The Politics of Well-Being: Towards a More Ethical World 9781138676695, 9781315559933

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The Politics of Well-Being

The Politics of Well-Being argues that the relationship between well-being and ethical life has been overlooked. The more specific argument of the book is that ethical life requires political engagement, and the emergence of a society committed to critical thinking. It is argued that these conditions allow for our ordination and confirmation as ethical subjects. While well-being can be experienced in different ways, it is claimed that, after experience of ethical life, a more sustainable form of it is revealed to us, a form which we would be drawn to preserve, a form which can be constituted as an object of hope. While the book draws on philosophical themes, its main focus is political. This is because its primary objective is to identify and to examine what needs to be done in order to realise ethical life. Its main focus in this respect is the identification and examination of the barriers which need to be overcome if ethical life is to be realised. It is acknowledged that this will not be an easy task. Indeed, it may be an impossible task. However, despite these barriers, and despite the dark days we are living through, the book is a call to hope rather than a surrender to despair. This book will be of interest to students of politics, psychology, cultural studies, philosophy, and sociology, as well as anyone else interested in exploring new ideas about how to make the world a better place. Anthony M. Clohesy left the University of Essex in 2018 after many years teaching in the Sociology department and in the International Academy.

Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

149 Consciousness and the Neoliberal Subject A Theory of Ideology via Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek Jon Bailes 150 Hegel and Contemporary Practical Philosophy Beyond Kantian-Constructivism James Gledhill and Sebastian Stein 151 A Marxist Theory of Ideology Praxis, Thought and the Social World Andrea Sau 152 Stupidity in Politics Its Unavoidability and Potential Nobutaka Otobe 153 Political Correctness: A Sociocultural Black Hole Thomas Tsakalakis 154 The Individual After Modernity: A Sociological Perspective Mira Marody 155 The Politics of Well-Being Towards a More Ethical World Anthony M. Clohesy For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/RSSPT

The Politics of Well-Being

Towards A More Ethical World

Anthony M. Clohesy

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Anthony M. Clohesy The right of Anthony M. Clohesy to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-67669-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-55993-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

For Corinna and Joe

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements

ix xi

1

Introduction

1

2

Well-being

15

3

Optimism

27

4

Populism

48

5

Escapism

73

6

Nihilism

96

7

Hope

115

8

Conclusion

129

References Index

135 141

Preface

When, in 2013, I published The Politics of Empathy, I thought that it would be my final contribution to the literature about ethics. This was not because there was nothing else to say. It was, rather, because I thought it was time to move on, and to think and write about other issues. However, perhaps inevitably, new questions emerged which demanded further consideration. The argument of the 2013 book was that empathy is necessary for ethical life. The argument of this book is that ethical life is necessary for well-being. Philosophers have been interested in examining the nature of this relationship for millennia. However, there is now a need to reimagine, and rearticulate, it for a new age. While it will examine a number of philosophical themes, this is not, first and foremost, a book about philosophy. I see it more as a book about politics which examines what we need to do to realise a better, and more just, world. It may not be clear at this stage how well-being relates to this political agenda. Indeed, it was not clear to me until I began to think more critically about some of the themes I had raised in the earlier book. Prior to this reappraisal, I was sceptical about well-being, not least because I thought that our obsession with it led to political disengagement, and to the emergence of a society which lacked the anger, and the political energy, necessary to tackle injustice. This sense of unease deepened on witnessing the articulation of a ‘well-being agenda’ by global corporations and governments around the world, including our own government here in the United Kingdom. At first sight, the idea of employers and governments expressing concern about the well-being of their employees and citizens is reassuring. However, what if their agenda is not what it seems? What if, more specifically, their priority was to manufacture a quite specific form of wellbeing in order to dissipate the anger, and the sense of despair, which threatened their political and economic interests? There were other concerns. One of them was that it is difficult, if not impossible, to define what well-being actually is, and how, if at all, it is different to, for example, happiness, fulfilment, satisfaction, and joy. A further concern was that our relentless pursuit of well-being is actually making us less happy. Implicit here is the idea, usually attributed to the Stoics, that we would be happier if we accepted that happiness is not for us in this world. I admit to feeling uncertain about some of the ideas proposed in this book, and no

x

Preface

doubt I will think differently about them in time to come. However, one thing is certain, namely, that we are not in a good place at the moment, and anything that can help us to realise a world in which there is less suffering, and more ‘wellbeing’ is at least worth a try. As with my previous work, I have tried to present my ideas and arguments in a way which is accessible. Apologies in advance if I sometimes fail in this respect.

Acknowledgements

My special thanks to Sandra Cardew and Joe Clohesy for their help in the preparation of this book. I would also like to thank Lakshita Joshi at Routledge for her support, encouragement, and patience.

Chapter 1

Introduction

In 2013, I published a book about empathy and ethics in which I argued that being able to imagine what it is like to be someone else is a necessary condition for ethical life. More specifically, my argument was that the experience of difference, the experience of life as seen through the eyes of someone else, is ethically significant because it forces us to think more critically about our identities, and our values, and to see them as no less contingent than the identities and values which inform the lives of others. My claim was that this experience of difference1, made possible by our capacity for empathy, would result in a commitment to recognise others as equals, and in a commitment to remember that our view of the world is always partial, and that it is always culturally mediated. These commitments, I argued, are significant because they provide us with something to which we can declare an allegiance, with something which allows us to sustain ourselves as ethical subjects: Without the experience of a demand to which I am prepared to bind myself, to commit myself, the whole business of morality would either not get started or would be a mere manipulation of empty formulae. At the basis of ethics, there has to be some experience of an approved demand, an existential affirmation that shapes my ethical subjectivity, and which is the source of my motivation to act.2 Why is this claim about empathy and ethical life relevant to well-being, the subject of this book? To answer this question, it is important to refer back to another claim I made in my earlier book. This was about how the experience of difference, and the acquisition of ethical subjectivity, comes at a price, namely, the interruption of our identities, and the relativising of the values which had sustained us in our lives. If this traumatic experience is accepted as the inevitable result of an empathic experience, it would seem that ethical life and human well-being exist in a relation of tension, or antagonism. A further implication is that empathy, widely seen as a good thing, as something which is integral to leading a good human life, is something which is best avoided if we value our well-being.3 This concern was reflected in one of the criticisms of the book which argued that, while its philosophical

2

Introduction

claims were plausible, it was less convincing as an account about how empathy would or could lead to the emergence of a more ethical society. In other words, and here I paraphrase what I saw as implicit in the critique, while we can imagine how an experience of difference might lead us to reflect differently on how we understand our duties and obligations to others, it is more difficult to see how these individual ‘moments of epiphany’ would, or could, lead to political change. In the period subsequent to the publication of the book, I began to reflect more critically on the nature of the relationship between empathy, ethical life, and political change. This led me to accept that, whatever the capacity of empathy to constitute a new ethical disposition, or sensibility, for us as individuals, it is not a sufficient condition for change at a societal level. The question which emerged from this period of reflection was whether there was something else which could lead us to, and sustain us in, ethical life? Those who subscribe to a Whig or Hegelian view of history, or those for whom religious life is important, might claim that the immense amount of pain, misery, suffering, and injustice in the world will inevitably lead to a moral awakening, and to the emergence of a better and more just world. Alternatively, a more secular analysis might hold to the view that, as we now live in a deeply interconnected and globalised world, it is in the interest of those of us in the more developed parts of it to attend more assiduously, and sensitively, to the needs of those who live beyond our privileged shores. Yet, as I will discuss below, these appeals to moral progress, and rationality, are not enough to reassure us that a more ethical world is possible, let alone inevitable. However, all is not lost. The claim I will defend in this book is that a more ethical world can emerge, and be sustained, not as a result of our being unsettled by an empathic experience of difference,4 but as a result of an experience of what I will call ‘ethical well-being’, an experience which comes to us when we are able to think of ourselves as subjects who are living well, as subjects who are living in a way which is attuned to that part of us which longs for meaning and justice. If this is accepted, it allows us to imagine ethical life and well-being existing together in a different way, not in a relation of antagonism, but in a relation of harmony. It also allows well-being, and our inexorable quest for it, to emerge as an integral and indispensable element in the political struggle on which we must embark, for justice, and for the realisation of a more ethical world. The argument of the book can be summarised as follows: • • •

the desire for well-being is hardwired into human nature. well-being can only be experienced, in a deep and sustainable form, when we are able to think of ourselves as ethical subjects who are living well in the world. there is, therefore, always hope for a better and more ethical future.

Before setting out the structure of the book in more detail, let me say more about these three claims.

Introduction

3

Claim 1: the desire for well-being is hardwired into human nature Although it requires a significant amount of unpacking, it seems to me that this claim is true beyond all reasonable doubt. For those whose thinking about wellbeing is informed by the teaching of Aristotle, there will be concern that, expressed in this way, the claim is too vague or, more specifically, that it fails to acknowledge the distinction between ‘well-being as flourishing’ and ‘well-being as happiness’. The Aristotelian distinction is important for the argument I want to make, and I will say more about it later. However, it should not distract us from understanding, and accepting, that our desire for well-being is our most fundamental and defining human trait. A different challenge to the claim might be that we are drawn to resist well-being because, when we do so, we become less vulnerable, more able to cope with our fear of death, and more able to imagine it as a welcome release from the misery and torment of existence. Finally, we might reflect on one of the defining leitmotivs of Romanticism, namely, that unhappiness is to be valued because it is a more authentic, humane, and creative disposition: [within Romanticism] there was a vogue for ‘spleen’, seen as the essential source of inspiration, and for an aesthetic of tragedy and suffering, aspects of life that were recognised as praiseworthy and creative. The pursuit of happiness, seen as a bourgeois desire to achieve comfort, and peace, and quiet, was despised and maligned.5 If these considerations are taken seriously, we might be inclined to think, with Freud, that a profound ambivalence informs our attitude to well-being. However, as I see it, all that these reflections reveal is that our search for it takes different forms, and that we are highly resourceful in finding ways to defend it when it is felt to be under threat.

Claim 2: ethical life is a necessary condition for a sustainable experience of well-being To consider this claim in more detail, we can turn to an examination of Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia. One of the thorniest questions relating to well-being concerns its epistemological and ontological status. The familiar Aristotelian view is that well-being, or eudaimonia, can only be experienced by those who are virtuous, and by those who are active in the pursuit of ends ‘appropriate to our nature’. Therefore, to flourish in the world, we have to live in a way in which we are attuned to ourselves as social, political, and rational beings. This perfectionist account is rejected by most contemporary philosophers on the grounds that well-being is not an objective ‘state of being’ whose existence can be declared, or denied, ex cathedra. Their alternative interpretation holds more to the view that, if a person feels themselves to have well-being, if, in other words, they feel that their life is going well, then that is all we need to know, and that is all we can say about the matter.

4

Introduction

This more subjectivist, or prudential,6 approach to understanding well-being is appealing, at least initially, because it seems less ‘top-down’, and less elitist, than the Aristotelian interpretation. However, despite its democratic appeal, it is clear that we cannot accept it. This is because, while we might have little difficulty in dismissing the metaphysical premise of the Aristotelian argument that human life has an immutable purpose or telos, and that well-being is only attainable when we live in harmony with it, our cultural embeddedness in the societies which have shaped us leads us, inexorably, to the view that there are certain experiences which we cannot afford to ‘miss out on’ if we are to feel that we are ‘living well’, and if we are to experience well-being. We can consider the significance of this notion of ‘missing out’, and its relevance to the argument I want to make, in the context of the work of the philosopher Daniel Haybron: I would suggest that the naturalistic perspective, while a source of the Aristotelian view’s allures, is not the perspective that gives perfectionism its primary appeal. Aristotle’s metaphysics may have helped to motivate his perfectionism, but many contemporary Aristotelians don’t buy the metaphysics. Nor is it clear how thinking about human beings as organisms, in the context of plant and animal flourishing generally, compels us to accept perfectionism. There is indeed something appealing about the idea that goodness in a lion consists in perfecting its nature qua lion. But is it so obvious that lion wellbeing consists in being a good lion, or in the exercise of liony excellence?7 For Haybron, rather than thinking about well-being in the context of perfectionism, we should understand it in the context of externalism. This is the idea that organisms flourish insofar as they enjoy the goods ‘characteristic of their kind’. Drawing on the aforementioned lion analogy, Haybron suggested that: the problem, intuitively, is not lack of perfection – not being a good lion or exercising the virtues proper to lions – but ‘missing out’, failing to enjoy one or more of the elements of a full life for a lion.8 The idea that it is the ‘facts of our nature’ which inform and structure our experience of well-being is discernible elsewhere. Consider, for example, this reflection on the philosophy of John Stuart Mill: In introducing considerations of quality as well as quantity, Mill is in part reverting to the position of Plato and Aristotle. Like them, he believes that to find out what constitutes full and genuine happiness, we have to look at what is specific to the nature of human beings and distinguishes them from other animal species. Unlike Aristotle, however, he does not attempt the transition from the view of human nature to the view of human happiness by means of the essentialist argument that, because certain activities are essentially human, they constitute the natural and proper purpose of human life and provide the

Introduction

5

content of human happiness. For Mill, the connection between human nature and human happiness is not this essentialist one, but a psychological one. The point, then, is not that, because human beings have distinctive capacities, they therefore ought to (or are intended by nature to) find their happiness in the exercise of them; it is that, because they have these distinctive capacities, they are not fully satisfied by a happiness which does not involve the exercise of them.9 Why refer here to Aristotelian and quasi-Aristotelian accounts of well-being? One reason is that they allow us to imagine how a better and more ethical world might emerge. At least, this is the case if we accept that, as social beings, we are drawn to realise well-being in a pro-social way, in a way which attunes us to that particular aspect of our nature. More specifically, however, and this is crucial, they are important because they allow us to understand that ethical life is a necessary condition for a sustainable experience of well-being. This is because ethical life, or the demand to live well, has become such a highly significant culturally integral externality,10 or ‘characteristic of our kind’, which we cannot afford to miss out on if we are to experience a sustainable form of well-being. Phrasing the question in the context of the encultured nature of human life is important because it allows us to dispense with the more philosophically problematic aspects of the Aristotelian argument, while at the same time insisting, on purely empirical or psychological grounds, that ethical life is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for wellbeing. One problem with this claim, however, and it is an important one, is that while we can and do experience well-being by being sociable, altruistic, kind, caring, and compassionate, we can derive a no less authentic experience of it by being attuned to what we might call the more ‘Nietzschean’ aspect of our culture, namely, the aspect of it which beckons us to experience well-being by casting off the shackles of Judeo-Christian morality, and embarking on a personal quest for greatness.11 However, the Nietzschean, as well as all of the other ‘ethically unattuned’ ways in which we experience well-being, are not, and cannot be, sustainable. This is because they represent ways of being in the world which are haunted by intimations that we are ‘missing out’ on something, something to which we feel the need to be more fully and meaningfully attuned, something which we intuit to be life-enhancing, and indispensable for a deeper experience of well-being. Nietzscheans might respond to this claim by arguing that, when the ‘life-denying’ demands of society compel us to be ‘ethical’, we miss out on something more significant, namely, the ‘will to power’, and the freedom to do what we like without restriction. This is an important point. I respond to it below.

Claim 3: there is hope for a more ethical future As indicated, even if claims one and two are accepted, it is clear that a more ethical future is far from certain. One reason for this is that, despite our intimations that our lives are not as they should be, without an actual experience of ethical

6

Introduction

well-being, or deep well-being, we will remain insufficiently cognisant of what it is that we are missing out on and, as a result, we will lack sufficient motivation to change the way we live our lives. To help us to understand this problem more clearly, and how we might respond to it, we can refer to Kierkegaard’s claim that despair is our inevitable fate when we renounce our faith in God: When a man imagines that he is happy (whereas viewed in the light of truth, he is unhappy) he is generally very far from wishing to be torn away from that delusion. On the contrary, he becomes furious, he regards the man who does this as his most spiteful enemy, he considers it an insult, something near to murder, in the sense that one speaks of killing joy. What is the reason of this? The reason is that his sensuous and psycho-sensuous nature completely dominate him; the reason is that he lives in the sensuous categories agreeable/ disagreeable and says goodbye to truth etc; the reason is that he is too sensuous to have the courage to venture to be spirit or endure it. However vain and conceited men may be, they have nevertheless for the most part a very lowly conception of themselves, that is to say, they have no conception of being spirit, the absolute of all that a man can be.12 Kierkegaard goes on to say that it is when we are happy living our lives without faith, and blissfully unaware of the dismal reality of our situation, that our despair is most profound: He is not attuned to himself as spirit, he prefers to dwell in the cellar to such a degree that ‘he becomes furious if anyone would propose to him to occupy the best floor which stands empty at his disposition…when living a life of high potency, but without faith, the man is like a sufferer from consumption; he feels well, considers himself in the best of health, seems perhaps to others to be in florid health, [but this is] precisely when the sickness is most dangerous.13 The argument I am making about ethical life and well-being is different to that made by Kierkegaard in two distinct ways. The first is that his claim was made in a theological context of faith in God. While I accept that religious faith is important for well-being in some respects, my claim is that our priority should be the reestablishment of faith in ourselves, a faith which has been largely lost. The second, and more pertinent, difference relates to Kierkegaard’s claim that our experience of happiness while ‘living in the cellar’ has rendered us insensible to what we are missing out on, and oblivious to what is necessary for our well-being. While I accept, to a point, his implicit claim that we have become intoxicated by the sweet despair of life in the cellar, I don’t accept, and this is crucial, that we are insensible to our situation in the way he described. If this is accepted, that is, if it is accepted that we do have a sense, or intimation, that we are missing out on something which is important for our well-being, the question which follows is what

Introduction

7

we can, and should, do about it? In his consideration of Nietzsche’s notion of the ‘eternal return’, Milan Kundera does not provide us with an answer to this question. However, he does allow us to reflect more critically on its existential nature: If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness. But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid? The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfilment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, to take leave of the earth, and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?14 It is clear that we cannot be certain which of these choices we would make. This is because, while we sense the need for the weighty form of well-being which accompanies ethical life, the lure of weightlessness, the lure of being, in Kundera’s words, ‘lighter than air’, remains powerful and seductive. Despite being torn subjects in this respect, the claim I will defend is that, if we had the experience of life on Kierkegaard’s ‘best floor’, or if we were to feel the burden of Kundera’s weight on our back, this is the choice we would be most likely to make. Why? In his book, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley records a scene in which the ‘controller’ tries to persuade the ‘savage’ that a soma-induced happiness is preferable to the truth and unhappiness which have to be confronted in the real world. In response, the savage says: ‘but I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom. I want goodness, I want sin’.15 In response, the controller says: ‘In fact, you’re claiming the right to be unhappy’. ‘All right then’ said the savage defiantly, ‘I’m claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind’. There was a long silence. ‘I claim them all’ said the savage at last. Mustapha Mond, the controller, shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re welcome’, he said.16 Why would the savage make this choice when he accepted that it will not make him happy? In the many philosophy seminars which I have conducted over the years, I have asked students how they would respond to this question and, with very few exceptions, the answer they give is the same, namely, that they, like the savage, would choose the more ‘reality-oriented’ life, even if it meant that they would experience more anxiety and unhappiness, even if it meant that they

8

Introduction

would have to accept the burden of responsibility for others, and even if it meant that they would have knowledge, and fear, of their own mortality.17 This apparent willingness to embrace what might be seen as a more authentic, but less happy, life is not, to return to the point made earlier, because we are, first and foremost, reality-oriented, or truth-seeking, subjects. Far from it. Most of us, most of the time, choose to keep our experience of the harsh realities of life firmly at arm’s length. However, and this is crucial, our need to be distracted from the reality of our situation does not mean that we are bound to choose weightlessness over ethical life. At least, this is the case if we are in a position to make an informed choice between the two alternatives, a choice between two different ways of being in the world of which we have experience. How can we say that the choice for ethical life would be made? I return to a fuller discussion of this question later but, for now, I will say that, as ‘rational’ subjects, we would be likely to make the choice which, to the best of the knowledge available to us, would lead to a more sustainable experience of well-being in the future.18

How can ethical life be realised? My argument will be that ethical life has two necessary conditions. The first is engagement in political life.19 This is necessary because it is only when we are politically active that we can respond to the culturally integral demand, or externality, to be part of the solution to the problems of injustice and suffering. It is true that not all forms of political engagement fulfil this function. Some forms of it, as we will see, are expressly designed to allow us to forget about the suffering of others, or to be indifferent to it, or even to prolong and enjoy it. However, despite political life taking these aberrant forms, engagement in it remains vital if ethical life is to be realised and sustained. In response to the claim that we can sustain a sense of ourselves as living well, or living ethically, insofar as we care for the well-being of others, perform individual acts of kindness to those we don’t know, live as sustainably as possible, and are sensitive to the consequences of our actions, I would say that these acts, or these ways of being in the world, while not insignificant, are insufficiently formative of a secure ethical or moral identity. This is because the ethical demand which is made to us today requires us to do more. More specifically, it is a demand which requires us to fulfil our role as citizens, and to be active in the pursuit of justice. However, as indicated, there is a problem here which may be insurmountable. This problem is that, without experience of ethical well-being, that is, the form of well-being which is disclosed to us when we engage in political life, we lack sufficient desire to realise it. In other words, our intimations and intuitions that we are missing out on something important for a more sustainable experience of well-being may not be enough to secure it. Moreover, even if we are able to acquire experience of the right form of political life, it is clear that, in and of itself, this is not enough to secure ethical life. This is because, while political life ordains us as ethical subjects, it is philosophical life, or a life dedicated to critical thought and reflection, which confirms us in it.

