true that the wealthy will pay more - both in total and as a percentage of income - but so what? Someone who's already extremely well off will feel no pain whatsoever from a slightly higher tax bill and a loss of child benefit. We're talking here about people who already have extremely comfortable lives, who own their own homes, have a couple of nice cars, plenty of holidays, possibly own more than one property, etc.

Whereas someone who has no money and no assets, who's possibly trying to live on £65 a week, will feel plenty of pain if they lose even £10 of benefits or tax credits.

It's one thing for the coalition to implement policies which favour the already wealthy - but it's outrageous for them to claim that they've spread the pain of the cutbacks fairly and that everyone is having to share in the pain and the hardships.

Spending review cuts hit poor hardest, says Institute of Fiscal Studies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/21/ifs-spending-review-cuts-poor-hit-hardest
Britain's leading tax and spending experts today flatly contradicted the key claims made by George Osborne and the coalition over the fairness of its £81bn austerity programme.

In a move that forced the government on to the defensive, the highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies challenged the chancellor's contention that his plans for four years of belt-tightening would be progressive, safeguard frontline school spending, and require smaller savings for departments than Alistair Darling would have demanded.

Angela Eagle, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: "George Osborne's smoke and mirrors have well and truly unravelled. On any measure his plans hit the poorest hardest. And the IFS have all but called him a liar for his ridiculous claim that he is cutting less than Labour planned."

In its detailed analysis of Wednesday's comprehensive spending review, the IFS said the £7bn of fresh welfare cuts, together with public spending reductions, reinforced the regressive nature of the changes introduced by the coalition since it came to power. Families with children would be the hardest hit by the changes and only by including the increase in the top rate of income tax introduced by Labour could the coalition justify the claim that the better-off were being hit more than the poor.

"The tax and benefit changes are regressive rather than progressive across most of the income distribution. And when we add in the new measures announced yesterday this is, unsurprisingly, reinforced," said the acting director of the IFS, Carl Emmerson.

"Our analysis continues to show that, with the notable exception of the richest 2%, the tax and benefit components of the fiscal consolidation are, overall, being implemented in a regressive way."

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Layer 275 . . . Positive Psychology, Maslow, and Individual Journeys

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A few remarks on "positive psychology" - thoughts which have been fermenting and distilling  in Oxzen's spirit refinery for quite a while. It's time for a tasting.

Firstly, "positive psychology" isn't even psychology. It's bleeding common sense, as far as it goes. You don't have to be a trained psychologist in order to understand it or practice it. Millions of Buddhists, for example, have been practitioners for millenia.

Abraham Maslow, who was a psychologist by trade, is usually referred to as the "father" of positive psychology. Since Maslow wrote about a hierarchy of human needs and described what he saw as "self-actualised" or fully evolved human beings (see Layer 20), a great many of his fellow practitioners have grabbed on to what he said and made a great deal of money out of it, using the label "positive psychology". Whereas, in fact, Maslow's insights actually amount to a philosophy of human development and human behaviour, and aren't a prescription for treating psychological disturbance and disorder.

Maslow understood that once our basic needs for safety, food, shelter and human relationships have been taken care of then healthy human beings are motivated by a quest for social, emotional and spiritual development. The driving forces beyond safety, sustenance and sex are the need to have and to receive what Buddhists call lovingkindness, along with sustainable feelings of joy and pleasure which occur through giving and receiving lovingkindness. These aren't terms used by Maslow, but it's clear to me, at least, that this is a useful way of paraphrasing what he said.

Beyond the positive feelings that occur through positive human contacts there is another level of joy and wellbeing which is gained through contact with nature, and feelings of awe and wonder that enter our beings when we feel a connection with the divine, and a sense that we're in fact connected with everybody and everything that exists. In other words, when we experience an enlightened sense of understanding that we're all part of everything and we depend for our existence on our place in the universal flux - beyond our individual egos; beyond our individual striving for power or riches or status; beyond even a concern for our own self-preservation.

