The School of Life

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.

 

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.

 

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.

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.

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.

Morgan Phillips on being immaterially green

Being green implies that you care about the future of the planet, that you enjoy the great outdoors and so on. It is generally defined somewhere along these lines: I recycle therefore I am green, I buy low energy light-bulbs therefore I am greener, I use reusable instead of plastic bags therefore I am greener still! It seems that the greener you are the better, unless of course you are too green at which point you liable to be labelled a killjoy or a hippy. By too green I mean that you are someone who has started to question conspicuous consumption, the material wealth equals happiness myth and have begun to opt out of mainstream consumer culture.

But how green is green enough? Can we really fly off on skiing holidays in the winter then exotic beach holidays in the summer and still call ourselves green because we get a box of organic veg delivered once a week? Can we still aspire to own and then flaunt the latest luxury cars, houses, clothes, electronics, holidays, jewellery and so on and consider ourselves green because we bring them home in a ‘I’m not a plastic bag’ and recycle the packaging? Surely not. The materialist and often infantilising values underpinning and reinforced by consumer culture are at the root of most, if not all, environmental, social, personal and one could now argue even economic problems.

To become green, and not just conspicuously green for the sake of one’s image, one needs to let go of these consumerist values. This is not a simple thing to do. It involves a lot of soul searching, a fair bit of scepticism and a lot of resolve. I know, I’ve been there, done it and recognised that I shouldn’t buy the t-shirt. The greenest people out there are the ones who don’t make a song or dance about it, but whose lifestyles just make them naturally ‘green’. These people often display materially simple but intrinsically rich lives. They have found real ways to meet their basic needs for non-material things like love, respect, friendship, intellectual stimulation, entertainment and play, they are not seduced by goods and services that merely promise to deliver these things and they are not conspicuously green. If you are less materialistic, less concerned with creating your identity through the goods and services you buy, you will naturally be more environmentally friendly (you will create less waste and use less fuel). You will also, probably, be happier because you will not be so reliant or guided by external stimulation and praise. Being green means doing all the green things like reducing, reusing and recycling, but it also means having a mindset that lessens your propensity to display your greenness!

Here’s a prescription for three books which might help you shake off the common assumption that a high income is always necessary for happiness, and encourage you to become less conscipuously green. 
Tim Kasser The High Price of Materialism
Vance Packard The Hidden Persuaders
John Naish Enough
Andrew Simms (ed) Do Good Lives Need to Cost The Earth?

All these books can be found on The School of Life's new shelf "For Those Who Strive To Be Greener".

Morgan Phillips is The School of Life's expert on Green Living.

Mark Vernon on why The School of Life is reinventing the sermon

Sermons have almost as bad a reputation in the UK as late night talk shows on BBC Radio 2. There's the vicar, "six foot above contradiction", displaying all the arrogance of the religious and their ghastly sermonising. Verbose, haranguing, waffle: these are the synonyms that come to mind. Samuel Pepys sarcastically wrote that they were "good, honest and painful".

And yet, are we missing a trick in rejecting the sermon? John Wesley launched Methodism on sermons, along with all that followed, from stirring hymns to the Labour party. In the US, the sermon never died: it is the chief characteristic of the political rally. Where would Barack Obama be if he did not understand the charisma of the church preacher? His mix of religious rhetoric and secular aspiration is the wellspring of his success.

Malcolm Boyd commented that some of the best sermons he ever heard were in the theatre. In similar vein, there is a new experiment being pioneered by The School of Lifeto reinvent the sermon, or invent the secular sermon. Tom Hodgkinson was the first of the lay preachers. The editor of the Idler campaigns against the work ethic, and chose as his text, "Love thy Neighbour". He delivered a discourse against usury which, he argued, is the opposite of neighbour-love. For most of human history making money from money, as opposed to investing it in something real, has been regarded as a sin. Why? Because it is ripping off your neighbour: it "dulls the edge of husbandry" as Shakespeare put it; it destroys community. Thus the Bible commands: "Take no usury off him, that thy brother may live with thee," and Ecclesiasticus adds: "Be not a beggar by banqueting on borrowing". Read a transcript of the sermon here.

Hodgkinson's oration was littered with such Bible quotes, and yet, the last person he sounded like was a Calvin or Spurgeon. It was as if the best words of the good book had been liberated. They could speak afresh for our times when unencumbered by hellfire and damnation. The surprise was that the sermon format genuinely worked for delivering a substantial, life-challenging message. Standing around afterwards, with a cup of tea and a copy of the parish newsletter, the secular congregation admitted he had a very good point.

All this shouldn't be taken too seriously, of course. But then maybe that is the point, and there could be a lesson in it for the churches. People want to hear spiritual ideas, demanding ideas, ideas that make a difference. And the sermon is an excellent way to deliver them. It is just that the barriers around church-going are often too high or prescribed.

Secularists might feel more kindly towards the sermon if they knew that the ancient Greeks practiced a form of such preaching called the diatribe. It was probably invented by Bion of Borysthenes, a cynic philosopher of the third century BC. The diatribe was a form of shadow-boxing for an audience, posing rhetorical questions, parodying opponents. A glimpse of Greek Sunday mornings in the marketplace, standing around Bion's lectern, can be caught from the handful of his sayings that remain. One day he caught sight of a wealthy citizen in the assembled crowd, and retorted: "He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him!" On another, he felt his congregation weren't paying enough attention and chastised them with a cry: "You want barley when what I brought is wheat!"