Introduction

9

The argument here is not that ethical life demands formal, or academic, philosophical training. The idea, rather, is that it requires a philosophical imagination, and a philosophical vocabulary, to give form to the experience of ethical life and well-being disclosed to us by our engagement in political life. This is necessary because, without philosophical scaffolding, our sense of ourselves as ethical subjects will remain amorphous and fragile. Conversely, while experience of political life requires philosophical thinking to allow us to make sense of it, philosophical life demands that something has to be there in the first place, something which is waiting to be given form. This is necessary because, without experience of something on which it can reflect, philosophy remains abstract and remote. In response to this, it might be argued that political life does not rely on philosophy in this way. We can, for example, imagine a situation where someone is propelled into a political campaign, such as Extinction Rebellion, without any clear philosophical sense of its importance. This is because our involvement, engagement, and participation in it simply feels right, and that we feel morally obliged to respond, and to act. However, in order for this engagement to be sustained, in order that our political energies are not dissipated, and in order for our newly formed ethical identities to set, a philosophical justification will, ultimately, be required. Before setting out the details of the chapters of the book, we can summarise the shape of the argument in diagrammatic form as follows: (Ordains)

(Confirms)

Political Life

Ethical Life

(Promotes)

Philosophical Life

(Secures)

Deep Well-Being

Outline of the chapters There is a joke about an economist who worries that something which works well in practice may not do so in theory. The concern some will have with what is being proposed here is the opposite, namely, that while it might work well in theory (that is, while it may be true that the experience of a stable form of well-being requires ethical life, and while it may be true that ethical life requires experience of political and philosophical life), there is little or no possibility that this ethical form of well-being can be realised. In other words, what we have here is another form of poetic politics.20 I acknowledge that it will not be easy to overcome the many obstacles which hinder our path to ethical life. One reason for this is that the conditions for ethical life, namely, political and philosophical life, have their own conditions of existence which are difficult, if not impossible, to realise. What are these conditions? Among those which are necessary for meaningful engagement

10

Introduction

in political life are a democratic culture of rights and freedoms, a political system which is transparent and accountable, a system which allows for meaningful and informed participation, a system which promotes a sense of hope that the problems we face are resolvable. Among the conditions necessary for philosophical life are the existence of a culture which values the pursuit of knowledge, and which nurtures the institutions to convey it to future generations. What is also required if these forms of life are to be realised is acknowledgment of the barriers which inhibit them, and the articulation of a political strategy to navigate a way around them. In Chapter 2, I explain in more detail what I mean by ethical life, wellbeing, and the nature of the relationship between them. The following four chapters examine the most significant of the barriers which inhibit their realisation. In the order in which I examine these barriers, the chapter headings are as follows: optimism, populism, escapism, and nihilism. In Chapters 3 and 4, the argument is that a culture of optimism and populism inhibits political life. In Chapters 5 and 6, the argument is that a culture of escapism and nihilism inhibits philosophical life. In what way can a culture of optimism, a culture which celebrates the progress we have made towards the creation of a world in which more people enjoy wellbeing than ever before, be seen as a barrier to political and ethical life? While it is true that, in many respects, the lives of most people are better than at earlier times, the argument I make in Chapter 3 is that this culture is problematic because its effect is a deadening of our sense that we are missing out on something, something which is important for political and ethical life. More specifically, the argument is that the discourses which constitute and sustain this culture are doing more than identifying historical trends which reflect, for example, a decrease in mortality rates from certain diseases, or the increase in access to education in the developing world. The philosopher, Judith Butler, is known for her work on the concept of performativity. This is the idea that, in describing the world, we constitute new realities, and new truths, about it. The concern with the discourses of optimism and positivity we will examine in this chapter is that they leave behind an ideological trace which blunts our capacity to think critically about the world and, as a result, our emergence as politically active citizens is blocked. In Chapter 4, I look at a more serious and stubborn obstacle to ethical life, and well-being, namely, populism. While there are many critiques of this style of politics, its capacity to promote a certain form of well-being is often overlooked. My argument is that this is a particularly egregious, and pernicious, form of wellbeing which, as well as appealing to that part of us which longs for affirmation, recognition, and the legitimation of our identities, also appeals to the angry and resentful part of who we are which longs for vengeance and retribution against those whom we are led to believe are responsible for our grievances and troubles. Once established, this form of politics is difficult to challenge, not least because its direct, ‘democratic’ appeal to ‘the people’ resonates so powerfully. To repeat, my argument here is not that we should not be angry. Far from it. There is a lot to be genuinely angry about. However, what we find in populism is the exploitation of this anger by those without the slightest conviction to address its fundamental root

Introduction

11

causes. The more substantive claim I will defend is that, despite its appeal, there is a weakness in the populist armoury of lies, and rhetorical conjuring tricks, which cannot be concealed. This weakness, or Achilles heel, is that it cannot provide us with ethical identity, or a sense that our lives are being lived well, or a sustainable experience of well-being. It is this weakness which provides us with a form of hope that a more honest, and ethical, form of politics can emerge in the future. Populism is typically, but not exclusively, associated with right-wing politics, and the promotion of ethnic nationalism. It is for this reason that a significant argument continues on the Left about the most effective way to oppose it. One claim is that the Left needs to adopt its own appeal to the people, a ‘left-populist’ strategy. It is easy to understand the appeal of this demand. However, I will argue that it should be resisted, not least because, like its right-wing counterpart, it inhibits the realisation of ethical life, well-being, and justice. Chapter 5 examines the ways in which contemporary culture inhibits our capacity to engage in critical thought, and how it impedes our journey to ethical life. In my previous book, I argued that, in many respects, culture is vital for ethical life. This is because, in the form of art and literature, it allows us to imagine how the world is interpreted differently by others. However, while this claim remains valid, culture is no longer able to perform this role effectively. There are a number of reasons for this failure. One of them is the ceaseless demand it makes to us to care for the self, to cultivate our gardens, to indulge, to consume, and to withdraw to the private realm. Let me be clear, this is not an appeal to ascetism. I accept that we should care for ourselves. This is necessary, not least because of the intolerable strain inflicted on us by populism. It is also necessary in order that we can assume our role as citizens in the public sphere. However, while we cannot say that culture has entirely extinguished our capacity for thought, it is clear that a form of cultural populism has emerged which significantly inhibits it, and blunts its critical edge. The danger posed to us by thoughtlessness has been brought to our attention by Hannah Arendt in her work on the Holocaust. This danger has also been examined by Susan Sontag, who reminded us of how thoughtlessness can lead to a numbness to the pain of others. However, despite these dangers, there is hope for something better. The source of this hope is the same as that identified in the context of populism, namely, that a life of escapism, distraction, mindfulness, mindlessness, and forgetfulness denies our need for something richer, for something more rewarding, for something which we would choose for ourselves after an experience of it. In Chapter 6, I claim that a culture of nihilism has emerged which is also a significant obstacle to ethical life. What is meant by a ‘culture of nihilism’ here, and how has it come about? In using this term, I am not suggesting that there is nothing left to salvage, or that we have sunk irretrievably into a relativist abyss. It is, rather, to point to the difficulty we experience in the contemporary world to believe in anything, and to imagine ourselves as ethical subjects. This difficulty is, to some degree at least, the inevitable result of the spiritual and intellectual void created by the emergence of secularism, the rise of science, and the advent of the

12

Introduction

era of postmodernism. It is also the result of what we might see as an excess of knowledge. By this I mean that we find it difficult to imagine ourselves as living well because we know too much about ourselves, about what we have done, and about what we continue to do. In his recent book, Paul Mason identifies some of the reasons why we have lost faith in ourselves: Towards the end of the twentieth century, neuroscience, genetics and anthropology all made claims that seemed to undermine earlier scientific assertions about what makes humanity unique. Meanwhile, some deep-green environmentalists concluded it would be better for the planet if we did not exist, while some radical supporters of animal liberation added: the sooner the better.21 For Mason, the solution to our predicament requires us to return to the humanism of Marx which he claims, uniquely, offers the possibility of ‘complete liberation from all forms of oppression, including those imposed on us by poverty, racism and sexism’.22 The argument I want to make is that, despite the claims of Mason, the teaching of Marx, while valuable, is not enough. In other words, in order to restore faith in ourselves, we require more than a belief in our ‘innate desire for freedom’. What else is required? In this chapter, I will argue that we need to return to Nietzsche. More specifically, we need to return to the distinction he made between active and passive nihilism. In light of my earlier comments on Nietzsche, this move may seem anomalous. However, implicit in Nietzsche’s notion of active nihilism are seeds of moral and ethical regeneration, albeit not those that he imagined, or advocated. In Chapter 7, I return to the idea of hope. The theme here is that, while we remain able to sustain a form of hope, it can only emerge in a meaningful and sustainable form retrospectively, that is, after experience of something which we would recognise as worthy of it, namely, ethical life. I finish the chapter by looking at two practical tasks on which we must embark in order to begin our journey to ethical life. The overall shape of the argument can now be represented diagrammatically as follows: (Ordains) Political Life

(Confirms) Ethical Life

(inhibits)

(inhibits) (promotes)

Optimism & Populism

Philosophical Life

(Secures)

Deep Well-Being

Excapism & Nihilism

Introduction

13

Notes 1 My argument here should not be confused with the 19th century, mystical view that it was possible to inhabit fully the mind of another person. The argument, rather, was that our capacity for empathy afforded us a glimpse, or insight, however transitory and incomplete, into how the world was viewed by someone else. In the context of our deeply, culturally, and politically polarised world, I argued that these leaps of the imagination were of the utmost political and ethical significance. 2 S. Critchley, (2007:23). 3 In Against Empathy (2017), Paul Bloom argued that empathy is ethically problematic because, in predisposing us to care disproportionately for those near to us, we neglect to care for those outside the boundary of our ‘empathy range’. 4 I remain committed to the view that empathy is significant in allowing us to think of ourselves as ethical subjects. However, the problem is that it is difficult for sufficient numbers of us to realise an experience of difference, or otherness, in a way which will lead to cultural and political change. 5 F. Lenoir, (2015:9). 6 Prudential values are always relative to an individual subject: ‘something that has this kind of value is good for someone (or something). Other kinds of value aren’t usually seen as having this kind of relativity: things are good simpliciter, not good for someone’ (T. Taylor, 2013:10). 7 D. Haybron, (2007:24). 8 D. Haybron, (2007:24). 9 R. Norman, (1998:95). A similar argument was made by David Hume who claimed that we are drawn to exercise kindness to others because the capacity for sympathy is so deeply hardwired into our psychology, and it is for this reason, and this reason only, that we experience well-being when it is exercised. 10 Clearly, what is considered important ‘not to miss out on’ differs between cultures, and it changes significantly across time. For example, in more traditional or patriarchal societies, a woman might feel that her well-being demands that she assumes her assigned role as wife and mother. In more liberal and democratic societies, on the other hand, independence and gender equality are more likely to be considered as its important conditions. I discuss this issue in the following chapter. 11 This is the point made by Flaubert when he noted that ‘from the idiot who wouldn’t give a sou to redeem the human race, to the man who dives beneath the ice to rescue a stranger, do we not all seek, according to our various instincts, to satisfy our natures?’ (G. Flaubert, 1980:61–61). 12 S. Kierkegaard, (1849). 13 S. Kierkegaard, (1849). 14 M. Kundera, (1985:5). 15 A. Huxley, (1932:192). 16 A. Huxley, (1932:192). 17 In the 1999 film, The Matrix, the character, Neo, is offered a choice between taking a blue pill which would allow him to live blissfully in a simulated reality, or a red pill, which would free him from ignorance, but which would also subject him to the fears and misfortunes of reality. While it is true that, in many respects, we choose to live a ‘blue pill’ existence, the argument of this book is that, after experience of an ethical ‘red pill’ life, we would be drawn to choose it on the grounds that it promoted a more sustainable experience of well-being. 18 We can think about the nature of the choice in a number of different ways. Imagine, for example, someone who has spent their life without the experience of loving, or being loved. While we know the burden and pain that love can inflict on us, most would not

14

19

20

21 22

Introduction deny that, after experience of it, we would not regret it. We would, rather, see our earlier lives as missing something we now consider as vital for a fully lived life. The argument here is not that we need to be involved in political life in any formal way, as professional career politicians, or even as members of a political party. It is, rather, that we have to have an awareness of ourselves as citizens, with duties and obligations to be informed, engaged, and, most significantly, to act together with others to address the issues which cause suffering and pain to our fellow citizens. I return to this question in a later chapter. One response to this is to say that there is nothing wrong with poetic politics. In other words, the fact that an account may not provide the basis for an effective political strategy of change, or resistance, does not render it obsolete, or unworthy of consideration. However, while I am open to this interpretation, this is not the response I want to make here. The response I want to make is that, while difficult, change is necessary, and possible. P. Mason, (2019:14). P. Mason, (2019:14).

Chapter 2

Well-being

There is significant literature on the topic of well-being. Indeed, it is one of the most heavily researched subjects in the social sciences. It is not my intention to provide a comprehensive survey of it here. This has been done elsewhere by others more qualified to do so than me. I indicated in the Preface that I see this book as a political, rather than a philosophical, engagement with this subject. In other words, my motivation in engaging with it is to set out an agenda, to effect change, and to advance the cause of ethical life and justice. However, it is important to be clear how the term ‘well-being’ will be used. This is important because it is interpreted in a bewilderingly wide range of contexts. We can begin with a citation from the economist, Daniel Kahneman, who stated the following: people don’t want to be happy in the way that I have described the term – what I experience here and now. In my view, it much more important for them to be satisfied, to experience life satisfaction.1 Kahneman is right to observe this distinction, and he is right to claim that life satisfaction is a more desirable disposition than happiness. This is because it is less volatile, less transient, and less subject to fluctuation. In other words, like well-being, life satisfaction is a disposition which defines an entire way of life. For David Brooks, however, it is the experience of joy which shares a deeper, and more significant, affinity with well-being: Joy tends to involve some transcendence of self. It’s when the skin barrier between you and some other person or entity fades away and you feel fused together. Joy is present when mother and baby are gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes, when a hiker is overwhelmed by beauty in the woods, and feels at one with nature, when a gaggle of friends are dancing deliriously in unison.2 Brooks describes different ‘intensities of joy’, culminating in what he calls ‘moral joy’, which he sees as something which pushes a mental reset button, wiping out feelings of cynicism, and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and moral inspiration.3 In essence, this is the experience of joy which comes to us when

16 Well-being

generosity and reciprocity become part of our lives; when, in other words, we shed the skin of selfhood and become one with the world, and with others. I am open to this Taoist-inspired way of thinking about the affinity between moral joy and well-being. I am also open to thinking about well-being in the context of life satisfaction. This is because these ways of thinking about well-being allow us to understand it as something which is experienced emotionally and cognitively. I have touched on this distinction already, but we should say more about it because it allows us to understand something important about well-being. More specifically, it allows us to imagine it as a sensory and involuntary experience, and as a disposition which is constituted by our capacity for language, and for critical thought. The distinction between emotions and reason4 can be traced back to the Ancients. Plato was suspicious of art, in the form of poetry and drama, on the grounds that it led to the emergence of emotions which were inimical to the pursuit of a life dedicated to reason and contemplation. Aristotle, by contrast, rejected Plato’s idea of art as a distorting mirror of reality. He analysed art in terms of its ability to engender emotion, especially the emotions of pleasure and pain. For Aristotle, our emotional reactions, especially those which are aroused when we witness the suffering of others in the performance of tragedy, were understood in the context of cleansing and purgation, and were thought important for well-being because they allowed us to reconcile ourselves to the vicissitudes which mark our lives. This latter way of thinking about well-being remains prevalent in contemporary thought. However, when we think about our emotional well-being today, we do so in a different way, as something which happens to us when, for example, we listen to music, or gaze at a loved one, or commune with nature. The point to note here is that this experience of well-being, while significant, is different to the form of it which we constitute for ourselves as a result of our capacity for deliberation, and for critical reflection. However, in accepting this self-constituting dimension to well-being, the concern raised is that it allows too much interpretive latitude or, more specifically, the concern is that it allows for the possibility that we can nominate, or declare, ourselves as bearers of well-being, irrespective of how we are living our lives. In other words, it strips well-being of its meaning by conceding too much ground to subjectivity, and to language. In response to this concern, it is important to stress that there are limits to what can be meaningfully understood, or experienced, as well-being, or moral joy, or life satisfaction. One way of considering these limits is to note the conditions which must be absent if we are to experience well-being in any form. I refer here to the freedoms from fear, pain, oppression, and hunger. In this ‘negative liberty’5 context, we might say that well-being also requires us to desist from certain actions. For example, because the demand to live well with others exists, in some form or other, in all societies, and because well-being requires, to some degree at least, that we are attuned to the cultural demands of our societies, it is not possible for someone who tortures others for no reason to have anything other than an entirely perverse experience of well-being. But what about the positive

Well-being

17

conditions for well-being?6 Most people would, I think, hold to the view that certain conditions are necessary in order for well-being to be meaningful, for example, the experience of love, or family, or friendship. Many might also refer to an appreciation of beauty, or culture, or education. Also high on the list of necessary conditions would be the realisation of our potential; a sense that life has been fair to us, empowerment, autonomy, and simply having something to look forward to. It is clear that this list could be extended almost indefinitely. The important point to note about it is that, while there are necessary conditions for well-being, there is also a space for cultural variation, a space in which different interpretations of it can be articulated. More significantly, however, our understanding of well-being as open to different interpretations is important because it allows us to challenge those accounts of it which inhibit our capacity to understand and experience it in an ethical context. It should be clear that this is not solely a question about language. Thus, while it is important that we promote the use of the term ‘well-being’ in the context of ethical life and justice, our more significant challenge is to create the conditions which allow for the experience of ethical well-being as something we would choose for ourselves. The important point to note here is that, while we will ultimately judge for ourselves what works well for us, the articulation and realisation of the conditions which structure and shape our experience of wellbeing is a political matter of great significance. It is for this reason that the politics of well-being is such an important area of study.