At this level we appreciate just how precious an individual life can be, and we feel motivated to help others to walk a path towards greater enlightenment and wellbeing. Ultimately each of us has to make that journey through our own efforts, but we can all help one another along the way. Through our connectedness in a spirit of lovingkindness we can reduce levels of loneliness, misery and sickness, and promote universal wellbeing. The answers to life's challenges are not "out there", not in a God or gods, not in material wealth, and not in individual power or status. The answers lie within each of us, and in reaching higher states of enlightened living, and in promoting those states in others. Not only do we not need power or wealth or status in order to become a fully evolved human being - those things more often than not hold people back from attaining any degree of enlightenment.

Ignorance is what holds us back, and lack of insight. Many of the richest and most famous and powerful people are unbelievably ignorant. They may also be some of the loneliest and unhappiest. The possession of comfort, popularity, safety and oppulence is no guarantee of wellbeing, let alone happiness. Time spent on pursuing wealth and status is time that's unavailable for pursuing spiritual intelligence and enlightenment. If we have no time for reflection and meditation then we are doomed to remain mired in ignorance and poor in spirit.

Education could play a massive role in overcoming ignorance and spiritual impoverishment, but unfortunately the schools and colleges in most industrialised nations have been turned into mere results factories with their managers primed to believe that their aim is to prepare pupils for the world of work.

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This little spiel, this minor rant against "positive psychology", was sparked by a recent article in the New Statesman -  by Anna Minton, called "Smile now, cry later."

http://www.newstatesman.com/health/2010/03/positive-psychology-happiness

Britain has bought in to America’s positive thinking and is heavily pushing the “science of happiness” – but does it work?

Maslow moved to Brandeis University, Massachusetts, in 1951 and three years later published Motivation and Personality, which rejected the determinism of both the psychoanalytic and the behaviourist approaches to psychology, taking dynamic and successful figures as its model, rather than those with negative pathology.

Maslow referred to humanism as a "third force" behind these two schools of thought, and became known internationally as the founding father and leader of this emergent branch of psychology.

I'd urge readers to have a look at this article, and ignore some of its superficiality to just take note of its comments on Martin Seligman, his stupid formula, and the comments on Richard Layard. We should also take note of how Layard and others are promoting the idea of "happiness lessons" in schools, which may amount to not much more than promoting "learned optimism" and a capacity to see a glass as half full instead of (or as well as) half empty.

As I was saying . . . bleeding common sense. A century of psycho-analysis, psychological quackery, ECT, etc, has done nothing for the promotion of human wellbeing. Our only hope is to show our children what the best of humanity is capable of (Layer 20), and to provide the conditions in which they can begin their individual journeys towards self-discovery, self-actualisation, wellbeing, lovingkindess, spiritual intelligence and enlightenment.

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Talking of Individual Journeys . . .

Two of the people I'm very impressed with at the moment are David Haye, the world champion boxer, and Emma Thompson, Oscar-winning actress and screenwriter.

Not since the heyday of Muhammed Ali have I heard a boxer speak with such intelligence and lucidity. Yesterday was a Haye day, with the man himself speaking on Radio 4 about his fight this evening. You rarely hear anyone speaking as well as DH does, let alone a boxer.

Emma T was this week's guest on Desert Island Discs, and was also on TV promoting her latest film, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang. She's also a wonderfully intelligent and lucid speaker, and also has a superb, subtle sense of humour, just like her late father, the sublime Eric Thompson, who died tragically young following a stroke in his late 40's. The Magic Roundabout wasn't exactly his creation, but the words he spoke, in his incredibly listenable voice,  were entirely his own. Brian, Dougal, Dylan, Florence, Mr McHenry, Ermintrude, Mr Rusty, Zebidee - Eric did them all.-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/28/emma-thompson-kenneth-branagh

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/7530122/Emma-Thompson-says-work-saved-her-from-going-under-in-her-battle-with-depression.html

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfNUdhFIVHA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zCGjSoZzkY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMZ_cQYOzkQ&feature=related


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This says it all:

Only drug dealers will benefit from this absurd ban on mephedrone

Prohibition will drive supply underground, endanger users and make it tougher to wean addicts off harder drugs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/01/drug-dealers-profit-illegal-mephedrone-ban

As its last measure the present parliament will approve its silliest. It will "ban" a recently discovered party drug called mephedrone. MPs will declare next week that, while they may have been venal, spendthrift and corrupt, at least their final act will have protected thousands of young innocents from the devil. They will have well and truly banned something. They will feel much better, and go off whistling into the night.

