The School of Life

Winter Solstice Reading Prescription from The School of Life’s Bibliotherapists

As we move inexorably towards the shortest day of the year, 21st December, a few of us find our hearts sinking with the fading of the light. For some the merry Christmas lights bring more shadows than joy. However, this present loss will soon be reversed; after the solstice, the days will surely lengthen towards spring, and the icy clutch of winter will loosen its grip on our souls.

Optimism therefore enters our beings, especially if we seek out characters in literature who show us hope. Voltaire’s Candide is the obvious choice for the most famous optimist in fiction, whose gnomish advice “we must cultivate our garden” still makes a lot of sense to the modern allotment enthusiast. Reading of his misadventures, trials and tribulations is still hilarious and darkly satisfying to the worst cynics among us.

 

Another text I return to in times of darkness, is Chang Tzu’s The Inner Chapters, translated from the Chinese by David Hinton. This remarkable collection of thephilosopher’s thoughts, dating back to the fourth century AD, fills one with the sense of the eternal wheel of change, from life to death and back again, and also with the wonder and gift of life, which makes death both a wonder and a gift.

George Elliot’s Silas Marner too is a book to make the bitterest pessimist well up and shed a tear of joy when Eppie redeems the old miser with her innocence. This is a wonderful tale, particularly good to read with a roaring fire and a cup of Christmassy potion in hand.

When you look at children’s literature, it is startling how many books feature orphaned or abandoned children. I think it is not enough to think of this a literary device that leaves the children free to adventure unfettered by family. I believe these characters are created because the authors understand our need to believe that there is hope.

Pippi Longstocking not only has to bring her self up, deal with her mother’s deathand her father’s disappearance but also bend an entire community to her will. She does not go to school, even though chased by policemen, she keeps a horse and monkey in the house and acts as an agent provocateur and nurturer to the neighbouring children. The orphaned Baudelaire children in Lemony Snickett’s wonderful series would be lost without their optimism. Klaus’s extensive internal library and Violet’s skilful inventiveness provide escape from their dastardly enemy Count Olaf, as well as provide them with comfort when all the adults fail them. 

When I am feeling the darkness invade, I reach for these characters whose journeys are never easy and who mainly live in a world where adults cannot be trusted. Sarah Crewe (A Little Princess) and Mary Lennox (The Secret Garden) both stand alone in worlds of secrets and adult prejudice; Frances Hodges Burnett sends them to harsh places to grow, where without optimism, their sad fates would be sealed.    

Two shining optimists burn more fiercely than any others in the world of Kidult literature.   Stargirl embodies optimism, in the book of the same name by Jerry Spinelli. She dances into the rigid conformity of a high school and blows it apart through acts of individuality and kindness. When she is reviled after cheerleading for the opposition at a football game she almost crumbles. Stargirl disappears for a while, cowed by the enormity of a community’s dislike. Yet, her optimistic nature wins through and Stargirl returns.

 In Morris Gleitzman’s novels Once and Then, set in Poland during the Second World War, we find one of  the most beguiling of young optimists. Felix, the narrator, is an innocent, unaware of who he really is, and what this would mean for him as a Jew. Felix’s optimism and humanity extend not just to the other children in hiding he meets, but to a Nazi child who he saves from a burning house. There is a heart wrenching scene in a train carriage on route to a death camp, when Felix donates pages of his precious book so that his fellow sufferers can relieve themselves in a more dignified manner.

Mark Twain said that an optimist is someone who travels on nothing from nowhere   to happiness. Chang Tzu advises us to “flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate”. Let us be cheered by these thoughts as we move toward longer, lighter days.

Is it possible to be too optimistic?   Can optimism be dangerous?  Join us for Barbara Ehrenreich’s Sermon on Optimism, Sunday Jan 10^th 2010.  Click here for tickets and info.

        

Catherine Blyth on Giving Presents

In forty years' marriage, my friend's Dad, a surgeon allergic to shopping, gave his wife not one present.  He adored her, and their lively sex life was a fact of which their kids would have preferred to know less.  Yet the gift embargo lasted until their youngest son (30) called it a disgrace.  You may think the Dad is amazing, but his wife's self-possession is what impresses me.  The Roman historian Titus Livy wrote, 'A woman's mind is affected by the meanest gifts' – meaning, it costs little to buy female favour.  But this happily married couple show that feelings about presents are fluid, and always an index of a relationship's insecurities. 

   

'The manner of giving is worth more than the gift,' claimed Pierre Corneille – in a play called The Liar.  In reality, gifts cause upset because they are supposed to embody the giver's  esteem for the recipient.  Hence it is little consolation to hear Mum say, 'It's the thought that counts', when you open a half-eaten tube of Polos from your aunt on 25 December, as a mate of mine did, more than once. 

   

As each exchange is a diplomatic act, similar rules apply to presents as to flattery.  When Gordon Brown welcomed Barack Obama to Britain with a pen holder whittled from timbers of a sister ship of the Resolute, out of which the Presidential desk in the White House is made, plus a seven-volume, first edition Churchill biography, Obama gave him 25 DVDs including Psycho.  Commentators scorned Obama's 'insult', but the error was Brown's.  His presents were too great to be returned. 

   

If gifts betoken love, in practice, they often say more about our budget, the relative length of queues in Selfridges and Superdrug, or our family etiquette.  Indeed, a litmus test of new in-laws at Christmas is how they read local custom.  My first time all gifts 'for me', in thrice-recycled paper, were 'for me and him'.  The highlight?  A wooden spoon.  Was I gracious?  As if.  But I have since learnt that so deep is my mother-in-law's aversion to receiving gifts, to her, something useful, costing pennies, is the best  imaginable.  Disappointed

   

I still love finding the perfect gift.  The downside is that I am a pain to buy for.  Which is why the best gift my husband and I shared was last Christmas.  A gift-free, guiltless week in Egypt.

 

Catherine Blyth is the author of The Art of Conversation.

 

Mark Vernon on a different kind of Christmas

Might you approach this festive season differently? Is it possible to spend a little less, and feast more carbon-consciously? Or do Christmas habits die hard and it’s more likely that you’ll end up bloated in stomach and irritated with family. Well, don’t resign yourself immediately. The ancient Greek philosophers, those masters of good living, didn’t have Christmas. But they knew all about the excesses of Posidea, the old solstice festival. They have some suggestions on how to survive the winter binges that are common to them and us. The fundamental lesson comes from Epicurus. Founder of the school named after him, the Epicureans, he thought the key question in life is how to enjoy its pleasures. However, unlike contemporary hedonists, whose ‘wisdom’ is that more is more, Epicurus believed that quality, not quantity, is what counts.

 

To believe that more is more is the philosophy of the addict. So forget the turkey and all the trimmings. Epicurus would have been as happy at the Christmas table if all he had before him was a glass of water and a barley cake. Be truly happy with that, and you can call yourself a real hedonist – someone who takes pleasure in the smallest of things.

 

There’s more to Christmas than food and drink. It’s about friends and family too. And they can be as hard to stomach as the food. A tip here comes from Aristotle. He believed that no one can be called happy – even if they get everything they want for Christmas – unless they have good friends. However good friendship requires a key ingredient, patience. ‘The desire for friendship comes quickly, friendship does not,’ he observed, which is to say that we should be patient with family and friends, even when they are annoying. Why? Because we can then hope that they will be patient with us when we are annoying to them. It’s an excellent virtue to practice at Christmas. Seize the opportunity.

 

That said, there is still the option of escaping from it all. So a final suggestion from Diogenes. He believed that we only truly know freedom when we do what we’re not expected to do. What are you expected to do at Christmas, he’d ask. Buy presents? Drink too much? Visit the in-laws? Well, do the opposite!

 

Diogenes was an extremist, of course. His life was prophetic, calling our own into question. But perhaps that’s what we need at Christmas. We may even get to like it better.

 

Mark Vernon’s new book is ‘Plato’s Podcasts: The Ancients’ Guide to Modern Living’ (Oneworld.)

Naomi Alderman on the Evolution of 'Self-Help'

Samuel Smiles' 'Self-Help', published on this day in 1859, was one of the most successful books of the second half of the 19th century. It sold more than a quarter of a million copies before Smiles' death – nomean feat since the population of the world was much smaller, and the literate population smaller still - and was widely translated.

Given the author's name - is it possible to imagine Mr Sam Smiles without envisioning a jolly, beaming Victorian paterfamilias? – and the associations of the self-help genre today, what might one expect to find in this volume? An exhortation to love one's inner child? Some encouragements to 'think positively', 'believe in yourself', and a general reminder that 'you're worth it'?

Far from it. The Victorians had a far grimmer - though perhaps more realistic - idea of what it meant to help yourself: work, work and more work.

For the modern reader, 'Self-Help' is frankly pretty dull. Although organised into themed chapters on subjects like 'Application and Perseverance', 'Helps and Opportunities' and 'Money - its use and abuse', there's no real line of argument. Instead it's a compendium of hundreds of stories, all on the same pattern:

1) A young man (and they are almost all men) grows up poor or disadvantaged

2) He conceives an ambition but is repeatedly thwarted

3) Nonetheless, he perseveres, and works extremely hard

4) Finally, success!

'Self-Help' certainly isn't part of our modern 'quick-fix' culture. Phase 3) of this process often lasts for decades. Smiles is wary of genius or prodigy too, saying that "wanting in perseverance, such natures are outstripped in the race of life by the diligent, even the dull.' Better to be somewhat stupid, as long as that encourages you to work hard.

'Self-Help' does contain some intimations of later outcroppings of the self-help movement, in this story of 'affirmations', for example:

"It is related of a young French officer that he used to walk about his apartment exclaiming 'I will be Marshal of France and a great general.' His ardent desire was the presentiment of his success; for the young officer did become a distinguished commander, and he died a Marshal of France."

What did the legions of Victorian readers get from this book? Inspiration, certainly. It's not a book that's meant to be read at one sitting; one can imagine it being read much more as a fortifying tonic a new story of adversity overcome every time you begin to feel discouraged. And with its praise of hard work, one wonders how many copies of this book were given by parents to disappointing offspring.

'Self-Help' has something in common with that modern self-help voodoo, 'The Secret'. That book also promises that unlimited success is just a matter of persistence - and both fail to take into account the randomness of luck and the benefits of family and personal advantages.

But in The Secret all you have to do is persist in thinking positive thoughts. So perhaps we still have something to learn from 'Self-Help' - after all, you can't change your luck, and you can't change your background, but the one thing we can all do is keep on keeping on. That is the rather grim-faced message of Mr Smiles.

Mark Vernon on Working Hard

     

It’s often remarked that people work too hard. At four in the morning, city traders can be seen jogging through Shoreditch, exercising before hitting their desks. At lunchtime, sandwich bars are packed with office workers grabbing a bite, even as they read a magazine telling them that a proper break will do wonders for their happiness. In the early evening, commuter trains are full of folk checking their email on handheld devices that were supposed to increase their leisure, not bring the office back home. We’re all workaholics now.

And yet, I suspect the problem is not so much that we work too hard. Rather, it’s that we work hard without being quite sure what we’re working for.

