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 240 . . . Superbowl, The Who, Gil Scott-Heron, Joseph Stiglitz, Bankers, Finance, Fairness, Values, the Flood Tablet, and Nick Clegg

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Having somehow slept through most of the first half of last night's Superbowl, currently an annual ritual, I woke up right on the stroke of half time, just in time for the entertainment. Last year it was the incredible Bruce and the E Street Band blasting out the best mini-concert ever. Tonight it was the turn of The Who.

Performing on a circular stage, in the centre of the pitch (naturally) they did well. It was quite a spectacle. Radiating out from the stage was what turned out to be a huge circular “screen” - actually a series of radiating spokes of light strips, computer controlled, on which appeared various patterns and shapes synched to the music. It's difficult to describe, but the technology is very impressive (presumably very expensive) and must have been amazing for those within the stadium. Take a look, and have a listen -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PEM4uFcaF0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La5uLfOVKaw&feature=related

I don't currently know who was playing the bass for The Who but if you listen on a good sound system (or headphones) you can tell it was impressive – almost up to John Entwhistle standards. But I still miss The Ox. It's not quite the same seeing just the two old guys, Townshend and  Daltry, taking their bows at the end, arms around one another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oUb5iRZzpU&feature=related   -  acoustic Who

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDL8hhR2vKY  -  Springsteen and the band 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uxJNSks2xo&feature=related


In case anyone's interested, the underdogs won – the New Orleans Saints.

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Poetry and Politics

Yesterday's Observer Review had three whole pages on Gil Scott-Heron, including its cover and pages 4-5. A man ahead of his time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/07/gil-scott-heron-comeback-interview

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/24/scott-heron-new-here


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

Born in Chicago in 1949 Gil earned a writing scholarship to a New York university.

The “great pioneer of socially conscious soul and rap” has a new album out, called 'I'm New Here'.

Weirdly, and to his great credit, the guy who published Obama's two books in this country, Jamie Byng, has also republished Gil Scott-Heron's two books – 'The Vulture' and 'The Nigger Factory'. (See Layer 238)

“I was just taken aback by the voice, the words, the poetry . . . I had been raised on rock but this was just breathtaking. The seasoned voice, the wryness of the delivery, the level of irony and satire in the lyrics – the whole thing just blew me away. Discovering those songs was an epiphanic moment for me.”

Those songs include Winter In America, Lady Day & John Coltrane, Home Is Where The Hatred Is, Pieces Of A Man, The Bottle, Whitey On The Moon and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

“As a teenager, his writing skills earned him a scholarship to the Fieldston School in New York and, from there, he went on to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, chosen, he later said, because it was where his hero, Langston Hughes, had studied. It was there he met Brian Jackson, his musical collaborator on many of the great songs that would follow.

Together throughout the 1970s, Scott-Heron and Jackson made music that reflected the turbulence, uncertainty and increasing pessimism of the times, merging the soul and jazz traditions and drawing on an oral poetry tradition that reached back to the blues and forward to hip-hop. The music sounded by turns angry, defiant and regretful while Scott-Heron's lyrics possessed a satirical edge that set them apart from the militant soul of contemporaries such as Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield.

"I still can't think of too many performers who have the intellectual range in their songwriting that takes in satire and social commentary apart from the early Bob Dylan and maybe the young Randy Newman," says Jamie Byng. "But there's also a great empathy there. Gil writes about the state of the world, but also about community, family, and the plight of the individual. And, he has never compromised. That's maybe a big part of the reason why his music never really crossed over. What he was saying was too raw, too truthful."

In more ways than one, then, Gil Scott Heron was, and remains, the great outsider, exalted by his devoted faithful, overlooked by the mainstream. His influence, though, is pervasive, though few and far between are the rappers that can make their lyrical gift, or its delivery, seem so effortless. "I work hard at it," he says, "just like I worked hard at getting my masters degree. It's not just something I sit down and do. You have to learn and keep learning."

"He sees himself as a live performer and a story teller," the album's producer Richard Russell told me last week. "Even in the studio, he brings this extraordinary energy with him, this natural, god-given ability to perform, to tell it like it is. The words just seem to flow though him.

He's a genuine artist in a way that most performers aren't anymore. He has no conception of time, no regard for money. He seems utterly free from the normal everyday burdens people carry.”

He's playing the RFH on 20th April.

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More On Emotions

Newsnight tonight had a feature on blubbing politicians (see previous Layer). It was pretty incoherent, and though I quite like the female presenter, her comments and questions left you wishing for Paxo to be on the case. He's a hard act to work alongside.

Also on the programme was writer and psychologist Susie Orbach, whose work I've always liked and respected, but even she had nothing new or interesting to say about the emotional cracking up we saw or heard about this weekend – Campbell and Brown.

There was some rubbish spoken about whether post-Diana we expect our leaders to 'show some emotion', and a slight suggestion that they can blub to order, as part of their repertoire, which is plainly ridiculous. Sure – Blair can put on a 'sincere' and 'emotional' performance when he thinks fit, but there's a world of difference between his bullshit and what we saw in Campbell's case, where the man had clearly just lost it under less than fierce questioning.

Like The Terminator, though, he'll be back.

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Start The Week

Radio 4 this morning gave us a good dose of the great Joseph Stiglitz, who was virtually the only economist to predict our great financial crisis. It's his birthday tomorrow.

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

His books include Globalization and Its Discontents, Principles of Macroeconomics, Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development, The Three Trillion Dollar War,   Whither Socialism ?
 and 2010, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.

He said we now need a totally different model of capitalism, and a totally different attitude to regulation of banking and finance. Most recent economic growth was due only to the property bubble. Even he didn't imagine the extent of the bankers' arrogance and stupidity when they were gambling insanely with billions in order to make their huge bonuses.

But it's not just their mismanagement of risk he takes issue with. He points out that they clearly don't give a stuff about the morality of taking advantage of the poor and ignorant, or even the rich and ignorant.

He says we still haven't seen enough 'Keynesian' spending on infrastructure, technology and education. More needs to be spent in order to stay out of recession. (NB Cameron and Osborne.)

Incredible amounts of money are being wasted on the military – on weapons that don't work, to fight enemies that don't exist.