Another government advisor has quit in protest against the government's handling of this issue:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8601315.stm

Eric Carlin said we need to get to the root causes of why young people use drugs. Indeed we do.And it's something to do with lack of a decent education, spiritual intelligence, and unbalanced human beings.

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Carly Simon was on the radio, talking about her heritage track, which turned out to be Cat Stevens'  "How Can I Tell You?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsk5MJeV5Qc

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/c/cat+stevens/how+can+i+tell+you_20028195.html

Interesting that she described the love she feels for her grandchildren as "an adrenaline rush" which occurs every time she sees them. I've never seen the words "love" and "adrenaline" linked in this way before, but it makes sense. If people feel a craving for "love" then it may well be because of the heightened sense of aliveness, wellbeing and joy they get from increased levels of adrenaline. After all, it's the drug of choice for people who are addicted to "falling in love".
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Layer 20 Fully Evolved Humans

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A Positive View of Human Potential

If we’re successful in helping children to develop personal, social, emotional and spiritual intelligences, where does it all lead? What do fully evolved human beings look like?

The humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow studied people whom he regarded as exceptional human beings, and described the characteristics of ‘self-actualised’ people. The actualisation process means the development or discovery of the true self and the development of existing or latent potential.

• They tend not to be overly religious in the orthodox sense of the word, but have a belief in a meaningful universe and a life which could be called spiritual. Their ideas of right and wrong are based on their own experience rather than blind acceptance of social conventions. Nevertheless, the characteristics of self-actualised HBs are very similar to the ideals and values taught by the great religions - “the transcendence of self, the fusion of the true, the good and the beautiful, contribution to others, wisdom, honesty and naturalness, the transcendence of selfish, greedy and personal motivations . . . the decrease of hostility, cruelty and destructiveness; the increase of friendliness, kindness, etc”
• Fully developed individuals have a kind of humility - the ability to listen carefully to others, to admit that they don’t know everything, and an understanding that other people can teach them something.
• The self-actualised perception is less distorted by desires, anxieties, fears, hopes and false optimism or pessimism.
• Self-actualizing people are dedicated to some work, task, duty or vocation which they consider to be important.
• Creativity is a universal characteristic of a self-actualised person. Creativeness is almost synonymous with health, self-actualization, and full humanness. Characteristics associated with this creativity are flexibility, spontaneity, courage, willingness to make mistakes, openness and humility. This creativity is similar to the creativity of children before they have learned to fear the ridicule of others, while they are able to see things clearly and freshly.
• Self-actualizing people are less inhibited, and therefore more expressive, natural and simple. They are self confident and have self respect. They lack the fear of making mistakes and their flexibility allows them to be able to change as situations change; they are able to break habits, to face indecision and changes without undue stress.
• A characteristic of the self-actualized person is the low degree of self conflict. The more they become unified as an individual the more they see the possibility for more unity in the world.
• These people find happiness in helping others. They enjoy their work, and they enjoy play; their work becomes play.
• They have respect for themselves based on the knowledge that they are competent and adequate. They rely fully on their own capacities. They are the most individualistic members of society and at the same time the most social, friendly and loving. They are governed far more by inner directives - their own nature - and natural needs than by those of their society or their environment. They are less needful of praise, honours, prestige or rewards.
• Self-actualizers have ‘psychological freedom’. They do not need or value unwarranted fame, celebrity or notoriety. They have a feeling of power in the sense that they have a feeling of self-control. They have control of themselves and their destinies; they are not afraid of themselves, ashamed of themselves, or discouraged by their mistakes. It is not that they are perfect; they make mistakes too, but they take them in their stride.
• They are able to make their own decisions - even in the face of contrary popular opinion. They resist their surrounding culture when it does not accord with their own point of view. They can become extremely independent and unconventional when they feel their basic principles are involved.
• For these individuals self-discipline is relatively easy because what they desire to do agrees with what they believe is right. They are responsible because they believe responsibility is rewarding.
• Whereas average humans are motivated by making good their perceived and actual deficiencies in their lives (coping behaviour) - seeking to fulfil basic needs for safety, love, respect and self-esteem - self-actualised individuals are focused mainly on their need to develop their higher potentialities, capacities and intelligences.
• Maslow believed that the term motivation did not really apply to the most mature individuals. They are spontaneous, they are doing what is natural; they are merely expressing themselves.