Consider the story of Cleanthes, the ancient Greek. He arrived in Athens, from a place way out of town, after something of a midlife crisis. He’d been a boxer, though now fed up with that, he wanted to wrestle with life and the best ideas. The trouble was he had only four drachma in his pocket, roughly four days wages for a skilled worker. Unlike many of his aristocratic philosopher peers – the likes of Aristotle and Epicurus – he would have to fund his studies. So he took up gardening by night, in order to philosophize by day. He became known as ‘the water-carrier.’

Other citizens were seriously impressed with his application. After a few months of this arduous regime, they awarded him an honorarium of ten minas, roughly three months wages for a skilled worker. It was the ancient equivalent of a student grant. In return, he wrote them a poem. In it, he extolled his fellows not to be swept along by blind desires, for if you live like that, you risk destroying your principles, your relationships, your passions. Don’t work hard and miss what you want, he advised.

Cleanthes wasn’t offering the trite self-help tip, simply to work less. He thought it is good to work hard and, after all, it is only human to want more and to devote your life to the pursuit of it. But he’d opted for a simple trade, the gardening, in order to preserve his energies for his main love, the philosophy. It’s rather like the novelist and poet, Adam Foulds, who took menial jobs that paid in order to fund his writing, which at first didn’t.

So the trick is this. Don’t not work hard. But do keep a check on whether you are working for what you really desire.

Mark Vernon’s new book is Plato’s Podcasts: The Ancients’ Guide to Modern Living (Oneworld,£8.99)–see www.youtube.com/platospodcasts

 

On Adultery

Is sexual liberation over? You may think so, reading Jealousy, the sequel to The Sexual Life of Catherine M. In it, lusty Parisian academic Catherine Millet, who hung out with the whores in the Bois de Boulogne, reveals something controversial: a heart. When her man slept around, she went barmy. 

 

Hypocrisy is the most logical attitude to infidelity, as it fuses many issues, and beliefs about it formed in a world very different to our own.  It has a religious dimension.  As an infidel betrays God, so infidelity betrays the faith between two people.  The assumption is that loyalty in body, mind and spirit are interchangeable.  But arguably, people began disapproving of infidelity for a more practical reasons, to stop rows about property.  

Avid debauchee Alexandre ‘Three Musketeers’ Dumas lamented, ‘Why is what was called cuckoldry in the seventeenth century called adultery in the nineteenth?’  His answer was inheritance law.  Once, first-born sons got it all, then the law changed, giving every child a portion of the estate.  So husbands who once worried only about the paternity of their heir grew to fear every cuckoo in the nest.  And society grew fiercer about female infidelity, while in men a mistress remained a badge of success.   

Female sluts got it in the neck since Eve bit the apple.  Katie Price is slated for cavorting with her cage fighter.  But male sluts are less tolerated than before.  The court of public opinion is still out on randy Ashley Cole, while Cheryl is a latter-day saint for fighting for her love.  But for those whose private lives are private, now we have DNA-testing, good contraception, fidelity seems less relevant.  With the internet and the liar's friend, the mobile phone, slipping the marital leash is ever easier.  Why can't we act on passing fancies without breaching emotional loyalty?  

I understand infidelity’s fans.  Yet I believe monogamy, with the right person, is the least-worst path through life. Even empty sex threatens a relationship, as nobody can guarantee it will not come to mean more.  This belief is less old-fashioned than imagining that mind rules body, like 17th-century rationalist, René Descartes.  On the contrary, scientists have found neurochemicals released in sex, vasopressin and oxytocin, mean that where lust leads, territorial feelings often follow.  Love and sex, mind and body, are as interchangeable as ever. 

 

- Catherine Blyth

 

Our Bibliotherapists on Pondering Death

As the days shorten my mind wanders towards Death. As a nation we shy from the inevitable although all the signs are there - Halloween, All Souls Day, the drawing darkness and the decaying leaves that we scuff underfoot. But we skip over the real meaning of these festivals, and avoid their mortal insistence.

 

So this Biblio-blog ponders Death, and prescribes some books that may give solace, even answers, to this most human condition.

 

It’s a reassuring thought that books are a direct link to the dead, as we can enter the minds of departed souls through their printed words. The mysterious Gawayne poet of the fourteenth century, for instance, wrote the beautiful poem Pearl, which, despite 600 intervening years has a voice still fresh today. It is a religious meditation that seeks to give heavenly comfort for the pain of loss. The language in this exquisite poem is hypnotically ravishing to listen to, so let it flood over you - take the consolation, without necessarily absorbing the Christian overtones.

 

Turning to more modern thoughts on death, Jim Crace’s Being Dead is a stunning novel that analyses the life and death of an ordinary middle-aged couple who are murdered at the same place where they first made love. We are reconciled to their death through the fastidious description of what happens to their bodies, microbes and all, after their murder.

 

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak is a novel that anthropomorphises Death into a deeply compassionate force, horrified by the collection of souls he is compelled to perform. Will Self’s book Liver addresses the idea of assisted suicide in its central story. Death is confronted without sentiment, and despite the grimness of the conclusions drawn, I found this a strangely reconciling book; in a culture where we live in a perpetual state of denial, I would prescribe this to the squeamish, so as to confront their fears.

 

One of the youngest reads that explores death is Goodbye Mog by Judith Kerr, as it gently looks at the passing of a beloved pet - in a way that children as young as two can relate to. The Giving Tree by Silverstein observes how unconditional love bonds us together even past the end of life. In this way death loses its taboo, and becomes part of the everyday.

 

For older children I recommend two books about death: Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nichols, which brilliantly examines the hardest of topics - a child dying, with humour and pathos, through wonderful, believable characters. It made my husband and I sob fiercely into the pillows but my daughter aged 10 saw past the sadness to the wonder of the story and the honesty of the writing. The other is Before I Die by Jenny Downham. Economically written with a directness that is fresh and not mawkish it helped me understand how death takes without prejudice and leaves us all behind.

 

We may wish that Death was not with us but as the year draws in and we look elsewhere, perhaps we should take comfort from the falling leaves and take time to ponder over what comes to us all. The leaves will rot, but inevitably new shoots will arise from the mulch.

Charlotte Raby and Ella Berthoud are available for in-person and remote bibliotherapy consultations via email or skype.  To find out more about the service click here 

 

Cathy Haynes on the Fear of the Amateur

I’ve just chanced across a copy of The 1951 Gadgets Annual. It gives five hundred useful and ‘ingenious hobby ideas’. They include how to build a ukulele, turn an old felt hat into a shoe-sock, pose live fish for photographs, ‘titivate’ a bath mat and draw a silhouette portrait of the wife (‘… pose the wife between a sheet of paper and a strong light … Draw round the outline of this shadow, and let the wife relax …’).

 

Gadgets, with its mania for the homespun and its assumption that it’s not talking to the wife, is fascinating. But, as I flick through its pages, I am distracted by an unexpected sense of disquiet over its espousal of all things amateur. True, I’m suspicious of its invitation to ‘Be Your Own Electrician’ and chemical engineer – I think there are laws against that now. But something else is troubling me. Who, I ask myself, would dare make a wedding present of a papier-maché fruit display? Who would sport a miniature homemade flower vase on their lapel? Who would try to bamboozle their guests with ‘The Puzzling Bran-Canister’ trick? Not me! For I am suffering from a form of cultural cringe, a symptom of a contemporary collective embarrassment toward handicraft and hobbies. 

Nowadays we believe we can buy much better things than we could produce ourselves, and getting what we want requires no more effort than a barely prehensile prod at a keypad. We have become consummate consumers, gourmets of culture, super-spectators, and our sophistication as audience-critics has out-stripped our making and performing skills. But the old hobbies, games and handicrafts haven’t disappeared. Instead they’ve changed from something we do into something we watch. TV programmes on DIY themes from cooking to home makeovers to ballroom dancing have professionalised the amateur: the old parlour games are played by professional entertainers, while amateur performers compete for the affirmation of fame and a professional contract. And so, whether we judge ourselves lacking the wit of TV quiz panellists at one extreme or gawk at the humiliation of talent show competitors at the other, most of us daren’t risk it ourselves.

 

We fear the amateur in case it causes us to loose face and look uncool. But at the root of the word amateur is the Latin amare, to love. An amateur pursuit is something we have genuine passion for, regardless of how we look to the outside world. By abandoning it, we lose the pleasure of doing something that is playful, creative, absorbing, and solely for itself.

 

So – for reasons of professional experiment, you understand – I’m going to try out some of those Gadgets ideas. And secretly I hope the process will release some of that joy of manual craft and ingenuity that I most fully felt in childhood. Who cares if my efforts are a bit shoddy? Only I’m going to see them. Oh, and my loved ones. Brace yourselves, family of mine, if you’re reading. If you play your cards right, you might get a lapel vase for a present.

 

Cathy Haynes teaches the Play course at The School of Life.

Places are still available on our six week Play course commencing on 10 November - 15 December, please go to our website for more details and to book.

 

 

 

Mark Vernon on What’s your philosophy type?

TAKE THIS QUIZ to see which master of good living has the best advice for you on how to live well. 

The philosophers of ancient Athens believed that ‘thought is therapy’ and were a powerhouse of ideas on how to live well.  Six main schools of philosophy emerged, each led by its own guru, each with its own approach, each appealing to different kinds of people. There were the Stoics, Epicureans, Cynics and Platonists, amongst others. A key question faced you as you travelled to Athens: who are you to follow? As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so the proof of any philosophy is in the living - and whether it helps you to live well.  What's your philosophy type? 

Designed by faculty member Mark Vernon, whose new book Plato's Podcasts: The Ancients' Guide to Modern Living is out now and available through The School of Life shop.

Roman Krznaric on the Extreme Sport of Empathy

This week I’ve launched OUTROSPECTION, my new blog about empathy – the art of stepping into the shoes of other people and seeing the world from their perspective. The concept of empathy is usually associated with caring and compassion. But I prefer to approach empathy as the ultimate extreme sport for the art of living. Let me tell you why.

Travel today isn’t what it used to be. People are tired of shuffling through the Louvre with the crowds or sitting around for hours at airports on their way to a Caribbean beach holiday that becomes a bore after two days of sunbathing. More and more people are choosing travel that widens their personal horizons and gives them experiential adventures. One of the best options for turning this into a reality is to become an empathist and journey into the lives of strangers.

 

What is the secret of this avant-garde form of travel? How do you do it? You can take a lead from the English writer George Orwell, who turned empathising into an extreme sport. In the late 1920s, after five years as a colonial police officer in Burma, Orwell decided to live as a tramp on the streets of East London, a period of his life described in his book Down and Out in Paris and London. He regularly donned shabby clothes and shoes, and set out virtually penniless to stay in homeless hostels and doss houses, wandering the streets with beggars and vagabonds for weeks at a time. One year he tried to get arrested so he could spend Christmas in gaol, but he resolutely failed to do anything bad enough for the police to take notice. It’s not always easy being an empathist.

 

What made him venture on these eccentric escapades? Partly he felt guilty for being an accomplice of the British imperialism he had grown to despise and wanted to understand the lives of those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Just as important, though, was his desire to broaden his life experiences and become a writer: his travels would give him all the material he needed to pen bestsellers.

Don’t mistake Orwell’s approach for the current trend of ‘poverty tourism’, where you might tour Soweto or Rio looking briefly at the slums from inside an air-conditioned SUV before heading off for a good lunch. Orwell knew that the real way to change his life was to have authentic experiences etched on his skin, by being in rather than merely seeing the lives of others. 

