In pursuit of happiness
‘Happiness’ is a concept that I seem to be increasingly encountering. It is the subject of a piece of work that my colleagues in Arts and Society are involved with in collaboration with the Happy Museum Project, an initiative that is encouraging UK museums to support transition to well-being and sustainability in our society.
The Happy Museum Project was born from psychological research suggesting that happiness and well-being are not related to material wealth. On the contrary, an emphasis on material wealth has led to a focus on the short term, causing the majority to feel pressure to “keep up” and leading to more unhappiness. Key to a sustainable notion of well-being, according to the Happy Museum Project, is what they call ‘support learning for resilience’, which encourages learning that is curiosity driven, engaging, informal and fun and can build resilience, creativity and resourcefulness.
Of course this is not a wholly new concept. We’re becoming increasingly familiar with research that shows that over a certain comfort threshold, increased wealth doesn’t correlate with general satisfaction, take Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index, for example, which was developed in the 1970s. Now the UK government has started to focus on the notion of happiness, with the announcement of the National Wellbeing Project in 2010, which will see them attempt to measure how happy Britons are and use the results to shape government policy.
One area where happiness does not seem to have been a central consideration however is in education. Take the new Ofsted framework, which requires inspectors to place emphasis on behaviour, safety and teaching but makes no mention of emotional wellbeing, sociability and support. The aim here may have been to concentrate on the essentials and perhaps the more quantifiable elements, but this only reinforces the lack of regard with which these qualities are held.
Plans for performance related pay for teachers could be taken as another example of overlooking the importance of happiness. Not only is this measure likely to increase pressure on teachers, making them less happy, but their performance is likely to be measured solely on academic results, as it must be, and not well-being. This is not to say that the two will always be unrelated. For example it seems obvious that if a child is taught in a way that is exciting, fun, collaborative and supportive then they will not only be happier but will be more engaged and therefore attain better results. But this policy risks increasing pressure on students to achieve academically, leading to more teaching to the test and so risking children’s well-being.
Additionally some proponents of performance related pay for teachers base their arguments on economics; a good teacher = a good education (good grades) = a good job = more money. Not only in the current climate is this not necessarily the case, as there are not enough good jobs for high achieving students, but if money doesn’t make us happy then we shouldn’t be thinking only about education in these terms.
So I come back to the Happy Museum Project’s central tenet – our culture must focus on the long-term and sustainable benefits of its actions. Whilst achieving good academic results may lead to happiness in the short term, it can no longer guarantee a child’s future well-being in the face of unemployment, recessions and climate change, although perhaps it can help. My point is not to belittle academic achievement, but to emphasise that like so many things, we just cannot be sure. What we can be sure of is that having confidence, emotional stability and resilience, will help this generation of students to survive this uncertainty and to cope better, if not always be happy.
Why your self needs its stuff
What is all this stuff? Books, chairs, clothes, cutlery, bags, shoes, shelves, kitchens, computers, bracelets, shoes…what’s it all for?
Julian Baggini whose RSA event I chaired a few months back… recently penned a thoughtful and amusing piece in The Independent: Is Osborne’s Dad worth a £19,000 desk? The article explores how we use our ‘stuff’ to make sense of ourselves:
“A good desk is a kind of proof that you take your writing seriously, and hence, by implication, are a serious writer. A decent computer monitor might be just as important, of course, but such technology is not the preserve of the person of letters, and so cannot provide the same kind of psychological support.”
Lest you think this is a politically motivated attack disguised as a casual philosophical insight, the point goes to the heart of many of our most pressing challenges. In a previous post on the madness of economic growth in the context of climate change I made a passing reference to Tim Jackson’s phrase ‘the social logic of consumption’. The basic idea is that, increasingly, we are what we buy. Through our consumption patterns we tell stories to ourselves about ourselves, and try to convey those stories to the people around us. It is not so much that we need status symbols to fuel our egos, but rather we need to surround ourselves with material objects to give our egos function and form. It is not that our objects are inherently meaningful, but rather through the process of identifying with them we make them so.
As with anything psychologically insightful, the Buddhist’s are way ahead of the game. In Buddhist epistemology, ‘rupas’ are those objects we use to reinforce our sense of self: “We commonly impose distortion on to the object world. We take it as implying ourselves, and in the process create self-material in relation to it. . . . We see in the object signs that lead us to construe a self, and from this create a sense of self. We can say that the object is an indicator of that self. The object is called a rupa” (Caroline Brazier 2003, 62).