• They have a deep feeling of kinship with the whole human race. They are capable of friendship with people regardless of race, creed, class, education or political beliefs. “This acceptance of others cuts across political, economic and national boundaries.”
• On the other hand, their circle of friends is usually quite small, involving others who are similar in outlook and ability. They can be very tolerant of others’ shortcomings, and yet they are very intolerant about dishonesty, lying, cheating, cruelty, and hypocrisy. Healthy individuals tend to seek people with similar character traits, such as honesty, sincerity, kindliness and courage. They are less attracted by superficial characteristics and more attracted by someone’s emotional, intellectual and spiritual qualities.
• Healthy individuals are not without problems - they too suffer moments of guilt, anxiety, sadness and self-doubt. Neither are they universally calm and free of temper outbursts. However, they generally exhibit joie de vivre, enthusiasm for life, and a good sense of humour. They enjoy laughter, and enjoy bringing smiles to the faces of others.
• Their relationships are never exploitative. Because they have great respect for themselves they are able to be more respectful to others. “The love that is found in healthy people,” said Maslow, “is much better described in terms of spontaneous admiration and the kind of receptive and understanding awe and enjoyment that we experience when struck by a fine painting.” These people need less love from others and are able to remain alone for long periods, but at the same time they are able to give love - they are more loving people.
• They are attractive and attracted to others, and find it easy to enjoy friendship and intimate relationships without fear. At the same time they are not afraid to be constructively critical of others, to be exponents of ‘tough love’ even, because they consider it to be unloving to let someone go on making the same mistake again and again just because other people don’t have enough courage or caring to tell them.
• Healthy individuals enjoy life more: not that they don’t have pain, sorrow, and troubles, just that they get more out of life. They appreciate it more; they have more interests; they are more aware of beauty in the world.
• They have less fear and anxiety, and more confidence and relaxation. They are far less bothered by feelings of boredom, despair, shame, or lack of purpose. “They spontaneously tend to do right, because that is what they want to do, what they need to do, what they enjoy, what they approve of doing, and what they will continue to enjoy.” This network of positive intercorrelation falls apart into separateness and conflict if someone becomes psychologically sick.
• Putting it another way, “Self-actualising people enjoy life in general and in practically all its aspects, while most other people enjoy only stray moments of triumph, of achievement, or of peak experience.” They never tire of life. They have the capacity to appreciate the sunrise or sunset or relationships or nature again and again.
• The healthy individual shows far less fear than the average adult. Lesser individuals are less influenced by truth, logic, justice, reality and beauty. Healthy individuals do not often feel threatened by the world around them, as they have great confidence in their ability to handle whatever confronts them. They are also unthreatened by the unknown and the mysterious. This is in sharp contrast to the neurotic person’s fear of the unfamiliar and the mysterious. Maslow quotes Albert Einstein as being typical of this fearless attitude: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science.” Not only are mature self-actualising individuals less afraid of the external environment, they are also less afraid of themselves. They accept themselves and their natures philosophically, and give them far less consideration than neurotic people.
• People who are more mature and highly (self) developed have the ability to be objective, issue-centred or problem-centred, which involves a certain amount of personal detachment from the problem. Such an attitude, however, can be interpreted as coldness, aloofness, snobbishness, even hostility.
• They have an unusual ability to concentrate, which can cut them off from more mundane matters and lead to so-called absent-mindedness. Since they have fewer ‘problems’ of their own, they tend to be working to solve the problems of society; they have a mission in life. They are more concerned with ends rather than means.
• “They have for human beings in general a deep feeling of identification, sympathy and affection, in spite of the occasional anger, impatience and disgust . . . they have a genuine desire to help the human race.”
• According to Frank Goble, summarising Maslow’s work in his book The Third Force, the very best of humanity are sufficiently philosophical to be patient, and accept slow orderly change. They are apt to be both theoretical and practical.
• They want to see virtue rewarded and cruelty, exploitation and evil penalised. They take pleasure in rewarding, praising and recognising the talents of others.
• They have plenty of self-respect, they do not need love from everyone, and they are willing to make enemies if necessary.
• They also enjoy calm, peace, quiet and relaxation.
• They like to be efficient and effective, and dislike inefficiency. They manage to love the world as it is, while seeing its defects and working to improve them.
• Their excellent perception of reality enables them to see both the good and bad in each situation, and they enjoy solving problems and bringing order out of chaos.
• They are seldom mean or petty or inconsiderate of others, and are able to ignore their faults.
• They enjoy their work and strive to be more efficient, better, neater, simpler and faster.