 

So if you want to master the art of living, take your inspiration from Orwell and cultivate yourself as an empathetic adventurer. Look in the mirror and ask: whose shoes have I always dreamed of slipping into? Maybe a week picking grapes in the vineyard of your favourite wine. Or perhaps helping your postwoman do her deliveries one morning. So pack your bags and prepare for a different style of travel. It is time to escape into empathy.

 

Roman Krznaric is on the teaching faculty of The School of Life. You can find his new blog, Outrospection, at http://outrospection.org/

You might also be interested in Roman’s one-minute definition of the word ‘empathy’, made for the Wordia online dictionary project, filmed on location at The School of Life.   Click here to watch. 

 

Nick Southgate on Being Wealthy

The economy may not, as yet, have bounced back. Bankers’ bonuses, however, have. Just as resilient as the bonus culture is our ability to feel indignant about it. The City defends the recipients of vast bonuses as merely employees being paid a proportionate reward for generating profits for their employers. They are just like the rest of us (all be it at a higher level). Any complaint is simply the politics of envy.

However, this economic defence feels inadequate. It is not just because bankers earn more than us that we feel their wealth lacks virtue. We do not feel the same outrage towards, for example, footballers or rock stars. Yet footballers’ earnings can be so vast they cripple their clubs and rock stars’ earnings so lavish they bankrupt their labels. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is far wealthier than any bonused banker and he does not attract such odium.

We would do well to remember a distinction Aristotle drew when he discussed the morality of money. For Aristotle, each part of our lives is governed by a particular virtue. The virtue of Courage, for example, governs how we should deal with fear and confidence. We must be strong enough to not be cowards but avoid the over-confidence of the foolhardy.

Money, Aristotle felt, needed not one virtue, as one might expect, but two. The virtue of Generosity deals with every day amounts. It tells us it is mean not to tip and spendthrift to buy shoes we will never wear. The virtue of Magnificence (as it is usual translated although there is no equivalent English word) deals with large amounts of money. This separate virtue recognises something crucial. Wealth is not simply a case having more money. Wealth, especially great wealth, imposes different requirements upon us.

What we find lacking in bankers is Magnificence. We are incensed not by the quantity of their wealth, but its quality and tone. Bill Gates is always clear he believes himself lucky. This makes him hard to hate. Footballers do something thrilling and beautiful to earn their money which makes them magnificent in our eyes. Rock star decadence is cool and warns us of the dangers of excess. Bankers, in contrast, appear only to have piles of money and the trinkets it buys them. If they could learn from Aristotle to be a little more magnificent they would be easier to love, or at least a little harder to loathe.

 

Robert Rowland Smith on Breakfast with Socrates

 

We all sometimes wish an ordinary day was a bit less ordinary. This month my book, Breakfast with Socrates, is published by Profile.   It takes you through a day in the company of some extraordinary ideas. From waking up in the morning, through going to work, shopping, making dinner, having sex and falling asleep, it raids the history of ideas in order to apply them to everyday life.

 

Take commuting. You're on a train, in a car, or on a bike, and periodically you're held up by a red light. It might be frustrating, but a red light is a literal manifestation of the law of fairness, that everybody should be allowed to have a turn. And although it is very literal, it's also abstract, for it has a depersonalised authority that we all pretty much obey. In this it enacts what Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century political theorist, said about how to make societies run smoothly. You've got to have an abstract authority for people to look up to and obey, or else they would all turn on each other. He thought that abstract authority had to be embodied in a sovereign, but in fact it's been transposed into something as humdrum as the red light, which regulates people's behaviour and so stops what Hobbes called the 'war of all against all'.

 

If you're interested in having a less ordinary start to your day, come to the next breakfast at The School of Life on Wednesday 11 November or if you're not an early riser, then get hold of a copy of Breakfast with Socrates available at The School of Life shop.

Catherine Blyth on Is it Art?

My husband's godson Theo (3) is a painter of genius.  Thank-you notes come daubed in cubist rainbows, with titles (e.g. 'Bacchus, drunk') added by dad.  We'd like to nurture Theo's talent, but I'm worried we'll ruin his fun.  A recent study found children paint happily until told it is for a certificate, then instantly their enthusiasm plummets.  Perhaps this is why traditionally we like artists starving in garrets.  If they're glum, we can believe their work is serious.

What is art?  The question is slightly pointless.  If something provokes you to ask it, and was designed to, it must be.  Art's job is to be contemplated, be it a busker's performance, Marcel Duchamp's upside-down urinal, or Piero Manzoni's canned turds. 

What people mean by this question is 'Is it any good?'  It can be hard to tell, as I found at the ICA, working on perplexing events like the Naked Poetry Festival.  The greatest talent, Steve McQueen, revealed to me how much an artist's task is to convince us of his value.  Wisely, he refused to supply publicity videos: no, his films were 'installations' (worth thousands).  He understood that we rate art by its price.  If Charles Saatchi coughs up £5,000 for a pipe, you know you're not dreaming: it is Art. 

Charles Darwin speculated that all futile delights – art, music, jokes – evolved from sexual competition.  Whether or not ancient cave painters did it to impress lovers, you can be sure they wanted to depict their horses well.  Once cash entered the equation, artists needed a new skill: to grab attention.  Michelangelo was discovered after burying a sculpture and selling it to a cardinal as an antique. (The cardinal realised, laughed, and summoned him to Rome.)  Art developed in social competition between artists and patrons, showing off.  A patron sent one message – 'My Madonna and Child has more gold leaf than yours' – while the artist sent another, 'Look at what I can do'. 

Now ads, TV and colour are everywhere, visual competition is intense, and beauty, cheap.  So art has a new task.  It need not be gorgeous, but must do more than distract: it must seize imagination.   Hence anti-social art has risen to the top.  The Chapman Brothers are no Michelangelos, yet they are great.  Because they make us ask, 'Is it art?'

Catherine Blyth is the author of The Art of Conversation.

 

 

Nick Southgate on Being Rational

When facing the big decisions of life we want to be rational. Houses, careers, study, marriage: these demand weighing things up with care and reason. We muster all our intellectual resources and try to focus them on reaching the right decision. Yet, the sneaking suspicion often remains that our decision came down to gut feeling, hunches or even simple guess work.

Small decisions are no better. Even the most trivial everyday of decisions can cost us disproportionate amounts of confusion and effort. Who has not been delayed for a party debating the degree of smartness demanded of one’s attire? Who has not mulled over the subtle implications and subtexts a choice of gift may unguardedly impart to its recipient? In these cases we are familiar with the rejoinder that we should “think rationally”. But such clear thinking is rarely at hand.

Consistent failure to not be more rational can lead us to upbraid ourselves for lacking intellectual gumption or moral fibre. Before we are so hard on ourselves maybe we should ask ourselves why it is so difficult to think rationally. After all, if it is so desirable why does it elude us so often when we most need it?

Consolation can be found in Descartes masterpiece The Meditations of First Philosophy. In it he sets forth a rational and scientific foundation for all our thinking. It is this ambition that Descartes is remembered for.

What is less often remembered is how difficult Descartes finds obtaining rational thought. To achieve his task he commits himself to six days of meditation alone in a room with only a fire to keep him warm. This ascetic effort does not bring instant rewards. As he strives for clear thinking his head spins, his concentration wanders, he lapses into old ways and is consumed by ferocious doubt and bewildering confusion. The result is not permanent reform. An ongoing effort is required to keep a clear and rational head.

Such effort is the preserve of the philosopher. Few of us have six days to devote to achieving a rational frame of mind. We should not be disheartened. Descartes was searching for a platform for philosophy and science. They yield to rational enquiry. Everyday life does so far less easily. Descartes’ efforts also show that we cannot be rational all the time. We need more than rational thinking to lead a full and proper life and should remember this when being rational once again eludes us.

 

How to Save the World... Literally

FUTERRA SERMON ON GLOBAL SALVATION

11.30am, 11 October 2009
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1

In this unique double-act, Ed Gillespie and Solitaire Townsend take to the pulpit to teach us how to save the world....literally.

Green may be the colour of the Futerra religion but their style is far from pious. Sustainability, as they preach it, is technology fancying, gadget-loving, carbon-neutral and super-sexy. So forget the sanctimonious finger-wagging in sandals and socks you may be used to from the green camp; this sermon will be anything but a Luddite get together of beard-stroking yogurt weavers. 

No one likes to feel guilty about their eco-sins, so most of us sweep our dark little secrets (cheap flights, plastic bags, solo car journeys) under the carpet and ignore them. “Confess and Progress” urge Ed and Soli, who’ll be bringing their Earthly Sins Confessional Booth (see picture on the right) to Conway Hall. 

Of course there’s a serious and urgent message behind Futerra’s playful style and you should expect to have fear about the world’s ecological crisis struck deep into your heart. Salvation is possible, we’ll learn, but only if we adhere to the essential eco-commandments that can bring about global absolution through individual and collective action.

Ed Gillespie and Solitaire Townsend are co-founders and directors of Futerra Sustainable Communications.

Come with a friend and get two tickets for £15.

 

 

Psychotherapy at The School of Life

Just as we go to the dentist, optometrist and doctor for regular check-ups on our teeth, eyes and bodily functions, perhaps we should also be open to the idea of having a mental tune-up from time to time - an ‘MOT for the mind’ if you will. 

Common prejudices tend to dictate that only those in crisis or with serious illnesses, for example, should seek out the help of a psychotherapist while the rest of us are encouraged to keep a stiff upper lip  when dealing with our ‘issues’.  In other cases, psychotherapy is viewed as a bizarre self-indulgence.

But when you consider that 1 in 4 people will experience some form of mental health problem in the course of any given year, the many others whose issues go unreported, and the increasing levels of anxiety that many of us now experience in our daily lives, it would seem that good mental health is something that none of us should take for granted.  Indeed, it’s a wonder we don’t embrace the support and therapeutic services available to us with open arms - and minds.

Speaking confidentially with someone who is trained to listen, respond and foster insight can be a useful tool for anyone hoping to gain deeper insight into their thoughts, feelings, behaviours and self in general.  It can also help to increase our sense of wellbeing, improve our relationships and teach us valuable coping skills – all of which are particularly beneficial in a world that is becoming increasingly complex and demanding.

And yet, even if we are able to overcome the stigmas associated with psychotherapy, we must then find a therapist and modality that’s suited to us, and with over 450 varieties of psychotherapy available – not all reputable - that can be a daunting task.

This week, The School of Life aims to demystify some of the issues around psychotherapy in our event: ‘How to Make Sense of Psychotherapy’ with resident expert,Brett Kahr.

If your mind’s due for an MOT, we also offer two types of psychotherapy.   You can make an appointment for one of The School of Life’s individual consultations where you’ll be given the opportunity to explore your psyche in a conversation that extends over 75 minutes. 

If you’d prefer to explore work or personal issues in a group setting, you can take part in one of our group constellations. These work with a whole picture of the individual as part of a larger set of systems - family, community, working environment and so on.

If you’re not able to attend this week’s event, please stay tuned for an update on future event dates.  If you’re interested in booking one of our psychotherapy sessions, please email info@theschooloflife.com or call 0207 833 1010 for more information.