He also spoke about the insane level of salaries and bonuses in the financial 'services' sector – how the lure of big money is so great as to be irresistible, with the result that many bright and capable and creative people who could be of benefit to society are drawn into being hired hands in the scummy banking casinos in places like London and New York. They don't have the strength of character to resist the temptations and just do the right thing.

There was also a brief discussion about the 'John Lewis' model of employee-owned businesses and cooperatives.

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On the same programme Peter Brook spoke about the role of the theatre (and by implication the creative arts) in enabling us to see through the lies and bullshit into the true nature of our society, and see through to truth and reality.

Interestingly he also mentioned that Blair actually believes every word he says, so can he be called a liar? Obama is very different, so we can still have genuine hope, and not just pursue false hopes.

In terms of developing a culture of non-violence and tolerance – these have to be passionate affirmations of strong belief, and not just 'passive' attitudes.

A passionate criticism of bankers is needed as an affirmation of higher values.

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The Flood Tablet

Today's object in the History Through 100 Objects series was the so-called Flood Tablet – a clay writing tablet found in Northern Iraq, dating from 700BC approx.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth#Tablet_eleven_.28XI.29.2C_the_flood_tablet

The message of this ancient story is that we should abandon wealth, spurn property, seek our own survival, help others, and then we will in turn be rewarded. [Very similar to the Buddhist story of Siddharta?]

God brings 'the flood' because the world is full of violence. [Maybe this is what climate change is all about!]

This story marks the changeover from polytheism to monotheism. Belief in a single, rational, creative, spiritual entity.

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Radio Clegg

Nick Clegg was also on the radio, talking about many things, including his disgust at the MPs who were 'flippers' and deliberately made stacks of cash out of lying about their 'main residence' and getting wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. He pointed out that there were NO Lib Dem MPs caught up in this, and that Brown and Cameron have taken NO action against their flippers, even though it's quite clear that their capital gains have been property development at OUR expense.

It seems Clegg is keen to reduce the size of classes to 15 at KS1. Seems like a good idea to me – especially in areas where there are high levels of E2L and SEN. Interesting that very few others have paid any attention to this. I've even heard of headteachers who have increased the size of KS1 classes back to 30 on taking over a school – presumably in order to invest more resources in chasing SATs scores at KS2.

Clegg spoke convincingly about what he called shocking levels of inequality in this country, especially in inner cities in places like Sheffield. We should all care about having a fairer society, and working for a fairer country. [See other blogs on The Spirit Level].

He spoke passionately about the need for fairer taxes, and for the rich to pay more in taxes. Also – no-one should pay any tax on the first £10,000 they earn. For Clegg, fairer taxes are the most important policy issue.

Not much to disagree with there. Well to the left of NuLabour, I'd say.
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Layer 215 Exploitation, Banking, Whistleblowing, Bombing, Intelligence, Snobbery, Stupidity, Greed and Jealousy

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Minimum Wages

Listening to some early Bob Dylan songs recently I came across this humorous verse from his early 60's song “Talkin' New York” -

Well, I got a harmonica job begun to play
Blowing my lungs out for a dollar a day
I blowed inside out and upside down
The man there said he loved my sound
He was raving about it, he loved my sound -
Dollar a day's worth.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/talkinnewyork.html

I've been thinking about exploitation, especially of younger people, and how the minimum wage has also become the maximum wage as far as a lot of employers are concerned. The people who used to employ my daughter said they loved her approach to the work and to customers, her trustworthiness, her commitment and her reliability, and they still paid her the minimum wage. When they asked her to look after the business whilst they went away on an expensive holiday they had still intended to pay her the minimum wage, and only begrudgingly paid her slightly more when she suggested they should.

Makes me wonder whether Dylan ever got a pay rise.

Of course these people are idiots, with no business sense whatsoever. These sorts of idiots can't see how a ruthless focus on short term profitability is detrimental to long-term business development. They certainly can't see that it's exploitative to expect someone to handle money competently and honestly  and deal in an intelligent way with customers or clients and yet pay them the same as someone who sweeps streets or stacks supermarket shelves. They just do it because they can.

As I write I'm listening to a Radio 4 programme (“The Choice”) on which I can hear someone saying that a senior banking manager admitted that they couldn't possibly have hit their sales targets by selling 'ethically'. In other words, business ethics these days don't exist. As if they ever did, that is, in most places.

More about banking later.

Incidentally, there's some interesting thoughts here about Dylan's influences and inspirations -
http://www.bobdylanroots.com/greenway.html

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According to a report out yesterday there's an 18 year gap in life expectancy between people living in the poorest and the richest parts of Sheffield. That's a bloody big gap.

http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news2/Sheffield-A-city-split-for.5785752.jp
And we should never forget that our economies as well as our banking system are based on selling “financial products” to people who have no way of knowing that the “deals” on offer are for the most part nothing more than swindles based on deception, exploitation, lies and half truths. How else do those bankers get those profits and those 'bonuses'?
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Coventry

At the other end of the spectrum of how human beings behave towards one another there was a documentary on the BBC recently, about the destruction of Coventry in WW2, which gave a very real sense of the extraordinary comradeship that was responsible for the phoenix-like revival of the city and also its community after the devastation that occurred. It was also interesting how that spirit of comradeship caused the majority of people in Coventry not to take up the offer of evacuation to a safer place – they became even more determined  to stay, in spite of the hardships, and to keep the factories working to provide the war equipment that was essential to the effort to defeat fascism.

Interviews with elderly people who lived through the air raid and its aftermath also gave a very real sense of what I know to be the truth about the majority of Midlands people of my parents' generation – their humility and groundedness, their stoicism, their decency, their modesty, their spirit of community – their spiritual intelligence.

“We were all the same. There was real camaraderie.”

568 people were killed in the bombing of Coventry. 50,000 civilians were killed in the subsequent RAF bombing of Hamburg. Almost as many died in the destruction of Dresden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/15/newsid_3522000/3522785.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n7xky/Blitz_The_Bombing_of_Coventry/
http://www.cwn.org.uk/heritage/blitz
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The Choice

Michael Buerk interviews people who have made life-altering decisions and talks them through the whole process, from the original dilemma to living with the consequences.
Michael talks to former banking executive Paul Moore about his choice to blow the whistle on HBOS.