Of course in Buddhism this construction of a self is, at the very least, something to be aware of, and usually considered somewhat problematic because it can lead to various forms of maladaptive attachment, and this viewpoint is largely shared by many aspects of modern cognitive science. In addition to Baggini’s reappraisal of Hume’s bundle theory of the self in the talk above, I would strongly encourage readers to take a look at the work of Francisco Varela who combines cognitive science, buddhism and continental philosophy to give a deliciously rich theory of self and consciousness.
Changes in our fundamental processes of consumption, self-creation, and social comparison are not going to happen overnight. However, the link between the social logic of consumption that is the engine of capitalism – driving economic growth, and the Buddhist insight that our selves are in some ways nothing but these things that we identify with and attach to, are closely linked. One thing that might follow, as was suggested by my colleague Egidijus Gecius in a previous post and in many other sources (and as is the mission underpinning the Garrison Institute in New York State) is that sooner or later you realise that the problems can be understood and, with practice, even experienced, as manifestations of our wayward minds.
And the more that insight sinks in, the more you feel the most productive place to work for social change is at the level of the mind. I was reminded of this while chairing the Matthew Johnstone event on meditation here last week. At the end, I felt moved to say to the audience that the Social Brain Centre is keen to develop work in this area. There are lots of people out there teaching meditation in various forms, and we are keen to start thinking about how to make meditation more mainstream, and socially supported. I would like it to become normal, in the literal sense of being a conventional social norm. What that might look like I am not yet sure, but examples include: meditation on the primary and secondary curricula, a meditation room in every major office building, doctors regularly subscribing meditation on the NHS. All of these things already exist in nascent form, but we haven’t reached a tipping point, and meditation is still viewed by many, wrongly, as a somewhat fringe activity.
Coming back to the breath, as it were, it seems I started with material objects and ended with meditation.
Hmmm.
Or should that be Om?
Addendum: At lunchtime Matthew Taylor mentioned an RSA event on sustainable consumption featuring two people who had given away virtually all their stuff, and an anthropologist who studied how people related to their stuff. The anthropologist shared his finding that, based on his years of research, the main conclusion was that those who liked their stuff were happier than those who didn’t. Somebody in the audience apparently then asked, in the context of an event on sustainability, a question that Matthew considered to be one of the best ever in an RSA event:
“So are you saying we should we should care more about our stuff or less?”
The case for caring less is that we would therefore buy less of it, which is better for the environment. The case for caring more, which Matthew had more sympathy for, was that if you really care about your stuff you look after it, and are more likely to reuse and repair it…which might be even more important.
The Great Room Papers, 2 of 2: A Room with a View
In my previous post, I briefly explored how James Barry’s ‘Distribution of Premiums’ sets out guiding principles for the RSA, with reference to the Society’s commitment to equality. In this post I’m looking to see how the painting captures something a lot less abstract about the Fellowship.
It’s as lively as the other panels in the series, mingling dignitaries, London awaking and even a falling Lucifer. William Shipley, Edmund Burke, Lord Romney and a bewigged Dr Johnson are among the crowd, debating and discussing, as you’d expect. It’s all very impressive, but why is it relevant to today’s RSA? Well, the painting captures Shipley’s energetic policies to ‘embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine arts, improve manufactures and extend commerce’. He proposed to do this by awarding Premiums to worthwhile social projects, and using the expertise of the Fellowship to bring those projects to fruition.
Mrs. Montagu recommends a young lady to other Fellows and Dr. Johnson does the same, whilst William Locke and Dr. Hunger examine a Premium winner’s work. If I was inclined to contemporary business-speak, I’d say Fellows and the RSA were building capacity by developing the Fellowship network and investing in social capital. Given my preference for the everyday, I’ll say they’re supporting projects by offering to help and getting people involved in the Fellowship.
The Buddhist, the Benthamite and the Biographer
A year ago today(sigh) I was attending the launch of Action for Happiness! The movement has grown considerably in its first year, and I wish it well. Mark Williamson is the Director of Action for Happiness, which is affiliated to The Young Foundation, but the movement grew out of the vision and motivation of what Jules Evans aptly called The Three Wise Men.