 

Invitation to The School of Life Open Day

Saturday 5 September 11.00 - 18.00

If you've been curious about The School of Life and would like to meet the people behind it, this is your opportunity! 
 
Staff and faculty will be on hand throughout the day to tell you about our five essential courses on Love, Work, Family, Play and Politics. Our bibliotherapists will offer taster sessions.  There'll be a Virtual Travel Clinic where you can find out about our upcoming holidays, and our Life Lessons stall will dispense philosophical ideas on matters as eclectic as telling the truth, finding the right job, making resolutions and falling in love.
 
The School of Life’s Open Day is part of the Marchmont Street Festival.  Entry to The School of Life is free. 

 

Sophie Howarth on holidaying at home

Sophie Howarth, Director of The School of Life, was interviewed on this morning's BBC Today programme about the idea of holidaying at home. Listen to the initerview here.

Meanwhile we're producing a second limited edition of our ever-popular Holiday at Home box, conceived by philosopher Alain de Botton. Quite literally a "package holiday" the box contains everything you need to enjoy a holiday full of art, love, adventure, self-discovery and even romance from the comfort of your living room. If you want to put your name down to be among the first to hear when the new box is released, please send an e-mail to info@theschooloflife.com.

To find out more about all The School of Life's holidays - future and past - click here.

 

Tom Mellors shares his ambivalence about our herding instincts

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche observes that "for as long as there have been humans, there have also been human herds." He considers humanity's long history of obedience and concludes that "everyone on average is born with a need to obey, as a kind of formal conscience that decrees... 'thou shalt!'"

 

The herd instinct may originate in our desire to become one with our community and surroundings but it can all too easily negate our individuality. It’s an instinct to fit in with the group and 'to follow'. At its best an instinct that joins us in family groups, congregations, tribes, peoples, and nations. But at its worst an instinct responsible for youth gangs, celebrity worshipers, of people who "stick to a brand", or submit to a dominant idea of how to live.

 

The dominant commandments in our "developed" society too often seem to comprise 'thou shalt consume', 'thou shalt work and be successful', 'thou shalt desire', and 'thou shalt love thyself above all others'. Although these commandments are not chiselled into stone or scripture, they are proclaimed subtly from almost every billboard and television advert. John Carpenter's cult film They Live incorporates this idea into its main plot. In the film George Nada, a homeless labourer in Los Angeles, finds a pair of sunglasses which reveal the true messages in the advertising around him. So when he looks at a billboard advertising something, all Nada sees is the words "Obey", "Watch TV", or "Marry and Reproduce".

 

The humanist philosopher Erich Fromm often talked about the biblical creation story, with particular focus on Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise. Fromm believed that when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge they suddenly became aware of themselves as being separate from nature, while remaining in nature. This, he says, explains why they suddenly felt ashamed and naked. Fromm believed that humanity's subconscious awareness of its disunited and separate existence is a source of guilt and shame, creating a deep desire to escape the feeling of loneliness. One way to overcome this loneliness is through conformity with the group and obedience. A quick scan of 20th century history provides many examples of where the herd instinct has become a religion and a goal in itself - few examples more destructive than Nazi nationalism.

 

The herd instinct today is a complex one, driven by strong narcissistic drives as well as the drive to obey and conform. The stories you hear in the news about absurd crimes committed over the gain of petty objects are arguably an example of when the tension between the need to obey and narcissistic desire fall out of balance. Yet to presume that all herds are exploitative would be to overlook the importance in life of smaller herds, such as family and friends. Confucius saw virtue in these groups, and he believed that familial duty especially helps individuals to cultivate personal and social harmony.

Nietzsche’s alternative to the herd is a life of extreme individualism which is supremely narcissistic. Rather than chase after extreme states of being - within or without of the herd - we should strive to negotiate a balance between the two.

 

Caroline Brimmer on pedalling thoughts...

Albert Einstein, a keen cyclist, said “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” Cyclists on The School of Life’s recent Philosophy by Bicycle holiday certainly agreed. With just over 20 miles and the whole of Western philosophy to navigate in a day, there wasn’t much time for hanging around.

And yet, as all cyclists know, the saddle is one of the very best places from which to contemplate the world. As Robert M Pirsig, author of the infamous Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, said “In a car you’re always in a compartment...You’re a passive observer. On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re in the scene, not just watching it. The sense of presence is overwhelming.”

Led by philosopher Nigel Warburton and presenter of Resonance FM’s Bike Show, Jack Thurston, this incredible day saw us debating the nature of self under a tree in Victoria Park, questioning our experience of space under a flyover next to the Albert Docks, considering choice as we circumvented the new Olympic site and discussing death whilst dodging pedestrians in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

And if it all sounds a bit like hard work, don’t worry, we also fitted in numerous refreshment stops and a leisurely pub lunch by the river. In fact, it was so much fun, we’ve decided to do it again.

To find out more and to join us for the next ride which will take place on Saturday 25 July, click here.

Caroline Brimmer is Programme Manager at The School of Life

Richard Herring on Bad Habits

Rather late in the day we’ve just come across Richard Herring’s wonderful radio series on Bad Habits. The picks for the series are procrastination, lateness, laziness, perfectionism and workaholism. But let's face it there are many more to choose from. We’re very familiar with people who struggle with workacholosm here at The School of Life – they signed up to our Work course in the hope of redemption, but then find they can't tear themselves away from the office to get here in time each week. In the programmes, Herring reminds us that, in Hollywood at least, the overworkers always finally realise it's family that matters. But then confesses with charming honesty, "I've worked so hard I don't even have a family to neglect." Herring interviews a whole range of people who have been involved with The School of Life – Tom Hodgkinson, Oliver James, Jon Ronson among them. You can download all the programmes here. Enjoy.

Photo by Matt Stuart.

 

Joan Byrne on Photographing London

I’m a Londoner, so why would I want to spend a weekend in my home town photographing every street curio that doesn’t move, or at least not too fast?  I can't really tell you except that intuition told me it would be fun. So I signed up for one of The School of Life’s Photographing London holiday weekends led by two dazzling photographers: Matt Stuart and Stephen McLaren.  Google them for photos that capture the surreal in the real.

 

When I stepped into Bloomsbury, home to The School of Life, my holiday began: the sun shone, the architecture glowed and none of it looked like Peckham Rye where I live. 

About twenty of us gathered: several Americans, the rest of us natives.  We were encouraged to ‘snap vigorously’ and our first mission was to photograph interesting examples of body language.  We looked at examples of successful street photography, before meandering to the British Museum, one of the few public buildings where you can photograph with impunity (and your camera). Foreign languages filled the air. It was, as promised, like being far away.

From antiquities to Oxford Street is quite a jump, but we made it and encouraged by Matt and Stephen acted like paparazzi on the West End’s mean streets.  We wended our way through two ribbon-thin alleys I’ve never seen in my life… and eventually arrived at the Photographer’s Gallery where we paused before hitting Soho.

 

Early evening back at The School of Life, weary and hungry, we enjoyed a delicious meal ferried from the restaurant across the road; wine and conversation flowed.

 

The FleaPit in Columbia Road’s floral paradise was our starting point for day two.  I don’t know how many years it is since I was in Columbia Road, but I rued every Sunday morning that I had not been there.  Set regular challenges to photograph themes, this time we were to snap with colour in mind: ‘Think Matisse but leave out the flowers!'  And it was around there that I drank the best cup of coffee ever, made by the world’s top barista who operates from a shack on a side street off the main drag.  I’d heard about this guy and now like a tourist I had discovered him. 

 

Brick Lane was next with its spirit of elsewhere and market stalls that sell something of everything and people who are surely out to be photographed.  In the nearby super trendy covered market I savoured a dish of delicious sushi, wiped my brow for the day was steaming and thought, yes, I really am on holiday. 

 

Next on the itinerary: the Bank of England which I’m not sure if I’ve even seen before.  Here our mission to photograph everyone and everything that appealed to our sense of humour or aesthetics came to a close. 

 

We walked back to Bloomsbury for a show ‘n’ tell  - each of us showed five photos to match the assignments.  We ate scrumptious carrot cake and toasted our holiday happiness with a cool glass of Pimms.

 

I’m told (one person had a pedometer) that we walked 14 miles on the first day and eight the next.  Each of us had been on our own journey: to improve technique, to find the nerve to take candid shots or solely for the pleasure of giving our cameras a workout and, in my case,  see more of London.  We left with a sense of achievement and the camaraderie that comes from sharing a memorable vacation.  And, we had our snaps to show the folks back home.  Here are a few of mine.

More photographs from The School of Life’s Photographing London holidays can be found here.

 

The holiday runs again on 12 and 13 September. Details can be found here. 

 

William Higham on a shameful week in British politics

Sometimes – like today - I wish I could find a big jar of gloopy political apathy in the supermarket, placed between the toothpaste and aspirin on the shelf. I would go home and smoother myself in it, sleep better and live a happier life. But people like me are well-named political junkies. Politics sits on the centre spot on the heart’s mantelpiece where better adjusted people might store their affinity for their football team, their hobby or their passions.

There are great highs, but they are few. Most of the time party politics brings a grinding sense of moral strain, as you sign up to the collective line. And most of the time is haunted by failure, compromise or the fear of failure.

And how do you explain what’s going on within British politics? If you don’t care about party, but feel politics should be rising to the challenges facing the country, is there any explanation that could excuse the sheer self-indulgence and navel-gazing we’ve seen out of Westminster?

These are tough times in Britain. There are some 600,000 people more unemployed than last year. Last year 40,000 homes were reposed and bankruptcies rose from 15 to 20 thousand. It’s hard to comprehend these numbers – even before you add the ripple effect of families, partners and dependents who find their security, prospects and standards of living dragged down too. But politics seems to have turned in on itself, indulging in introspection, faction and at picking its own scabs formed by the Telegraph’s devastating expenses scoops.

There is something incorrigible and toxic in the way that the Labour party seems only able to fight about its own leadership and itself. Like a doomed couple who pledge each time to be civil and get on, but find each evening together ends up in a hissing fight. And behind all the conflict lies hope or blame about what a leader can actually do for a party or a country– each equally superstitious, even mystical. The would-be assassins of Brown remind me of a passage in the Golden Bough about the itch to sacrifice kings and gods to bring back fertility and serenity to the land: “a dying god should be chosen to take upon himself and carry away the sins and sorrows of the people”.

The plotters are neither united in their grievances or their alternatives. Hanging over them seems to be the redemptive promise of spilt political blood. Of course, we might ask whether the resignation (or ritual sacrifice) of the Commons Speaker has raised the stock of parliament? But that’s far too reasonable a question. That is like asking the last Mayan priests why just one more blood libation will stop the jungle closing around their cities. And really, despite years of engagement with politics, I can give no better explanation of what is hoped for by the plotters than that – a semi-magical catharsis. And then a new king to replenish the joint stock of political mojo.

Well last night, the dagger halted in its arc – Brown was spared.  But if you read the columnists today discontent rumbles on, or is delayed to the autumn.  Meanwhile the Conservative’s spend most of their public utterances mocking the Labour party’s troubles. At the heart of today’s politics is introspection, ringed by derision. We can and must do better.