Layer 19 The World Public Broadcasting Corporation

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I noticed this week that Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, which is about the physical degradation of the planet and the destruction of unique environments, is about to have a TV showing, on Sky Premier Movies. Seems strange that it hasn’t already been shown on public broadcasting TV around the world, given his passion for saving the planet. Maybe Al Gore is to making films what ‘ethical’ manufacturers are to manufacturing - they like the idea of doing good and being environmentally friendly, but profits come first. And here’s me thinking he wasn’t short of a few quid.

If the World Public Broadcasting Corporation were to make a film about Planet Earth in the 21st Century, for transmission to the rest of the universe, it might go like this:

Establishing shots:

Various faces of children around the world, both happy and sad; soldiers, armoured vehicles and aircraft unleashing incredible firepower against civilians and one another. Scenes of awesome beauty - sunrises and sunsets, mountains, gardens, forests and lakes. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre with their plumes of smoke, collapsing into rubble, and as they do so covering New York with vast clouds of dust and airborn debris. Families enjoying home life in various ways - laughing, playing, eating meals, sitting and walking in gardens and other places of great beauty, driving cars, watching TV. Traffic jams, factories, churches, temples and mosques. Various works of art, including paintings by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Picasso, Klimpt, Turner and Monet; sculptures by Hepworth, Moore, Picasso, Michelangelo and Rodin. Clips from quiz shows, soap operas, video games and films such as Apocalypse Now, The Terminator, Alien and Predator. People embracing, holding hands, kissing, smiling, making love, looking at one another adoringly. People shouting, arguing, punching, fainting, collapsing. Ambulances, police cars and fire engines speeding to emergencies. Streets full of demonstrators and protestors, libraries full of people silently reading, rooms full of computers where silent faces stare at screens. Bands performing, children playing trumpets, singers singing, drummers drumming, various instrumentalists reeling and rocking. Six different people wearing blindfolds, each touching a different part of an elephant, trying to describe it from his or her particular point of contact. Hurricanes blowing, floods rising, glaciers melting, the sun shining on beaches full of people sunbathing or lying in the shade under palm trees. Scenes of joy on Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, various festivals, a child’s birthday party. A nuclear explosion.

Voice over:

Good evening people of the universe. Planet Earth is a wonderful, beautiful, frightening, ugly, inspiring, uplifting, depressing and amusing place, depending on where you’re standing, what you’re looking at, who you’re listening to, and whether you have food to eat, money to spend, a proper home, security, friendship, peace and love in your life.

This programme’s aim is to show a balanced portrait of a unique planet, in all its glory and its misery, showing it how it is, and not trying to say whether any of it is good or bad, right or wrong. Is it wrong for big fish to eat little fish? For birds of prey to kill small mammals? We are not setting out to judge or even to comment. Feel free to comment on it as you wish. Our intergalactic email address will be given at the end of the film for you to send us your comments. Or your judgements. You can be the judge.

People of the Earth are ready to be judged on the state of our planet. We have made it as it is. We found it in a state of virginal innocence, and we have embraced it, worshipped it, treasured it, abused it, defiled it, injured it and tried to make it better again.

As human beings we have many strengths and many weaknesses. We have issues. We have problems. We are sometimes argumentative, selfish, aggressive, abusive and disrespectful. At our best we can be thoughtful, generous, creative, appreciative, loving, peaceful, sympathetic, and awesome in our ability to unlock the mysteries of the universe through science, mathematics, technology and the use of computers and other machines which are the products of our intellects and our capacity for cooperation, collaboration, innovation and ingenuity. We have the capacity for brilliance and for stupidity, and you will see the results of these wherever you look. It is inevitable that our behaviour will be both sublime and disgusting, since there are many people on this planet, in various states of ignorance, desperation, confusion and unhappiness, and also sublime, talented, gifted and awesomely enlightened.