This was another brilliant little programme that went to the heart of the kind of society we've become in this country. Paul Moore talked about his decision to become a whistle-blower - his concern for truth and justice versus his concern for his own wellbeing, his family, his career, and his future.

Mr Moore spoke very eloquently about having a  strong ethical sense of fairness that was in conflict with the taking of severance money on condition of a gagging order. £700,000 is what was offered.

He also spoke about his feelings of devastation at being fired for doing something that was clearly right and proper – simply speaking up about things the bank was doing that were clearly unethical. He spoke about turning to the bottle in the aftermath of his sacking.

Sir James Crosby – the head of Moore's employer HBOS who insisted Moore had to be fired after he'd written a devastating report about what the bank was up to – subsequently went on to be head of the Financial Services Authority.

Moore spoke very well about the importance of the truth coming out so that we could reconstruct the banking industry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nk2c2

see also
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/4629670/Gordon-Brown-must-go-says-HBOS-whistleblower-Paul-Moore.html
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Banking

All over the media this morning – how our Chancellor Darling has determined to keep our capitalist system pretty much as it is by creating some new banks. Ha!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/03/banking-bailouts-lloyds-rbs
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Finance and Banking

Please read this excellent piece in the Guardian yesterday by its economics editor, Larry Elliott -

Painful death of the American economic dream

This crisis has been a long time in coming, and history suggests that the period of upheaval will be long and painful, just as it was between 1914 and 1945

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/02/globalisation-financial-markets-reforms

This is precisely the sort of clear-eyed overview that everyone should read if they care to understand the really big picture, the global picture.

Have a look at this on today's website as well, including Oxzen's comment - 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/banking-rbs-lloyds-darling?

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More on Drugs and Government

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/drugs-science-evidence

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/02/cannabis-row-drugs-david-nutt

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Spiritual, Social and Emotional Intelligence

I know I bang on about this, but what's the alternative? Keeping quiet?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1224565/Random-attack-thugs-30-seconds-stranger-assaults-soar-binge-Britain.html

Someone is attacked by a complete stranger every 30 seconds in Britain, figures revealed last night.

There were 1,057,000 violent attacks by strangers last year - the equivalent of 2,895 a day or 120 every hour.

When Labour came to power, only a third of violent crimes were carried out by an attacker the victim did not know.

That has now jumped . . . as random violence . . . has become commonplace.

Of course the Daily Mail's focus is on the symptom rather than the causes, and this report is part of a campaign to reduce pub opening hours. These sick people couldn't possibly admit that our society is sick, and it's the mental and spiritual health of the nation we ought to be concerned about, not simply how to clamp down on the behavior of sick and/or stupid people. Of course it's a lot simpler, and cheaper, to force pubs to go back to closing at 11.00pm, rather than having to invest more in developing proper spiritual, emotional and social intelligence in our young people and thereby educate them away from lives of violence, binge drinking and drunkenness. Of course these young (and not so young) people for the most part KNOW that what they do is harmful to themselves and others – but do they give a shit? What we must do, and fail to do, is to educate their souls and spirits away from the ignorance and stupidity that infects them. It can be done. It's done elsewhere. It's not even rocket science.

Talking about infections, Brother B reminded me that he still wants to read “Affluenza” by Oliver James, and I'm reminding all of Oxzen's readers that they ought to read it.

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More Sickness

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/cage-fighting-the-ultimate-challenge-447449.html

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

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In Praise of the BBC

The reason conservatives and reactionaries hate the BBC is because it insists on making quite a lot of programmes that appear “liberal” or “progressive” or “left wing” - simply because they're intelligent and they deal in revelation and truth-telling. Intelligent discourse that deals in reality is abhorrent to the idiots on the Right simply because they either can't get a stupid word in edgeways in the discussions or because when they do it's promptly exposed as misguided ludicrous reactionary rubbish based on ignorance and fear.

The best of the BBC is our only hope for an intelligent national discourse that's available to all and also very wide-ranging. “To inform, educate and entertain”. Contrast that with what's on view on Fox TV, for example, as seen on the clips on Jon Stewart's 'Daily Show' on More Four.

Items heard on Radio Four yesterday -

• The government's PREVENT programme that sets out to show young Asians etc how the police monitor and deal with “extremists threats” is no more than an exercise to convince the young that our approach to surveillance and “intelligence gathering” is right and proper. Whereas what we should be doing is teaching the young people that have the biggest sense of grievance to engage constructively in a dialogue with those who oppose and dismiss their radical views. We should also be helping them to learn whilst still at school that non-violence is the best and only proper philosophy, no matter how great your sense of frustration and injustice might be.

• Quentin Letts has a new book out called Bog Standard Britain. This appalling man, who might actually be quite an intelligent individual given some extensive de-toxification and some further learning opportunities, actually thinks that the TV character Hyacinth Bucket (Keeping Up Appearances) is a fine example, in spite of her extreme snobbery, of enlightened self-interest and drive to “better oneself”.  http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0030918/quotes    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyacinth_Bucket

• The Radio 4 Book of the Week this week is a biography of Somerset Maughan, who apparently qualified as a surgeon before opting to live his  life as a writer, in spite of the huge drop in income that it initially involved.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nj9jc   "In 1892, at the age of 18, Somerset Maugham enrolled at St Thomas' medical school, but his heart wasn't in it. What he really wanted to do was write."
  

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Galactica

I've finally got round to watching Battlestar Galactica – the mini-series. The first 90 minute episode was on the Sci-Fi Channel last night.

“Greed, spite and jealousy. We still commit murder and other sorts of violence because of these things.”
Destructive emotions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_%282004_TV_series%29
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Layer 61 A Blogella

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To read the final chapter of ‘On Chesil Beach’ took an early-morning hour of slow, concentrated effort. Having reached what is effectively (figuratively and literally) the climax of this novella in the previous chapter, what remains is simply the denouement - how will the characters play out the consequences of what has gone before?

The reader approaches McEwan’s ending with a sense of dread and foreboding, but still retaining, perhaps, a slight hope that events will play out for the ‘best’, that happiness and fulfilment is, after all, possible.