William Higham will be teaching The School of Life’s Politics course starting Monday 15 June. For more information or to book a place click here.

Photo by Nils Jorgensen

 

Alice Rawsthorn on Good Design

Ahead of her secular sermon for The School of Life on Sunday June 28, International design critic Alice Rawsthorn, puts out a call to arms for young designers.

 

The numbers seem nutty. There are 6.5 billion people on this planet, 90% of who can’t afford basic products and services. Half of them, nearly 3 billion people, don’t have regular access to food, shelter or clean water. Yet whenever we read, or talk, about design, it’s invariably about something that’s intended to be sold to one of the privileged minority – the richest 10%.

 

The £1 million chaise longue. The super-smart phone. The fast car. The beautifully bound book. The elegant typeface. The cute digital device.  Museums, books, magazines, and blogs are stuffed with them. Tens of thousands of designers devote their working lives to producing more.

 

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that. No one forces billionaires to pay £1 million for chaises longues at gunpoint, and I can’t pretend to feel the least bit guilty about loving beautiful books. But when you look at the bigger picture, doesn’t it seem odd that so much time, energy, talent and resource should be devoted to creating luxuries for relatively few people, when so many more people are in desperate need of designers’ skills and ingenuity?

 

More and more designers, mostly young ones, are addressing that need by designing everything from emergency housing, water purification devices, cheap forms of transport, educational resources, to new business initiatives for “the other 90%”. They are also tackling the problems of mature economies like our’s by working in collaboration with other disciplines such as anthropology, economics, ethnography, psychology and the social sciences to develop new solutions to acute social problems in areas like crime, education, healthcare, housing, joblessness and ageing.

 

At the same time, the combination of the economic recession and environmental crisis is prompting designers to re-assess the value of their conventional projects. Many of the values that underpinned design in the 20^th century are now redundant. Technology is no longer seen as a panacea. New things aren’t necessarily better than old ones. Big isn’t always best. Why buy something when you can borrow it for a time, before passing it on? Then there is the realisation that most designers’ work will end up rotting – or worse, failing to rot – in landfill sites? And that the design phenomenon of this year, iPhone apps, was dreamt up by amateur designers, not professionals.

 

If you look back historically, design has always flourished in periods of change. It is an agent of change that can help us to understand the changes in the world around us, and to interpret shifts in science, technology, culture and the economy into things that can help to make our lives more efficient and enjoyable. This is a time of unprecedented change, when those shifts are accelerating as are the extremes of speed and scale that confront us daily, while the social and political systems that once ran our lives are collapsing.

 

All of this creates extraordinary opportunities for designers, if they embrace a new approach to design – one that is more fluid, responsive, collaborative and inclusive. They will have to win over an increasingly demanding and knowledgeable public. They will have to design intangible formulae, as well as things, and then devolve responsibility for how them. Designers will also have to accept responsibility for ensuring that their work can be disposed of as responsibly as it should have been sourced, manufactured, sold and shipped. And they must focus on the needs of the under-privileged 90%. If they succeed, we will have a new definition of “good design” – one that has less to do with chairs, and more with the aspects of design that really matter.

 

To book tickets for Alice Rawsthorn's sermon on June 28th, click here.

 

Mark Vernon on the importance of a good breakfast

I have never understood people who do not eat breakfast. It is one of the blessings of the day. And what a joy: it comes around regular as clockwork, every morning. The night might have been short or long, but there is always the thought of tea, then cereal and fruit, then coffee. The tastes are simple. As is the pleasure. Why anyone would want to deny themselves by skipping breakfast is a mystery.

Breakfast meets certain biological needs. First thing in the morning, our blood sugar level is low. This is no doubt why sweet pastries are common breakfast fare. Tea and coffee perform a similar trick as an alternative physiological stimulus.

But all human hungers carry meaning too. So, breakfast is also a ritual. However you prefer to start the day, it doesn'’t start quite right if breakfast isn'’t quite right. Remember the time you stayed in a hotel where they served a 'continental breakfast'. At first, the processed cheese and low fat yoghurt seemed exotic. But somehow they did not hit the spot, as bacon and eggs would.

The point is that we humans don’t just eat food to quell our appetite. For those of us on this planet who have enough to eat, eating is mostly not just a question of satisfying our hunger. We prefer it to be a culinary delight. We also like to do it together. The word 'company' itself is derived from the Latin words meaning bread and together, panis and com: ‘companis’ - company. Hence we have wedding feasts, romantic suppers, birthday parties, celebratory dinners, and breakfast.

The word itself is an amalgam of two words, ‘break’ and ‘fast’. As the first meal of the day, it was the moment when medieval monks broke their overnight fast. Renewed by the night, they could start the day afresh.

And this is what we'll be doing at The School of Life's Breakfast Club. Think of it as waking up not just to tasty food but to nourishing ideas too. We'll be asking what it is to wake up anyway, how to engage with the day, and how to share in the company of others. We'll introduce you to thinkers who stimulate the soul, as the coffee stimulates the body. We are confident you’ll leave with a renewed sense of how to seize the day.

Mark Vernon is part of The School of Life faculty. To find out more about The School of Life’s Breakfast Club click HERE. Breakfast photo by Johanna Neurath.

 

Cathy Haynes on the fun to be had lying about books

A recent Mori report revealed that 40% of us resort to lying about having read certain books just so we can join in with a conversation. My cynical side seizes on this as dismal evidence that we’re buckling with indignity under the weight of “must-reads” the media piles upon us daily. But my upbeat, airy self wonders if the statisticians have stumbled upon and misinterpreted a fantastic party game being played all over the land where everyone is re-imagining the content of books in a splendid frenzy of creativity.

I would never condone this misrepresentation of an important work; the urgent content of some books is vital for us to encounter critically and debate collectively. But perhaps there is a playful liberation in the 40%’s fraudulent resistance to the tyranny of booklists. What’s more, that we’re able to bluff a conversation about a book we’ve never read suggests at least 40% of us are much better at creative storytelling than we might have expected.

In The School of Life’s Play course we experiment with an old parlour game. It’s the one where you choose three obscure books, read their covers aloud and ask players to write what they think is the first line. An umpire then reads out the results with the real first line of the book buried somewhere among them, and asks the group to choose which is the real one. I’m prepared to bet as much as a fiver that no matter how many times we play this game, the group will always mistakenly identify one of their own lines as the real thing. But perhaps 40% of us already knew that, and are busy playing the game up and down the land.

Cathy Haynes is part of The School of Life's faculty. To find out more about the Play course click HERE. Photo by Jeff Mermelstein.

 

Sophie Howarth on the agitational influence of Augusto Boal

The Brazilian theatre director, educator and politician Augusto Boal died earlier this month. He was a huge inspiration to me and his influence can be felt in many of our courses here at The School of Life.

I had the fortune to be part of a workshop around The Art of Legislation Boal led at the GLA in London in 1998. Later I learned about his ideas from Adrian Jackson, who translated Boal’s work into English and adopts his unique brand of playful agitation though his own work as artistic director of Cardboard Citizens. Earlier this year, I made a personal resolution to try and attend another of Boal’s workshops wherever in the world that might take me, as I yearned for more of the confidence to make useful trouble he inspired. Sadly that opportunity has now passed.

Boal was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a form of everyday theatre used in radical education and increasingly in drama therapy. The name is a variation on Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the now infamous 1968 education manifesto by philosopher Paolo Friere.  Friere is without doubt one of the great visionaries of revolutionary social education, but his books are as earnest as they are urgent. Boal, by contrast, made the very serious project of tacking social injustice seem full of humour, joy and hope. Games were in his blood and at the heart of his methodology.

Boal believed everyone could make theatre, and that it was a unique way for each of us to identify strategies for personal and social change. In his Invisible Theatre actors would, seeminly spontaneously, put on a prepared scene in a public place - a restaurant or crowded square - that would quickly engage the surrounding public. In Forum Theatre, a play about a social problem turned out to be the beginning of a negotiation; audience members were encouraged to suggest different modes of resolution for the play and even to climb onstage to help enact them. It all makes Brecht look tame.

The impact Boal made on the everyday lives of many previously disenfranchised Brazilians did not endear him to the military regime of the 1960s and 1970s, and his life was an eventful one involving imprisonment and exile.  But after the fall of Brazil’s dictatorship, Boal returned to Rio de Janeiro and used his innovative theatrical approach to engage overlooked communities as a city councillor. He started over a dozen theatere companies and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008.

Sophie Howarth is Director of The School of Life.

 

 

Robert Rowland Smith on telling lies

When someone asks how you are, do you say you’re fine when you’re feeling wretched? Have you ever assured your host that dinner was delicious, when it made you feel sick? If you’re given a present you hate, might you tell the giver it’s what you always wanted?

 

If you answered yes to any of the above, you’re a liar. Ok, you’ll say these are just ‘white lies’, strategic untruths to spare your questioner embarrassment - in protecting the other person, you’re being almost gracious. But lies that are white sit on a spectrum with those that are black, with an area between that is grey: what about when you arrive late for work blaming the transport, instead of admitting you couldn’t get out of bed? Lies become blacker the more you try to protect yourself rather than the person you’re deceiving.

 

Now, while all lies are false, not all falsities are lies. You can believe sincerely in something quite wrong, as did the entire world before 1543, for example, when Copernicus pointed out the earth revolved round the sun. It’s not that, before then, people were lying when they averred the earth lay at the centre, no - they were, in all honesty, expressing a falsehood. But things get blacker still when you both know something to be false, and you try to convince yourself of it - you imagine the bus really had broken down, and picture the frustration when you had to get off and start walking.

 

In this, lying parallels acting. There is the Olivier school and there is the Method. The former says a plausible imitation doesn’t require you to get inside your character’s head, whereas the Method demands you become the person you’re portraying, and in preparing for Raging Bull, Robert De Niro, its foremost exponent, trained like a real contender. Olivier was just lying to the audience, De Niro was lying to himself.

 

The lesson is that unless you’re a professional actor, lying can be perilous. Not just because of the tangled web you’ll weave when you start to deceive other people, but because, if you believe your own lies, you, like a Method actor, risk losing your sense of self.

 

Robert Rowland Smith’s Breakfast with Socrates: the Meaning of Everyday Life, is published this autumn by Profile Books. He will be teaching the next Love course at The School of Life on 6-7 June.

This article also appears in Life Class, The School of Life's weekly column in the Evening Standard.

 

Caroline Brimmer on the pleasures of urban gardening

Who needs to hang about at Stansted waiting for Ryanair to get their act together when you can holiday on the Elephant and Castle roundabout? We ran the first of The School of Life's summer holidays this weekend, and appropriately the sun beamed down on us all day.

We met at 10.00am on the 17th floor of Perronet House SE1, an eye-sore or a modernist landmark, it depends on your opinion. There guerrilla gardener Richard Reynolds brewed up coffee on his balcony and had us survey the local landscape below for evidence of the transformation he has bought about over recent years, as well as to establish our mission for the day - to apply green fingers to various unloved patches of inner-city land.

Later in the day Independent on Sunday garden blogger Emma Townshend led a crash course in urban garden design and had us all rethinking just what can be done with a rooftop, a hanging basket or an old Brillo box. She led us to gardens I never even knew existed – on the rooftop of SOAS, behind Lincoln's Inn Fields, down alley-ways whose names I can't for the life of me remember.