The Buddhist:
Actually I am not sure Geoff Mulgan is really a Buddhist, at least not in the card-carrying sense, but it made a huge impression to learn that his weighty CV (now head of NESTA, but previously CEO of The Young Foundation, Director of Policy for the Blair government, author, Professor etc) is grounded(or so I like to think) by his experience of being a Buddhist monk in Sri-Lanka. I don’t know Geoff Mulgan personally, but it is hard not to be impressed by his track record.
A year ago, his idea of wellbeing seemed quite nuanced to me, and he recognised the importance of experiencing the full range of human emotion(not merely positive) for a life well-lived. I was particularly impressed by his comment that people working in government tend to dehumanise what really matters, for instance they talk of ‘social isolation’ but rarely of ‘lonliness’ and they speak of the importance of ‘social support’, but rarely of ‘friendship’ or ‘love’.
The Benthamite
I am pretty sure that Lord Layard is a Benthamite, although he may not accept the term, and has called himself a ‘democrat’, which might be a less pejorative way of saying the same thing. He has done a great deal of good to promote wellbeing, so I hesitate to express reservations, but whenever I have heard him speak, I found his idea of happiness to be a very conventional and rather uninspiring form of utilitarianism. This is too big a question to explore here, now, but I think enduring wellbeing is much more complex than mere hedonic satisfaction in its various guises.
And I would say he is Benthamite rather than merely utilitarian(his world view is radically different from, say, Peter Singer, who describes himself as a preference utilitarian) if only because in answer to a question posed by Jules Evans at the RSA event Happiness: New Lessons he made it clear that he doesn’t distinguish, as John Stuart Mill famously did, between higher and lower pleasures e.g. the pleasure of writing a poem is no greater than the pleasure of smoking a fag. For Layard, as long as you are not harming others, it really is just a question of ‘whatever makes you happy’, in which happiness is a self-evident experience, captured by self-report measures. It is hard not to respect such an eminent figure, who does so much for the social good, but I don’t find his vision of happiness rings true for me- somehow there is a lack of depth, and no ‘shadow’.
The Biographer
Anthony Seldon is Headmaster of Wellington College, and also a biographer of John Major and Tony Blair (an old friend of mine, Daniel Collings, played a significant role in producing some of this work). He is clearly hugely industrious, but I find he makes me uncomfortable, perhaps because he always seems rather sure of himself. When I heard him speak at last year’s event, I felt he sounded more like a headmaster than a biographer- his pitch was more about telling and admonishing and less about discovering or revealing. At the time I even had the unworthy thought: “You can take the happiness out of the headmaster, but you can’t take the headmaster out of the happiness” and I think that line would sound more positive with respect to being a biographer.
His idea of happiness appears richer than Layard’s, and more spiritually grounded, but still sounds too much to me like an idea that can be encapsulated in the right kind of information and directly taught, rather than something multi-faceted grounded in a range or experiences, relationships and balances. That said, he has been a trailblazer for wellbeing in schools, and walks the talk in his own school, so on balance I am sure his contribution is a very positive one.
Despite some minor reservations about the founders, I am glad to see that the Action for Happiness movement is alive and well. I hope this is the first of many genuinely happy birthdays.
The Understandable Madness of Economic Growth
Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must. - Tim Jackson
Speaking at the RSA President’s Lecture last year, David Attenborough made a profoundly subversive comment disguised as an innocent joke: “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad, or an economist.”
The trouble is that political and policy arguments are largely driven by the methods and metrics of economists. So while the means to the end of achieving economic growth are constantly debated, the legitimacy of the end itself is barely questioned. In this sense most of our political class are indeed ‘mad’. The problem with Attenborough’s joke is that after the laughter has subsided here we all are, believing in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet.
I write as a relatively privileged thirty-something with a full-time job, so perhaps it is too easy for me to make this case. Perhaps if I was a recent unemployed graduate with a young family, desperate for work in a depressed region, who just received his thirtieth rejection letter I would feel differently. Perhaps if I wanted to start a new business but couldn’t get a bank loan, or if I had to lay-off good staff in a small company because my main customers were withdrawing their business…perhaps.
But for what it’s worth I think the prevailing focus on ‘jobs and growth‘ is painfully shallow. The debate about ‘jobs’ obscures a much more productive discussion about employment, particularly finding ways to support flexible, temporary, and part-time work. NEF lead the way on this issue, with their examination of the feasibility of a 21 hour working week. It appears obvious to me that if most people who have full-time jobs feel overworked and stressed while others are not working at all the solution is not necessarily to create more ‘jobs’ through economic growth, but rather to redistribute the available work more evenly.