We have educated people who are nevertheless hopelessly confused and ignorant, and we have unschooled people who are unbelievably wise and enlightened. We have clever fools and we have naïve savants and sages. It takes all sorts to make a planet. It takes a whole village to educate a child, and it takes a planet to educate the human race.

Our task at the World Public Broadcasting Corporation is to educate, inform, entertain and enlighten. We have many eyes and many voices. We have a multitude of viewpoints, explanations and opinions. During the course of this film you will hear them all. We will not only show you Planet Earth as it is, we will show it to you from many different perspectives, and we will invite you to reach your own conclusions and make your own judgements. Some say there is no one truth. But there is one truth that matters, and that is YOURS. See things our way - see things your way.

Having seen the truth what will you do about it? Are you able to help us? Planet Earth needs all the help it can get. We are in danger of destroying so much that is beautiful and meaningful on this planet. We are in danger of wiping ourselves out with nuclear weapons. If you’d like to help us in our quest to be a happy, peaceful, grateful, appreciative, positive and harmonious planet, please get in touch. Without help we may all perish. Without your help we may have to educate and enlighten ourselves, and we’re not very good at those things in spite of centuries of our best efforts. So please. Please, help. Get in touch. Come on down.

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Salvation Studies. Module 1.

Appealing to space beings for help is like looking to God for solutions to our problems on Earth. It’s not going to happen. Even if there were space beings or a God or gods in a position to enlighten us, support us, or offer us help, how on Earth would they go about it? Who would they go to see or speak to?

George Bush claims that God speaks to him. Many of us doubt it. Tony Blair thought he had a direct line to his Maker. Look what happened to him. Was Iraq a “failure of Intelligence” or a failure of intelligence? Or was God just having a laugh? Or was it arrogance and hubris on the part of men who thought they were hearing the voice of God, and maybe even thought they were somewhat godlike themselves, which is fair enough when they are treated that way by so many followers, believers and worshippers.

No. We have to do this thing ourselves. Our fate and our fortune is in our own hands. No space beings or gods or saviours or upper-class sons of millionaires or of the manse are going to do it for us. We, the People, have to do it for ourselves. We have the need, and what is more we have the capacity to enlighten ourselves, and to help one another become enlightened, and then to work together collectively on our own salvation, our own better, brighter, more brilliant future as individuals and as a planet.

And if we don’t do this thing for ourselves, as a species, then we don’t deserve any help, any salvation. To hell on a handcart, or to a much better place on vehicles of our own design and manufacture? The choice is ours. The journey is long. The way ahead is rocky and obscure. But we need to get together and get started. All aboard!

The point is that the answers are within. Each and every one of us has to look within and try to fathom out what we’re doing and where we should be going. Though we could start by paying attention to what some of our best thinkers and scientists and sages have said through the ages. To begin with we need a framework of values and ethics.

Maybe start with the Buddha - maybe the most ancient source of counsel and wisdom. Starting with his more modern translators and interpreters?

Then there are more recent scholars and researchers, people of sublime wit, integrity and vision - people who had the capacity to really observe the world truthfully and objectively.

Abraham Maslow was a brilliant researcher who had the insight that in order to better human beings we should start by developing our awareness of what the very best of our species actually look like, how they behave and what they accomplish. Not famous people - just so-called ordinary people who somehow stand out from the crowd.

The next blog, Layer 20, will be a summary of what Maslow noticed about human potential, about high functioning human beings, and what he described as “self-actualised” individuals.

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In the news today.

The Orwell Prize for best political writing. Won by a Palestinian human rights activist, Raja Shehadeh, for his book Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape. He describes the destruction of the beauty of the land, and the loss of the enjoyment of the land. Also the confinement of Palestinians to towns and villages. They are unable even to use the roads, which are now only for Israeli settlers.

Please read the first chapter of the book here: http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/the-award/short-books/palestinianwalks.aspx

http://www.profilebooks.com/news.php?news_id=25
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The Value of Investing in Emotional, Social and Spiritual Intelligence.