We finished the day here at The School of Life with a feast of foraged delicacies whipped up by Oliver Rowe, proprietor and chef of Konstam, our local restaurant renowned for locally sourcing all its ingredients.

We've been inundated with requests to repeat the holiday so we'll be running it again on Saturday 19 September. Find out more here.

Caroline Brimmer is programme manager at The School of Life.

 

 

Simon Jenkins on the lure of the live

Simon Jenkins' comment piece in Saturday's Guardian exploring the extraordinary public appetite for live performance highlighted by the success of the Simón Bólivar Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall last week, is certainly borne out by our experience at The School of Life. Our Secular Sermons on Sunday mornings now draw a crowd of over 500, eager for good ideas delivered with palpable passion. When most churches can barely scrape double figures for their weekly attendance, and media experts tell us the future is all on online events, what exactly is going on?

Jenkins calls it the “magnetism of human congregation..... which invites the audience to speak, to think, to make up its mind and to vote.  .... The more leisure we have, the more we want to escape the tyranny of screen and earpiece, the now ubiquitous workstation. Theorists seem unable to handle this want, because its technology is old-fashioned, that of live sound heard by a live community of enthusiasts in real time and place."

Read his full piece here.

Maurice Glasman on why Orwell got it wrong

It is sixty years since George Orwell published 1984. Maurice Glasman asks whether it has really been as prophetic as it’s cracked up to be.

George Orwell’s 1984 has failed to stand the test of time.  Twenty five years after its projected moment of realisation, the type of totalitarian repression he envisaged may help us grasp the condition of a Chinese Communist Party functionary who has fallen out of favour but does not give us the conceptual resources to capture the type of threats to liberty and integrity that confront us in Britain today. 

 

As a conservative patriot working in a socialist tradition, Orwell was concerned with threats to the type of society Britain was becoming.  ‘Big Brother’ is a scary concept but it is not at the heart of what is at stake here today.  The booing of Andy Burnham at the Hillsborough Memorial at Anfield yesterday expresses a rage and contempt that people feel towards politics and politicians that is nowhere captured in 1984.  The threats to society that people fear, such as environmental degradation, market failure, immigration or Islamic contestation do not feature. 

 

It is true that millions of people live a life of atomised powerlessness when confronting forces that are definitively beyond their control.  The force which confronts them, however, is not a Single Party Prison State based upon constant domestic surveillance, common activities and Supreme Leader devotions all co-ordinated through a central government of such integrated omnipotence and knowledge of each citizen’s secret fears that resistance of even the most personal type is met by the slavering jaws of wild black dogs that attack you in the night. 

 

The force is something very different.

 

There is indeed a culture of almost constant surveillance and most of it is carried out by family members and friends who record as many moments of one another’s lives as they can.  The police are held to account by a citizen’s army of mobile phone cameramen who document every moment.  The State cannot hit its targets for teenage pregnancies or literacy, political participation or tests for cervical cancer.  Even the might of the Great Hegemon’s Army is made to jump around Afghanistan by a bunch of enraged peasants with Kalshnikoffs.  Blowing away three teenage pirates is heralded as a great success in a whole array of global wars.  Meanwhile the State finds itself subordinate to the demands of finance even to the extent of using its own resources to keep them in their position of dominance. 

 

The most effective forms of public manipulation and mobilisation are not to be found in the public sector, or politics at all, but in advertising campaigns and branding.  The State is more than capable of losing personal data, but only the private sector will sell our most intimate financial details on to unscrupulous fraudsters for a profit.  Totalitarianism is found far more forcefully in private sector team bonding sessions in which you either commit yourself publicly to obvious bullshit or risk losing your job.  The obtrusiveness of line management and the risks associated with not being a team player are forged most furiously when making money is at stake. 

 

The type of closed society that Orwell envisages is also inconceivable in a society characterised by internet access, satellite television and immigration.  The black dogs that attack you in the night are far more likely to belong to people traffickers or drug dealers than the secret police.  Orwell’s failure to envisage the power of the market, the incompetence and subordination of the state and the increasing insignificance of political parties in people’s lives deserves some reflection. 

 

Orwell’s conceptual imagination was shaped and formed by the dreams and nightmares of the Left.  From Wigan Pier to Catalonia, from Animal Farm to 1984 the concern is the same. If the problem for Conservatism has always been that of how to stop the market undermining the family, the locality and integrity of inherited institutions, then the problem for socialism has always been that of how to stop the State nationalising society and then making it redundant.  Orwell envisages an entirely monopolistic state,  a supreme leader leading a single party through the repressive apparatus of a dominant State with collective coercive power over all its citizens.  Any form of Hard Left politics that had this type of political arrangement as a vision of the good is now only of any consequence in public-sector teaching Unions. 

 

Orwell was right that society would become atomised and sedated, he was right that abstract forms of communication would feed a permanent sense of displacement and powerlessness and he was right in 1948 to observe that Statist socialism was the biggest show in town.  Where he was wrong was in his assumption that capitalism had been beaten. 

 

Maurice Glasman will be discussing the failure of such a dream for the Left and for our society as a whole with Phillip Blond in Red Tory vs Blue Labour, a debate organised by The School of  Life next Wednesday 22^nd of April at Conway Hall, London WC1. Find out more here.

 

Maurice Glasman will also  be teaching the next Politics course at The School of Life starting Thursday evening 30 April. Find out more here.

Cathy Haynes on upbeat culture

A friend – a singer – recently told me that in her experience it is much harder to compose in the major key than the minor. The minor harmonies are the tear-jerkers and the hair-raisers. Bang out a few of those with panache, she said, and you can pack a compelling emotional punch. To create convincing emotional content in the major key is more creatively challenging, she concluded. I asked her for a powerful work in a major key. She obliged by singing Holiday by Madonna. Surely, I complained, there’s a better one out there. She winked at me silently with a sage-like smile as if to say, go seek. So I knocked on the doors of two authors I know. They commiserated with my quest and described how difficult they have both found it to write a novel on happiness, let alone find a publisher. And we took a moment to think of a truly joyful, uplifting novel that doesn’t seem too thin, insincere or politically insidious. About all we could muster is HE Bates’ Darling Buds of May series. It appears it’s hard to find fine novels untrammelled by the darker stuff. And yet, sometimes more than anything, we need the genuinely uplifting, inspiring and hopeful. As a small part of the exploration of our potential for creativity and enjoyment on The School of Life's Play course, this is one of the questions we consider: where can we seek our sheer enjoyment -- as well as fascination, empathy, inspiration and solace -- in culture of all kinds.

Cathy Haynes will be teaching the next Play course at The School of Life starting on 21st April. Come with a friend and you'll both get £50 off the ticket price. Find out more here.

Picture shows a recent installation by artist Olafur Eliasson.

Catherine Blyth on silence

Those of you who read the Evening Standard will have noticed The School of Life's regular Friday column "Life Class", which has been runnning there for several months now. It's written by different members of our fabulous faculty and has covered subjects as various as shyness and shopping. I'm posting last week's column about Silence, written by Catherine Blyth, to give you a flavour.

1.    In the beginning was the word.  So what is there to say about silence?  Plenty, judging by Amazon, where 8,772 book titles feature this term.  Most are murder mysteries or spiritual musings, reflecting mixed feelings about these hazy seven letters.

2.    Silence is nothing if not ambivalent. Since it requires discipline, it has long been associated with power, both good and evil. To Romans, the goddess Isis vanquished 'the lamentable silences of hell'.  Yet for Buddhists, freedom from the word brings higher consciousness.  Today, however, negative sentiments are rising, and while city dwellers should appreciate quiet, they seem the most intimidated by silence.

3.    Our noisy culture is unbalanced by the view that good communication is all talk. At a gap in conversation, few of us pause to consider silence's virtues: we're too busy panicking how to fill it.   The quiet person threatens, because he acts as a verbal laxative on us.  Maybe this is why corporations are stuffed with strong, silent types, whose success seems disproportionate to the few ideas anyone recalls them having.  Then again, they can't be blamed for bad ideas.

4.    Silence should be cherished for more than the ease that it signals with a loved companion.  In fact, this communication tool is as versatile as the queen in chess.  Seventeenth-century conversation gourmet La Rochefoucauld distinguished between the “eloquent”, “mocking” and “respectful” silence.  But its meaning is never fixed: it can express empathy or confusion, encourage intimacy or distance, depending on how it is interpreted.

5.    Used wisely, silence compels others to speak (handy in negotiation). It also helps them to listen, by lending weight to what we say.  Stand-up comics pace jokes carefully: 'Don't,' they advise, 'step on your punchline'. In that extra beat the audience's imagination becomes their collaborator.  This is why masters of silence may be taken for master talkers.  Such as the wily French politician, Talleyrand, who used to sit up late, polishing fine phrases.  At parties he was a clam, before suddenly spitting out a sentence that people claimed 'was the sort they never forgot'.  So have a pause for thought.

Catherine Blyth is the author of The Art of Conversation.  She will be hosting The School of Life's next Conversation Meal at the Front Line Club on April 19th. Find out more here.

Next week's Life Class column by Robert Rowland Smith is about secrets. Look out for it in the Evening Standard on Friday 10 April.

The School of Life Alternative Job Centre

To coincide with Alain de Botton’s new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, The School of Life is reinventing itself as an alternative job centre throughout April. But we're turning the usual way jobs are advertised on its head. Rather than invite employers to advertise jobs for us to squeeze our ourselves into, we’re inviting you to write  an ad for the job of your dreams, and let employers decide if they are able to offer it to you.

The instructions are simple:

Write your personal job ad, which advertises to the world the kind of person you are and what you care about.

Make sure that your ad includes:

•  Your name or pseudonym (and maybe a personal motto)
•  Personal qualities
•  Talents
•  Values and ambitions
•  Anything else you wish (e.g. I want a job that where I laugh a lot, would like to use my Spanish, work abroad, expected salary)
•  How you can be contacted

Send in your ads via this blog, or e-mail them to info@theschooloflife.com. We’ll collate the best entries and post them up both here and on our website. If you want to make something particularly beautiful  feel free to post your ad to us at The School of Life, 70 Marchmont Street, London WC1N 1AB and we'll display it in our shop. 

Throughout April we're also offering 25% off bookings made for our Work course. The course explores the expectations we have around our jobs from both a personal and a historical context. It provides a unique opportunity to reflect on how each one of us can make our own working lives more fulfilling, creative and adventurous. Find out more here.
 
On April 3rd, we’re relocating to The Hub – London’s hotbed of social enterprise – where Alain de Botton will be interviewing seven people who love what they do to find out what the rest of us might learn from them. Find out more here.
 
And finally... we're offering signed copies of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work in our shop at just £14.99 (RRP £18.99).

Red Tory vs Blue Labour

A battle is being fought for the centre ground of British politics. Ideological divisions between the two main parties seem to be melting faster than the financial system or the polar ice caps. The School of Life is adding to the heat, by hosting the most vital debate of the day: Red Tory vs Blue Labour.

With both Thatcherism and New Labour in disgrace, the ideological cross dressing of the last thirty years has changed and intensified. Cameron’s Conservatives increasingly identify themselves with the National Health Service, educational opportunity and stronger local government. Labour meanwhile remains in thrall to the City of London, while strengthening its policy on Law and Order and presenting itself as the most effective defender of Britishness and the British State.