Hedonism, desire theory, and objective list theory These three approaches to the study of well-being have generated, and continue to generate, a substantial academic literature. In the context of the argument of this book, it is important to examine and challenge them, becausethey constitute a discourse of well-being which fails to acknowledge the intimacy of its relationship to ethical life. It is also a discourse which promotes the idea of human beings as subjects stripped of capacity to constitute for ourselves a more progressive and ethical experience of well-being. We can begin with an account of hedonism. This is the idea, following Bentham, that nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure, and that well-being consists in the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. There are many criticisms of this approach. The most significant of them, following Mill, is that it doesn’t acknowledge the distinction between different forms of well-being. In other words, it assumes that the sole criterion for assessing our experience of well-being is its quantity or, more specifically, its duration and intensity. It is for this reason that Thomas Carlyle referred to hedonism as the ‘philosophy of swine’. In response to the question about what makes pain bad, and pleasure good, the answer of the hedonist is the ‘pleasantness of pleasure and the painfulness of pain’.7 It has been questioned whether Mill’s invocation of a ‘higher’ form of pleasure situates him in the Aristotelian rather than the utilitarian tradition? This conclusion could be rejected on the grounds that, as

18 Well-being

‘competent judges’, we would choose the higher form of well-being because, and only because, of our anticipation that it would give us more pleasure. However, if the reason it would provide us with more pleasure is because it has more objective moral worth, Mill’s utilitarian argument collapses. This is the point raised by G.E. Moore: Moore argued that the idea of ‘my own good’, which he saw as equivalent to what is ‘good for me’, makes no sense. When I speak of, say, pleasure as what is good for me, he claimed, I can mean only either that the pleasure I get is good, or that my getting it is good. Nothing is added by saying that the pleasure constituted my good, or is good for me.8 In one sense at least, what I am proposing in this book appears consistent with a hedonistic, or utilitarian, approach. After all, one of its central assumptions is that we would be likely to choose ethical life, after an experience of it, on the grounds that it would provide us with a more sustainable experience of wellbeing. However, while I accept the broad Hobbesian point that our nature moves us towards pleasure, and away from pain, what I am arguing for here, as I hope is clear, is utilitarian only to the degree that it seeks to address the problem of suffering. However, it remains important to reject hedonism on the grounds that, in reducing human motivation to a crude pleasure/pain calculation, it fails to acknowledge something important about how our judgements are informed, something about our capacity, and responsibility, to constitute new ways of thinking about what it means to experience pleasure and well-being, and something about the intimacy, and significance, of well-being’s relationship to political and ethical life. As we have seen, one interpretation of the ‘objective list’ approach, following Aristotle, is that well-being becomes meaningful when we realise the ‘essence of our nature’; when, in other words, we perfect ourselves. While Aristotle argued that it is only when we live virtuously that happiness can be realised, for some Aristotelians, the experience of happiness is of secondary importance. For them, what is paramount is living well, or living as nature intended, and if this condemns us to misery, then so be it. However, as we have seen, the objective list approach can be seen in a different way, in a way which does not hold to the view that flourishing relies on the perfection of our nature. The claim here, rather, is that it relies on the expression, and the realisation, of the contingent facts of our nature and culture. However, one problem here, as we have seen, is that there are different aspects to our nature, and different ways of culturally realising ourselves. I accept, therefore, that what I am arguing for here is politically and ideologically motivated, and that it is culturally prejudiced.9 In other words, I accept that we cannot justify entering the hegemonic fray to promote a particular experience of well-being by appealing to anything beyond how we happen to think about the way the world ought to be. This is the bedrock beyond which, or below which, we cannot go. However, rather than concealing the partial and self-interested nature

Well-being

19

of the judgements we make about our lives, and about the world, it is important to acknowledge it. This is important not least because it allows for the preservation of humility, and it provides us with a deeper insight into the nature of the struggle in which we must engage with others who may have a very different political agenda. To show in more detail how these two accounts – hedonism and perfectionism – frame a discourse of well-being in a way which conceals its most significant ethical dimension, we can refer to the debate between two of the most influential theorists of well-being in the United Kingdom, Richard Layard and Martin Seligman. Richard Layard is a powerful advocate of the idea that the fundamental moral duty of government is to increase the happiness, and to reduce the suffering, of citizens. This position distinguishes him from the ‘laissez-faire’ philosophers of happiness on the right of politics who argue that the only duty of government is to protect the conditions which allow citizens to find happiness in their own way. Another of Layard’s claims is that, because the priority of governments is seen as the promotion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and ‘economic well-being’, they fail in their moral duty to alleviate the shocking levels of suffering in society, in particular the suffering caused by depression, and other mental health problems, which persist in all societies throughout the world. To address this crisis, he argues that resources should be dedicated to evidence-based therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which he claims are highly effective in treating these disorders. Moreover, the benefits of these treatments can be measured, before, during, and after treatment, allowing for changes in public policy making.10 For Layard, the good thing about evidence-based psychotherapy is that, for the first time, it allows for the measurement of happiness, and the promotion of its most important conditions – family relationships, rewarding work, friendship, and community. Moreover, he argues that these conditions can only be realised when we reorient our politics to prioritise the more communitarian values of equality, fairness, and trust.11 In response to the criticism that his approach focusses excessively on the subjective experience of happiness, he stated: You might ask why we talk about happiness at all – why not talk about altruism or self-sacrifice or duty? Because we need a clear concept of what we would be doing if we did our duty. The world will be a better place when duty means creating as much happiness as you can, and as little misery. If we all took that view, in our family lives, at work and in our communities, as we would have a very different world – and a better one.12 It is important to note that Layard’s reference to the importance of family and community does not denote a concession to the Aristotelian argument about the significance of flourishing. His point, rather, is that because these are the things which make us happy, it is the moral duty of governments to promote them. How can Layard be sure that it is things like family and community which make us happy and promote well-being? He claims that it is because happiness is something which can be accurately measured and, as a result, it is possible to determine,

20 Well-being

with a high degree of certainty, what it is that promotes it. It was this unwavering commitment to the benefits of a quantitative approach to the study of happiness and well-being which led Layard to criticise the work of the founder of ‘positive psychology’, Martin Seligman. In his 2011 work, Flourish,13 Seligman identified what he saw as the five necessary conditions for well-being, namely, positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (PERMA). At first sight, it is not clear how this analysis is substantively different to that of Layard. However, there is an important difference. Layard described it as follows: But surely, Abraham Lincoln was great because he did a lot for human happiness and not, as Seligman says, because he accomplished highly, as though accomplishment were sufficient without some external criterion for deciding what accomplishment is valuable. Rational public policy requires a single criterion for comparing the benefits of different types of expenditure, and for comparing the costs of different cuts. Seligman will have to come up with a system of weights for combining his different objectives, and where will they come from? I dare guess that, in the end, the weights he chooses will in fact depend on how far PERMA affects human happiness.14 Seligman’s more Socratic view that the meaning of living well, and flourishing in a good society, cannot be reduced to a subjective experience of happiness, or as something which can be objectively measured, is echoed in the work of other theorists of well-being. In his book, A Good Life, Mark Rowlands considered the Greek myth of the Lotus-Eaters, a fable which invited us to consider whether the pursuit of happiness should be our defining objective. His claim was that the problem with the life of the Lotophagus is that it fails to meet certain ‘standards of competence’: Imagine a creature that is capable of only two things: experiencing pain and pleasure. That is all it can do; it can’t move, it can’t see and it can’t think. If you wanted to promote the welfare of this creature, then all you would need to do would be to place it in a situation where it experienced as much pleasure and as little pain as possible. However, the best possible of all lives for our imagined creature would be a sad waste of a life for a child. The reason is that the child has far more capabilities than the creature: the ability to walk and run, to think and to reason, to talk, to write, to argue, to empathise and sympathise, to play, to paint, to love, and many more. If we focus just on the relative measures of pain and pleasure in the child’s life, then we leave undeveloped all of the other capacities and abilities, actual and potential, the child possesses. The life that resulted would be a travesty.15 A similar point was made by Thomas Hurka: Imagine a world containing only intense mindless pleasures, such as those of eating chocolate. If we ask whether this is a good world, one whose existence

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is better than if there were nothing, the answer is surely yes. But if we ask whether it’s a very good world, or only somewhat good, it seems to me that it’s only somewhat good. Though it’s better for there to be intense mindless pleasure than for there to be nothing, it’s not fantastically better. A world with only this kind of pleasure isn’t one to get very excited about.16 The debate can be summarised as follows: for Seligman, there are ways of being in the world which should be valued even if they do not increase our experience of happiness; for Layard, on the other hand, these ways of being in the world have value, and significance, only insofar as they increase our happiness. The criticism of Seligman’s position is that it can lead us to adopt values which do not promote happiness, or reduce suffering. The criticism of Layard is that his promotion of happiness can lead to a society which, for Seligman, Rowlands, and Hurka, is only ‘somewhat good’. The debate is far more complex, of course, and it should be noted that Layard and Seligman have responded effectively to these criticisms. It should be clear that, in referring to this debate, my argument is not that Layard and Seligman are unaware of the importance of political engagement in order to shape public policy, and to promote more equitable outcomes. As we have seen, this is far from being the case. However, three concerns with these accounts should be noted. The first is that, while insightful in many respects, their focus on optimal and suboptimal outcomes (for Seligman, these outcomes are philosophically optimal or suboptimal) distracts us from recognising that, whichever philosophy of well-being is advocated, our fundamental priority is to engage in a political struggle to create the conditions for the experience of a form of ethical well-being which we may come to recognise as good for us and which may also lead to the adoption of policies to promote happiness and reduce suffering. The second concern is that this dialogue doesn’t acknowledge the significance of the experience of ethical life as constituting a form of well-being which we would be drawn to choose for ourselves. The third concern is that it fails to acknowledge that a more ethically nuanced account of well-being can only come about when we move beyond arguments about measurements, and about metaphysics. This seems an overly harsh verdict on the work of Rowlands and Hurka to which I am broadly sympathetic. Indeed, there are many analyses which draw on Arisotelian teaching in some form with which I have little substantive disagreement. My concern with them, as indicated, is more about what they fail to acknowledge. Let me now turn to the third approach to the study of well-being, namely, ‘desire theory’. We can begin by considering how it is different from hedonism. The distinction has been summarised as follows: Historically, the reason for the current dominance of desire theories lies in the emergence of welfare economics. Pleasure and pain are inside people’s heads, but also hard to measure – especially when we have to start weighing up people’s experiences against one another. So, economists began to see people’s well-being as consisting in the satisfaction of preferences or desires,

22 Well-being

the content of which could be revealed by their possessors. This made possible the ranking of preferences, the development of ‘utility functions’ for individuals, and methods for assessing the value of preference-satisfaction.17 However, we should note that there are different versions of desire theory. In its simplest form, it holds to the view that someone is better off when the desires they hold in the present are fulfilled. There are obvious concerns here. One of them is that, if any meaningful account of well-being must relate to reflections about a whole life, the satisfaction of our immediate desires is clearly problematic. The ‘comprehensive’ version of desire theory responds to this objection by claiming that a person’s well-being is the overall level of desire-satisfaction in their life as a whole. In the context of my argument, the more significant version of comprehensive desire theory is the ‘informed desire’ interpretation. This points to how we can make the wrong decisions about our well-being if we are not fully informed about the choices which are available to us. This ‘informed desire’ version holds to the view that the best life is the one I would desire if I were fully informed about all the (non-evaluative) facts: Note that on the informed desire view the subject must actually have the desires in question for well-being to accrue to her. If it were true of me that, were I fully informed, I would desire some object which at present I have no desire for, giving me that object now would not benefit me. Any theory which claimed that it would amounts to an objective list theory with a desire-based epistemology.18 Implicit here is the claim that, without desire, well-being is denied. I consider this assertion in more detail in the final chapter about hope. How should we respond to this version of desire theory? Interpreted narrowly, it is clear that if a person has no desire for ‘x’, and then ‘x’ is presented to them, their well-being cannot be said to be enhanced. Indeed, we can think of situations in which presenting them with ‘x’ will lead to a diminution of their well-being. For example, if a man doesn’t want children, and his partner informs him that she is pregnant with his child, it seems fair to assume that this would diminish his well-being. It is also clear why presenting a person with no desire for ‘x’, on the understanding that it will somehow enhance their ‘well-being’, while at the same time making them miserable, is not a good basis for a sustainable account of well-being. However, more plausibly, we might say that if we were to provide ‘x’ to someone without an acknowledged desire for it, an unanticipated outcome might come about, namely, that the bearer of ‘x’ might judge that this is something whose value they had not recognised in the past, and that they now want to preserve it on the basis that they judge it to be essential for their future well-being. If this is accepted, the challenge we face must be seen as a political one, namely, to allow for new experiences which can constitute new desires. The argument of this book is that, if we were to experience ‘x’ in the form of ethical life, as relatively competent judges, we would be likely

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to desire its preservation. Phrasing the debate in this individualistic and algebraic form should not distract us from acknowledging the importance of what is at stake here. This is because, as I have made clear, while our experience of well-being is important for us, its wider significance is that it is vital if we are to realise and secure justice for others.

Political and ethical life These two forms of life are important for the overall argument of the book. While it is not possible to say everything that can be said about them here, it is important to provide a broad sense of how they will be interpreted. In the previous chapter, I argued that ethical life is a disposition, or a sensibility, which we assume when we are active in the public sphere; when, in other words, we acknowledge and accept our duty, as citizens in a political community, to act with others to address the problem of injustice. To understand the significance of political life in this respect in more detail, we can turn to the work of Hannah Arendt, for whom it was vital, first and foremost, because it revealed the ineradicable plurality of the world; a world irreducible to language, to ideology, and to thought itself. For Arendt, ‘we are human not solely because of our physical birth, but also because of our belonging with others politically in a world we create together between us; we become fully human on the basis of the natality of our second “political birth”’.19 This is not to suggest that, for Arendt, the activity of thinking was not significant. Far from it. It is, rather, to insist that we must reject pure thought; the form of thought which obliterates plurality, the form of thought which leads to the ‘untold evils, moral disasters, and political catastrophes which occur when the public realm is shrouded in shadows, and truth itself has been rendered oblique’.20 For Arendt, the political world, the world of freedom, the world which provides us with a space to question, to challenge, to see the world from different perspectives, and, most significantly, which allows us to assume our responsibility for it, and to declare our love for it, had to be protected against the form of thought which solidifies into ideology: For her, thinking was diametrically opposed to ideology; ideology demands assent, is founded on certainty and determines our behaviours within fixed horizons of expectation; thinking, on the other hand, requires dissent, dwells in uncertainty and expands our horizons by acknowledging our agency. It is the task of education – and therefore of the university – to ensure that a space for such thinking remains open and accessible.21 For Arendt, to understand the relationship between action and thought, the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, the critical point to note was that experience always precedes thought: ‘every thought is an afterthought, that is, a reflection on some matter or event’.22 Her phenomenological outlook is best summarised in her comment: ‘what is the subject of our thought? Experience! Nothing else. And if

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we lose the ground of experience then we get into all kinds of abstract theories’.23 It was because of the danger posed to political life by abstract philosophising that she rejected the claim that the role of philosophy was to remake society. For her, the role of philosophy was one of illumination. More significantly, it was one which allowed for understanding; one which provided us with a sense of meaning about what we are doing, one which sustains that fragile condition of being human, the condition which relies on being in communion with others, and sharing a sense of reality with them: what is clear is her insistence that, without thinking that reaches out in dialogue to others, there can be no informed judgement, no moral agency, and no possibility of collective action – no care for the world.24 George Kateb summarised Arendt’s view of political life as follows: Arendt, in her Greek thinking, suggests that political action does not exist to do justice, or fulfil other moral purposes. The supreme achievement of political action is existential, and the stakes are seemingly higher than moral ones.25 While I am sympathetic to Arendt’s argument in many respects, my concern with it is that its phenomenological and aesthetic orientation limits its political and ethical impact. This is not to argue against phenomenology. I accept her claim that experience precedes thought, and I share her anxiety about the threat posed by thought, philosophy, and plurality, to natality,26 and to the irreducibility of political life. However, the argument I have set out allows us to see political life and natality in a different way. More specifically, it allows us to see political life as giving birth to ethical subjectivity, to the emergence of a sense of ourselves as subjects who are living well. However, Arendt would have been deeply suspicious of this move precisely for the reason outlined above, namely, that she would have seen it as representing a profound threat to political life, rather than as something which could protect and nurture it. More specifically, her concern would have been that this ‘ethical subjectivity’ would evolve into a form of Platonic totalitarianism. For Plato, a person can be said to be living well, or can be said to be leading an ethical life, when the three parts of their soul (spirit, desire, and reason) exist in a relation of harmony. For him, this harmony of the soul equates to a life of virtue; a life in which our capacity for reason controls the excessive expression of our emotions. This way of understanding what it means to live ethically (ethical naturalism) holds that ethical life is not contingent on our thoughts about how we are living our lives. In other words, for Plato, we are either living ethically, or we are not. However, ethical life does not have to be like this. This is because it is a disposition born of experience of political life and, as a result, it is something which is deeply attuned to it. My more specific concern with Arendt, however, is that, in her desire to protect plurality and natality, she underestimated the anarchic and destructive nature of political life and, as a result, she underestimated the

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importance of philosophy, or thinking, as an activity; as the only activity which can contain it, and to help avoid political catastrophes. Moreover, it is able to perform this containing function because of its capacity to do what Arendt dreaded most, namely, to confirm us as ethical subjects.

Summary and link to next chapter The objective of this chapter was to provide a broader context for the ideas and themes identified in the Introduction. I appreciate that it is not remotely possible to do justice to the meaning and complexity of political life, philosophical life, ethical life, or indeed, well-being, in a few short paragraphs. However, in the context of the argument which follows, which is about the barriers to ethical life and wellbeing, the important point to note is that the meaning of these ways of life, and the relationship between them, while not open to endless interpretation, are subject to political contestation. The danger here is that discourses can emerge, and become hegemonic, by severing the link between well-being and ethical life. However, more positively, this relative openness allows for the possibility of a different articulation which restores the intimacy and significance of their relationship. In the next chapter, I examine one of the discourses which inhibits the progress of this restoration, and I suggest how we should respond to it.

Notes 1 2 3 4

D. Kahneman, cited in A. Mandel, (2019). D. Brooks, (2019:xxiv). D. Brooks, (2019:x). Although it is far from a perfect fit, this distinction between our emotional and cognitive experiences of well-being can be mapped onto the distinction between political and philosophical life. This is not, as indicated, to suggest that political life is distinct from reflection, or that philosophical engagement is unrelated to the experience of emotional affects. It is, rather, to note the intimacy of the relationship between emotions and thought, and its significance for our understanding of the relationship between ethical life and well-being. The question of whether our emotions govern our thoughts, or our thoughts govern our emotions, remains contested: ‘Since Spinoza and then Freud, the moderns have, however, emphasised the importance of emotions, which in their view, determine the content of our thought. But with the development of positive psychology at the end of the twentieth century, our contemporaries have again underlined the decisive role of thoughts and beliefs in our emotional lives’ (Lenoir, 2015:77–8). For Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, our thoughts have precedence over our feelings and emotions. More specifically, this approach holds to the view that, if we change the way we think about something, a change in how we feel about it will follow. In the context of well-being, the argument here would be that, if we change how we think about the things which make us unhappy, our well-being can be, at least partially, restored. There are problems with this approach. One of the most significant of them is that, in dealing with the symptoms of our unhappiness, the causes of it remain unaddressed. However, this approach does remind us of something important, namely, that we are always more than passive recipients of well-being. Therefore, while we should accept that our experience of it is, to some degree at least, culturally mediated,

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5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

it is important that we remember our capacity to resist those pernicious forms of it which inhibit the emergence of ethical life. The idea of negative liberty was developed by Isaiah Berlin in his celebrated lecture at the University of Oxford in 1958. This idea was explored by Abraham Maslow in the context of a ‘hierarchy of needs’. See ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, (1943), Psychology Review, 50(4). ‘Well-being’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 8.5.2013. ‘Well-being’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 8.5.2013. It is important to acknowledge our motivation in issuing moral prescriptions about the world. More specifically, it is important to acknowledge that, implicit in them, is a plea to others to be more like us, to recognise us, to share solidarity with us, and to love us. It is also that our expression of love for them is an important condition for our well-being. R. Layard, (3.10.2017). R. Layard, (2.4.2012). R. Layard, (3.10.2017). M. Seligman, (2011). R. Layard, (15.5.2011). M. Rowlands, (2015:131–132). T. Hurka, (2011:55). ‘Well-being’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 8.5.2013. ‘Well-being’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 8.5.2013. P. Hayden, (2014:14). P. Hayden, (2014:12). J. Nixon, (2015). P. Hayden, (2014:7). P. Hayden, (2014:10). J. Nixon, (2015), ‘A Worldly Thinker’, Times Higher Education, 26.2.2015. G. Kateb, (2014:49). This concept refers to the idea that it is when we act politically that new ways of being in the world are disclosed to us, and new ideas are born. In The Human Condition, Arendt described it as follows: The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, “natural” ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. (H. Arendt, 1958:247)

Chapter 3

Optimism

In 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum which asked people if they wanted to remain in, or to leave, the European Union. By a fairly narrow margin, the decision was taken to leave. I begin with this episode because it illustrates as well as anything the significance of one of the themes of this chapter, namely, framing. The accepted wisdom relating to framing is that, if a complex set of ideas can be brought together, and framed in a way which engages us emotionally, in a way which makes sense of the world for us, and in a way which recognises us, and affirms our existence, the more likely it is to be accepted, the more likely it is to become established as what Gramsci called the ‘common sense’, and the more likely it is that it will assume a hegemonic ascendancy. Behind the binary choice presented to the British people in 2016 were a number of highly complex political and economic questions about which most people in the country, on both sides of the argument, were largely uninformed. One question which continues to be discussed in political science and psephology circles is the extent to which the respective campaigns, Leave and Remain, influenced how people voted. While many questions remain unanswered, it is widely accepted that the Leave campaign was far more effective in framing its message. Its strategy, from the beginning, was to keep it simple, and to repeat, ad infinitum, the same ‘take back control’ slogan and, most importantly, to appeal directly to the emotions of the electorate.1 George Lakoff has written widely about the importance of framing. In a recent article he stated that: Framing is not primarily about politics, political messaging or communication. It is far more fundamental than that: frames are the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality – and sometimes to create what we take to be reality. But frames do have an enormous bearing on politics. They structure our ideas and concepts, and they shape the way we reason. For the most part, our use of frames is unconscious and automatic.2 How is framing relevant to the question of well-being or, more specifically, how can it tell us anything about how we think about how our lives are going? In response to this, I would say that, while the way an issue, or a question, is framed

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does not determine our thoughts about it in any definitive way, it would be naïve to suppose that it has no effect at all on the way we think, even if the issue in question is something which feels private and personal to us. After all, if this were not the case, the advertising and marketing industries would disappear overnight. In this chapter, I examine two different, but related, discourses of well-being, namely, the ‘optimism agenda’ and the ‘positivity agenda’. This examination is important because, while these agendas may seem remote to our personal experience of wellbeing, they constitute what Raymond Williams called a ‘structure of feeling’, or a climate of thought which, to some degree at least, shapes our ideas about how we think our lives are going, and informs our understanding about what it means to live well. There is another reason why this examination is important. This is that those responsible for constituting this optimistic climate of thought are not neutral observers of the mood of society. Far from it. In other words, in the business of framing, there are always political, and ideological, strategies at play. These strategies need to be exposed and contested because their effect, intended or otherwise, is to inhibit change, political engagement, and the realisation of the form of wellbeing which we would be likely to choose for ourselves if we had experience of it.