And yet we know (because we know that the writer will not cop out - he will not pretend that life is other than it is) he will confirm that the human condition is essentially tragic, and that life cannot be, and is perhaps not meant to be, a simple place where young lovers live happily ever after.

Sex, of course, is the problem. Without sex, life could be easy. Without libido, attraction, yearning for physical fulfilment and release; without arousal, desire for ecstatic pleasure, and the joining of spirits through physical bliss; without a need for transcendence through orgasmic satori experience, life could be so simple. Or so it might seem - to an ascetic, a logician, a virgin or a celibate.

The female character in Chesil Beach, on her wedding night, is, and wishes to be, all of these things. Not that she’s without passion and desire. But her passion is her profession, her vocation and her music; and her desire is to achieve perfection through the creation and the performance of the one thing she loves unconditionally.

Like so many homo sapiens she’s assertive, strong, fearless and decisive - when she’s at work on her beloved profession. She needs no advice and she doesn’t hesitate - she instinctively knows what’s right and what’s wrong. But like so many English women and men, when she needs to manage relationships and her own emotions she hesitates, she flounders, she frankly hasn’t a clue. She no more knows and understands her inner self or other people than she knows and understands the physical structure of atoms or the universe.

Why should this be so? How can university educated, bright young people with talents and aspirations be so socially, emotionally and spiritually dumb? Because that’s the way we do things here - it’s what you might call the English condition, rather than the human condition. It doesn’t have to be this way. Elsewhere, people do it differently. Not a lot, but some.

But what we have here are two clever young people who have been brought up to be emotionally illiterate, to have no understanding of their own feelings, emotions and sexuality. They have no words and no concepts with which to communicate, or to even think about these matters.

They have no idea that to become a mature, three dimensional human being they need to effectively have degrees in three different sorts of intelligence, and that IQ is not only NOT the be all and end all - that the pursuit of ‘academic’ excellence and intellectual refinement precludes, in most instances, the development of the other key intelligences. Locked for hours and days in the individual, egotistical pursuit of certificates and diplomas and degrees is no way to find enlightenment.

It's also precluded by the pursuit of money, fame, professional success, and any kind of material goal, when these things consume so much precious time that could be better spent on more worthwhile achievements. Like knowing oneself, understanding others, and developing the precious qualities of intuition, empathy, generosity, kindness, imagination and creativity, awe and wonder. Out of which love - unselfish, unconditional, unstinting love - might eventually emerge. But that’s not how we do things.

It’s a dog eat dog world, and the masters of the universe, our universe, have decreed these things should be otherwise. The hard-faced decision makers with iron and lead in their toxic and radioactive souls decided long ago that academic attainment, from which they themselves profited, obviously, should be the only goal of what they call education.

Oh yes, they pay lip service to what they see as the fluffy fringes of schooling - the stuff that can’t be tested, graded and sorted - like becoming a decent human being. But they don’t, after all, want others to have what they don’t have, which is rich human relationships, laughter, time to enjoy their loved ones, time to enrich the lives of others, time to relax and meditate, time to create and imagine, and time for fulfilling and mutually enriching sex.

It’s clear from McEwan’s book that none of the older characters has any kind of a sex life. They don’t even have any genuine enjoyment of one another on any level. Each pursues his or her lonely goals within the conventional social frameworks which they, and society, have created.

Not that sex could or would be a cure-all for the things that separate and divide the principal characters on Chesil Beach. Life is more complicated than that. Her background is well-to-do business-owning people with cars and servants. His is relative poverty, make-do and mend, and cramped, chaotic accommodation. She loves classical music and can’t see any merit whatsoever in any other sort. He loves blues, jazz and rock, and can’t see any merit in anything classical. And so on.

We know that love can transcend differences of class and background, and even cultural tastes. But when love hits the rocks, what resources have we to use that will help us to re-float our boat? What means of communication do we have that will allow us to work together, agree what repairs are needed, assign tasks, agree on how to be collaborative and supportive? And in times of crisis can we even be calm enough and patient enough to arrange a meeting where things might be discussed objectively, considerately, disinterestedly? Or do we resort to primitive instincts and let reactions and emotions overwhelm us - fight, flight or freeze? Of course we do.

McEwan’s genius, like any fine artist, is to wrap up the story without condemning either character - both of them have their strengths and weaknesses, their fine points and their faults, their guilt and their innocence. What they’re both guilty of is their age, their inexperience, their ignorance, their egotism, their incomprehension, their lack of communication, their absence of real inter-personal and intrapersonal intelligence, their lack of real empathy, intuition and emotional intelligence. None of which is their fault. In essence they are both victims, living in a world that’s run so badly, so incompetently, so utterly without the benefit of real spiritual intelligence. So are we all.

Chesil Beach is a hard place, though not without its own beauty. Nothing lives there, and nothing grows on that rocky, pebbly, bouldery spit of land between cold, grey waters. Even to walk there is difficult. You wouldn’t choose it for a beach holiday. It’s not really a beach at all. It’s nothing more than a barrier; and it’s desolate, it’s featureless, it’s barren, it’s without colour and it’s where nothing really happens, except the continuous pounding of the elements, of tides and wind and rain. It’s a bit like life as it’s lived by many unfortunate souls.

It doesn’t have to be this way.
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And if you ever have any doubts that August is the silly season then check out today’s news as brought to you by the good people at Yahoo! Hold that front page!

* Rooney quizzed over spitting.
* ‘Big Brother’ Rex blows the food budget.
* Police hunt for British girl’s body parts in Brazil.
* Dad reveals Destiny’s Child may reform.

All of which rival the classic Sky Sports’ “Leeds in talks with unnamed player.”

Stop Press!
* Whale rescue in Hampshire!
* Thatch Croaks!
* Cameron shags pig!
(Which of these is NOT true?)
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Layer 60 Klimt

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It doesn’t seem possible that the Tate Liverpool's exhibition of Klimt is the first ever exhibition of his work in this country. Are we not a nation of art lovers?

How can this be? Perhaps this lack of interest in showing Klimt’s work has been somewhat connected with the fact that Klimt and the Secessionists believed that sexuality is the key to human liberation and fulfillment, and that a good deal of Klimt’s work is highly erotic and a celebration of the beauty of the female form. The current concerns manifested in the British media with sex education and teenage pregnancy are showing us, as ever, how much we still fear and tend to avoid explicit conversation and discourse about sex.