The reason this idea is viewed as subversive rather than obvious is due to the assumption that we need economic growth at all costs, what Clive Hamilton calls ‘growth fetishism’.
Prosperity without Growth?
Prosperity without Growth by Tim Jackson is an indispensable guide for anybody hoping to challenge this idea. It is a remarkably sane, balanced and human book by an economist who has the capacity to authoritatively present conventional economic arguments at their strongest, and the insight to show their limitations, sometimes even on their own terms. There are many reviews online, so what follows are the traces of the argument left in my mind a week or so after I finished reading it:
Prosperity is a legitimate goal, but it is best viewed as a social and psychological concept rather than an economic one. Linking prosperity exclusively to income is unhelpful, because even if they are related(and some dispute that) prosperity is a much bigger concept, relying only on minimal conditions from income.
Moreover, a fuller analysis suggests we are suffering not just from an economic recession, but also a social recession(poorer relationships, less trust, more lonliness) and, more urgently, we are rapidly approaching our planetary limits. These are clearly related concerns, and it is completely wrong-headed to think that growth will solve the other problems, when it often causes them. As Jackson puts it:
“The truth is that there is as yet no credible, socially just, ecologically sustainable scenario of continually growing incomes for a world of nine billion people.”
Our Dependence on Growth
Alas, the need for growth is deep. We have constructed our economies in such a way that they have a structural dependence on growth and are therefore inherently unstable. Economies are full of positive and negative feedback cycles(e.g. low/high growth, high/low unemployment, less/more spending power to support growth). If the economy stops growing, it starts shrinking towards collapse…there is no steady state. Accepting this means we have a stark choice: to make growth sustainable or ‘de-growth’ stable.
The challenge with the latter is that economic growth is driven by what Jackson calls the ‘social logic of consumption’ underpinned by a deep human need to convey identity and signal status. This is the engine of capitalism, fuelling aspiration, innovation, higher living standards i.e. it’s not all bad and we are used to it. It appears so much easier to find ways to make growth sustainable, but what Jackson’s analysis makes clear is that these approaches don’t add up, quite literally.
The Myth of ‘Decoupling’
The Ehrlich equation outlines the arithmetics of growth with respect to sustainability, and it doesn’t look good. The impact (I) of human activity is the product of three main factors: 1) P: the size of the population(going up to 9-11 billion by 2050), 2) A: its level of affluence (income per person) and a technology/efficiency factor which measures impact per unit of economic output. I=PxAxT.
Here is the issue: If P goes up, and A goes up, T has to go down to stay within planetary limits. This is why so many economists and politicians need to believe that we can continue to grow, and the only way to believe that is to argue that technological and behavioural change can make us much more efficient such that our impact remains within sustainable limits. This solution is often called ‘decoupling’- in other words separating economic activity from environmental impact.
However, when you look at the numbers more closely that appears at best wildly optimistic and at worst completely delusional. We have no reason, other than recklessly blind faith, to believe that technology can deliver in that way. One reason many remain caught in this delusion is that they don’t distinguish between relative decoupling(less environmental impact per unit of economic output) and absolute decoupling (less environmental impact overall) which is what we desperately need to achieve. It is possible to appear ‘green’ with relative decoupling, but you are only really sustainable if you achieve absolute decoupling.
There is a very strong argument that while we can improve relative decoupling and should continue to do so, absolute decoupling is incompatible with the continued pursuit of economic growth, at least in the developed world. (It remains coherent to argue for growth in the developing world where the marginal utility of growth is much greater, and environmental impact can be lessened through appropriate investment).
So I found Jackson’s argument (much more sophisticated than I can present here) persuasive. I am not sure if that makes me a lunatic an idealist or a revolutionary, but I think we have to think about changing the structure of the economy through giving serious thought to what a model of a stable economy without economic growth looks like. Some models have been proposed, but they remain nascent. We urgently need to develop them.
On reflection, such a bold approach does not appear ideological to me, but rather waking up from a prevailing ideology that is manifestly self-destructive. We are running out of planet. A no-growth economy is a curious creature to think about, but as Sherlock Holmes once put it: once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
The Optimism Bias (2)
Following from my previous thoughts on optimism, I enjoyed chairing Thursday’s event on the Optimism Bias, but found it hard to answer the ‘so-what?’ question at the end.
So we know now (and in fact we knew already) that we have this optimism bias, and consistently and predictably expect things to turn out better for ourselves(though not for others) than they actually do. What follows?