Framework 1: the optimism agenda That there has been progress in the history of humanity can scarcely be doubted. Those who do take leave to doubt it, a group which contains a number of postmodern thinkers, have presumably no wish to return to witch-burning, a slave-owing economy, twelfth-century sanitation, or pre-anaesthetic surgery. That we live in a world rattling with nuclear weapons and scarred by spectacular poverty is no refutation of the truth that some things have become immeasurably better. What is in question is not progress but Progress.3 In November 2015, a conference was organised in Toronto to debate the following question: ‘do Humankind’s best days lie ahead?’ Two speakers, Stephen Pinker and Matt Ridley, argued that, while we can never aspire to realise a perfect world, there is no doubt that we are making rapid progress to a much better one. Opposing the motion, Alain de Botton and Malcolm Gladwell argued that, while it is true that there has been progress in certain areas, this does not provide grounds for optimism about the future. In his contribution to the conference, Stephen Pinker argued that, while poverty, racism, and ethnic conflict remain worryingly persistent, all the available evidence indicates that these threats to our well-being are becoming increasingly rare and, as a result, we can be confident that they will be largely eradicated in the future: A better world, to be sure, is not a perfect world. As a conspicuous defender of the idea of human nature, I believe that out of the crooked timber of humanity, no truly straight thing can be made. And, to misquote the great Canadian, Joni Mitchell, ‘we are not stardust, we are not golden, and there’s no way we’re

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getting back to the garden’. In the glorious future I am envisaging, there will be disease and poverty; there will be terrorism and oppression, and war and violent crime. But there will be much, much less of these scourges, which means that billions of people will be better off than they are today.4 At the conference, and in his later work, Pinker identified two issues which he acknowledged pose an existential threat to our survival: nuclear weapons and climate change. On the nuclear weapons issue, he drew comfort from the fact that the nuclear powers remain committed to the eventual elimination of these weapons in the future. On climate change, the source of his optimism was that, while this may be humanity’s toughest problem, economists agree that it is a fixable one. In defence of these claims, he referred to a series of headlines in Time magazine such as ‘Walmart, McDonald’s and 79 Others Commit to Fight Global Warming’ and ‘China shows it is getting serious about Climate Change’.5 Pinker’s assault against the ‘agents of progressophobia’ continued in his 2018 book, Enlightenment Now. In her review of the book, Biancamaria Fontana drew attention to Pinker’s claims that ‘the persistence of famines, civil wars, and epidemics does not signify modernity’s decline’ and that ‘marginal difficulties can be corrected and improved’.6 Crucially, she also noted that: while Pinker tries very hard to support his claims with scientific evidence, providing a profusion of quantitative data, and illustrating his chapters with diagrams and graphs, the subject remains deeply ideological, and his conclusions are bound to be met with denials and scepticism.7 The philosopher, John Gray, articulated his scepticism in the following terms: Pinker is an ardent enthusiast for free-market capitalism, which he believes produced most of the advance in living standards over the past few centuries. Unlike Spencer, he seems ready to accept that some provision should be made for those who have been left behind. Why he makes this concession is unclear. Nothing is said about human kindness, or fairness, in his formula. Indeed, the logic of his dictum points the other way. Enlightenment Now is a rationalist sermon delivered to a congregation of wavering souls. To think of the book as any kind of scholarly exercise is a category mistake. Much of its more than 500 pages consists of figures aiming to show the progress that has been made under the aegis of Enlightenment ideals. Of course, these figures settle nothing. Like Pinker’s celebrated assertion that the world is becoming ever more peaceful – the statistical basis of which has been demolished by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – everything depends on what is included in the analysis, and how it is interpreted.8 In response to this critique, Pinker acknowledged Gray’s point that our ‘unpredictable emotional impulses’ have not been annulled by the Enlightenment. For

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Pinker, however, this is not the important question. What we have to focus on, he claimed, is ‘how we govern those impulses, through religious dogma, tribal lore and superstition, or by reason, debate, and the rule of law’.9 This response was never going to be enough to satisfy Gray for whom, as we will see later, our capacity to reason, and to be reasonable, is limited by our tribal nature, and by our desire to preserve a particular way of life. In his contribution to the conference, Matt Ridley echoed Pinker’s optimistic prognosis for the future. More specifically, he pointed to the progress which has been made in the fight against malaria, species extinction, global inequality, climate change, and population growth. He concluded that, on the basis of this evidence, optimism for the future is fully justified: But my optimism about the future isn’t based on extrapolating from the past; it’s based on why these improvements are happening. Innovation, driven by the meeting and mating of ideas to produce new baby ideas, is the fuel that drives them. And, far from running out of fuel, we’re only just getting started. There’s an infinity of ways to reconcile ideas and make new ideas. And we no longer have to rely on North Americans and Europeans to come up with them. The internet has sped up the rate at which people can communicate and cross-fertilise their ideas.10 Ridley’s claims for progress were based on his 2010 book, The Rational Optimist, which acknowledged that, while things are getting better, the world is far from perfect: If my great grand-daughter reads this book in 2100, I want her to know that I am acutely aware of the inequality of the world I inhabit, a world where people live in hovels of dried mud, slums of corrugated iron, or towers of soulless concrete, a world in which I can worry about my weight while in Darfur a child’s shrunken face is covered in flies, and in Somalia a woman is stoned to death.11 Responding to Ridley’s plea to future generations for understanding and forgiveness, Terry Eagleton said the following: Whatever concessions he may make to the shrunken faces of the children of Darfur, his outlook is drastically one-sided. A judicious apologist for market forces would point to their role in the rapid accumulation of wealth, as well as in the general advance of global civilisation, while acknowledging that this has involved not only poverty and inequality, but a crassly instrumental rationality, ruthless acquisitiveness, economic instability, selfish individualism, destructive military adventures, the withering of social and civic bonds, pervasive cultural banality, and the philistine erasure of the past. For Ridley, these are the sour-faced caveats of those for whom modernity simply means decline.12

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Back in Toronto, in one of his conference contributions, Malcolm Gladwell’s response to Pinker and Ridley’s paean to optimism struck a different note: If the proposition was ‘Be it resolved that humankind’s best days historically have lain ahead’, I think the answer is absolutely yes. And that is exactly what my two opponents have done. They have beautifully made the case that, if we go back into the past and project forward to the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century, the nineteenth century, 1950, 1975, and we fast forward to the present day, things have been on an upward trajectory. We can all agree that’s true. But this debate is not about the past, right? It’s about whether things get better from this point forward.13 Gladwell’s point here was that, while progress has been made in many areas, the nature of the risks we face today, and in the future, are of a fundamentally different order to those confronted by our ancestors. This point has also been made by the political philosopher, David Runciman: The point is that if something does go seriously wrong in our societies, it’s really hard to see where it stops. The thought that, say, the next financial crisis in a world as interconnected and algorithmically driven as our world, could simply spiral out of control – that is not an irrational thought. Which makes it quite hard to be blithely optimistic. When you live in a world in which everything seems to be getting better, yet it could all collapse tomorrow, it is perfectly rational to be freaked out.14 In other words, for Runciman, it is futile to compare the past with the present because it is not comparing like with like. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic raging throughout the world in 2020, the prescience of this analysis can hardly be overstated. However, despite the serious threat this virus poses to us, there are far more terrifying future scenarios which the optimists fail to sufficiently acknowledge. One immediately thinks here of the climate crisis. If, as many scientists believe, it is likely that global temperatures will rise by three of four degrees over pre-industrial levels, we will witness a breakdown of society in ways which are scarcely imaginable. In light of the scale and gravity of this threat, it is disturbing to note that the source of Pinker’s optimism is that China is ‘taking the problem seriously’. There are other concerns which optimists fail to take sufficiently seriously. One of them is the possibility that we will develop a resistance to antibiotics. I am not a scientist, and I cannot make an informed judgement about this issue. However, it is clear that there is little political pressure being exerted on pharmaceutical companies to focus their research in this area, or to force change to the farming practices which increase the likelihood of resistance. The crucial point to note here is that this culture of optimism, this sense that we are masters of nature, and the belief that modernity has provided us with all we need to respond effectively to anything that comes along, has consequences for life and death,

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and for the very future of humanity. This problem is particularly acute in an age of populism. This is because, as we will see in the next chapter, the promotion of optimism, and the downgrading of risk, are two of the most significant tactics employed by populists to retain power, and to protect their political and economic interests. Let me turn now to the last of the Toronto participants. One of Alain de Botton’s contributions to the conference pointed to Pinker and Ridley’s ‘overly materialistic’ view of human beings: You are approaching this debate from a scientific background and I’m coming from a humanistic background. I would like to ask my learned friends how their laboratories might try and cope with some of the problems that literature has tried to address. What would you do if Hamlet walked into your lab? How would you view some of the dilemmas raised by Euripides? Or assess the levels of human unhappiness that were spotted in Kafka?15 We should note that the inability of science to advise Hamlet about his future course of action should not lead us to lose faith in it. However, de Botton’s contribution is important because it links the debate about optimism and progress to the question of well-being, and its conditions of existence. More specifically, it links the debate to the question which bubbles below the surface of analyses such as those of Pinker and Ridley: why, despite the progress we have made, does our well-being continue to flatline? For de Botton, the answer to this question is that, as complex social beings, the conditions for our well-being extend beyond material prosperity, and the realisation that our lives are better than those who came before us. There is significant literature which addresses this question about why our well-being lags behind the progress which has been made. We can summarise the broad shape of it under three distinct headings. This summary is important in order to bring into sharper focus the problem with the optimism/progress/wellbeing discourse, namely, that it distracts us from acknowledging the changes we need in order to realise a different form of progress, one based on ethical life, justice, and a more sustainable experience of well-being.

Three reasons why progress fails to promote well-being The first set of responses focusses on the importance of human relationships for well-being. It is summarised in the following citations: There are many problems with just focusing on national wealth. Money is not the only thing affecting people’s happiness. Money is not the whole story; it’s not remotely the whole story. It’s important we try to get a better balance between income, and human relationships and mental and physical health. People must understand that they would do well to preserve their

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human relationships; they should give them a higher priority than how much they earn.16 GDP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion not our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.17 Well-being can’t be measured by money or traded in markets. It’s about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture, and, above all, the strength of our relationships. Improving our society’s sense of well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times.18 There is consensus around this question because the view that material prosperity is the only condition for well-being is clearly untenable. Moreover, it is clear to anyone who has thought about well-being that, as social beings, relationships, in all of their different forms, are important for all of us. However, there is less consensus around the second response. This focusses less on the importance of our relationships with each other, and more on how a culture of progress leads a crisis of meaninglessness. Johan Harari has argued that, while the benefits of modernity have to be acknowledged, one of the problems with the progress/optimism agenda is that it fails to acknowledge how the ‘unholy trinity of industrialism, capitalism and consumerism’ has led to social disintegration and spiritual emptiness. He also noted how the progress we have made has been bought at the expense of the fate of nearly all other forms of life: Much of the wealth that shields humans from disease and famine was accumulated at the expense of laboratory monkeys, dairy cows and conveyor-belt chickens. Tens of billions of them have been subjected over the last two centuries to a regime of industrial exploitation, whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth.19 A similar point has been made by Rutger Bregman who claimed that, despite the fact that capitalism has lifted 700 million Chinese people out of poverty, and created the wealth to allow for the eradication of diseases such as smallpox, we have to acknowledge the limitations of human well-being: Welcome to the world of Plenty, to the good life, where almost everyone is rich, safe and healthy. Where there’s only one thing we lack – a reason to get out of bed in the morning. We have nothing more to aim for other than the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.20 I am sensitive to the point made by Harari about how our search for progress has inflicted appalling suffering on other species. In my view, our knowledge of our history in this respect is a significant reason why a sustainable experience of wellbeing is so difficult to realise. I am also sensitive to the point made by Bregman

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about meaninglessness, and about how progress has ushered in a climate of existential angst. This is a theme familiar to literature. For example, in his novel, Cocaine Nights, J.G. Ballard describes the problem of providing a society which has everything it needs, a society with ‘a billion balconies facing the sun’ with a sense of meaning and purpose. The third explanation for our ‘well-being deficit’ claims that it is not primarily the result of materialism, or meaninglessness. It is, rather, the inevitable outcome of the vagaries of our psychology. This interpretation comes in two different forms. The first points to how, irrespective of how much progress we make, it will never be enough: One of the real tragedies of economic development is that we thought that by increasing people’s material conditions we would improve human happiness. However, the economist, Richard Easterlin, did a famous study on the relationship between income and happiness forty years ago. He argued that even if a society is by all accounts extremely rich, the desire for more, envy of others, and a sense of status anxiety continues.21 Our happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions. When things improve, expectations rise, and consequently even dramatic improvements in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before. In their pursuit of happiness, people are stuck on the proverbial ‘hedonic treadmill’, running faster and faster but getting nowhere.22 Again, while we should not underestimate the significance of the relationship between wealth and well-being, there is little to argue with here. We are complex, and competitive, social animals. We also get bored very easily. Moreover, we need a constant stream of distractions, targets, goals, and objectives in order to prove something to ourselves, and to others. For these, and for countless other reasons, our well-being will never be complete. The second strand of the psychology-oriented response is more contentious. Its basic premise is that the reason for our well-being deficit is that we are unable to recognise that progress has been made. In his 2016 book, Progress, Johan Norberg claimed that there are four reasons why, despite the progress we have made, our well-being is not improving. The first is that bad news requires more ‘mental processing’ and, as a result, it disproportionately informs our thinking about the state of the world. The second is what he calls the ‘psychology of moralisation’. The idea here is that, being critical or negative about the world, a disposition which might be seen as a form of ‘virtue signalling’, allows us to demonstrate our empathy, and our compassion for others more effectively. The third reason is the existence of what he calls the ‘myth of the golden age’, and our tendency to idealise the past. The argument here is that our nostalgia for a ‘lost world’, a world which never actually existed, distorts our understanding about the present, and leads us to see it as a ‘fall from grace’. Finally, he warns against mistaking, or conflating, the changes which occur as we age, and as we become more cynical, with the reality of what is happening in the world.23

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In the book he published shortly before his untimely death, Hans Rosling identified the shocking level of ignorance about the world which exists in all societies. He was particularly concerned to understand why nearly all of us, nearly all of the time, misinterpret, or deny, incontrovertible facts about the world, even when those facts are staring us in the face.24 In his book, he shows, ‘beyond all doubt’, that ‘bad things are decreasing’, and ‘good things are increasing’.25 Once again, the question left open is: why do we fail to acknowledge this progress? For Rosling, an important part of the answer to it is the role of the media. In one passage, he argued that ‘forming your worldview by relying on the media is like forming your view of me by looking only at a picture of my foot. Sure, my foot is part of me, but it is a pretty ugly part. I have better parts’.26 This view of a distorting media effect is widely held. In his 2018 book, Notes from a Nervous Planet, Matt Haig argued that, in many ways at least, the world is better than it was, but each age brings its own new problems and today, partly because of the media, things seem worse due to what he calls the ‘multiplier effect’: The world can be terrifying. Political polarisation, nationalism, the rise of Hitler-inspired Nazis, plutocratic elites, terrorism, climate change, governmental upheavals, racism, misogyny, the loss of privacy, ever-cleverer algorithms harvesting our personal data to gain our money or our votes, the rise of artificial intelligence, the renewed threat of nuclear war, human rights violations, the devastation of the planet. The difference now is that, thanks to social media technology, we experience what is happening in a more direct, and visceral, and intimate way than ever before. The experience is multiplied, and leaks out, from a thousand different angles.27 Rosling’s more eye-catching claim is that we need to embrace the idea of ‘data as therapy’. This is important, he argues, because it is only when we look at the facts of the world, as revealed to us by objective data, that we will be able to ‘upgrade’ our knowledge and, as a result, feel more positive about our lives. However, he acknowledged that this upgrading will not be easy for us because of the way our brains work. More specifically, the problem is that our view of the world is determined by deeply embedded instincts which profoundly limit our capacity to see it as it really is. One of these, what he calls our ‘negativity instinct’, is particularly significant because it causes us to misremember the past. For Rosling, the reason we refuse to believe that things are better today, and here he echoes the aforementioned point made by Norberg about our tendency to nostalgia, is because we idealise the past which results in an overly negative view of the present, and an inability to appreciate how, in nearly every aspect of life, things have become spectacularly better: Beyond living memory, we avoid reminding ourselves and our children about the miseries and brutalities of the past. The truth is to be found in ancient graveyards and burial sites, where archaeologists have to get used to

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discovering that a large proportion of all the remains which they dig up are those of children. Most will have been killed by starvation or disgusting diseases, but many child skeletons bear the marks of physical violence. Huntergatherer societies often had murder rates above 10 percent and children were not spared. In today’s graveyards, child graves are rare.28 In conclusion, he summarises his philosophy of progress as follows: it is ridiculous to look away from the progress which has been made. People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress which they didn’t know about. That makes me angry. I’m not an optimist, that makes me sound very naïve. I am a very serious possibilist. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic world-view.29 My concern with the analyses of Norbert and Rosling is fourfold. First, their research, while academically rigorous and well intentioned, is, as with the accounts of Pinker and Ridley examined earlier, notably one-sided. Where, for example, is their explanation for the many equally erroneous reasons why people maintain an optimistic outlook? The second point is that their identification of the reasons why we fail to appreciate progress does not mean that we should not be sceptical about it. In other words, it may be that our reasoning, while doubtless faulty, plays an important and necessary role in holding back the juggernaut of optimism from careering out of control completely. The third cause for concern about their analyses is that, while they resonate most powerfully in academia, the ideas advocated and argued for within them do trickle down, they do find their way into more popular discourses and, as I show below, they do find expression in wider political debates. This is problematic for many reasons. One of the most significant is that it leaves us unprepared for the inevitable shocks and crises which lie in wait for us in the future. The final, and most significant problem, and this concern applies to all of the frameworks examined above, is that none of them acknowledge the importance of ethical life as the most significant condition for a meaningful experience of well-being, one which will bind us to the pursuit of justice. In this sense, what is of more significance in the framing of the entire well-being discourse is what is not included in it, what is not acknowledged, what is not recognised as necessary for the change we need, and what is not recognised as necessary for the triumph of hope over optimism.30 As we will now see, this ‘problem of omission’ is also discernible in other discourses around well-being, and it is to another of these that I now turn.