Like his contemporary, Sigmund Freud, and Wilhelm Reich, another resident of turn-of-the-century Vienna, Gustav Klimt focused a lot of his creative energy on the subject of sex and sexuality, and believed that sexual & emotional health and sexual fulfillment play a vital role in human wellbeing - more vital than wealth or status, more important than bourgeois ‘respectability’ and material comfort and security.

Our society’s historical aversion to full-on engagement with human sexuality in any mature way is reflected in the actual location of the Tate show’s semi-darkened room containing drawings of women nudes masturbating - with genitals, fingers and splayed thighs depicted in loving detail.

This small room, which is more like a room within a room, is situated right at the end of the exhibition, and visitors have the option of walking straight past it, and avoiding it, in order to go out of the exhibition, and into the bookshop and merchandise area, where there's a variety of Klimt shopping bags, posters, key rings, fridge magnets, vibrators, etc, on sale.

(I made that last one up. Though they say the Anne Summers shop in the main shopping precinct is selling an exciting range of Klimpt Klit Stimulators, specially commissioned to coincide with and cash in on this exhibition, which is pulling in visitors from far and wide - people who would normally no more visit Liverpool than they would New Brighton or Birkenhead.)

But truthfully, when was the last time anyone went to an exhibition and saw erotic drawings like these by a major artist, depicting this important but virtually taboo aspect of female sexuality? Surely nice girls don't do that kind of thing? Actually they do, but you'd never know it from the output of the world's best-known artists. Klimt is unique, in very many ways.

(To be fair, nobody does paintings of men masturbating either, but that’s another story. At least everybody seems to know that men actually do it, whilst women’s self-pleasuring remains a subject surrounded in mystery, even to many women, unless you happen to be into pornography, which his critics actually accused Klimt of being. ‘Accused’, you see. Like it’s a crime he committed by creating powerful images of beautiful and erotic women, no matter how willingly the models posed, and how much they presumably enjoyed posing, since Klimt was said to have made love to most of them.)

I remember how startling it felt in the Musee D'Orsay a few years ago to come across Courbet's incredibly naturalistic and highly erotic painting of a model’s genitals with her mass of dark pubic hair. Was it OK to stand there and stare at it, like you would any other exhibit? Interestingly no-one else did. Yet it's a wonderful picture, aptly titled "The Origin of the World". (L’Origine Du Monde)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Origine_du_monde

And it was interesting to observe visitors, including pairs of young women, in the masturbation room in the Tate, where there were also some drawings by Klimt of couples in various stages of love-making. Interesting to observe their somewhat embarrassed and giggly interactions. Clearly, walking round in silence was not an option for cool connoisseurs, but neither was any thoughtful or normal conversation. The attitude seemed to be that one should either be embarrassed, indifferent to, or amused by the drawings. Like it was impossible to be turned on by them, see oneself in them, or just simply enjoy them for their artistic genius.

It was also interesting to consider whether Klimt ever developed any of these drawings into oil paintings - which seems highly likely - and if so what happened to them, and where they are now. And if he didn‘t, why not?

Could it be that to acknowledge that women masturbate would be to acknowledge that women enjoy sensuality, sexuality and orgasm? Enjoy them, need them, and desire them. And how difficult and dangerous would that be for so many men, the majority of whom in Klimt‘s time and Freud‘s time, and it seems often in our own time, are pretty clueless about female physiology and sexuality? Why else do so many women desire, enjoy, and often prefer, vibrators?

Whilst he also painted superb landscapes, and clearly enjoyed painting well-to-do women in fabulous dresses, Klimt didn’t shirk the need for the artist to engage with the sexual and the erotic in the quest to illustrate and depict the human condition, which after all is surely the foremost duty of any artist. Human love, tenderness, desire and intimacy are at the very heart of our lives, or at least ought to be.

Human sexuality is mysterious and yet enormously important for most of us, and the role of the artist is surely to shed light on the emotional and spiritual aspects of our instinctual drives. But how many of us have been enriched and enlightened in this way? How many artists down the centuries have been capable of engaging with such challenging subject matter? It’s impossible to see Klimt’s work and not reflect on ourselves, our sexuality, our desires, our ideas of beauty, our need for kissing, for intimacy, for holding someone close, for physical union.

One of my favourite Klimt paintings, Nuda Veritas, The Naked Truth, is very explicit. A curvaceous nude with lovely auburn hair cascading over her shoulders stands facing the viewer, with lips and legs slightly apart, holding up a round mirror, in which we see our own reflection.

She’s a tall, proud, unabashed figure, asserting her nakedness and beauty, her naturalness, her attractiveness. Her only adornments are a few white daisies, which she’s fastened in her hair. But she’s confronting us with the mirror - daring us to look in it and thereby become aware of our own reactions to her. So what are they? Admiration? Appreciation? Attraction? Desire? Fear? Embarrassment? Envy? Resentment?

She’s not being deliberately provocative - she just IS. As pure and innocent and unadorned as any living creature. Klimt is giving us the naked truth - about another human soul, and about ourselves - if we only care to look. Yes folks - underneath those gorgeous dresses and gowns, this is what women actually look like. Is this a problem? Is this pornography? Or is it a source of awe and wonder, joy and fulfillment?

The printed guide to the exhibition describes the city of Vienna at the turn of the century, and says it was a place where “Sigmund Freud’s theories positing sexuality as a liberating force were highly influential, contributing to an overarching atmosphere of eroticism.” It goes on to say that “Against this backdrop Klimt put the female form centre-stage, oscillating between the extremes of woman as immaculate virgin and sinful seductress.”

The oscillation is the interesting part. Klimt is too much of a realist to have a simplistic view of women as either virtuous virgins, wives and mothers on the one hand, or whores on the other. As an artist he recognizes that every woman contains within her all the stereotypes, and travels through life, whether or not she admits it to herself or others, somehow oscillating between all of them. A woman’s capacity to experience arousal and desire may be stunted or wrapped in chains and vows, but the point is that she has the potential to experience and express herself and her needs sexually. And this was not a commonly accepted view prior to Freud and Klimt and the Secessionists.