Speaking for the Red Tories is Phillip Blond, director of the Progressive Conservatism Project at Demos. He will argue that only a revived Conservative tradition drawing inspiration from Burke, Disraeli, Chesterton and Belloc can challenge inequality, restore a sense of home and place and provide real security for people in times of crisis. Blond's brand of Red Toryism decisively rejects markets pretending to be free when in fact they are private sector monopolies, and far from insisting on a powerful state, argues for power to be restored to local communities.

Waving the flag for Blue Labour is Maurice Glasman, Director of the Faith and Citizenship Programme at London Metropolitan University and faculty member of The School of Life. Glasman will argue for a deeply conservative socialism that places family, faith and work at the heart of a new politics of reciprocity, mutuality and solidarity. The debate will be chaired by Professor John Gray, Britain's foremost political philosopher whose widely influential books include Straw Dogs: thoughts on humans and other animals. Find out what is really at stake in how the two great political traditions of Britain make sense of the role of finance in civil society. And discover the battleground over which the next general election is sure to be fought.

The debate takes place on Wednesday April 22 at 7pm at Conway Hall, WC1. Tickets cost £10. To book call 0207 833 1010 or e-mail info@theschooloflife.com

Bibliotherapy for Idle Parents

After Tom Hodgkinson’s recent How to be an Idle Parent event at The School of Life last week, our kids' bibliotherapist Charlotte Raby caught up with him to talk about idle parenting and books.

 

How can the idle parent make the most of story time, avoiding tedious tales, and if possible winning fruitful hours for yourself while children entertain themselves?

 

 

Tom reminded us that stories must grab your children, otherwise it’s a waste of time putting your all in; using funny voices and fabulous expression. His moment of enlightenment was when he saw how his children sat transfixed, wide eyed and still, through each chapter of ‘Treasure Island’  (full of death and killing) after fruitless sessions of ploughing through ‘Watership Down’ to their wriggles and interruptions, even though he gave the text the whole package! Indeed Tom and I both agreed that casting aside vapid horrors such as the ‘Magic Kitten’ and ‘Rainbow Fairy’ collections, and instead choosing books you can bear and more importantly enjoy is essential to the Idle Parent’s reading aloud experience.

 

For younger children Tom suggests engaging with the wonder of nonsense poetry such as ‘The Jumblies’ by Edward Lear, illustrated by Ian Beck, as well as ‘The Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll, which has eerie illustrations by Joel Stewart. These well-composed poems could earn you further idle hours as your offspring begin to learn them by heart and entertain each other in dramatic renditions.  For even the youngest child it is possible to coax utter absorption by sharing such classics as ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak, and Tom says he finds the intricately detailed interiors of Alan Alberg’s ‘Each Peach Pear Plum’ and ‘Peepo’ completely fascinating observations of the minutiae of life.

 

Tom and I agreed that Enid Blyton deserves a second chance; in terms of reading aloud it’s a winner. For girls there are the wonderful school series ‘Malory Towers’ and ‘The Twins at St Clares’ full of tales of horrid children being redeemed by sport, japes and hard graft, as well as the co-ed ‘The Naughtiest Girl’ stories, which deal with perennial school issues such as friendship, bullying and pet-care! Whether you give Enid a go for a hit of nostalgia from your reading past or are purely curious Tom recommends the ‘Adventure Series’ that features four children their pet monkey and hilarious cockatoo, Kiki, whose every utterance had Tom’s children in stitches. I would also recommend graphic novels for any child that finds reading a trial, especially Neil Gaiman’s ‘Coraline’ .Tom says his eldest aged 8, spends hours of absorption reading ‘Tin Tin’ and ‘Asterix’ as well as the weekly comic The DFC, which has an amazing range of illustrative styles from Manga to ‘Ren and Stimpyesque’ strips, with forceful, imaginative story lines.

 

Tom ended our idle chat with a thought about the importance of creating our own stories, and having, as Philip Pullman suggests, a stock of oral stories that can be pulled out when needed. Tom told me about a family camping experience, where deprived of light to read, he had to make up a story to entertain his restless clan. He was amazed at how much they enjoyed his hastily assembled narrative and although he was not entirely at ease in the mantle of the storyteller he felt that in terms of reward and child-parent appreciation it was one of his best storytimes.

 

To find out more about bibliotherapy for kids and parents click here.

Nigel Warburton on Free Speech

Philosopher Nigel Warburton will be wading through the thickets of censorship, hate speech, offensiveness and human rights this Friday at The School of Life. Find out more about the event and about Nigel's new book on Free Speech here.

Nigel has also created an invaluable web resource of podcasts, articles and links around the topic. Listen to his contribution to the new Thought for the World series, in which we argues with reference to the Geert Wilders case, that offensive views can have an unexpectedly beneficial side-effects.

 

Mark Vernon on alternative thoughts for the day

There's a battle underway for control of BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day slot. At present, you have to show religious affiliation to win your two minutes of fame. Secular humanists argue that you don't have to be religious to have offer a life-improving suggestion, a point that seems perfectly obvious to us at The School of Life.

So the humanists have launched a rival series of thoughts to make their point. I've listened to some, and they're certainly listenable to - though rather focused on critique and moral issues, as opposed to the fuller, life enhancing moments that the best thoughts can offer.

Alain de Botton on Seduction

In the season of romance, as we head out on dates across the city, we should bear in in mind that seduction is never easy when it's a case of seducing someone one actually likes. It is one of the ironies of love that it seems easiest to confidently seduce those we are least attracted to, desire eliciting a crippling sense of inferiority compared with the perfection we have located in the beloved.

 

Out of this perceived inferiority, there often emerges the need to lie or be absurly reserved: to take on a personality that is not directly our own, a seducing self that can locate and respond to the demands of the superior being we're having dinner with. Does love condemn us not to be ourselves? Perhaps not for ever, but at least initially, for it leads us to ask What would appeal to her? rather than What appeals to me?

 

Silence and clumsiness can sometimes be forgiven as rather pitiful proof of desire. It being easy enough to seduce someone towards whom one feels indifferent, the clumsiest seducers could generously be deemed the most genuine. Not to find the right words may ironically be proof that the right words are meant. When in the Liaisons Dangereuses, the Marquise de Merteuil writes to the Vicomte de Valmont, she faults him on the fact that his love letters are too perfect, too logical to be the words of a true lover, whose thoughts will be disjointed and for whom the fine phrase will always elude. Language trips up on love, desire lacks articulacy (but how willingly most of us would swapped our tongue-tiedness for the Vicomte's vocabulary).

 

Seduction is a form of acting, but just as an actor needs to have a concept of the audience's expectations, so too the seducer must have an idea of what the beloved will want to hear - so that if there is a conclusive argument against lying in order to be loved, it is that the actor can have no idea of what his or her audience will actually be touched by. Most of the time, we charm people for reasons we don't entirely understand and cannot fully control. There's no better reason to try to be that most tricky of things on our dates: ourselves.

 

For more on Seduction come to The School of Life's Sunday Sermon this weekend, where the preacher is none other than Sam Roddick, founder of erotic emporium Coco de Mer.

 

Or sign up to The School of Life's Love course.

Read your way out of a Valentine's crisis

 

As February 14th approaches, The School of Life’s bibliotherapists asked writers Matt Thorne and Toby Litt to pick their favourite books about love.

If you are in the terrifying position of being madly in love with your best friend, but too scared to confess to it, send them Joshua Spassky by Gwendoline Riley. It features a couple who are clearly made for each other, but they're both too cool and too insecure to make the first leap. Then you'll have to make the first leap. For a book to give your secret Valentine who is unaware of your all-consuming love for him or her, Matt suggests A Certain Smile by Francoise Sagan, the tale of a young woman bored of her lover who begins an affair with an older man; it’s witty, amoral and French. Also Vox by Nicholson Baker, a story of telephone sex, written almost entirely in dialogue -well, it worked for Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. Matt’s all time favourite love story is that of Merteuil and Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which would be a great book to leave on your love-objects desk. Toby suggests John Donne’s poetical works or The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke for seducing your love, either as a gift, or for reading aloud by candle-light in a remote cottage on the coast; and if you want to impress your secret love, give them Ulysses by James Joyce, which Toby holds to be literature’s greatest love story.

Long-term lovers might need a reminder of the all-consuming passion of youth, and First Love by Ivan Turgenev captures that with knobs on. The young hero falls entrancingly in love with a beautiful guest who is politely uninterested in him. The truth behind her indifference sneaks up on the reader like your mum walking in on your first snog. Equally engrossing is The Go-Between by LP Hartley. Seldom has unqualified besottedness been better described; the ultimate loss of innocence is agonizing, but the atmosphere of heatwave-intensified lust and longing will take any jaded lovers back to the discovery of Love itself. For a dose of magic and fate to remind mature lovers of the role of destiny in their own narratives, Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams is one of the most enchanting tales ever to grace your bedside table. Full of lyrical descriptions of the colours of the sea, sky and rain painted by ex civil servant William, who throws his sensible job to the winds in order to capture God’s elements on canvas, this is a complex tale of converging fates that will rekindle the fires in many a long-term union.

If it is, frankly, lust rather than love, and you're a girl, send him In the Cut by Susanna Moore, in which we found one of the most erotic and charged couplings we’ve read about recently. But it has a deeply scary ending, so you'd need to communicate somehow that you're not suggesting things should end up as they do for the characters here (which is very, very badly for the heroine). Matt offers Letters of a Portuguese Nun, by Myriam Cyr (the true story of the first romantic bestseller), or Marry Me by John Updike (particularly if this an adulterous scenario).

If you are a sad or jilted Valentine, lonely and loveless on the 14th February, Toby suggests you curl up with Woody Allen’s Complete Prose to laugh your way out of lovesickness. Matt recommends Ex and the City: You’re Nobody Till Somebody Dumps You by Alexandra Heminsley,- a hilarious account of the numerous ways that Alexandra has been dumped, how she got over it, and the wisdom she can pass on to others on the rebound. He is also a fan of Gwendoline Riley, putting forward Cold Water (or indeed any novel by her) as an antidote to smug coupledom, in which slightly spiky women generally end up preferring to be alone than with men who don't live up to the dream.

Bibliotherapy consultations cost from £35. For information about giving bibliotherapy as a Valentine's gift click HERE. The Love Gift Box shown here costs £60. To view The School of Life's full range of bibliotherapy gift boxes click HERE.

Have you taken the day off?

It's estimated that 6.4 million workers have stayed at home today costing the struggling economy as massive £1.2 billion. If you were one of those who used the snow as an excuse to skive, maybe you need to come on The School of Life's work course. Too many of us feel trapped in jobs that are too small for our spirits, and the recession only adds to the fear we may feel about making a change. It needn't be that way. The work course offers a challenging but playful opportunity to explore  ways of reinventing yourself, whether in your current job or in an entirely new professon. Read more HERE.

Nathan Cresswell, a primary school teacher who just took the course this weekend and woke up this morning to find his school closed for the day, just wrote to us to say:

On both days I found that my head was buzzing with ideas on the train journey home to Southend when normally I drift off and sleep through the journey. When I went out clubbing on Saturday night I found that the course had an impact on the way I was relating to people, both friends and strangers and so though the title of the course was work it was actually dealing with things that are far bigger.