Still more concern for anti-social behaviour, violence and crime. How to deal with difficult children? After Columbine, the US state of Colorado focused on prevention of mental and emotional sickness, not trying to ‘fix’ them at 16.

School based classes were developed, and anger management for children as young as 4 years of age. They are taught to understand their bodies and their emotions. There were no parental objections to ‘wishy-washy touchy-feely’ stuff ‘detracting’ from academic focus and attainment.

There has also been systematic family support for children growing up in violent homes. Outreach programmes were funded.

Through these various programmes and changes to the school curriculum they have saved millions of dollars in special education costs, plus reduced costs of healthcare and policing. They reckon 3 dollars have been saved for every dollar invested in early intervention.

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A brilliant anecdote on a Radio 4 programme (The Reunion) about Thompson Comics. A particular issue had one of the characters in the Dandy making his own fireworks. Someone from a government department wrote a letter to the comic warning them that it was illegal for individuals to make fireworks in this country. In the next issue the Dandy's editor printed a trailer for the following week, which just said, “Next week Desperate Dan will show you how to make an atomic bomb.”

Layer 18 The Nature of Reality. Redefining the Goal.

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Chapter 3 of Ancient Wisdom, Modern World is concerned with ‘dependent origination’ and ‘the nature of reality’. Broadly speaking I take these ideas to mean that we are not, in reality, independent individuals, and that all life, all phenomena, and every human being, are interlinked and interdependent. Within this context, all of our actions have consequences not only for ourselves but for others, and we are nothing ourselves without other people.

With this in mind, then time has no real meaning - there is only a NOW when past actions inform the present and when what we do at any given moment has consequences for the future - both for ourselves and for others; both positive and negative.

These ideas were touched on in Layer 1 of this blog.

In Chapter 3 the Dalai Lama says, “If the self had intrinsic identity, it would be possible to speak in terms of self-interest in isolation from that of others’. But because this is not so, because self and others can only really be understood in terms of relationship, we see that self-interest and others’ interests are closely interrelated.

Indeed, within this picture of dependently originated reality, we see that there is no self-interest completely unrelated to others’ interests. Due to the fundamental interconnectedness which lies at the heart of reality, your interest is also my interest. From this it becomes clear that ‘my’ interest and ‘your’ interest are intimately connected. In a deep sense they converge.”

“Particular causes lead to particular effects, and certain actions lead to suffering while others lead to happiness. Thus it is in everybody’s interests to do what leads to happiness and avoid that which leads to suffering. And because our interests are inextricably linked, we are compelled to accept ethics as the indispensible interface between my desire to be happy and yours.”

Chapter 4 - Redefining the Goal - deals with the nature of happiness - short term and long term.

Money and material things can only bring short-term happiness. Having a lot of money and a lot of material things can even create a state of constant anxiety about their possible loss, for example. There can be no hope of gratifying the senses permanently.

The principal characteristic of genuine happiness is inner peace. Flourishing mentally and emotionally makes a significant contribution to inner peace. So does the satisfaction of love, and in order to attain it we need friends and family who can return our affection.

Our basic attitude to life is a major factor in attaining inner peace. Life consists of both light and dark elements. We can see a glass, and indeed our life, as half full or half empty. A tendency to see it as at least half full is needed in order to attain inner peace.

The other major source of inner peace, and therefore genuine long-term happiness, are the actions we undertake day to day. There are actions which contribute positively to the inner peace of ourselves and others, and actions whose impact are negative - certainly in the long run - to both ourselves and others.

Positive actions can be either ‘ethical’ or ‘spiritual’.

“An ethical act is one where we refrain from causing harm to others’ experience or expectation of happiness. Spiritual acts we can describe in terms of qualities such as love, compassion, patience, forgiveness, humility, tolerance and so on which presume some level of concern for others’ well-being. We find that the (spiritual) actions we undertake which are motivated not by narrow self-interest but out of our concern for others actually benefit ourselves. And not only that, but they make our lives meaningful.”

“Because our every action has a universal dimension, a potential impact on others’ happiness, ethics are necessary as a means to ensure we do not harm others.”

“Genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, humility and so on. It is these which provide happiness both for ourselves and others.”