The Tate’s booklet tells us that Klimt’s drawings “record the artist’s private investigation and explicit celebration of female sexuality”. And this is where he was such an iconoclast and pioneer - not only celebrating female sexuality, but doing it so explicitly. And for this alone, if for nothing else, he deserves recognition and praise.

Some of the other great pictures in the exhibition include portraits of Hermine Gallia, Eugenia Primavesi, Joseph Pembauer and Helene Klimt. There’s also the stunning Adam and Eve, Judith II, and The Three Ages of Women.

Finally, there’s a reproduction of the Beethoven Frieze, at eye level around three walls of a room. And it’s a truly symphonic piece of work, with so many elements that are in turn elegiac, erotic, spiritual, carnal, joyful, melancholic, lyrical and simply beautiful. One of the newspaper reviews dismisses it as merely a reproduction and not worth including in the exhibition, but for those of us who’ve had to make do with looking at disconnected details in books, and who aren’t likely to be visiting the original in Vienna any time soon, many thanks.

http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/gustavklimt/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Secession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4014012.ece http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/06/03/baklimt203.xml
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Layer 34 IQ, SATs, and other complete nonsense.

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Ther's more and more rubbish in the so-called quality press about intelligence, education and social mobility. These are definitely zeitgeisty issues. Yesterday’s Observer had three pages devoted to “The Problem With IQ - Are we too clever for our own good?” Friday’s G2 had six pages considering “Is Meritocracy Dead?” And this evening’s Panorama had half an hour on “The pressure that exams place on children and schools”. All part of a never-ending debate on “standards”, “social mobility”, and “progressive methods”.

The Observer’s feature was the biggest let-down. Three pages of rehashed argument about the validity of IQ tests, theories about the relative intelligences of different ethnic groups, and the reasons for joining or not joining Mensa. So why can’t we just say that some people are good at IQ tests and some aren’t, and just leave it at that? Some people are good at verbal reasoning, mathematical puzzles, spotting patterns, anagrams, etc, and some are not. So what?

Is intellectual agility the same as intelligence? Of course not. Is there only one kind of intelligence? Of course not. Is being coached for a test the same as developing one’s intelligence? Is being a creative thinker the same as being intelligent? Is having a good imagination the same as being intelligent? Do tests foster one’s imagination or creativity?

Jim Knight, the School’s Minister, appears to be a moron. Asked whether it made sense for children and teachers in English schools still to be subjected to SATs when Scotland and Wales don‘t see any need for them, he waffled and avoided the issue, parroting the party line (i.e. the right-wing political consensus in England) that SATs are helping to raise ‘standards’. Even though he knows very well that research shows that what’s gone up is the amount of time spent preparing for the tests (to the detriment of all else), and teachers’ skills in preparing kids for tests.

Has intellectual ability gone up? No. Has creativity gone up? No. It’s gone down, due to the narrowing of the curriculum. He even lied about the impact of SATs on children, maintaining that in most schools the children don’t really notice they’re doing special tests, and that they’re frequently tested anyway.

Well they certainly are now you fuckwit - tested to death in fact - since everyone feels compelled to do “optional” SATs throughout Key Stage Two, and the practice papers are never-ending in Year 6. As for children not minding all this crap they’re subjected to - the man’s a disgusting liar. Of course they feel the pressure, and they feel bad when they don’t do as well as the government’s targets say they should be doing, and they worry themselves sick in the run-up to the tests that they won't meet their parents' and teachers' expectations, that they won't do as well as their friends, etc.

Meanwhile the Observer article has nothing to say whatsoever about other sorts of intelligence - creative and artistic ability, use of the senses, empathy, intuition, imagination, and so on. How many more times do we poor bloody English have to debate all this rubbish? The simple answer seems to be - forever.

The Guardian article, meanwhile, in looking at the Bullingdon Club, the intake of Oxbridge, the numbers of ex-private sector pupils in government and the professions, etc, concentrates on whether we can get back to promoting meritocracy, by which it means greater social mobility. Michael Gove, the Tories’ school’s spokesman, says, “School may be the only place you learn, and progressive methods let you down.” This ignorant pillock has much to learn.

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What all of this amounts to, of course, is a conspiracy. There is in England a vast network of people who have built careers on the notion that we need a massive centralised system of control involving Ofsted, the department for education (under its various and never ending changes of name), inspection contractors, overpriced independent consultants, and so on. This system has wasted billions of pounds that should have gone towards the well-being and teaching of our children.

None of these people who support the SATs system and in the name of ‘accountability’ favour a highly confrontational and vindictive system of ‘targets’ and ‘standards’ have any idea as to why other countries - the most successful countries included - have either never had an Ofsted and target-setting culture, or have abandoned one when given an opportunity. They never ask themselves why England, uniquely, has looked to the USA for a model of test-based schooling.

They haven’t a clue as to what works best in the best systems. All that the people who are involved in the conspiracy know is what they know, and what they actually do to support our current system is simply done in order to bring in the money to pay for their various mortgages and lifestyles. Most of these people are involved unwittingly, but in my view ignorance is no excuse. They have never had to defend their support for the dominant system which they help to manage, and in any debate about the actual needs of children and schools they could never defend it. They are just carrying out orders. Unquestioningly. Which is what the system likes and expects. God help you if you question it or suggest changing it.

Talk to any of these people and you’ll be aware that a) they’re ignorant of what it means to have a system based on meeting children’s actual developmental needs, and b) they don’t give a damn about why good teachers and head teachers (who actually do know how to provide for all of the intelligences and the creativity of every child, and who do know why the vision for education set out in such visionary publications as “All Our Futures”, “The New Learning Revolution” and “It’s About Teaching” is so vital) are giving up and looking for ways out of a profession they used to love.

Politicians like Jim Knight, Andrew Adonis and Gordon Brown (who ought, as a father of a child with special needs, know better, as should David Bullingdon Cameron) are fed statistics and nineteenth century bullshit about ‘attainment‘, which they are in any case, as academic high-flyers themselves, predisposed to believe, by a vast civil service of academic over-achievers and loud voices from the stupid wing of the commentariat. These voices are all in favour of the idea that we must measure and assess children’s ‘attainment‘, as if rote learning, memorisation and the accumulation of ‘facts’, as well as the ability to pass tests, is really what makes someone well educated.