Tali Sharot suggested we can incorporate this knowledge into our planning decisions, and indicated that the Government indeed have in their Green Book but somehow this feels too simplistic.
For starters, it sounds suspiciously like contingency planning with a bit of extra scientific backing. You know that you consistently mis-predict, mis-assess and so forth, so you factor that in. It is different from having a bit extra for unexpected events, but not that different.
In any case there is a deeper problem.
During a book tour of his own a few weeks ago Daniel Kahneman was speaking about cognitive biases more generally. In an interview with Oliver Burkeman he made the telling remark: ”It’s not a case of: ‘Read this book and then you’ll think differently,’” he says. “I’ve written this book, and I don’t think differently.”
Tali Sharot’s argument, combined with Kahneman’s comment reminded me of the wonderful Hofstadter’s law:
“It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s law into account.”
In other words, it is not so easy to trick ourselves into not tricking ourselves. Sharot seems to suggest that the optimism bias is adaptive, and that it is broadly a good thing, but again this feels like an answer designed to reduce dissonance rather than being fully thought through. In this respect I have sympathy with Jules Evans who argues that The Optimism Bias is unduly pessimistic about our ability to change ourselves.
The issue, of course, is HOW to we go about changing? (And how much does this matter?)
My first set of scribbles in response to Sharot’s book was “This is about a deluded sense of self rather than optimism…”
This point goes beyond the scope of this blog, and I have written about it before but my impression is that our best hope in addressing biases are forms of psychological or spiritual practice that lead us to transform our fundamental sense of who we are. There may be no short-cut out of delusion.
One finding of many that might support this claim is the curious discovery that Buddhist meditators are more conventionally ‘rational’ in classic behavioural economics experiments i.e. they are more self-interested, and care less about norms of fairness and reciprocity. The stock response to this curious finding is that Buddhists are not so kind and compassionate after all! However, it looks to me more like they are much more aware of what is going on than most participants, and fully grasp that this is a game they are playing, and not a proxy for the human feelings and relations that actually matter, and which they experience more acutely than most. If you are genuinely altruistic, you have less need of altruistic punishment. Similarly, if you have an experiential (rather than merely conceptual) grasp of how the mind distorts reality, you may be better able to prevent it doing so in practice.
The issue of cognitive bias matters hugely in general, but when you consider the major issues of our time, not least the climate crisis and the debt crisis, both are arguably grounded in problems relating to optimism.
I am not saying that we should all just meditate and everything will be ok (that would be too optimistic!) but it might be a more fruitful ‘so-what’ to fall out of our awareness of the optimism bias.
The Third Industrial Revolution
They say a rainy day is no match for a sunny disposition, but London’s wet, windy, monochrome sky is enough to make the cheeriest soul wish they were elsewhere.
While weather and climate are related, weather is immediate, salient, shared and self-evident, while climatology is statistical, abstract, systemic, chronological and inaccessible. Indeed it is far from clear what kind of mandate the link between weather and climate gives us, and whether it is perhaps safer not to rely on weather as a way of communicating the climate challenge.
For instance, George Monbiot writes today about how selective attention to weather patterns is used to reinforce the narratives of climate change doubt and denial, while many have criticised Al Gore for linking extreme weather events in China and Pakistan to the need to act with urgency.
The connection between weather and climate is a narrative challenge. We want to tell a story that links them, because it makes the issue vivid and real, but the links are tentative, non-linear and probabilistic i.e. they are not good ingredients for an inspiring narrative to galvanise action on a global scale.
And narrative matters. It has been argued, for instance, that despite major policy initiatives, Obama’s green jobs initiatives never really took off because he didn’t have a compelling vision for how the myriad of policies could be woven together to create a vision of the future that people could figuratively and literally buy into.
This is no minor point because we urgently need a narrative that is complex enough to capture the dimensions of the problem, but simple enough to make intuitive sense to billions of people. If weather can’t do that, what can?
(image from voiceseducation.org)
Of all the RSA talks I attended last year, Jeremy Rifkind’s Third Industrial Revolution made the deepest impression, because he addressed the challenge of finding the right narrative head on. He spoke eloquently, passionately and coherently without prompts for 45 minutes, and it was the first RSA talk where I had to hold myself back from starting a standing ovation in the great room. (The Twitter feed suggests I wasn’t the only one).