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Back in the mists of time I first became interested in human well-being as a subject in itself (what some people are now calling ‘happiness studies’) when considering the ideas of the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow who maintained that people who achieve something like their full potential (in terms of being the best human being they can be) are ‘self-actualised’.

In recent times I’ve come to see such people as being ‘3 dimensional’ - fully developed in terms of spiritual intelligence (SQ), emotional intelligence (EQ), and intellect (IQ). These three dimensions also encompass physical intelligence, instinctual intelligence, social intelligence and metaphysical intelligence. Self-actualised individuals have all of these in abundance.

These ideas concerning three dimensionality and three continuums of intelligence have already been described in Layer 2.

Self-actualised people have travelled a long way along the path towards enlightenment, and they experience satori as a day to day reality. These ideas concerning enlightenment have been described in other recent blogs, recent Layers.

In Layer 20 I’ll summarise Maslow’s work and set out a description in terms of day to day behaviour and attitudes what it actually means to be self-actualised. We can then consider which types of behaviour and which attitudes correspond with which intelligences. We will then be able to judge the proportions of SQ, EQ and IQ that are engaged in the day to day lives of self-actualised individuals. We can then take a view on the relative importance of each of the three dimensions to individual and collective well-being, happiness and enlightenment.
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Materialism [In Our Time. Radio 4 (9.00am.)]

Melvyn Bragg, A.C. Grayling, and others.

Listening to this reminds me I need to get back to reading (and blogging about) Grayling’s 2003 book, What Is Good? The Search For The Best Way To Live, which can happen after I’ve finished Richard Layard’s Happiness - Lessons from a New Science. (2005)

Notes on the broadcast:

Materialists maintain that the only thing that exists is Matter.

The universe is fundamentally material in nature.

Epicurus said that materialism also applied to human nature. But whereas Aristotle believed in permanent substances, Epicurus didn’t.

He believed that humans should follow Pleasure - meaning tranquillity, serenity.

Lucretius believed the world consists of atoms - the basic stuff out of which everything is created.

Religion is mostly about fear and it oppresses people. If people realised they’re just atoms they wouldn’t worry about gods.

Aristotle saw nature as an interlocking system.

Purposes and intelligent design? Final causes? Opposite view to atomists and materialists.

Mind/soul/spirit = good? Matter = bad?
Christian doctrine was an espousal of this dualist view.

4th C Arian persecution. The Arians thought that ‘God is just a man’. They were wiped out for this view.

16th C Descartes. It’s possible to think about the material realm through science - to investigate this realm without impugning religion.

Galileo said that science is to do with quantifiable phenomena. Analysis of the world is a long way from common sense approaches. Science should be based on mathematics? Not an obvious idea.

Descartes and Gasendi - understanding the world through the senses. “There are only surfaces - not soul.” Injecting Epicurus into scientific debate.

The church’s doctrines had been dominant for centuries.

Hobbes espoused radical atomism. The only thing that exists are bodies.

Experiences produce thoughts and ideas in our brains. Consciousness is the ability to be aware of what’s happening.

There are no spiritual or immaterial realities. Hence the need to be atheist.

18th C saw the beginnings of the organised study of psychology and the phenomena of mind. We are still researching how consciousness arises. Our experience of the world is conditioned by our physiology and our psychology.

Issues of free will. Everything we do caused by anticedal states of affairs. Endless cause and effect. There is no freedom, fundamentally. Though we need our freedom to follow our desires.

The mind (memory) is a book that endlessly writes on itself. A Palimpsest. Layers. [See Layer 1]

We conceive ourselves as free moral beings. Whereas science proposes causal explanations.

Consciousness unifies disparate activities within the brain to create a unified sense of self.

The idea that there is a thing called soul or spirit that has ‘its’ own feelings, memories, desires, etc will fall away as we find proper explanations as to how the brain itself, of itself, gives rise to ‘mental’ phenomena.

No time on the programme to discuss Hegel, Marx and Quantum Physics!

If you missed the programme catch it on the BBC website - Listen Again.

Also Start The Week on R4 this week - another ‘must listen to’.

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A recent award for best individual contribution to radio went to Melvyn Bragg. And so say all of us In Our Time devotees.