Thus they continue to promote a system that’s effectively a counter-revolution to the Plowden ‘revolution’ that tried to put the needs of the individual child at the centre of our schools’ practice and organization. The English system post-Plowden used to be admired throughout the world for its child-centred philosophy, which insisted on enabling children to love learning for its own sake, and which encouraged imagination, creativity, intuition, empathy and collaboration rather than competition, since these are all key life skills.

Nowadays enlightened educationalists elsewhere (as well as the few that remain in this country) are incredulous that our system has abandoned doing things for the immediate and genuine benefit of our children, and runs according to the benighted ideas of ‘tradition’ and the elitist ideas of those who believe that the only way to do well by working class children is to cram them from cradle to eighteen to enable them to get into universities and thence into well-paid employment that will enable them to abandon the concrete jungles of the inner city for starter homes in the suburbs.

This is bullshit of the highest order, and no wonder our inner-city streets are full of violent disaffected adolescents who have been tested, bored and excluded to a spiritual death, if not to actual death, and resort to violence and drugs in order to find some kind of escape, identity and self-expression.

England had managed to defeat the more enlightened vision of educational ‘progressives’ through doing untold damage to its children, who have been identified by various studies as the unhappiest in the world. There is no doubt at all about this. Unesco, for example - by no means a radical organization - has published a damning report, which of course our system has ignored and gone into denial about.

It will take more than damning reports for our political masters to overthrow the conspiracy. In the first place they must be predisposed to do so and must possess some enlightened views of their own, which they patently do not. Neither will the next administration. Michael Gove, the Tories’ ‘schools spokesman’, an ex Times journalist, pretends he’s not an opponent of ‘comprehensive’ schools as such, but says merely, “What’s gone wrong is . . . not the comprehensive ideal, but some of the educational theories that came with it”.

Postscript.

In case anyone was wondering, what the best systems do to ‘measure’ pupil progress is to carry out continuous assessment as to what skills, concepts and knowledge children are acquiring week in, week out. They do not attempt to ‘measure’ these things in high-pressure timed tests. The reason our system imposes timed tests of its own devising on children, and has the tests marked by people outside the schools, is because they do not trust the schools to carry out effective continuous assessment, and in any case they use the tests to measure the effectiveness of schools and teachers (and head teachers) as much as they use them to supposedly measure the educational progress of pupils.

Of course no-one could possibly claim that academic tests show us anything at all about schools’ effectiveness in promoting emotional intelligence, social intelligence, spiritual intelligence, creativity and imagination, let alone a life-long love of learning for its own sake, but then no-one currently in a positions of power gives a damn about these things anyway.

And we’re still awaiting the publication of Professor Alexander et al's Primary Review. Though don’t hold your breath in the expectation that it will have any impact whatsoever on the views or careers of our politicians, bureaucrats and commentators, all of whom have vested interests in maintaining the system as it is, and cannot therefore be expected to disown their current idiotic views on children and education.

And people wonder why we've become a nation of cynics.

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(See Layer 3 Making the News for previous thoughts on Jim Knight, Michael Gove, schools and education)

Breaking news at 8.18 am. The Commons Select Committee on Education has just delivered a damning report on SATs and standardised testing, and the pressures on schools, pupils and teachers. Jim Knight is still talking shit. He's now defending the system by saying we have to have high-pressure tests at 11 and 13 in order to prepare children for the stressful tests they have to sit at 16! Thank God for some sensible comments from Mick Brookes of the NAHT about Assessment For Learning and the need to abandon the testing regime.
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Layer 31 Passion and Patience

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The Today programme on Radio 4 just now featured an item on a new production at the National Theatre of “The Taming of the Shrew”. This came shortly after a trailer for ‘In Our Time’ in which Melvyn Bragg was talking about this morning’s programme, which focused on the human brain. He mentioned that Shakespeare had little regard for the brain, by which he meant ‘thought’, compared with his emphasis on the ‘heart’, meaning human passions and emotions.

This was a real coincidence as I’d woken up today thinking about Shakespeare’s regard for patience, as a crucial human ‘virtue’. He speaks of patience in lots of the plays. For example, in Romeo and Juliet: “Be patient. For the world is broad and wide.” (Act 3 Scene 3) That phrase alone is worth a whole session of reflection and meditation.

Needless to say, Romeo, being a young man under the influence of passion and infatuation, has no interest at all in being patient, and no intention of calming his enthusiasm in order to ensure long-term happiness. Obviously his banishment from Verona was seen as the best thing for him - to give him a chance to cool down.

This week I enjoyed a long and stimulating conversation with two good friends about human emotions - whether they are positive or negative, whether they are simple or complex, whether they have components of thought, feeling and intuition as well as passion, and whether passion is the basic or primitive driving force within us, the fiery part, the libido, and so on.

Yesterday’s Guardian featured a letter from a Hillingdon Councillor, Norman Nunn-Price, who was commenting on what the Labour Party needs to do in the wake of last week’s disaster in the local elections. He speaks of anger, and how to channel this emotion in a positive way.

“ There are now many ex-councillors who are very angry at losing their seats. They are now free to be active where it matters - on the streets and doorsteps. This anger must be harnessed.”

Yes indeed. By everyone, every day. If we take the time to reflect on the things that make us angry, then we should think through the ways in which we can constructively use this emotion and the passion that fuels it to eliminate from our lives the things that make us angry. If not, we either have to learn how to live with the anger and whatever‘s causing it, or else let it rip negatively, and to hell with the consequences.

For myself, I’ve always liked the phrase “Don’t get mad, get even.” Given that we can’t prevent ourselves experiencing anger from time to time, it seems to me that what this means is, don’t just let your anger rip and cause havoc in a useless negative way - consider why you feel angry, and who is causing the anger, and act wisely and logically in a way that will either punish or neutralise whoever or whatever caused you to feel angry. Essentially, revenge is a dish best served cold, as the saying has it. Personally I quite like it frozen, on a stick.