Framework 2: the positivity agenda When David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010, he instructed the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to measure the ‘well-being of the United Kingdom’.

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More specifically, his instruction was to devise a methodology which would allow policy outcomes to be evaluated by measuring their impact on the well-being of society. This was not a new initiative in the United Kingdom. While Cameron gave this agenda a huge boost, interest in the question about how to promote a less materialistically oriented form of well-being went back to the years of the Blair government. In the wider European context, in 2007, the European Commission launched its ‘Beyond GDP’ initiative to consider the feasibility of developing a ‘well-being index’ to replace, or to complement, the existing data relating to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The following year, in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse, President Sarkozy commissioned Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen to examine the deleterious effect on the well-being of the citizens of France resulting from the relentless search for economic growth. By 2015, national interest in compiling well-being data to evaluate policy success had spread rapidly, with the majority of OECD31 countries now collecting this type of information. However, the Conservative government, led by Cameron, was determined to embark on something more ambitious than anything that had been attempted before in the United Kingdom. His intention was to open up a national debate about ‘what really matters’, and to ensure that whatever came out of it was used to help government understand, with reliable evidence-based data, the most effective and cost-efficient ways to improve people’s well-being.32 This initiative led to an unprecedented degree of participation in the well-being agenda across all areas of the public sector in the United Kingdom. To report on whether progress was being made, since 2011–2012, the ONS has tracked four different measures of personal well-being: overall life satisfaction, whether life is seen as worthwhile, levels of happiness, and levels of anxiety.33 According to the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the program to collect subjective well-being data was on a scale never seen before in the United Kingdom. This body became one of the most significant sources of information to the government about the impact of their policies on the well-being of citizens. In the Autumn of 2014, the results of its survey of 160,000 respondents were made available for its analysts, allowing them to explore the rich patterns of well-being in the country.34 What are we to make of this unprecedented initiative to promote and measure well-being? It was certainly welcomed by the government’s ‘happiness czar’, Richard Layard, whose work we referenced earlier, who argued that governments around the world have focussed for far too long on GDP, rather than customising their policies with a view to increasing human well-being: That is all to the good because if you measure the wrong thing, you do the wrong thing. Governments began measuring GDP in order to manage unemployment, but they allowed it to become the totem of national success. This simply confirmed the materialistic, consumerist values of the wider society. It is great that this is now changing. The aim of measurement of well-being is to see who is languishing and, having found the causes, to adopt policies to improve things. To find this out, people are asked questions about how happy

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they are, how satisfied with their life and its different dimensions, and so on. These measurements get high response rates. But do they mean anything? The answers are, as intended, totally subjective. But the important thing is that they are well-correlated with all kinds of objective measurements.35 The significance of this alignment between subjective assessments of our wellbeing, and the objective conditions in society was also noted by the economist, David Blanchflower: Behavioural economics has taught us a lot about patterns in well-being data. Worries that answers to happiness questions differ by culture and language have slipped away given the large literature that is now emerging that subjective levels of happiness are well correlated with objective measures. A recent experimental paper by MIT graduates Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro studied the response of poor rural households in Kenya to large temporary income changes and they found that money buys happiness, What they also found was that the results were exactly the same whether they used subjective measures of well-being or an objective measure of stress such as the reduction in the level of the stress level hormone, cortisol.36 There are two issues which need to be identified and examined here. The first is whether the availability of this data has actually led to an increase in our wellbeing? If Layard and Blanchflower are right in their assessment about the alignment of subjective well-being, and its objective societal conditions, it is not unreasonable to expect such an outcome. At least this is the case if we accept that governments are motivated by a sense of duty to promote the well-being of their citizens, and that they are able to effect change to the conditions in society which promote it. A full analysis of the well-being data harvested by this initiative is beyond the scope of my argument here. Readers interested in drilling down into it in more detail should consult the ONS website. I would say here though, by way of providing a context for what follows, that the results are, to say the least, far from conclusive, with some findings suggesting improvements and others, such as those uncovered by Layard, who is also the founder of the Action for Happiness movement, which found that, in the United Kingdom, despite massive economic growth, we are no happier now than we were in the 1950s. This conclusion is consistent with the findings we examined earlier in the context of the work of Norberg and Rosling, although Layard would emphasise different reasons to these researchers about why no significant advance has been made. The second question to consider is whether this quantitative methodology, which tracks subjective assessments of well-being, is an appropriate way to inform policy making. At first sight, it is hard to see what might be wrong with governments seeking to align their policy choices with well-being outcomes. After all, as Barbara Gunnell has noted, ‘what could be more scientific than recording how

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people tell you have they feel. The real measure of happiness is what people themselves report’.37 However, there are problems with this approach. We have seen how David Blanchflower was opposed to it on the grounds that it was a waste of time and money. A more damning analysis of it was articulated by Lynne Segal: Here, the first thing I notice is that the contemporary happiness agenda might be better understood as its opposite: a misery agenda. The recent interest in happiness shown by both governments and employers has been triggered not by outbursts of benevolence toward us, quite the contrary. Rather, the disingenuous ‘happiness agenda’ is concerned above all with softening the costs of ever-rising social wretchedness.38 Other concerns with the initiative were noted: Governments, corporations and institutions all over the world are trying to improve the well-being and happiness of their citizens or employees. However, too often these attempts are dominated by a scientific, instrumental and technocratic approach that leaves little room for people’s reasoning, engagement or choice, forcing them into pre-fabricated definitions of wellbeing designed by scientific experts.39 Concern about the technocratic approach to well-being has been acknowledged by the NEF itself, one of the United Kingdom’s most significant collectors of wellbeing data: some fear that basing decisions purely on well-being science could lead to a technocracy of ‘government by statistical analysis’ where we use national survey data and regression models to calculate what it best for people, without actually asking them directly what they want.40 We have seen how a utilitarian approach to well-being is anathema for the Aristotelian tradition, which holds to the view that a flourishing life cannot be measured by asking questions such as ‘how happy did you feel yesterday?’ A similar concern with a data-led approach to the study of human affairs was noted many years earlier by Martin Heidegger in his analysis of technology: The essence of technology, argued Heidegger, lies in the idea that life is something to be controlled and mastered. Instruments of measurement and calculation – surveys, for example – are integral to this project. Heidegger linked the accelerating domination of technology in the 20th century with the idea that modern humanity faces a spiritual crisis. According to this view, utilitarian approaches to ethics in general, and attempts to measure and regulate happiness in particular, are symptoms of this crisis rather than solutions to it.41

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While these concerns are important, they should not lead us to abandon attempts to measure the effects of policy on well-being. In other words, while economic and well-being data can be falsely conflated, it is not the case that there is no causal relationship between them. It should be clear therefore that I am not denying the importance of economic life for well-being. In other words, I am not ignoring the deeply entrenched economic realities which profoundly limit the capacity of so many to experience well-being in any form. I refer here to the realities which Nietzsche identified as the terrible forces at work in our lives; the brute realities that bear down upon us and cannot be swept aside by glib rhetoric or ingenious interpretation. Failure to recognise these realities is problematic, not least because it absolves governments of their responsibility to acknowledge their role to address them. I make reference to how these realities can obliterate human well-being in any form to reiterate the point that we must not abandon philosophy and the search for new ideas. The important point here is that, while we need to attend directly to the fundamental barriers to well-being such as, for example, conflict, poverty, and inequality, we must not leave the ideological terrain free for others, for adversaries, to establish their ideas about what is important, and unimportant, for a good life. In other words, ideas matter. If this were not the case, governments, and those who do their bidding, would not put such effort into promoting and defending those which serve their interests. Control of the narratives, and the frames, which constitute our understanding of well-being is also considered vital by those responsible for the performance of corporations. While this control can be exercised in socially acceptable ways, it is also clear that it can be exercised in ways which are catastrophic for human wellbeing. In this latter context, we might consider, for example, tobacco companies’ denial of the link between smoking and lung cancer or, more recently, the efforts of oil companies to challenge the scientific consensus about the link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. It hardly needs saying that the advocacy of these strategies has had, and will continue to have, catastrophic implications for the well-being of many people. After all, if your home is submerged under water, or you are slowly dying of emphysema, nothing else much matters. However, this should not distract us from what else is going on with these strategies, namely, the articulation of the link between well-being, personal choice, individual freedom, wealth creation, and the absence of an overly regulated economy and society. In light of the ecological anxiety which characterises the mood of the contemporary world, this corporate strategy of denial is deemed vital in order to alleviate our sense of guilt, to absolve us of our responsibility to act responsibly, and, most significant of all, to allow us to go on consuming. There are a variety of other ways in which the framing of well-being is used as part of a strategy to protect the economic interests of corporations. One of the more ingenious and subtle of them is the promotion of ‘social well-being’. This is a strategy which exploits our need to be connected to each other, and to share with each other. We can see it most clearly at work in advertising campaigns

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which typically feature a product being consumed, or shared, in an environment of friends, families, or indeed strangers, enjoying each other’s company. It might be argued that, if this sort of framing has the effect of encouraging more human interaction, it is not such a bad thing. However, needless to say, this is far from being the corporations’ primary objective. William Davies has written about how ‘social well-being’ has become an increasingly important tool in the capitalist armoury: This is symptomatic of a more general shift in policy and business practice today. Across various fields of expertise, from healthcare to marketing, from military training to finance, there is rising hope that strategic goals can be achieved through harnessing the power of the ‘social’. But what exactly does this mean? As the era of social democracy recedes further into the past, the meaning of the term is undergoing a profound transformation. Where once the term applied to something concerning society or the common good, increasingly it refers to a technique of psychological intervention on the individual. Informal social connections and friendships are being rendered more visible and measurable. In the process, they are being turned into possible instruments of power.42 For Davies, this shift to a focus on the power of the social now informs a range of different political agendas, including ‘neoliberal socialism’: What we encounter in the current business, media and policy euphoria for being social is what might be called ‘neoliberal socialism’. Sharing is preferable to selling, so long as it does not interfere with the financial interests of the dominant corporations. Appealing to people’s moral and altruistic sense becomes the best way of nudging them into line with agendas that they had no say over. Brands and behaviours can be unleashed as social contagions, without money ever changing hands. Empathy and relationships are celebrated, but only as particular habits that happy individuals have learned to practice. Everything that was once external to economic logic, such as friendship, is quietly brought into it.43 For Barbara Ehrenreich, this strategy to elicit ‘consumer well-being’ is integral to the corporate world’s wider effort to promote a culture of positivity. She writes that ‘in the great centuries-long quest for a better world, the baton has passed to the practitioners of “optimism training”, the positive psychologists, and the purveyors of pop positive thinking’.44 Her broader contention is that our acceptance of this culture of positivity is deeply problematic because it depoliticises us, desensitises us to danger, and inures us to the most profound threats to our survival, for example, climate change.45 A similar concern about the numbing effects of positivity is found in the work of Cederström and Spicer who observe how, in order to avoid

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transgressing the newly articulated moral demand for self-improvement, we willingly submit to demands to monitor our behaviour and performance: Bio-morality does not just inflict its enthusiasts with personal pathologies; it reshapes how they engage with others. Those who don’t live up to high standards of wellness are looked at with disgust. And as this vitriolic language becomes common in the public sphere, the possibility for a reasoned debate fades away. As authorities lose faith in structural reforms, they become more interested in small scale behavioural interventions. In place of politics, we are left with corporeal babble and increasingly invasive lifestyle tweaks. As a result, we abandon political demands. The just redistribution of material resources (through ‘social welfare’), the recognition of previously maligned identities (through ‘identity politics’) and the representation of political voices (through ‘democratisation’) have now become replaced by a new ambition: personal rehabilitation. Here, the unemployed are not provided with an income, they get life coaching. Discriminated groups don’t get opportunities to celebrate their identities; they get an exercise plan. Citizens don’t get the opportunity to influence decisions that affect their lives; they get a mindfulness session. Meanwhile, equality, discrimination, and authoritarianism become seen as questions too grand to tackle head-on. Instead, political ambitions become myopically focused on boosting our well-being.46 William Davies also notes how ‘bio-morality’ diverts attention from broader political and economic problems. Referring to the work of 19th-century theologian, Gustav Fechner, he writes: If a certain physical context (such as work or poverty) is causing pain, one progressive route would involve changing that context. But another way would be to focus on the way in which that pain is experienced. Many of the experts who followed in Fechner’s footsteps were psychiatrists, therapists and analysts, whose critical eye was turned upon the subject having the feelings, rather than the object that seemed to be causing them. If lifting weights becomes too painful, you’re faced with a choice: reduce the size of the weights, or pay less attention to the pain. In the early twenty first century, there is a growing body of experts in ‘resilience’ training, mindfulness and cognitive behaviour therapy whose advice is for the latter strategy.47 In response to the work of Davies, Jules Evans, a member of the Centre for WellBeing Studies at Queen Mary University, claims that his critique, and the many others which adopt a similarly critical approach, amounts to a crude form of Marxist propaganda: Davies’ story risks confusing the behaviourist with the cognitive behavioural. Much of the politics of well-being sprung from the success of Cognitive

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Behavioural Therapy, which arose in the 1960s as a critical response to behaviourism. In CBT, people’s beliefs, meanings, and values are all important, so it’s more humanistic and potentially more democratic. It’s true that CBT can over-emphasise people’s agency, and turn into individual pathology what may be normal responses to adversity and poverty. But people are developing more collective forms which equip us to change our circumstances as well as our inner lives. The overriding tone of Davies’s book is the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ – he is constantly expressing ‘unease’, ‘disquiet’ and the need for ‘critical resistance’ to the ‘hidden agenda’ of the elite. This is left-wing academics’ favourite posture, but it’s not really radical in that it undermines people’s agency: the ‘well-being agenda’ in this narrative is always something the elite imposes on us, never something we develop for ourselves.48 However, in his desire to protect CBT from being maligned by left-wing or Marxist academics, Evans passes over the corporate threat to our well-being a little too quickly. As indicated earlier, while it is important that we don’t slip into an overly conspiratorial mindset, it is also important to remember that, as citizens and consumers, we are at all times in the crosshairs of a finely tuned strategy of governments and corporations to provide us with an experience of a quite specific experience of well-being. For governments, it is the form of well-being which comes to us when we feel that politics is working for us, when we feel listened to, when we feel that government understands our concerns, and when we feel that it is on our side. One of the new strategies being employed by corporations is what has come to be known as ‘woke-washing’, whose purpose is to exploit our social conscience by encouraging us to buy products which allow us feel ethical, and which allow us to feel that we are doing our bit to ‘save the planet’. However, its more significant objective is to elicit an ‘ethical experience’ which will result in an intense rush of well-being; an experience we will want to preserve by ensuring that we continue to consume. There are countless examples of this practice. Two of the more recent ones are the clothes company, Lacoste, which changed its logo to include images of endangered species, and Marks and Spencer’s introduction of the LGBT sandwich. Once again, it might be argued that if the effect of this strategy is to raise awareness about important issues, it is something which should be encouraged. This is a fair point. However, we should resist this response, not just because it is a cynical ploy, which it clearly is, but because it inhibits our search for a more meaningful ethical experience of well-being; an experience which can only come to us when we consume less, when we are bind ourselves to living more sustainably, and when we are more ‘critically woke’ to the reality and significance of what it is that we are missing out on. What, if anything, can be done to resist these attempts to promote ‘consumer well-being’? In his work on governmentality, Foucault referred to what he called ‘technologies of the self’. This examined how, despite our lack of sovereignty, and despite our entrapment in the net of the power/knowledge nexus, we maintain

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a degree of autonomy, and we retain our capacity for self-creation. However, as has been noted: What does resistance mean when the power to be resisted is conceived as generating the very conditions of resistance that oppose it? [As] resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power, what does it mean to be an agent when the subject that resists is but the product of this generative power.49 For Foucault, one of the effects of this entrapment, or of this experience of interiority, is the internalisation of the power which acts on us, with the result that we become our own most effective agents of control. This leaves open the wider question of what it is that our subjection to power is blocking or repressing? For Foucault, there is nothing, or at least nothing which we can say, that exists independently of power, ideology, and language. Indeed, for Foucault, to ask the question in this way is to reveal a philosophical naivety or innocence. Instead of seeking to find and protect something which isn’t there, we should, he argued, learn to imagine our situation in an aesthetic context in which, in true Nietzschean style, we celebrate ourselves ironically. That is to say, where we act and enjoy our autonomy despite, or because of, our knowledge of the contingency, and the power relations, which define it. However, rather than ironically celebrating ourselves, we should reflect on how governments and corporations have manufactured a subject position which maintains an unironic sense of sovereignty and autonomy, which allows us to imagine that we occupy a place exterior to power, and that we retain a capacity for resistance to it. It is hard to know which of these interpretations, the ironic or the unironic, is the more politically disabling. This is because neither of them provides a basis for an effective challenge to existing power relations. While I understand the ethical demand to be sensitive to the finitude, contingency, and power, which defines human life, the problem with ironically celebrating ourselves in the way recommended by Foucault is that it distracts us from embarking on what is actually a more politically subversive, and more ironic, act of self-creation; one which allows us emerge as subjects who can, despite knowledge of our entrapment, bind ourselves to the pursuit of justice, and to a more enduring experience of ethical life.50

Summary and link to next chapter This chapter has argued that the discourses of optimism and positivity which permeate our societies must be challenged. The reason for this is that, in bolstering neo-liberalism, and entrenching a culture of consumerism, these discourses manufacture a ‘weightless’, unfulfilling, and unsustainable sense of well-being which drains our political energy, legitimates a rotten political and corporate culture and, most significantly in the context of my general argument, distracts us from appreciating what is necessary for a more substantive and enduring form of progress.

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However, at the time of writing, optimism is posing a far more immediate threat to our well-being. I refer here to how we are beginning, and perhaps only beginning, to get a sense of the extent of the devastation which the Covid-19 pandemic may inflict on us. How is this relevant to optimism and positivity? It is relevant because, at least partly, this tragedy is the result of an overly optimistic way of being in the world; a way which finds it impossible to imagine, and therefore to prepare for, a catastrophe on this scale. The more important question here though is whether this event will allow for a less blindly optimistic culture in the future. In my last book, I examined Alain Badiou’s notion of the Event as something which emerges unbidden into the world, and changes everything: The Event is the Truth of the situation, that which renders visible/readable what the official state of the situation had to repress, like the French Revolution renders the lies and inconsistencies of the ancien regime…what the Event renders visible is that injustices are not marginal malfunctionings, but effects of the very structure of the system.51 How could this pandemic event lead to the renewal of ethical life? While it is certainly not inevitable, and while the price we pay for it will be high, it is possible that the response we make to this humanitarian crisis will disclose something to us about what we are capable of, about what is important for us, and about our commitment to others, and to the future. However, even if this happens, it is clear that, without the experience of political and philosophical life, it cannot be sustained. This is the problem I alluded to earlier, namely, how can we hope for something of which we have no experience? In one of his ‘Prison Notebooks’, Gramsci wrote that ‘the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’.52 One of the most significant of these morbid symptoms is the ubiquity of populist leaders throughout the world; leaders who pose a far greater threat to the world than the optimists and positivity advocates we have examined in this chapter. One of the reasons for this is that, above all else, they are determined to deny us access to the experience of political and ethical life which would threaten their interests. It is to these adversaries, and enemies of ethical life and well-being, that we must now turn our attention.

Notes 1 The Remain argument has been widely criticised for focussing on the negative economic consequences of leaving the European Union. We will never know if the outcome would have been different if a more positive strategy had been adopted; a strategy which made a powerful moral argument for remain, one which went beyond a utilitarian appeal to the British people, one which framed the decision in a wider context of the well-being of a continent and the wider world, one which promoted a powerful emotional and ethical response to counter the appeal made by the Leave campaign about sovereignty, and the protection of a native culture.