Before I continue to wax lyrical, I should express some intuitive doubts about the speaker that I can’t quite put my finger on. He came across as warm, wise and brilliant, but I am mindful of the saying that if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is, and there is something about Rifkind’s clarity and certainty that, while it inspires, it also makes me a little nervous. For instance he valorises Europe to an American audience in way that doesn’t ring true, and appears to name-drop to a suspicious extent. He also seems over-fond of highlighting just how influential he is. These reservations might be ill-founded, or perhaps just grit for the pearl in the oyster, but I have them for whatever they are worth.
And yet, Rifkind offers a vision of the future grounded in an economic, environmental, technological, political and psychological diagnosis of the present that sounds coherent and feels compelling. Who else does that? I strongly encourage you to listen to the talk to hear the argument for yourself, jump to the wikpedia page, or buy the book where it is unpacked in detail.
Here is my quick summary.
- All industrial revolutions are based on an interplay or energy and information (An ontological aside- is there ultimately anything else in the world?) The first Industrial Revolution brought together print and literacy with coal steam and rail, while the second combined the telegraph and telephone with the internal combustion engine and oil. The Third industrial revolution is about bringing together renewable energy with the internet.
- We misunderstood the financial crisis. Everything was mis-priced because we didn’t factor in the true cost of energy. We thought it was about the housing market, toxic assets, and debt, but these were corollaries of of gradually diminishing fossil fuels and increasing oil prices. We witnessed: “extraordinary binge buying designed to keep the economic engine artificially revved up while the real economy was winding down.”
- ‘Peak globalization’ occurred in in July 2008 where ‘peak oil per capita’ happened (linking population growth to oil production). We need a completely new industrial model.
- The new industrial revolution has five pillars:
- Shifting to Renewable Energy on a grand scale.
- Turning all buildings into power plants i.e. DIY renewable energy for everybody.
- Storing this energy, principally with hydrogen.
- Reconfiguring the world’s energy grid along the lines of the internet, allowing people to share energy, and overcoming the main problem of renewables (“the wind doesn’t always blow, the sun doesn’t always shine”…)
- Creating electric transport vehicles to transport energy that can be plugged into the main power grids.
All of these steps beg questions, mostly of a technological nature, but it appears that in all cases ‘we have the technology’, as they say, and the process is already under way in several parts of the world, including Rome, San Antonio and Utrecht.
What is lacking is the political will to make this model the prevailing narrative of our time.
In this respect Rifkind builds on his earlier work on empathy to argue that these five pillars must emerge alongside a ‘shift in consciousness’, and he links this shift in consciousness to a political shift, illustrated in the Arab Spring in which the top-down power of the second industrial revolution is gradually replaced by what he calls ‘lateral power’- the power of non-hierarchical connections, or what is sometimes also called heterarchy. (If you listen to the audio, I ask about this shift of consciousness towards the end of the event).
This combination of renewable energy, distributed capitalism, lateral power and a change in consciousness forms the basis of the third industrial revolution. It looks like a vision worthy of the challenges we face. The Devil will surely be in the detail, but in the blueprint I sense the divine.
Events Dear Boy, Events…
Events, or specifically lectures, are probably the resource for which the RSA is best known. Whether it is the incredible collection of world leading speakers we have coming to John Adam Street; the innovative Animate series; or the range of events that take place outside London, as a Society we put together some incredible lectures. In our Networks team we are focussed on the active delivery of the Fellowship’s potential, and events and lectures offer one of the key means by which we can stimulate this activity.
Last week I attended the 2011 Angus Millar Lecture in Edinburgh. A staple of the RSA calendar in Scotland, supported by the legacy of a Scottish Fellow and the ongoing work of his family, it is always a well attended event, bring together a disparate audience. This year was no different. Chaired by our very own Matthew Taylor, it saw noted science writer Matt Ridley give a very provocative talk on the concept of Scientific Heresy. Taking the sensitive topic of climate change as his subject, he explored some of the ways in which heresy can turn out to be true, and truths (which should be viewed sceptically in science anyway) can be found to be empty. The questions came thick and fast, with debate continuing long after the event had finished, attendees eagerly questioning the ideas expressed.
But is there a point to lectures such as this? This may seem a rhetorical question, however given the range of organisations producing lectures at any given time, it could be argued that the RSA could focus its resources elsewhere. Lectures can be stimulating at the time, however it is action that is required if we are going to change the world for the better.