So bring back the sermon! Geoff Dyer will be preaching on punctuality this Sunday and The School of Life have a host of key cultural figures taking to the pulpit in 2009 including Sam Roddick on Seduction, Alain de Botton on Pessimism, Robert Winston on Curiosity and Richard Wiseman on Humour. For details or to book click here.

Mark Vernon is The School of Life's expert on friendship and a member of the teaching faculty.

The Daily Aphorism - a new website from The School of Life

We need good ideas today more than ever, to give us the courage and humour to get through these uncertain times. So today we’ve launched The Daily Aphorism, a new website that distributes a short and pithy piece of wisdom every morning. Sign up now to receive a beautifully typeset aphorism in your inbox every day for a month.

www.thedailyaphorism.com

But what exactly is an aphorism? An ‘itch of wisdom’, ’the world in a phrase’, or for the more prosaically minded, ‘an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and easily memorable form’. Anyone can write one, though it takes some skill to do it well. Famous aphorists have included Blaise Pascal, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Winston Churchill, Jenny Holzer and Woody Allen, many of whom are featured on The Daily Aphorism website.

As part of the campaign, we are also inviting you to compose their own contemporary aphorisms. Here is some advice from aphorism expert James Geary about how to compose a winning entry: 

There is good news and bad news. The bad news is: 'How to write an aphorism' is something that can't be taught. The good news is: It is something that can be learned.

There are three basic methods of composition. There is the 'spontaneous combustion' method, in which the aphorism flares out fully formed at unexpected moments, sending the writer scrabbling for napkins, envelopes or any other scrap of paper on which to write it down. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec was a great practitioner of this method: "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

Then there is the 'deliberate composition' method as practiced by the likes of La Rochefoucauld. He would attend a swanky salon, discuss all manner of subjects, such as love and friendship, then retire for hours to his room where he would produce several sheets of prose, all of which he would eventually distill down to one or two sharp, shining sentences: "In the adversity of even our best friends we always find something not wholly displeasing."

And then there are the 'accidental aphorists,' those writers who never intend to compose aphorisms but just can't help themselves—aphorisms occur naturally within longer stretches of text, such as essays, novels, or poems. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a classic accidental aphorist: "What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered."

So, it's really a matter of finding out which kind of aphorist you are. Then I find it helpful to apply these handy laws—keep it short (after all, only a fool gives a speech in a burning house), definitive (no ifs, ands, or buts), philosophical (it should make you think), and give it a twist. It's also useful to keep in mind what Gabriel Laub said about aphorisms: "Aphorisms are so popular because, among other reasons, they contain half-truths, and that is an unusually high percentage."

Entries should be submitted via The Daily Aphorism website before 31st December. The competition will be judged by James Geary, philosopher Alain de Botton and Director of The School of Life Sophie Howarth. The winning aphorism will be the main feature in The School of Life’s window in the New Year and the winner will also be offered a free place on one of The School of Life’s courses.

The Daily Aphorism has been produced in collaboration with St. Luke’s. The aphorisms have been typeset by Susanna Edwards and Joseph Harries and posters are available from The School of Life's shop.

 

Tom Hodgkinson on loving your neighbour

‘Brothers and sisters, I see in the papers the users are being asked to repent’, proclaimed Tom Hodgkinson at The School of Life’s first Sunday Sermon yesterday. His contemporary interpretation of the Biblical commandment LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR focused on the practice of usery. There was a time, Tom argued, when to lend money at interest to a man in need would have been considered wicked. Now it is the basis of the banking system. But salvation may be at hand he suggested, with the looming economic crisis and the renationalisation of the banks offering us a chance to see to the prevalence of sinful practices.

What other advice did Tom have to offer? Alcohol, he explained, is among the most tried and tested ways to promote good relations with your neighbours. He told us of the boozy feasts he and his family put on for neighbours in their Devon village and urged us to do the same in London. Tom headed for drinks after the sermon at the suitably named Friend at Hand pub opposite the Horse Hospital.

A synopsis of Tom's sermon will soon be published on The School of Life's website.

Tom preached to a packaged congregation who were led in song by the Hackney Secular Singers. Hymns included Lou Read’s Sunday morning. Confessionals were offered to living worry dolls; Jonny Satan, the West-country devil offered parishioners the chance to sit on his lap for 20p; and there was tea served with Nice biscuits and millionaire’s shortbread for everyone after the service.

The next preacher in the series is Geoff Dyer extolling the virtues of punctuality. Details are here. Be on time!

Read Mark Vernon's blog on The School of Life's sermons on The Guardian website here.

The Art of Living at The School of Life

‘Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so', concluded John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century British philosopher, after a period of profound unhappiness. He realised that to pursue happiness directly is a mistake. Happiness is a by-product of life. As he also put it, happiness is like a crab: it approaches us sideways, not head on.

Three authors from a new series of books, The Art of Living (published by Acumen), will be at The School of Life on Friday 24th October, 2008, 7-8.30pm. Mark Vernon, author of Wellbeing, Raymond Tallis, author of Hunger and Chris Hamilton, author of Middle Age, have all written on how the ideas of philosophers can help us not just live, but live well. Join them for an evening exploring the good life. As Plato put it, ‘Our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to live.’

The event is free but space is limited and advance booking is strongly recommended. To confirm your place e-mail info@theschooloflife.com

Books from The Art of Living series are available at The School of Life's shop.