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2 G. Lakoff, (2014). In my earlier book, I cited a similar argument made by Jonathan Haidt, who claimed that our deeply ingrained political positions are the result of deep evolutionary forces, rather than the product of ideological frameworks. This analysis implies that political change is extremely difficult to effect because of our genetic predisposition to be loyal to the values of our tribe. 3 T. Eagleton, (2017:7). 4 S. Pinker, (2016:10). 5 S. Pinker, (2016:10). 6 B. Fontana, (2018). 7 B. Fontana, (22.2.2018). 8 J. Gray, (22.2.2018). 9 S. Pinker, cited in A. Anthony, (11.2.2018). 10 M. Ridley, (2016:17). 11 M. Ridley, (2010:353). 12 T. Eagleton, (2017:16). 13 M. Gladwell, (2016:20–21). 14 D. Runciman, cited in, O. Burkeman, (29.7.2017). This is an interesting article that summarises the views of a range of optimists, such as Philip Collins, Nicholas Kristof, and Max Roser. The claims they make are similar to those of Pinker and Ridley, for example, that 2016 was the best year in the history of humanity, with falling inequality, and 300,000 getting access to electricity every day, and that a newspaper could have run the headline on any day in the last 25 years that 137,000 people had emerged from extreme poverty since yesterday. Burkeman notes how, in one way or another, these analyses are all informed by the claim made by Leibniz in 1710 that ours must be the best of all possible worlds, on the grounds that God, being perfect and merciful, would hardly have created one that was weak and mediocre. For a humorous commentary on Leibniz, see Voltaire’s novel, Candide. 15 A. de Botton, (2016:40). 16 R. Layard, cited, in C. Blackhurst, (13.7.2014). ‘Money is not the only thing affecting people’s happiness’, The Independent, 13.7.2014. 17 This citation is from a speech given by Robert Kennedy at the University of Kansas on 18.3.1968. 18 These words were included in a speech about well-being given by David Cameron at the Google Zeitgeist Europe conference on 25.11.2010. 19 J. Harari, (6.9.2014). 20 R. Bregman, (2017:10). 21 J. Harari, (6.9.2014). 22 J. Harari, (6.9.2014). 23 This latter point was captured well by Philip Larkin in his poem, ‘Going, Going’, which explores how our thoughts about the world change as we age, and become more aware of our own decline: And that will be England gone, The shadows, the meadows, the lanes, The guildhalls, the carved choirs, There’ll be books; it will linger on, In galleries; but all that remains, For us will be concrete and tyres. 24 This was essentially the same question asked by Thomas Macauley almost two centuries earlier: ‘on what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?’ (Macaulay, Edinburgh Review, 1830).

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31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

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H. Rosling, (2018:60–64). H. Rosling, (2018:185). M. Haig, (2018:124). H. Rosling, (2018:66). H. Rosling, (2018:69). For many, the idea of hope is synonymous with what Gramsci called the ‘optimism of the spirit’. I am also drawn to thinking about it in this way. However, as I will explain in the final chapter, for hope to be meaningful, it has to have an object which comes into existence as a result of our capacity to love. Countries allied to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. I. Bache and L. Reardon, (11.6.2014). G.O. Donnell, (May 2015). Data gathered by the ONS from 2012 to 2017 found relatively small increases in life satisfaction (26.2%–30%), life being worthwhile (31.5%– 35.6%), and levels of happiness (31.5%–34.9%). New Economics Foundation blog, (9.1.2014). R. Layard, (3.10.2017). D. Blanchflower, (21.5.2014). B. Gunnell, (15.11.2010). L. Segal, (2017:5). Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions, (11.06.2014). ‘How well-being can strengthen democracy’ (New Economic Foundation, 28.5.2014). C. Carlisle, (21.5.2014). W. Davies, (7.5.2015). W. Davies, (7.5.2015). B. Ehrenreich, (2010:172). B. Ehrenreich, (2010:200–206). C. Cederström and A. Spicer, (2015:133–134). W. Davies, (2015:35). J. Evans, (20.6.2015). A. Huquembourg and J. Arditi, (1999). In a book I co-wrote in 2009, I described how, for Foucault, this capacity for selfcreation was understood in the context of what he called ‘marginalisation’. S. Žižek, (1998:235–261). Cited in R. Cohen, (18.11.2013).

Chapter 4

Populism

Commenting on the work of the political theorist Samuel Huntingdon, the writer and activist Elif Shafak, noted that the world is not going through a war of civilisations. Her claim, rather, was that: what we face now is more complicated and disparate. This is the age of a thousand cultural clashes, and these battles take place within countries, not between them. They tear societies apart and polarise politics to such an extent that it will be forever altered.1 How should we reflect on this account of our situation? While there is no doubt that we are not in a good place, it is important that we do not allow it to erode further our faith in the value of political life. This is not just because it is all we have in order to address the challenges we face. It is also because it is a way of life which can transform how we feel about ourselves, how we relate to others, and how we envisage the future. In this sense, political life can be seen as both a means to an end, and an important end in itself. However, it is clear that restoring our faith in political life will not be an easy task. In this chapter, I argue that one of the most significant barriers to it is the wave of right-wing populism which continues to spread across the world like wildfire. As indicated, this way of doing politics represents a far more significant threat to ethical life and well-being than the analyses and discourses we identified in the previous chapter. One reason for this is that populist regimes actively fail to acknowledge and address the existential threats we face as a global community, for example, the climate emergency. Another reason is that they divide us by ‘lashing out at anyone to whom blame can be attached for the agonising sensation of lost hope’.2 This is not to suggest that we, the people, are innocent dupes of a malevolent cadre of demagogues. Far from it. All too often, the people, or at least a significant percentage of them, are all too willing to hear, and to respond to, the populist call. This is precisely why the threat posed by populism to democracy and ethical life is so significant: Power becomes dangerous when the capitalist elite align with the mob, when racism is allowed to take over the institutions of state, and when the

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aching loneliness of living in a fact-free atomised society sees people running towards whatever tawdry myth will keep them company.3 A further danger posed by right-wing populism is that, as the falsity of its narrative is exposed, its advocates will resort to yet more extreme rhetorical excesses in order to maintain their appeal to the ‘people’. In his analysis of the threat posed by populism, Evan Davis argued that we won’t have to wait for long for it to implode because we have already reached what he called ‘Peak Bullshit’. He argued that the populists have become ‘deluded by their own skill and deluded by their own science, and have taken bullshit way beyond the optimal level’.4 He went on to suggest that ‘bullshit can captivate and entrance us for a time, but good sense normally prevails in the end. Even those for whom it has provided a refreshing change, it will probably wear out quickly, depending on the substantive results with which it is associated’.5 However, I am less certain than Davis that we have arrived at this peak or, indeed, whether there is a peak beyond which we will refuse to venture. One reason for this is that it is not clear that our awareness of the mendacity which is integral to populism is necessarily damaging to it. Indeed, it might be argued that it is one of populism’s most significant sources of appeal. After all, who can deny the pleasure we derive on witnessing the humiliation of our adversaries and, more tellingly, who can deny that this pleasure is not increased a thousand times over when we know, and when we know that our adversaries know, that the ascendancy which we have established over them is maintained by bullshit. To be clear, this is not to dispute that there are genuine grievances which need to be addressed. Nor is it to dispute that the system is rigged in favour of elites, or that people are genuinely fearful for the loss of their livelihoods, and their way of life. My argument is not, therefore, that populists have conjured a mood of fear and loathing from nothing. However, it is clear that the priority of populists is not to address the root causes of our immiseration. It is, rather, to exploit it for an entirely different end. This is the argument made by, among many others, Naomi Klein, in response to the presidency of Donald Trump: The idea here is to wait for a crisis (or even, in some instances, as in Chile or Russia, help to foment one), declare a moment of what is sometimes called ‘extraordinary politics’, suspend some or all democratic norms, and then ram the corporate wish list through as quickly as possible, a programme so defiantly unjust and so manifestly corrupt that it can only be pulled off with the assistance of a divide and conquer racial and sexual politics, as well as a nonstop spectacle of media distractions.6 The important point to note here is that populists are emotionally literate, and it is this literacy which allows them to frame a situation, particularly a crisis, in a way which will appeal to, and resonate with, those with genuine social and economic grievances, as well as those who harbour racist and misogynistic views. In other words, populism is a powerful force because it can play a range of highly emotive

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tunes to engage an increasingly disoriented electorate. However, there is one tune that populists cannot play. My argument in this chapter is that, while populism can elicit a form of well-being, it is, and can only be, an illicit form of it; a form of it which is irreconcilable with ethical life, a form of it which is inimical to a sustainable experience of well-being. As indicated in the opening chapter, despite the cheap thrill afforded by indulging in this political charade, this is populism’s Achilles heel, and its advocates know it. This is why they are determined to inhibit the emergence of a more considered and critical form of political subjectivity which would allow us to see it for what it is, namely, a cheap, ugly, degraded, corrupted, and morally soiled form of politics which we would reject outright after experience of a more noble, ethical, dignified, and truthful form of political life. I accept that, without this experience, populism, for now at least, remains in a strong position, whether it be in the nominally democratic world – the United States, India, Brazil, as well as in parts of Europe – or in authoritarian states such as Russia7 and China. What, then, in the words of Lenin, is to be done? The argument which follows will proceed in two sections. In the first, I examine why we remain vulnerable to the populist appeal. In the second, I respond to those on the left who claim that the best way to counter right-wing populism is to embark on a strategy of left-wing populism. My argument here is that, while this strategy is superficially appealing, it cannot form the basis of an enduring politics for the left. This is because, like its right-wing counterpart, it cannot provide us with a vision of a better future, and it cannot provide us with the form of political experience8 which we need in order to realise ethical life, and a sustainable experience of well-being.

Why is there such a high demand for populism? The old motto about ‘speaking truth to power’ is overrated. Power quite probably knows the truth already, and is mainly interested in supressing, or limiting, or distorting it. We would therefore be better to try to instruct the powerless.9 The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, and the distinction between true and false no longer exists.10 Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the body of facts that exists in the minds of the general public.11 While differences exist between right-wing populist regimes and movements, there is what we might call a ‘populist playbook’ to which they all adhere and abide. On page one of this playbook is the recommendation to create an environment which makes it difficult to differentiate between competing truth claims. For evidence of the importance attached to this recommendation, we need only look to the concerted effort of populists to challenge the claims of the scientific community about

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the climate emergency. The damage caused by this unprecedented challenge to scientific orthodoxy has been examined by the sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris, in the context of ‘denialism’: denialism offers a dystopian vision of a world unmoored, it’s perfectly understandable that denialism sparks anger and outrage, particularly in those who are directly challenged by it. If you are a Holocaust survivor, a historian, a climate scientist, a resident of a flood-plain, a geologist, an Aids researcher, or someone whose child caught a preventable disease from an unvaccinated child, denialism can feel like an assault on your life’s work, your core beliefs, or even your life itself.12 For Kahn-Harris, the problem posed by denialists is that attempts to refute their claims by appealing to established scientific method do not work. Let me say more about denialism as it is important for the wider argument I want to make. For Kahn-Harris, the modern world presents a profound challenge to those who are desperate to protect their belief in, for example, the biblical account of creation, or the idea that there is a biological difference between ‘races’, or that it is acceptable to destroy and despoil the world. The modern world presents a challenge to those who hold these views because they are subject to empirical refutation. They can, in other words, be denied. This is where denialism comes to the fore. For Kahn-Harris, denialism is a way of being in the world in which our deeply held desires and beliefs can be protected by simply refusing to accept the validity of scientifically established methods of adjudication. In other words, the denialist, despite all evidence to the contrary, will simply declare that any such ‘evidence’ reinforces, rather than refutes, their claims. One example of this is the claim that climate change ‘hysteria’ is the result of a Marxist plot to destroy capitalism, or a Chinese plot to destroy the West. At the time of writing, we are witnessing the extraordinary spectacle of the bushfires in Eastern Australia. We are also witnessing the denialist response to it. The science writer, Ketan Joshi, argued that linking this tragedy with human activity has the effect of reinforcing the views of the sceptics because it backs them into a corner, and they have no means of escape from it other than to retreat further into denial. In this context, our attention is drawn to the increasing amount of online activity suggesting that the fires are the result of ‘ecological terrorists’ with an anti-capitalist political agenda.13 For Kahn-Harris, the important point to note here is that, in holding to his views in this way, the denialist claims the mantle of objectivity. While it is clear that denialism is not entirely reducible to populism, it is also clear that it is a strategy which populists can, and do, employ to further their agenda. Indeed, for Kahn-Harris, it is because it has succeeded so well in blurring the truth/falsity distinction that populists such as Donald Trump now feel able to discard the pretence that their views are validated by science, and simply allow his assertions to stand alone. For Kahn-Harris, it is

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this abandonment of scholarship and authority which heralds the birth of what he calls ‘post-denialism’: whereas denialism explains, post-denialism asserts, whereas denialism is painstakingly thought through, post-denialism is instinctive, whereas denialism is disciplined, post-denialism is anarchic…it is based on a deeper desire to remake truth itself, to remake the world, to unleash the power to reorder reality itself and stamp one’s mark on the planet. What matters in post-denialism is not the establishment of an alternative scholarly credibility, so much as giving yourself blanket permission to see the world however you like.14 For theologians, and historians of Christianity, this instinct to remake the world in whatever way you like is familiar. Mark Lilla, among others, has written about St. Paul as ‘a figure who has never been out of favour with those aching to escape an unbearable present and bring about our future redemption’.15 Lilla cites the work of Jacob Taubes, a Jewish admirer of Carl Schmitt, as evidence of Paul’s significance in this respect: Taubes’ reading of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans offers a good example of this theological-political thinking. Taubes homes in on Paul’s antinomianism – his relentless attack on Jewish and Roman law as the enemies to be vanquished if the Bible’s messianic promise was to reach the whole of mankind. Paul’s declaration that ‘you are not under law but under grace’ (Romans, 6:14) announces a double coup d’etat against Moses and Caeser, a sovereign decision establishing a new world order. Jesus has virtually no part in this reading of early Christianity; he was just a martyr in the early years of the insurgency. The real revolutionary was Paul, who imagined a utopian order and brought it about through theological-political fiat. Compared to this, Taubes declared, all the little revolutionaries are nothing.16 The idea that a people can be commanded by a ‘political revelation from above that requires no universal principle, and recognises no natural bound, just a will and capacity to make something be’17 is, to say the least, disturbing. When the prophet of redemption is a right-wing populist who promises to restore an illusory lost past, the idea is terrifying. For Lilla, we are receptive to the message of these prophets, first and foremost, because of our deep need for unity and meaning: The reactionary comes closer to the truth [than the revolutionary] in his historical myth making when he blames modernity tout court, whose nature is to perpetually modernise itself. Anxiety in the face of this process is now a universal experience, which is why anti-modern reactionary ideas attracts adherents around the world who share little except their sense of historical betrayal. Every major social transformation leaves behind a fresh Eden that can serve as the object of somebody’s nostalgia. And the reactionaries of our

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time have discovered that nostalgia can be a powerful political motivation, perhaps even more powerful than hope. Hopes can be disappointed. Nostalgia is irrefutable.18 For the psychotherapist Gary Greenberg, this appeal to nostalgia is integral to populism’s political objectives: He [the populist leader] promises to make the world comprehensible again without the intercession of pointy-headed elites and the nagging of social justice warriors. He urges us all to shake loose the surly bonds of civilised conduct; to make science irrelevant and rationality optional, to render truth obsolete, to set power free to roam the world, to lift all the core conditions written into the social contract – fealty to reason, scepticism about instincts, aspirations to justice. We then, at last, will be restored to the primordial American state of nature – free to consume, to pillage, to destroy, to wall out our neighbours and to hate people for living in shitholes.19 This citation reinforces the point I made earlier that, while populists may be complicit in encouraging a nostalgic reaction to our predicament, they have not conjured it from nothing. In other words, the problem we have is not just with the supply of populism, but with the seemingly inexhaustible demand for it. Indeed, for Cas Mudde, our priority should be not the destruction of populist supply, but the weakening of populist demand.20 Let me be clear why this reference to denialism, and theological-political fiats, is relevant to the theme of this chapter. We noted earlier the claim that the allure of populism would fade when the public realised that it was based on bombast, lies, and deception. However, it is clear that, even if this is true, without something to replace it, something which can emotionally engage us, we will remain vulnerable to its re-emergence in the future. In other words, the problem with the ‘the end of populism is nigh’ analysis is that it underestimates our desperate longing, in a largely secular age, for a message of renewal which promises the restoration of meaning, purpose, identity, community, and in-group solidarity. In other words, populism is powerful because it promises to provide us with the most addictive drug in the world, namely, wellbeing. However, we should note here the disjuncture between what is demanded, and what is being supplied. This returns us to the issue of framing. The strategy of populists is to tap into an utterly amorphous, and ill-defined, feeling of disorientation (hence, the strategy to erase the truth/falsity distinction), loss, and discontent, and frame it in a way which allows them to emerge as the solution to it. The source of hope here is that, while we are open to the offer, we retain a sense, however dim, that it is one which invites us to enter a Faustian pact, one which will have the effect of compounding our misery rather than alleviating it. To be clear, this is not to argue that our demand for meaning and unity can or should be ignored. Far from it. It is, rather, to suggest that a deeper and more fulfilling experience of meaning and unity, and therefore a more sustainable experience of well-being, can only

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be acquired when we reject populism in favour of something less divisive, and in favour of something which will allow us to imagine ourselves as subjects who are living well. However, the concern is that, despite our sense, or intuition, about the offer, or the promise, all too often it is the only one on the table and we are, as a result, prone to accept it. In other words, we are prone to accept a way of being in the world in which we turn away, or turn inwards, or accept easy answers to complex problems, or seek retribution against those who are not responsible for our ills. In short, the concern is that, because of our need, and our longing, for wellbeing, we are, like the drug addict, prone to seek and accept a form of it which is not good for us, which is not good for others, and which is not good for the world. Let me now look in more detail at how populists frame our situation in a way which makes us vulnerable to accept their offer. To repeat, this is not to argue that our need for a sense of unity and meaning is manufactured by populists from nothing. However, the ways we experience loss, the ways we think about its causes, and the ways we imagine solutions to it, are open to a wide range of interpretations. One of these interpretations is articulated around the threat posed by strangers to our community, our values, our identity, and our nation. When she was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May suggested that those who were citizens of the world were ‘citizens of nowhere’. Implicit in this assertion is the belief that a strong sense of where we are from, and a strong sense of ‘home’, is important for our well-being. Also implicit in it is the acknowledgement that, due to the crosswinds of modernity and globalisation, the organic bonds which commit us to each other are fraying at the edges. This is a widely held view in the United Kingdom, and is thought to be one of the primary reasons for the Brexit referendum result. For the academics Eatwell and Goodwin, our fear that something which is important to us is under threat, or that it has already been lost, is one of the reasons why we remain open to the populist offer: [the role of the populist] is to reassert cherished and rooted national identities over rootless and diffuse international ones; to reassert the importance of stability and conformity over the never ending and disruptive instability that flows from globalisation and rapid ethnic change; and to reassert the will of the people over those of elites and liberal democrats who appear increasingly detached from the life experiences and outlooks of the average citizen.21 This view is shared by David Goodhart, who claimed that the reason the populist right prevails at the moment is that it understands that our need for recognition and respect is born of something deeper, something about what it means to be human, something about our need for a secure cultural identity. It is for this reason that he thinks there will always be a limit to our capacity to share with those who are seen as beyond our ‘in-group’.22 A similar, but more starkly nativist, argument was made by Eric Kaufman who claimed that white people should be able to assert their ‘racial self-interest’, and that ‘dignity lies in the ability to control demographic

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change’. There is, he stated, ‘something primordial about ethnic identities. They are a product of our evolved psychology. [Therefore], the desire to assert one’s ethnic identity cannot be denied, so much so that anti-racism constitutes a repression of ethnic instincts. And the repressed always returns’.23 This account about the experience of loss, and the longing for restoration, is accepted by many on the Left. However, for those such as Pankaj Mishra, our sense of disorientation has to be understood in the context of disorderly capitalism, rather than the threat to community posed by immigration. In this context, he noted how a society of entrepreneurial individuals competing in the rational market reveals unplumbed depths of misery and despair, and spawns a nihilistic rebellion against order itself: the many factors ever-present in human lives: the fear, for instance, of losing honour, dignity, and status, the distrust of change, the appeal of stability and familiarity. There was no place in it for the more complex drives: vanity, fear of appearing vulnerable, the need to save face. Obsessed with material progress, the hyper-rationalists ignored the lure of resentment for the left-behind, and the tenacious pleasure of victimhood.24 For Mishra, in order to understand the potency of the populist message, and its capacity to tend to the concerns of the ‘left-behind’, we need to return to the teaching of Rousseau for whom: acts of violence are repudiations of instrumental reasoning in the name of deeper, more visceral, human needs and urges. Rousseau provides us with a more adequate understanding of human nature. It is only when we understand this, will we understand the profound forces which are currently threatening to re-shape the world.25 In response to the claim that, despite the Rousseauian impulses which pump through the veins of the ‘left-behind’, they would reject the siren calls of the populist right, which has so blatantly enriched itself at their expense, the essayist Giovanni Tiso stated that: Populist politics isn’t about facts or truth, much less policy. A populist politician must above all forge a connection with the public; persuade voters that he – and it’s nearly always a he – sees the world the same way they do and speaks the same language as them. Mastering this art is what enabled Berlusconi and Trump, two highly leveraged but nonetheless obscenely rich tycoons, to commune with ordinary people and appear to share in their trials and aspirations.26 For Paul Mason, in countries such as the United States, Hungary, and Poland, an important aspect of the strategy of right-wing populists is to appeal to that part