I believe that our lectures and events represent one of the key ways in which the RSA gives to society. They are watched and discussed across the world, as many as possible freely accessible from our website, with over 50 million viewers having engaged with them to date. Of course this requires access to the internet, yet it does offer opportunities for engaging with knowledge that might otherwise be unavailable. We do not charge fees and we do not limit the information – rather we offer it as a gift to the rest of humanity. And when attendees are able to make it to an event in person, they can share in the company of their fellow humans as we question the world around us.
And that is the key point – the RSA is fundamentally a human organisation, one focussed on the core strengths and drives of our species. We are questioning creatures, animals preoccupied with the questions Why and How, and RSA lectures and events offer us a way to engage in this drive.
So take a browse through our collection of lectures and conferences – you will be driven to broaden your own understanding by questioning the world around you, engaging in that most human of acts.
Jamie Cooke is Senior Networks Manager for Scotland, Ireland and NE England – follow him @JamieACooke
Pinker: “The Moral Sense has done more harm than good”
A quick reflection on the Steven Pinker event that just finished.
He looked great. Sharp pinstripe suit, impressive mane of curly silver hair, and a poppy, as if his message that the world has become more peaceful wasn’t enough.
I was glad to see he struggled ever so slightly with his power point slides, which tempered the ambient envy in the room.
Highlights for me were being reminded of the great Voltaire quote: ”Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities.”
I also enjoyed the idea that “violence is now a problem to be solved, not a conquest to be won.”
And I liked the reference to Kant’s essay on Perpetual peace, where he argued that three things would reduce violence: trade, democracy and international community.
Perhaps the best point was his claim – in response to a question about morality not being the cause of reduced violence – that the moral sense has done more harm than good. He backed this by saying that most homicides are justified on moral grounds, and that most aggressors think of their cause as morally justified.
I asked a question, which amounted to: If you define violence as human on human activity, then the argument flows beautifully and your data seems to back it. But if you give a broader definition of violence, including forms of ‘structural violence‘ in social and economic systems, violence against other species in the form of factory farming and violence against nature in the form of environmental degradation, it is not so clear that we have become less violent.
His answer was basically that these things are not really violence as such, and he slightly ridiculed the environmental point by comparing killing somebody to polluting a stream, which is rather different from entire islands disappearing and their population being displaced, or Darfur being the first of many climate change wars.
Had Matthew not asked for questions to be brief, I would have linked my question back to Kant. If you reframe violence not as direct human on human contact, but on the way our exploitative instincts manifest in the economy, towards other species and towards the planet, is it not the case that democracy, trade and international community may be responsible for the increase in violence, of a form that threatens our way of life? This idea of the world as a ‘resource to be used’ rather than something to stand in reciprocal relation toresonates with McGilchrist’s argument about the increasing dominance of a left hemisphere perspective on the world.
But then I listen to myself, and wonder if I am one of those people Pinker was talking about when he said that, for social critics, good news is bad news.
Maybe I am, but if the decline of violence is to be a measure of the success of modernity, as Pinker wants, then surely we need to give it its broadest possible definition?
Is it even possible that our violent impulses are being projected away from each other, and towards impersonal systems and structures that cannot retaliate?
Job! RSA seeks social brain to join Social Brain.
Senior Researcher, Social Brain
Salary: £29,000 pa
Contract Type: Permanent, applications for both full and part-time hours are being considered for this post
Location: London, WC2N 6EZ
The Social Brain project is a core part of our research identity at the RSA, underpinning our view of human capability, and informing our approach to behaviour change.
An opportunity has arisen for a creative and skilled researcher to join our team. Working closely with the Associate Director of Social Brain in this newly created role, you will undertake and manage research, analysis and reporting on major strands of Social Brain work. You will also assist with fundraising and be responsible for horizon scanning and maintaining an engaging online presence for the project.
You will have the opportunity to contribute to the future scope of this innovative project by assisting with its development into a wider programme of work.
The ideal candidate will have an active interest in brains and behaviour, an analytical mind, and experience of successful fund raising. You will have a confident approach to your work and strong interpersonal skills, enabling you to communicate and engage effectively with a range of different people and audiences.
For over 250 years the RSA has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action. This work is supported by our 27,000 Fellows around the world.
To apply for this role please submit the following to recruitment@rsa.org.uk:
- Your CV
- Covering letter explaining how you fit the requirements of this role and the RSA’s broader mission
- Your preference regarding working full or part time. If part-time, please state how many days or hours you would ideally like to work
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