Author: Richard

‘Why do born-again people so often make you wish they’d never been born the first time?’
Katharine Whitehorn

Paul Graham is an interesting, prickly character. I’ve linked to him before, here and here. I recently finished reading his “Hackers & Painters” (well worth a read) and just wanted to query one point he had made, so whipped off an e-mail. To my surprise, a couple of hours later I got a thoughtful reply. This is what I love about the net, the way it has changed the relationship between creators and audiences.
I first encountered this many years ago when I was reading Douglas Rushkoff‘s “Children of Chaos”. After reading the first three or four chapters I was so excited I did a search, found his web site, got his e-mail address and sent him a rather over-excited rave. To my immense surprise he replied very quickly and it clicked that something significant was going on.
Since then I often write a quick appreciation if I encounter ideas I am enthusiatic about. I don’t usually expect a reply, but more often than not I get one.
I know from my own experience with the e-mails I have got from readers of the three books I wrote with Bob Cotton, that there is something rather special about getting a direct response from someone who has engaged with something you have done. It is almost better than royalties, knowing that in some small way you have made a difference.

An interesting snippet from Victor Lombardi‘s Noise Between Stations:
“…success with complex problems depends on sharing control with others. Joe Kraus, the founder of Excite and JotSpot has said, ‘Very early on, the founders of startups make an important choice. Do they want success or control? …I’ve picked success. And success implies giving up control – hiring people who are much better than you, or being willing to be the janitor if that’s what’s required.'”

Looking at the smug faces of of the MPs, who voted to ban smoking in enclosed public spaces, basking in their costless virtue, I was prompted to write a long piece urging a campaign to Ban Smugging Now.
I have written before of my sense that the anti-smoking crusade may itself be a threat to health in an extend piece “Why Do Dancers Smoke”, where I concluded:
“People who smoke have adopted the practice as a strategy for dealing with life and defining who they are. The fact that the number of smokers seems to have stabilised, even in countries like the USA, where there are massive social pressures against smoking, suggests that current propaganda and health education is no longer working.
What all this suggests to me is that anti-smoking as a moral crusade has itself become dangerous. What seems to be required is more disinterested research into why people smoke, the perceived and actual benefits of smoking, and what, if any, other strategies smokers could adopt to gain these benefits without the harmful effects of smoking.
What might also be worth considering too is whether there are any hidden costs to the possibility of the total elimination of tobacco smoking. The general assumption is that the elimination of tobacco smoking would be an unqualified good. This looks like a moral rather than a scientific judgement.”

However, rather than go over the same ground again I urge you to read a fascinating and pointed lecture, “In Praise of Bad Habits” by Peter Marsh, which puts the case against “healthism” more eloquently than I suspect I could manage. Here is taster:
“At the core of all healthism is a concern to eradicate risk in people’s lives. On the surface this appears to be a liberal, caring aim and is robustly defended by those in the health education and promotion fields. Risk, however, as the anthropologist Mary Douglas and others have pointed out, is now both a politicised and a moralised concept. Risk is now the secular equivalent of sin. In this sense exposing oneself to risk, when other options are available, is to act in a sinful manner.
But there is a further issue here, and that is to do with the (often arbitrary) definition of risk. Which particular aspects of lifestyle are to be defined as risky/sinful, and to which segments of society will ‘persuasion’ be applied for the ‘good of society as a whole’? These are not abstract questions for they raise yet another insidious component of healthism – its culturally divisive nature. Risk determination is undertaken by a relatively small, white, middle class elite group in Western society – scientists and health professionals. These are people who, in the main, do not smoke, drink to excess or engage in promiscuous sexual activities. They have low-fat and low-sodium diets and tend to be over-represented in the gymnasium and aerobic exercise groups. (They might, to some people, also appear phenomenally dull.)
Engaging in risk – smoking, drinking, creating the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases, eating fat, sugar, salt and avoiding too much exercise – is characteristic of a different strata of society – the poor and marginalised, the working classes, ethnic minorities and ‘deviant’ groups. When the proponents of healthism are urging changes in lifestyle in order to achieve, in their terms, ‘well-being’, they are advocating changes for others much more often than they are for themselves. In this sense they are essentially moralists seeking to stigmatise specific members of society.”