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of the population which feels that the country’s Judeo-Christian culture is under threat. Or, in his words, to that part of the population which ‘harboured untapped and unchallenged reserves of racism, cruelty and misogyny’.27 Moreover, for Mason, Trump understands that tired people don’t want logic or principles; and they don’t want the kind of freedom that the libertarian right offers. In fact, they fear freedom. What they want is a leader who rises above logic and truth and tells them that all of their inner prejudices are right.28 In response to the suspicion that this appeal is tantamount to a form of fascism, Mason suggests that: this time round, they probably don’t need fascism. Solidarity has been atomised, our belief in collective action eroded, our sense of self hollowed out by the routines of market behaviour, and with that, so has the moral basis of liberalism. If you wanted to choose a moment to unleash at attack on democracy, reinforced by machine control of human behaviour, this would be it.29 In his recent work, Francis Fukuyama noted the role of populist rhetoric in shaping these emotions and impulses.30 He situated his analysis in the context of Plato’s concept of thymos which he interpreted as a ‘kind of third way for a soul instinctively divided between two competing impulses – reason and appetite’. For Fukuyama, thymos is interpreted as the ‘seat of judgements of worth’, a kind of eternal status thermostat which recognises that the satisfaction of our appetites, for example, our appetite for recognition and respect, must take account of the appetite of others who also hunger for recognition and respect. When it does this, when, in other words, it is in balance (isothymia), thymos performs this regulatory rule properly. However, for Fukuyama, the problem we have today is that it is no longer in balance, and no longer able to perform its regulatory role. This is because our appetite for respect has transmuted into something else, namely, the need to be recognised not as equal to others, but as superior to them, what Fukuyama calls ‘megalothymia’: The megalothymic individual or group is dissatisfied with the simple equalities and balancing forces of liberalism: it wants to take big risks, engaging in monumental struggles, seeking large effects, because all of these lead to recognition of oneself as superior to others.31 For Fukuyama, two examples of megalothymia are Trump and Brexit, which he sees as ‘megalothymic backlashes against the isomorphic forces of multiculturalism and international cooperation’.32 The claim that contemporary societies are characterised by ‘megalothymia’ is echoed by Pankaj Mishra in the context of ‘otherness’:

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otherness is used to prop up not just an economic order, but a sense of cultural decline, restoration of a form of well-being, recovery, anyone who can provide it will triumph, in an age of deep division, uncertainty, change, the supplier who can halt the juggernaut of change will triumph, so cultural otherness is used as a way to allow elites to project an image of a threat to homogeneity, in the same way that chaos is used by Trump to further financial ends, but also to bolster cultural stillness, how Jacques Attali, described the veil as the successor to the Berlin Wall.33 For a deeper analysis of our receptivity to the populist promise of restoration, we can turn to an examination of the work of the 20th-century political philosopher, and conservative reactionary, Eric Voegelin, who held to the view that the point at which the history of the West took the wrong turn was when, after the establishment of Christianity, the bond between the divine and the political orders was broken. This fateful rift happened because Christian teaching, following Augustine, distinguished between ‘a transcendent City of God and a terrestrial City of Man’, a theological dictum which culminated with the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a process which, for Voegelin, ‘decapitated God’. For Mark Lilla, this rupture provides us with a vital context to understand what is happening in the contemporary world: Yet the modern liberation of politics from God did not mean the liberation of man from man. Quite the contrary. Though the Enlightenment banned God from the city, it could not abolish the practice of divinisation that had originally given rise to civilisation. What happened in modern Western history after the Enlightenment, in Voegelin’s view, was that human beings began to conceive in sacred terms their own activities, in particular their creation of new political orders free from traditional sources of authority. Modern man became a Prometheus, believing himself to be a god capable of transforming anything and everything at will. ‘When God has become invisible behind the world’ Voegelin said, ‘the things of the world become new gods’. Once this is understood, the true nature of mass ideological movements of the twentieth century – Marxism, fascism, nationalism – become evident: they were all ‘political religions’, complete with prophets, priests, and temple sacrifices. When you abandon the Lord, it is only a matter of time before you start worshipping a Fuhrer…This was how the modern age was born, through a gnostic ‘immanentization of the Christian eschaton’ – that is, the pursuit of the millennium in the political here and now.34 Implicit here is the claim that, for a society to renew itself, it must first go backwards to find where and how it lost its way. In holding to this view, Lilla noted how Voegelin was influenced by the Viennese satirist, Karl Kraus, who said that ‘the origin is the goal’, by which he meant that the point of the future was to

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restore the lost order and harmony of the ancient past. In his essay, ‘The prophets of Trumpism’, the political advisor, Charles Leadbeater, wrote: When, in his presidential inauguration address, Trump spoke of American ‘carnage’, he was echoing Voegelin’s account of decay and disorder. When he talked of ‘one people, one nation, one heart’, he was evoking the kind of order that Voegelin spoke of. Trump and his acolytes see their mission as the need to restore natural order, under which illegal immigrants and aliens are kept well away and white people can feel at home once more in a society where everyone signs up to Judeo-Christian beliefs.35 For Leadbeater, what is also crucial for the populists’ restoration agenda, is to identify a definitive moment in time when the cohesion of the community was ruptured and ripped asunder. In the United States, the time they chose was the 1960s: The culture wars of the 1960s are very much alive for Trump’s acolytes. Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of the alt-right website Breitbart News, blames the counterculture of the 1960s – the drugs, the hippies, the liberal reforms – for America losing its way and, eventually, succumbing to economic crisis in 2008. Bannon set out his ideas in Generation Zero, a 2010 documentary which blamed the financial crash, not on greedy, under-regulated bankers, but on the moral and cultural malaise that started in the 1960s.36 It is clear from the above that there are different ways of thinking about the future of populism. Following Fukuyama, it might be argued that our political and cultural settlement is so profoundly ‘out of balance’, there is nothing we can do to blunt its appeal. A different way of coming to more or less the same conclusion would be to say that populism will remain strong because, however bad for us it may be, in hard and uncertain times, it provides us with a reliable and familiar source of well-being. The alternative interpretation, following Davis, is that populism will inevitably run out of steam, and that good sense will return. In other words, the populist hysteria will subside when it becomes apparent that it does not address any of the grievances which fuel, and sustain, it.37 A fourth response has been articulated by political parties throughout the world which have defined themselves as ‘left-populist’. One of the most significant voices associated with this approach to politics is the political philosopher Chantal Mouffe, who argues that ‘fighting fire with fire’ is the only politically effective way to challenge the populist hegemony established by the Right. However, as we will see, this approach, while well-intentioned and theoretically insightful in many respects, is not the answer to our situation. One reason for this is that it is not an approach which can sustain us in political life, and it is not, therefore, an approach which can lead us to an ethical life, and to a richer experience of well-being.

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Why left-populism is not the solution A populist is, above all, a gifted storyteller, and the recent elections across the world illustrate the power of populism: a false narrative, a horror story about the other, well told.38 In a world that is dominated by democracy and liberalism, populism has essentially become an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism.39 In some ways I feel sorry for racists and religious fanatics because they miss so much about what it means to be human, and deserve a sort of pity. But then I harden my heart, and decide to hate them all the more, because of the misery they inflict and because of the contemptible excuses they advance for doing so.40 One of the most important questions facing the Left today is about how to respond to the inexorable appeal of right-wing populism. However, it is clear that there is little agreement within this ‘broad church’ about what it should do. This lack of agreement is partly because the ideological divisions which preceded the rise of right-wing populism in its contemporary form remain so firmly entrenched. In the United Kingdom, and in many other societies, the primary division is between, on the one hand, the advocates of democratic socialism and, on the other, those more inclined to the social democratic approach. Broadly speaking, the strategy favoured by democratic socialists to challenge the authoritarian/populist right is to adopt a ‘left-populist’ approach. The response of the more pragmatic centre-left, on the other hand, is to pursue a less confrontational, more centrist, or ‘third way’, approach. However, it is worth noting that this latter group acknowledges that the Left must pay more attention to those concerned that globalisation, and unrestricted levels of immigration, are corrosive of good community relations, and inimical to the preservation of national identity. In the contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn, as the recently defeated leader of the Labour Party, in the United Kingdom, candidates from both wings of the party have responded to this concern by articulating the idea of ‘progressive patriotism’ as a way of demonstrating their understanding of the needs of those in their traditional support base. However, while the Left needs to acknowledge the significance of identity and belonging, it is vital that ‘left-populism’ is rejected. In the context of the overall argument of this book, this may seem a surprising position to defend. After all, it is clear that populism draws people to political life perhaps more than any other approach. After the election of the avowedly populist Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom in 2015, its membership swelled to over half a million, making it the biggest party, in terms of membership, in Europe. Moreover, because it is a strategy based on positing a clear frontier between those for and against a politics of equality and social justice, it affords its advocates a strong sense that they are fighting for a good cause, for an ethical cause, for a

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cause which allows for an experience of what I have termed ‘ethical well-being’. Before making the argument about why, despite its capacity to generate political engagement, this approach should be rejected, it is important to provide a more detailed analysis of it. It is also important to examine some of the more significant criticisms of it. While many of these criticisms are valid, the concern here, and this refers to the same problem we noted in the previous chapter in the context of optimism, is that, taken together, the pro and anti left-populist voices constitute a discursive framework which distracts us from acknowledging the most significant problem with populism, namely, that it inhibits the form, the only form, of political engagement which leads to ethical well-being. As with ‘democracy’, the term ‘populism’ is now overused to such an extent, it is easy to lose sight of what it means. However, we can summarise its two core features as follows: Firstly, the most important division in society is an antagonistic one between the ‘people’, understood to be fundamentally good, and the ‘elite’, understood to be fundamentally corrupt and out of touch with everyday life. Second, all populists believe that politics should be an expression of the ‘general will’ of the people – a set of desires presumed to be shared as common sense by all ‘ordinary people’. A populist movement, then, is one that consistently promises to channel the unified will of the people and undercut the self-serving elite establishment.41 Concern about ‘direct democracy’, or the idea that political life should reflect the ‘will of the people’, goes back to the Ancients. Plato, for example, was consumed with trepidation at the thought of the uneducated mob being allowed a role in the life of the polis, a fear which has echoed down the ages. During the Renaissance period, Machiavelli warned of the danger of the people becoming ‘promoters of licence’, while Montesquieu expressed concern about the implications of a ‘spirit of extreme equality’. Perhaps the best-known exponent of this fear of ‘people power’ in the history of political thought is Edmund Burke who, on witnessing the events of the French Revolution, remained haunted by the capacity and willingness of the majority to inflict the cruellest of oppressions on those deemed to be its enemies. In order to contain the violent and irrational emotional outbursts of the mob against the ‘enemies of the people’, liberal thought, inspired by Locke, formulated constitutions designed specifically to ensure that populist demagoguery, and majoritarianism, be deemed unlawful. In the United States, this attempt to limit the scope of popular sovereignty, ironically enough, led to the emergence of the first populist party under Andrew Jackson who, inspired by Rousseau, believed that it was only when the voice of people was heard that America’s destiny as the City on the Hill could be secured. However, one concern with this Jacksonian assertion is that it failed to heed the warning that ‘democracies end when they become too democratic’.42 In other words, when democracy is conflated with the

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putative will of a majority of the people, its role as a guarantor of liberal values is eroded: Modern democracies all rest on a claim of popular sovereignty – the proposition that all legitimate governments grow out of the power of the people, and in some way are subject to its will. Yet, when a large majority of a country’s people vehemently supports policies a critic finds abhorrent, many liberals, even avowed democrats, recoil in horror.43 A further question to ask here is whether the idea of an authentic ‘will of the people’ is remotely intelligible or meaningful. For Joseph Schumpeter, the answer to this question is an emphatic No. In response to the emergence of populism, he argued that what we are confronted with is not a genuine, but a manufactured will, a will described by Peter Baker as ‘an alien bacteria which has slipped through democracy’s defence, and brought to the boil by charismatic politicians hawking impossible promises’.44 In The Phantom Republic, Walter Lippmann provided what remains one of the most brutal criticisms of populism: The individual man does not have opinions on public affairs. He does not know how to direct public affairs. He does not know what is happening, why it is happening, or what ought to happen. I cannot imagine how he could know, and there is not the least reason for thinking, as mythical democrats have thought, that the compounding of individual ignorances in masses of people can produce a continuous directing force in public affairs.45 One suspects that this way of seeing things was not uncommon at this time. Indeed, one suspects that it is a view which is not without adherents today. However, while offensive, in rejecting it, we must, at the same time, remain alert to how populists’ use of inflammatory language can, within the ‘individual man’, whip up emotions and incite violence. Indeed, this is precisely the scenario we are witnessing today in the United States, Brazil, India, China, Hungary, Italy, and elsewhere. In light of this threat to democratic life, the appeal of left-populism is clear. Two reasons for this can be noted. The first is that, while maintaining the ‘people/elite’ frontier, it casts the adversary of the people, not as the liberal elite, but as the economic elite, or the oligarchy. While many of those who feel left behind by globalisation care little for so-called liberal elites, there is a visceral hatred for oligarchs, tax avoiders, and other parasites on the public purse, and it is not surprising, therefore, that the populist message resonates strongly in this constituency. Secondly, this binary framing of the division in society between economic elites and ‘the people’ is acceptable to many on the Left because it is not based explicitly on an appeal to race or ethnicity. John Judis has argued that the difference between right-wing and left-wing populism in this respect is that the former is triadic while the latter is dyadic.46 By this he means that, while the Right always points to the immigrant

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as the figure whose interests are prioritised, the Left sustains its argument without recourse to ‘playing the race card’: One result [of the triumph of the Right] has been the rise of popular movements in which a majority of ordinary citizens has embraced a narrow conception of solidarity and rallied around a leader who claims to embody the will of such a closed community.47 However, even if we can exonerate the Left from the charge of racism and xenophobia, history tells us that it is equally capable of making false promises, manipulating public opinion, whipping up emotions, encouraging damaging cultural divides, and inciting violence. Moreover, it can be argued that, when the Left engages in populism, it enters onto a terrain of contestation on which it is bound to lose. For example, the right-wing populist, Steve Bannon, said that ‘republicans couldn’t get enough of the left’s race-identity politics, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got em…I want them to talk about it every day’.48 However, the real danger here for the Left is that, when it fails to heed the advice of Michelle Obama that ‘when they go low, you should go high’, it has the effect of ratcheting up the hate and reaction on the other side for which no floor is too low. In response to this, it might be hoped that, no matter how disoriented and angry sections of the people become, there is a limit to how far they will follow the hate-mongers into the gutter. Well, maybe. However, in response to this, it should be noted that our need to avoid humiliation, and to hold tight to a familiar way of seeing the world, means that we will continue to lend support to populists, even when we know they are intent on causing us harm: the Enlightenment call to elevate reason above emotion has run aground. One interesting aspect of his [William Davies] argument links ageing, pain and bodily decline to our capacity to inflict pain and distress to others even when it will not address the source of our own maladies. He claims that it is ‘better to be the perpetrator of harm than always to be the victim, even if it is harm to oneself’.49 The journalist Gary Younge has argued that, in order to take on the populists on the Right, one of the priorities of the Left should be to expose the myth that they are above playing the ‘identity politics’ game: It is not difficult to see why the right has a problem with this. Their agenda is centred on preserving and extending privileges which already exist. Denigrating equal rights campaigners as ‘grievance politics’ practitioners, the irony is that they practice the very methods they lampoon. Railing against liberal elites, feminists, migrants and Muslims, they have cornered the market in victimhood. Trump’s presidential campaign made an unvarnished appeal to White, Christian Americans, – what is that if not an identity?50

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Younge is right to point to this deliberately overseen ‘blind spot’ of the Right. However, for reasons outlined above in the context of denialism, it is not clear that, in exposing it, anything much will change. This is because, within sections of the populist right, there is a sense that it is engaged in an existential struggle for the survival of a culture under siege: anyone who thinks they can disarm fascism by giving it oxygen has fundamentally failed to grasp the nature of its pathology. There is no reasoning with people who believe themselves to be engaged in a zero-sum demographic struggle for existence. They consider race as existential. Conservatives who espouse racial tolerance are seen as complicit in a quiet campaign of genocide by encouraging non-white immigration, interracial relationships, low white birth rates, racial guilt, and the denigration of white culture.51 Despite these concerns, a significant body of thought on the contemporary left remains of the view that the realisation of a more progressive form of politics requires the articulation of a populist appeal to the people. One of the advocates of this view is Chantal Mouffe. I want to examine her work because it is the most theoretically sophisticated justification of this strategy. It has also been influential in informing the approach of political parties in the United Kingdom, France, and elsewhere, and it is for this reason, above all, that it should be challenged. For Mouffe, one of the most important points to make about left-populism is that it is a strategy, and not an ideology. In response to this claim, Cas Mudde and Cristobal Kaltwasser, who are two of the most significant commentators on contemporary populism, argued that, despite Mouffe’s claim, populism must be understood as a ‘thin ideology’. In saying this, they meant that, in order to survive, populism has to attach itself to a more substantial host ideology, and that this ideology can be located anywhere along the left–right spectrum. This means that the question of who belongs in which group (the people or the elite) depends entirely on the character of the populist movement, and to which thick ideology it ends up being attached. For Mudde and Kaltwasser, this thin-centred, or ideational, way of thinking about populism is important because it allows us to see it as something which awaits being ‘fattened’ by an ideological act of framing which separates ‘the people’ from whichever set of elites has been designated as its adversary, foe, or enemy. They argued that understanding populism in this way allows us to see how it provides ‘a mental map through which individuals analyse and comprehend political reality’.52 For Peter Baker, this definition of populism as a ‘thin ideology’ is accepted by nearly all of the academic approaches to the subject. However, he pointed to Chantal Mouffe as one of the few theorists who remains adamantly unwilling to accept the ‘populism as ideology’ view, even in its thin form. In her 2018 book, Mouffe was clear on this point when she stated that ‘it [populism] is not an ideology, and cannot be attributed a specific programmatic content. Nor is it a political regime. It is a way of doing politics’.53 Moreover, she said that ‘if Jeremy Corbyn should ever win

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an election, he is not going to establish a populist regime, but one of democratic socialism’.54 Why is Mouffe so emphatic in her rejection of the ideology label? This is important for the critique I develop below so let me be clear about how I see her position on this question. For Baker, part of the explanation for her position is as follows: [For Mouffe], defining populism in terms of core beliefs is a deep methodological error. For Mouffe, talk of an essence of populism – however thin, shades too easily into a charge of guilt by association, which inevitably has the effect of saddling left-wing populist movements with the baggage of their right-wing counterparts.55 However, while this is part of the explanation, there is a more significant reason why, for Mouffe, the idea of ‘populism as ideology’ should be rejected; a reason which is less to do with its association with right-wing counterparts, and more to do with its association with consensus politics, and more to do with her emphatic rejection of the view that the idea of ‘a people’ can be defined ahistorically. In respect of this latter point, the important point for Mouffe is that it is ‘through representation that collective political subjects are created; they do not exist beforehand’.56 Thus, the problem with the ‘populism as ideology’ thesis lies is its implication of a people as a homogenous bloc, rather than a contingent gathering of subjects who happen to share a commitment to resist the injustices imposed on them by capitalism, and neo-liberalism. Why is it important to resist discourses of homogeneity and consensus, and promote those based on contingency, heterogeneity, and anti-essentialism? For Mouffe, it is because the former threatens to annihilate the conditions of existence, not just for democratic socialism, but for meaningful political life in any form, namely, adversaries and frontiers. John Morgan has described Mouffe’s thinking around this question as follows: To have a real purchase on people’s desires, democratic politics must have a partisan character and it must recognise the people’s yearning to share in collective identities. Consensus politics would provide fertile ground for rightwing populists who would replace the left-right opposition with a new type of we/they opposition.57 Let me be clear about what is at stake here. Mouffe’s argument is that, without the existence of a frontier to give meaning to what it means to be on the right and the left, the desires, passions, and emotions, which are integral to human life will find expression in nativist and ethnocentric discourses. To understand Mouffe’s insistence on this point, it is important to appreciate the extent to which her outlook is informed by the work of Freud. In a celebrated exchange of letters in 1931–1932, Albert Einstein asked Freud whether it was possible to control man’s mental