The other thing that struck me was that the people on the course listened to each other and there was a tremendous sense of respect for each other that meant you could discuss areas of life with a refreshing honesty and openess. I was also struck by how poignant the final session was when we shared our 3 year plan and addressed our needs to make them happen.

I stumbled on The School of Life website by accident and I could have never imagined what a catalyst it could be for sparking new ideas, thinking with fresh perspectives, enjoying the company of other people and taking part in a stocktake of your life that felt authentic and true.

Luke Johnson gives a financial reality check

  Read Luke Johnson's bold and prescient article in today's Financial Times.

We need to make programmes, do research and deliver lectures about this moment – because this downturn is very bad indeed. It will sear itself into a generation’s memory and scar lives. It may well be the worst slump most of us have ever experienced. It surely needs to be recorded and discussed, while solutions are sought – and in the meantime we have to struggle through it.

For at least a year I have been as restrained and positive as I felt I could be. I am past all that now. It is time for some blunt talk, I fear.

It is clear that as a society we must learn something painful and radical – how to live within our means – because the credit just is not there any more. The easy money is all gone, and there will be no more for a long time.

Previous assumptions simply do not apply. Homeowners should forget about houses going up in value – all that is history. They are places to live in. So cut back on your outgoings. Pay rises are off the agenda. Wholesale pay cuts may yet become common. Put some cash aside if you possibly can; you might lose your job. I fear most citizens’ plans for the future must be put on hold. This is not something happening to other people – we are all in trouble.

To read the complete article click HERE.

Luke Johnson will be talking about Risk as part of The School of Life's series of Sunday Sermons. For more details and to book click HERE.

How To Keep Awake While Reading

We just came across the following essay by the late philosopher Mortimer Adler.

The rules for reading yourself to sleep are much easier to follow than are the rules for keeping awake while reading. Just get into bed in a comfortable position, see that the light is inadequate enough to cause a slight eyestrain, choose something you don't care whether or not you read, and unless you have insomnia, you will be nodding soon enough. Those who are expert in relaxing with a book don't have to wait for nightfall or for bed. A comfortable chair in the library will do at anytime.

Unfortunately, the rules for keeping awake do not consist in doing just the opposite. It is possible to keep awake while reading in a comfortable chair or even in bed, and people have been known to strain their eyes by reading late, in light too dim. What kept the famous readers by candlelight awake? One thing certainly -- that it made a difference to them, a great difference, whether or not they read the book they had in hand.

Whether you read actively or passively, whether you try to keep awake or not depends in large part on your purpose in reading. There are many kinds of reading and many sorts of things to read. You may be seeking the same effortless pleasures of relaxation that the movies and radio so readily afford, or you may be making the effort to profit by your reading. Let me roughly divide books into those which compete with the movies and those with which the movies cannot compete. They are the books that can elevate or instruct. If they are fine works of fiction, they can deepen your appreciation of human life. If they are serious works of nonfiction, they can inform or enlighten you.

Everyone admits that if your aim in reading is to profit -- to grow somehow in mind or spirit -- you have to keep awake. That means reading as actively as possible. That means making an effort -- for which you expect to be repaid.

Everyone admits that good books, fiction or nonfiction, deserve such reading. To use a good book as a sedative is conspicuous waste. To all asleep or, what is the same, to let your mind wander during the hours you planned to devote to reading for profit is clearly to defeat your own ends.

The essay continues. Read the rest HERE.

Guy Browning on how to live

Guy Browning publishes a regular How To column in the Guardian Saturday magazine. We particularly loved last week's entry:

People who are about to die generally don't regret the parachute jumps they haven't made (unless they're falling from an aircraft without one). Instead, they regret the love they haven't given or haven't expressed. Generally, the reason they haven't done this is because they've been too full of hate, too in love with themselves or simply too crushed by the business of survival.

The universe is in balance. If it wasn't, it wouldn't exist. Every constituent part of the universe is also in balance, including us. Life, therefore, is a question of balance. On the tightrope of life, the pole we have to balance with always has two sides: light and dark, male and female, good and bad. Acknowledging and understanding both sides is the only way of keeping upright and moving forward.

To get through life requires effort and luck. Generally, the harder you try, the luckier you get - but not always. Sometimes superhuman effort fails and, at other times, absolutely minimal effort succeeds spectacularly. That said, try trying first. Everyone has free will in life, but what happens to you is largely out of your control. We're like a flea on the head of an ox: we may be jumping around merrily, but the overall direction of travel is not really in our hands.

The secret of life is a combination of the combined wisdom of the great thinkers down the ages and the Cub Scout law: be nice to other people and do your best. It doesn't sound very inspiring but, on balance, it's probably right. Remember, too, that there's a reason that the universe is in balance. We don't know what it is, but it's likely to be a lot more impressive than we are.

Laurence Shorter in search of the brighter side of life

Let’s face it; January 2009 isn’t looking to be the most joyful month in recent history. The combination of bad weather, continuing global crisis and rising unemployment are likely to get even the cheeriest among us feeling a little glum. To add to the gloom, we've just discovered that today is "Blue Monday", officially the most depressing day of the year.

If you,like us, haven't heard anyone say they feel "optimistic" recently, come and listen to Laurence Shorter talk at The School of Life tonight. We've invited him to instill a bit of hopefulness into us ahead of Obama's inauguration. He'll be talking about his new book The Optimist, which charts his ambitious, year-long quest to seek out the world’s most positive thinkers, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jung Chang, Matthieu Ricard, California’s renowned Surfing Rabbi, and Bill Clinton. But even for Laurence, optimism doesn’t come easy. If your love life is in trouble, you are worried about losing your job, or your relationship with your parents has still not recovered from Christmas, rest assured he's been there too.

Find out more about tonight's event here. Read an interview with Laurence here.

Neil Astley on why we need poetry

Poetry in Britain is both thriving and struggling: it is flourishing at grass-roots level while poetry publishing is floundering. Bookshops have drastically reduced their ranges of poetry. Publishers have scrapped or shortened their poetry lists and are taking on very few new authors. Small presses have folded. Yet, paradoxically, public interest in poetry has never been higher.

More people write poetry than go to football matches, and poetry is popular in schools, at festivals and at the hundreds of readings staged every week in pubs, theatres, arts centres and even people's homes. Poetry has reached a wider audience through films, radio, television and the internet, as well as through initiatives such as London's Poems on the Underground, which has been imitated around the world. More people than ever believe, as Jackie Kay wrote in her National Poetry Day blog, that "poetry makes us think about who we are".

Neil Astley is editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978. These comments first appeared in the New Statesman - read the full article here.

Laura Barber, editor of Penguin's Poems for Life and former Penguin Poetry Doctor, will be prescribing verse at The School of Life tonight Thursday 15 January at 7pm. Click HERE for more information.

It's official - evening classes are good for you!

In the face of further economic gloom, the new economics foundation (nef) has produced five recommended actions which suggest well-being does not depend on spending money or consuming more. The findings, based on research compiled by nef for the UK Government’s Foresight project on Mental Capital and Well-being, suggest we concentrate on five key things:

CONNECTING
With the people around you. With family, friends, colleagues and neighbours. At home, work, school or in your local community. Think of these as the cornerstones of your life and invest time in developing them. Building these connections will support and enrich you every day.

BEING ACTIVE
Go for a walk or run. Step outside. Cycle. Play a game. Garden. Dance. Exercising makes you feel good. Most importantly, discover a physical activity you enjoy; one that suits your level of mobility and fitness.

TAKING NOTICE
Be curious. Catch sight of the beautiful. Remark on the unusual. Notice the changing seasons. Savour the moment, whether you are on a train, eating lunch or talking to friends. Be aware of the world around you and what you are feeling. Reflecting on your experiences will help you appreciate what matters to you.

KEEPING LEARNING
Try something new. Rediscover an old interest. Sign up for that course. Take on a different responsibility at work. Fix a bike. Learn to play an instrument or how to cook your favourite food. Set a challenge you will enjoy achieving. Learning new things will make you more confident, as well as being fun to do.

GIVING
Do something nice for a friend, or a stranger. Thank someone. Smile. Volunteer your time. Join a community group. Look out, as well as in. Seeing yourself, and your happiness, linked to the wider community can be incredibly rewarding and will create connections with the people around you.

Find out about The School of Life's courses here. They offer a chance to pick up on pretty much every recommendation.

To read nef’s full report, click here.

Are we wising up or dumbing down?

That's the topic of an Economist online debate and the audience is currently split exactly 50: 50. Sophie Howarth, Director of The School of Life, is one of the featured guests contributing to the discussion. Read what she has to say and contribute your opinion or vote here.

Photo by Matt Stuart.

Geoff Dyer urges us to sort out our time-keeping in 2009

Punctuality is largely a matter of one’s inherent nature. I’m not a great reader of psychoanalysis or psychoanything for that matter but I wonder if there might be a connection between the kind of birth you had and your time-keeping as an adult. Do overdue babies become habitally late adults? Do premature babies turn up early for appointments? More research needs to be done in this area. If this is the case, if there is any relation between how you timed your arrival on this great stage of fools, and how you time your arrivals once the play gets underway, then I must have come out promptly at 9 months, no weeks and no days, right on the money, like clockwork. As I matured I realised there was no correlation at all between being reliable, punctual, dependable and being boring, that in fact being unreliable and chaotic and late actually means that you spend more time doing boring things, unravelling the knots of chaos.

People who are late are also the key losers, the ones without cash who have forgotten their passports or mislaid their concert tickets or who’ve forgotten their pin numbers, the ones who for one reason or another are always getting into scrapes. Have nought to do with them because they are not fun, wild, crazy people, they’re bores, or – and this is even worse – they force you to become boring, to clear up the mess which they leave in their wake.

This is an extract from Geoff Dyer's sermon on Punctuality delivered for The School of Life on 30 November 2008. Listen to Geoff talking about the sermon on Monday's Today programme here or download an mp3 of the full full sermon here.

Forthcoming sermons from The School of Life include: Sam Roddick on Seduction, Alain de Botton on Pessimism, Robert Winston on Curiosity and Richard Wiseman on Humour. Tickets costs £10. For more information or to book click here.

What We Learned From Bernard Crick

"Politics is ethics done in public", argued Bernard Crick who died on 19 December 2008. The statement sums up why he had such a profound influence on all of us who struggle with how to lead good lives both in private and in public.

Theorist, activist, academic and public intellectual, Crick was a key advisor to both Neil Kinnock and David Blunkett, and is perhaps best known as the major biographer of George Orwell, and more controversially as devisor of the recent Britishness test for immigrants to the UK.

In his landmark book In Defence of Politics (1962), Crick described politics as a messy, complex and imperfect process. But he believed this is exactly why we must value it. The frustrations of compromise and the need for constant adaptability are precisely what make politics the only tested alternative to government by coercion. He urged against the temptation to reduce politics to ideology, democracy, or nationalism, encouraging all of us who want to engage in political action to learn to live with, indeed to value contingency. 

Crick’s ideas are integral to The School of Life’s politics course. Find out more here.

Read an obituary of Bernard Crick in The Independent here.