Simon Caulkin hits the spot again:
“Whatever happended to joined-up government? One of New Labour’s favourite mantras when it came to power, it dropped out of the lexicon in the second term. This is perhaps understandable, since there is precious little of it about. But that, too, is not surprising, because the management methods the government favours make joined-up anything almost impossible to achieve.”
In his article he looks at Education, the NHS and Pensions and shows how a focus on micro-mamanagement and targets inevitably leads to unintended consequences. For example:
“… according to a Nuffield Review, students going to university increasingly struggle with work that requires them to think independently or make connections between narrow areas of study – when called upon to show joined-up thinking, in other words. Because of excessive emphasis on modular courses, results and league tables, students are taught to pass exams, not to think for themselves.
‘Learners who may have achieved academic success by such means at A-level… are increasingly coming into higher education expecting to be told the answers,’ the review says. Passing exams has become the unspoken purpose of the system. Ministers boast that results are improving but ignore the purpose of the system as a whole: preparing students for adult life as thinking, connecting beings.”
Read the rest of the article and weep.

In my last post I linked to the delightful autobiography Amartya Sen produced to accompany his acceptance speach for his Nobel prize in economics. The whole thing is worth a read but I particularly liked two quotes that brought a smile to my face.
The first is from his early years at Rabindranath Tagore‘s school, where as he says, “my educational attitudes were formed.” and goes on to explain:
“This was a co-educational school, with many progressive features. The emphasis was on fostering curiosity rather than competitive excellence, and any kind of interest in examination performance and grades was severely discouraged. (“She is quite a serious thinker,” I remember one of my teachers telling me about a fellow student, “even though her grades are very good.”) Since I was, I have to confess, a reasonably good student, I had to do my best to efface that stigma.”
The second is his concluding paragraph:
“I end this essay where I began – at a university campus. It is not quite the same at 65 as it was at 5. But it is not so bad even at an older age (especially, as Maurice Chevalier has observed, “considering the alternative” ). Nor are university campuses quite as far removed from life as is often presumed. Robert Goheen has remarked, “if you feel that you have both feet planted on level ground, then the university has failed you.” Right on. But then who wants to be planted on ground? There are places to go.”

Amartya Sen is one of my favourite economists, because he comes across as being a thoughtful and humane man, committed to human freedom. His latest focus of attention, express in a recent article in The Guardian is on the dangers what he calls Plural Monoculturalism:
“What grates on Sen is the idea that individuals should be ushered like sheep into pens according to their religious faith, a mode of classification that too often trumps all others and ignores the fact that people are always complex, multi-faceted individuals who choose their identities from a wide range of economic, cultural and ideological alternatives. “Being defined by one group identity over all others,” he says, “overlooking whether you’re working class or capitalist, left or right, what your language group is and your literary tastes are, all that interferes with people’s freedom to make their own choices.”
What begins by giving people room to express themselves, he argues, may force people into an identity chosen by the authorities. “That is what is happening now, here,” he says, a little indignantly. “I think there is a real tyranny there. It doesn’t look like tyranny – it looks like giving freedom and tolerance – but it ends up being a denial of individual freedom. The individual belongs to many different groups and it is up to him or her to decide which of those groups he or she would like to give priority.””
As he argued in an article in the FT (reproduced here):
“Multiculturalism can be understood in terms of making it possible for people to have cultural choice and freedom, which is the very opposite of insisting that a person’s basic identity must be simply defined by the religious community in which he or she is born, ignoring all other priorities and affiliations.”

“You govern a kingdom by normal rules;

You fight a war by exceptional moves;

But you win the world by letting alone.

How do I know that this is so?

By what is within me!
The more taboos and inhibitions there are in the world,

The poorer the people become.

The sharper the weapons the people possess,

The greater confusion reigns in the realm.

The more clever and crafty the men,

The oftener strange things happen.

The more articulate the laws and ordinances,

The more robbers and thieves arise.
Therefore, the Sage says:

I do not make any fuss, and the people transform

themselves.

I love quietude, and the people settle down in their

regular grooves.

I do not engage myself in anything, and the people

grow rich.

I have no desires, and the people return to

Simplicity.”

Lao Tzu

I have a very long list of things that I failed to do, so it was with an enormous sense of relief that I read Lucy Kellaway’s column in the FT that begins:
“Every day I do a lot of things. Every day I avoid doing a lot more. I avoid replying to e-mails, I avoid researching any articles that do not need writing immediately.
I avoid ringing my bank to cancel a standing order for a subscription to some internet computer game that my sons no longer play. I avoid trying to find a builder to rebuild my garden wall. I avoid opening bills.
In fact, I avoid opening my mail altogether. (I used to open letters from friends, but now that friends no longer seem to write letters the official envelopes pile up in the hall.) I avoid making phone calls, and above all I avoid doing my tax return.”

(Sadly, this one is subscription only)

Today I stumbled across some lines from a song,“All That is Different is Part of the Dance”, by Leon Rosselson, quoted in a review of two books about Blake by Paul Foot that resonate strongly with me:
“For all things are holy, the poet once said,
And all that is different is part of the dance.
And the web of life’s colours needs each single thread
For the dance to continue unbroken.”