Some quotations on Anger:

http://www.cybernation.com/victory/quotations/subjects/quotes_anger.html

Incidentally, Norman Nunn-Price concluded his letter, “The Labour party in Westminster must turn its back on the fat cats in the City and all these media whiz-kids and advisers. Spend the next two years on the streets where people live. Talk to them, listen to them and learn from them. Build up our fighting strength again. Replenish, replace and regroup the shattered battalions. That is the way ahead“.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/may/07/3

Revenge

(Wikipedia has an interesting page on revenge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge)

Working with children and their parents over so many years I frequently had to deal with the notion from the Old Testament of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, and the determination of both the kids and their parents that they needed some sort of revenge on wrongdoers. It was very hard to convince them that the role of the school was to help children learn from their mistakes, and to develop their emotional intelligence.

It was sufficient punishment normally, given that the children did learn from their mistakes and rarely committed the same act of aggression more than once, for them to have to talk through what they had done, and to feel a sense of shame and disgrace. Even more so if their parents were brought in to talk about the matter, which happened whenever children did not learn and did not respond to warnings and demands for better behavior, better self-control, etc.

Learning to control anger can be hard, and some children are just naturally more fiery than others - more inclined to flashes of temper, instant reactions to frustrating situations, more passionate in their likes and dislikes. Both carrot and stick are needed. Praise for successfully staying calm or walking away from stressful situations; and having to experience isolation from their friends and teachers, and deprivation of things they enjoy, as well as counseling sessions and having to reflect on whatever got them into trouble, when things go wrong.

In Our Time - The History of the Brain.

A curiously unsatisfying and superficial edition of the programme. No reference at all to the essential parts of the brain and what functions they perform - the frontal and pre-frontal lobes, the amygdala and the hippocampus.

Aristotle regarded the heart as the most important part of the human body. He dissected animals of every kind. He believed the heart was the major organ of the human body. He thought the arteries were the conduits of ‘sensation’. The brain looks as though it has very little blood, being grey in colour. Therefore he considered the brain was relatively unimportant.

Plato thought the soul controls the human body, and was located in three places - one part being in the brain, one in the heart, one in the guts or liver. But ‘the heart’ is what makes us human. The brain is seen as a kind of ‘wise counselor’.

[Very clever, I think, of Plato to recognise that our ‘souls’ are complex, and made up of thoughts, passions, feelings, etc.]

Galen was a prominent ancient Greek physician, whose theories dominated Western medical science for well over a millennium.

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

Shakespeare tended to use ‘the brain’ as almost a term of abuse.

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What ‘In Our Time’ left out.

The amygdala is clearly a vital part of the brain.

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

Damage to the amygdala, or perhaps deformation, or under-development, will “produce noticeable changes, including overreaction to all objects, hypoemotionality, loss of fear, hypersexuality, and hyperorality, a condition in which inappropriate objects are placed in the mouth”. Hmmmm.

Problems with the amygdala may also be responsible for Borderline Personality Disorder, paranoia, and autism.

The hippocampus is another key area, controlling memory, inhibition, and a sense of space, it seems. This is one of the first areas to be damaged by the onset of Altzheimer’s.

Borderline Personality Disorder is particularly interesting, since it seems to occur in individuals who have problems with controlling strong passions. Sign and symptoms, according to Wikipedia, can include,

1) Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
2) A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
3) Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4) Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving).
5) Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars, or picking at oneself.
6) Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
7) Chronic feelings of emptiness, worthlessness.
8) Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
9) Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms
For those of us working in education and life-long learning in emotional and spiritual intelligence the above list provides much food for thought.

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

Patience

The cultivation and practice of patience seems to me a vital part of becoming emotionally and spiritually intelligent, as an antidote to excessive passion and a tendency to use it negatively. Easy for an Oxzen to say, you may think, but then again a certain lack of passion or fire in one’s makeup brings its own problems. Ah, the difficulty in finding a balance . . .

http://www.cybernation.com/victory/quotations/subjects/quotes_patience.html

Quotes re patience

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
~ W. H. Auden ~
The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.
~ Epictetus ~
Patience means self-suffering.
~ Mahatma Gandhi ~
Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.
~ Barbara Johnson ~
Consider the hour-glass; there is nothing to be accomplished by rattling or shaking; you have to wait patiently until the sand, grain by grain, has run from one funnel into the other.
~ John Christian Morgenstern ~
If I have made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.
~ Sir Isaac Newton ~
Patience makes a woman beautiful in middle age.
~ Elliot Paul ~
Patience in the present, faith in the future, and joy in the doing
~ George Perera ~
In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience.
~ W. B. Prescott ~
Rome was not built in a day.
~ Proverb ~
An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains.
~ Dutch Proverb ~
There are times when God asks nothing of his children except silence, patience and tears.
~ C. S. Robinson ~
Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.
~ Johann Friedrich Von Schiller ~
Who can be patient in extremes? [Henry Vi]
~ William Shakespeare ~

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Here’s an interesting link to Shakespeare and The Normalisation of Violence.

(I was just thinking this very morning how difficult it is to educate children in non-violence when they are exposed on a daily basis to powerful images of men using everything from knives and swords to guns, tanks, rockets and aircraft to blast their enemies, often in the name of revenge, or justice, or just ‘taking out the bad guys’. Brings back to mind the cap badge worn by our very own Prince Harry - “We do bad things to bad people”. Oh - great!)

The Moderate Voice

http://themoderatevoice.com/at-tmv/newsweek-blogitics/19330/clinton-obama-mccain-and-shakespeare-the-normalization-of-violence/

This contains an interesting reference to Ate

Ate, a Greek word for 'ruin, folly, delusion', is the action performed by the hero, usually because of his/her hubris, or great pride, that leads to his/her death or downfall. There is also a goddess by that name (Até) in Greek mythology, a personification of the same.
In Nonnos' Dionysiaca (11.113), at Hera's instigation Ate persuades the boy Ampelus whom Dionysus passionately loves to impress Dionysus by riding on a bull from which Ampelus subsequently falls and breaks his neck.

In the play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare introduces the goddess Ate as an invocation of vengeance and menace. Mark Antony, lamenting Caesar's murder, envisions "And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, With Ate' by his side come hot from Hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war, ..."

http://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Ate.html