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evolution so as to make him proof against the psychosis of hate and destructiveness. Freud replied that ‘there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies. We are ruled by instincts, Eros and Thanatos, forces of creation and destruction’.58 For Mouffe, this is important because if we fail to understand the ‘irrational’ side of human nature, we abandon the territory on which we must engage right-wing adversaries, and we allow them free rein to invite the people to invest, or discharge, their libidinal energies in undemocratic, and nativist, discourses. It is for this reason that she favours the more deconstructive approach to politics articulated by, for example, Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, over the deliberative approach associated with Habermas: The problem with ‘deliberative democracy’ is that it views reason and rational argumentation, instead of interest and the aggregation of preferences, as the central issue of politics…it conceives of political questions as being of a moral nature and therefore susceptible of being decided rationally.59 Mouffe’s insistence on this point is why she argues that it is vital for the Left to acknowledge the importance of issues such as national identity and immigration, and why it must not allow the Right to establish ownership of them: Only a left-wing populism can emotionally connect with voters whose need for collective identity may otherwise lead them into support for right wing populists, potentially delivering a hegemonic power shift…the Left is too rationalistic and wrongly thinks that mobilising emotions is something only fascists do…while we need international cooperation to defeat neoliberalism, a left populist strategy cannot ignore the strong libidinal investment at work in national or regional forms of identification and it would be very risky to abandon this terrain to right wing populism…a group is clearly held together by a power of some kind; and to what power could this feat be better ascribed than to Eros, which holds together everything in the world.60 It is also for this reason that she is critical of the attempts by centrist politicians to demonise those for whom national identity is important: Classifying right-wing populist parties as ‘extreme-right’ or ‘neo-fascist’ and attributing their appeal to a lack of education is of course especially convenient for the forces of the centre-left. It is an easy way to disqualify them, without recognising the centre-left’s own responsibility in such an emergence. By establishing a ‘moral frontier’ so as to exclude the ‘extremists’ from the democratic debate, the ‘good democrats’ believe that they can stop the rise of ‘irrational’ passions. Such a strategy of demonization of the ‘enemies’ of the bipartisan consensus can be morally comforting but it is politically disempowering….I do not deny that there are people who feel perfectly at home

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with those reactionary values, but I am convinced there are others who are attracted to those parties because they feel that they are the only ones that care about their problems. I believe that, if a different language is made available, many people might experience their situation in a different way and join the progressive struggle.61 For Cas Mudde, the problem with Mouffe’s left-populist account is that it misdiagnoses the nature of the Left’s predicament: At least since the beginning of the new century, a debate has been raging about how to respond to right-wing populism – largely between those who regard it as the product of economic anxiety and those who see it as a form of cultural backlash. But both sides have the prescription wrong; if social democracy is to survive, its politicians need to return to their core values – rather than chasing a mirage that looks like their former core voters. The key to reviving social democracy is to embrace its fundamental ideas and policies – egalitarianism, social justice, solidarity, the right to social protection and a comprehensive welfare state. These values represented a widely shared common sense for the vast majority of Europeans in the second half of the 20th century – before their hegemony was eroded by three decades of neoliberal ideas and politics. The only way back for social democracy is to fight to make these values dominant again.62 For Mudde, Mouffe’s analysis is damaging because it has led to the acceptance of the idea that, if it is to be electorally successful in the future, the Left must mimic the nativist call which is more commonly associated with the Right: The argument that a tougher stand on immigration will revive the social democratic parties – and arrest the rise of the radical right – is based on two basic errors, which together reflect a larger misunderstanding about the historic role of centre-left parties. The first mistake is the assumption that the rise of rightwing populism and the decline of centre-left parties are two sides of the same coin – both caused by working class voters abandoning the old social democrats for the nativist message of the populists. The second misperception is that the voters who support the populist right are largely the white working class which used to reliably vote for social democratic parties. As the data shows, both assumptions stand on loose empirical footing. In fact, most populist radical right voters are not working class and the majority of the working class does not support the radical populist right.63 Implicit in Mudde’s critique is the claim that the problem with Mouffe’s analysis is that it is overly reliant on a Freudian reading which priorities the significance of Eros. For him, the strategy of the Left should be to appeal to ‘the people’ on the basis of its capacity to invest its energies in a less libidinous way:

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[the priority of the Left] is to make an egalitarian ideology based on solidarity with all socially weaker groups and individuals irrespective of class, race, or sexuality and to integrate the precariat into a broader movement for economic and social justice built on socio-economic interest rather than ethno-nationalist interest.64 A similar critique of Mouffe’s appeal to Freud was articulated by William Davies: What distinguishes left from right is that the ‘people’ is structured democratically rather than on the basis of nation or race. With good strategic leadership, a radically democratic or egalitarian movement can be a match for nativism, but she offers no guidance as to how left populism can fight and succeed, nor any reassurance that it will. If politics is the naming of enemies, the right start with huge advantages, and when the left starts to play this game, isn’t there a risk that certain aspects of fascism (such as antisemitism) start to creep into its programme?65 In response to my question in a recent London School of Economics seminar about left-populism, Michael Ignatieff expressed a similar reservation. More specifically, he argued that there is no evidence anywhere of a successful coalition against the oligarchy which has been constructed and maintained in the way advocated by left-populists. More damningly, for Jan Werner-Müller, the concern with the ‘left-populist’ approach is that ‘it excludes anyone who does not support it as traitors. Moreover, they see themselves as the sole representatives of a virtuous people. They are not just anti-elitist, but anti-pluralist as well’.66 As indicated, while this dialogue between the advocates and critics of left-populism is important, the problem with it is that it distracts us from understanding populism in a wider theoretical context. More specifically, it overlooks how political life must be understood in the context of passion and reason. We can consider this concern in more detail in the context of consensus politics. In a recent intervention, Terry Eagleton noted the following: ‘not all uniformity is pernicious. Neither is all unity or consensus to be demonised as essentialist. On the contrary, a great deal more of it would be thoroughly welcome’.67 As we have seen, for Mouffe, the danger of consensus, or the danger of a world without adversaries and political frontiers, is that it deprives the left of its distinctive identity and, as a result, the people will invest their libidinal energies elsewhere. However, conceived in a non-universalist way, consensus is not a threat to the Left, or to political life, in the way Mouffe imagines. Far from it. My claim here is that, following Eagleton, more consensus is precisely what the Left needs. Consensus about what though? Certainly not that there is only one way of seeing things, or that there is only one way of thinking about the world which can then be imposed on others. While I have some concerns about the dangers of consensus, it remains important that we preserve a space for it which allows us to understand that there are certain things about which we can and should agree. One of them is about the

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damage caused to us by divided societies. To be clear, I understand the importance of acknowledging the divisions in society; the important divisions which populists on the right try to conceal. I also understand that mobilisation around these divisions is an important and integral part of the strategy of the Left. Moreover, and this is crucial, I also understand the importance to politics of emotions, identities, passions, needs, irrational forces, libido, Eros, and all the rest of what it is that makes us who we are. The important point for Mouffe is that we can only make sense of these forces, and we can only be effective in promoting the values of the Left, in the context of a particular form of politics; one defined by frontiers,68 and adversaries. In holding to this view, she might be right. However, when we think like this, the danger is that we lose sight of something important, something which might also be right. I refer here to how, when we come together to engage in a form of political life informed, not by frontiers and adversaries, but by an aspiration to universal solidarity, and love, we experience passion and emotion in a different way, in a way which is no less potent, in a way which allows us to see everything differently, in a way, following Arendt, which allows for something new to come into the world. This is not to say that difference will or should be overcome, and it is not to say that we will or should be bound together in a homogenous and uncritical unity. In other words, it is not a form of rational consensus which threatens political life. In an earlier chapter, I noted how Arendt’s concern for political life had the effect of limiting our capacity to see it as an activity which can allow us to emerge as ethical subjects. In one sense at least, my concern with the work of Mouffe is the same, namely, that her aesthetic approach to political life, to which I am broadly sympathetic, prevents us from creating something new; something which can reveal to us that, despite our differences, there is much about which we can agree. A similar concern is raised as a result of the priority afforded by left-populism to identity politics. As we have seen, there is considerable disquiet on the Left about the ethical and strategic implications of this strategy. It should be clear that I am not for a moment equating left-populism with the strategy of the right, which is precisely to foment racial, ethnic, and class division. I am also not disputing Mouffe’s theorisation of identity in the context of a ‘constitutive outside’, and I am certainly not suggesting that we should dispense with the categories of left and right. In other words, as indicated, I understand that identity is an integral aspect of political life. Moreover, in many respects, it is an important one. I am thinking here of the need of marginalised groups for recognition, for solidarity, and, not least, for protection. A lot is said about how identity politics is a difficult issue for the Left because of its capacity to dilute the salience of class struggle. For Mouffe, a different challenge is noted, namely, to ensure that we do not neglect the specificity of those who come together in a coalition, or ‘chain of equivalence’, to express resistance to economic oppression. We have also noted how, for Mouffe, it is important that the Left does not concede to the Right the territory on which identity claims are contested. However, in acknowledging these points, my concern about identity politics is that it leads, inexorably, to the unleashing of

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emotions which inhibits our capacity to imagine a future in which particularities can be experienced in ways which are less divisive. This is significant in the context of Mouffe’s insistence on resisting the ‘populism as ideology’ categorisation. This is because, even if her claim is accepted, it remains the case that populism has ideological consequences. The concern here is that, while its theoretically sophisticated advocates can maintain critical distance from the emotions it generates, this may not be possible for those whose lives are defined more explicitly by the imagery of adversaries and frontiers which populist rhetoric sustains. A further concern, and this relates specifically to the central theme of the book, is that when we keep the people trapped in an emotional maelstrom without the means to make sense of it, they are denied the possibility of assuming a more genuinely empowering political identity which allows for a glimpse of a more ethical world defined less by reaction and disunity, and more by solidarity and love.

Conclusion and link to next chapter My argument in this chapter has been that populism inhibits our capacity to imagine, and to realise, a new and more ethically sustainable form of political life. This is an important argument because, if the damage it inflicts on us is not acknowledged, we will be unable to challenge it. But how is this to be done? I accept that that we cannot expect a vibrant culture of civic engagement to emerge at any time in the near future. Trust in politics, including democratic politics, is low, and there is a general mood of fatalism which pervades societies all over the world. This is not to say that all political life has died. In some ways, the opposite is true. Politics is everywhere, and never before have we been more politicised as a global community. However, much of the political activity we witness today will not lead us to ethical life and well-being. Indeed, it will have the reverse effect. This is because, rather than promoting a vision of a more ethical future, it is an activity which deepens the divides between us, and stokes the flames of anger and resentment which prevent us from coming together in a spirit of love, recognition, and solidarity. It is important that the arguments I have made in this chapter are not interpreted to mean that we should abandon radical politics, or that we should be anything less than robust in our denunciation of the institutions and practices which deform our politics, and which sustain grotesque levels of inequality and corruption. In light of these manifest injustices, I understand the appeal of a strategy of left-populism, and I accept that its advocates are fully and genuinely committed to their eradication. I also acknowledge that this strategy can lead to positive change, and to reform, in many instances. In criticising populism, my intention has not been to disparage its advocates. Far from it. It has been, rather, to draw attention to how it inhibits the emergence of a political subjectivity which would be more securely bound to the pursuit of ethical life and justice. In the next chapter, I examine another barrier to ethical life, one closely aligned with political populism, namely, cultural populism, or escapism.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8

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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

E. Shafak, (6.5.2019). T. Lott, (25.7.2019). L. Stonebridge, (28.3.2019). E. Davis, (2018:140). E. Davis, (2018:140). N. Klein, (10.6.2017). Paul Mason has also written about how the invocation of chaos has been utilised by populists in the United States. The threats he invoked include jihadi terrorism, China (with whom Steve Bannon has predicted war), Mexican immigration, ‘black crime’, and the US national debt. But since none of those threats has actually mobilised masses of Americans to stage a revolution, there was always the ultimate option – to fabricate something. What Bannon fabricated was the chaos of the Trump presidency. Once it started, it didn’t need Bannon’s guiding hand for long. Bannon got himself kicked out of the White House and switched to amplifying the impact of Trump’s chaos strategy across the Western world, by attempting to build an alliance of ethno-nationalists committed to destroying the European Union (P. Mason, 2019:27). While, in theory at least, Russia maintains the structures, institutions, and procedures characteristic of democracy, it is, in practice, a kleptocracy. See, for example, K. Dawisha, (2014). As indicated, in referring to political experience in this way I am describing a form of engagement which is different to that promoted by populism. It is a form of political experience which is informed by thought, by philosophy, and which is motivated to realise an ethical world in which a deeper experience of well-being is realisable for all citizens. N. Chomsky, cited in T. Eagleton, (3.4.2006). It should be noted that not all forms of right-wing populism are the same in terms of how this strategy is pursued. In other words, at least for now, what happens in, for example, Russia, the Philippines, Hungary, Italy, and Turkey is different, and worse, to what happens in the United Kingdom. H. Arendt, cited in M. Kakutani, (14.7.2018). Document in form of a memo from Brown and Williamson, a then-subsidiary of British American Tobacco. K. Kahn-Harris, (3.8.2018). K. Joshi, (8.1.2019). K. Kahn-Harris, (3.8.2018). M. Lilla, (2016:88). M. Lilla, (2016:91–92). M. Lilla, (2016:91). M. Lilla, (2016:xiv). G. Greenberg, (12.10.2018). C. Mudde, (14.5.2019). M. Goodwin and R. Eatwell, cited in W. Davies, (17.11.2018). D. Goodhart, (2017). E. Kaufman, cited in K. Malik, (21.10.2018). P. Mishra, (8.12.2016). S. Collini, (2017). G. Tiso, (2017). P. Mason, (2019:29). P. Mason, (2019:21). P. Mason, (2019:34). F. Fukuyama, cited in T. Adams, (16.9.2018).

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38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66

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F. Fukuyama, (16.9.2018). F. Fukuyama, (16.9.2018). P. Mishra, (15.8.2009). M. Lilla, (2016:31–37). C. Leadbeater, (28.3.2017). C. Leadbeater, (28.3.2017). A different response was articulated by Slavoj Žižek who, following Georges Sorel, argued that our strategy must be to forego conventional political life, and to embrace revolutionary violence in order to cleanse our souls of the stain of bourgeois capitalist culture. However, he acknowledged that the prospect of liberation is not good. This is because of our fixation on what he calls second order questions such as ‘Trump or Clinton, Leave or Remain [in context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom in 2016], Assad or Isis, burkini or bared breasts?’ For Žižek, the problem is that we are ‘fiddling with ourselves while Rome burns’. See W. Self, (29.04.2017). S. Mehta, (27.8.2019). C. Mudde and C.R. Kaltwasser, (2017:10). C. Hitchens, (2001:109). P. Baker, (10.1.2019). A. Sullivan, (2.5.2016). J. Miller, (10.7.2018). P. Baker, (10.1.2019). J. Miller, (10.7.2018). Y. Mounk, (19.7.2017). J. Miller, (10.7.2018). T. Egan, (25.8.2017). W. Davies, cited in J. Thomas-Corr, (13.9.2018). G. Younge, (5.10.2018). G. Hawley, (23.3.2019). C. Mudde and C.R. Kaltwasser, (2017:6–8). C. Mouffe, (2018:11). C. Mouffe, cited in J. Morgan, (4.4.2019). P. Baker, (10.1.2019). C. Mouffe, (2018:56). C. Mouffe, cited in J. Morgan, (4.4.2019). J. Gray, (21.10.2014). A similar argument was made by the writer Bret Easton Ellis: ‘politics cannot solve the dark heart of humanity’s problems, and the lawlessness of our sexuality. Neither can it heal the deep contradictory rifts and the cruelty, the passion and the fraudulence, that factor into what it means to be human’ (25.4.2019). C. Mouffe, (1999). C. Mouffe, (2018:71). C. Mouffe, (2018:22). I acknowledge that the mainstream centre-left has to accept some responsibility for the legitimisation of hostility to migration. I also agree with Mouffe, and this is crucial, about the importance of the need for a new language to be made available. However, this cannot be the language of further divides and retrenchment. Rather, while resisting an overly consensual view of politics, it should be a form of language which seeks to articulate a vision of political life as something which is necessary for all of us if we are to experience ethical life and well-being. C. Mudde, (14.5.2019). C. Mudde, (14.5.2019). C. Mudde, (14.5.2019). W. Davies, (7.7.2018). J.W. Mueller, (21.2.2019).

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67 T. Eagleton, (2016:33). 68 Perhaps it is possible to imagine the frontier, not as something which is external to us, such as that which distinguishes the people from the elite, but as something which is internal, or interior, as something which is constituted by an act of memory. One of the central claims of the book is that, after experience of political and ethical life, we emerge with a different sense of our ourselves, and with a different sense of the duties and responsibilities we owe to others. The question at stake here is whether our memory of our earlier lives, our lives before we had experience of ourselves as ethical subjects, is a sufficiently robust ‘constitutive outside’ to sustain us in our new identity.

Chapter 5

Escapism

The argument I make in this chapter is that we are living in a ‘cultural skin’ which has hardened and coarsened into something that inhibits the realisation of a more reflective, thoughtful, critical, and considered life. As a result, ethical life, and the experience of well-being that accompanies it, are denied. In my previous book, I wrote about how culture, understood in the context of art, music, and poetry, was important for empathy and ethical life, and I remain committed to this view.1 However, it is possible to understand culture in a different way: as a way of life, a disposition, a mood, or simply as a way of thinking. To say that culture has estranged us from something vital for ethical life and well-being is not new. In some form or other, it was the view which informed the work of Marx, Weber, the Frankfurt School, as well as many on the Right of politics. However, while our condition in the early years of the 21st century is different to that of earlier times, the ‘problem of culture’ remains with us. There are two responses to this argument which should be noted. The first is that it is not true to say that we live in this thoughtless and unreflective way. This is because, in the entire history of humankind, we have never been more thoughtful, or less estranged from that part of us that seeks to understand our world, and to engage in it. The second concern accepts that we have become thoughtless and disengaged. However, the claim here is that there is nothing that can be done about it. The reason for this, it is argued, is that a thoughtless way of being in the world reflects the unalterable reality of our psychology that leads us to value emotions over the examined life. The structure of what follows in the first part of this chapter examines these two responses. I begin by defending the claim that, while it might be true that we have never been more thoughtful, the ‘withdrawal from thought’ hypothesis must be acknowledged. This is important because, if we don’t acknowledge and understand our condition, we won’t be able to do anything about it. I then argue that, while it will be difficult to establish a more thoughtful way of being in the world, it remains possible if the right strategy is adopted. In this context, I look at the work of Daniel Kahneman which examines why our slower, more thoughtful, ‘system two’ way of being in the world remains subordinate to our more emotionally engaged, fast, ‘system one’ mode. In the third section of the chapter, I distinguish my argument from that of the cultural pessimists on the

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Right of the political spectrum. This is important because, while it is important to acknowledge that we are living through bleak times, the conclusions of this group of thinkers must be rejected.

Withdrawing from the world of thought It should be clear that my argument is not that we have stopped thinking altogether, or that we have completely withdrawn from the world in order to, following Voltaire, ‘cultivate our gardens’. Far from it. However, while it is true that we have never been more informed, or had more time and opportunity to engage in thought about politics, and much else besides, it is also true that, for the most part at least, the way we think about ourselves, about our relationship to others, about political life, and about the world, is not philosophically, or critically, informed. If this is accepted, the question which follows is whether this is necessarily a bad thing. After all, as Freud reminded us, ‘too much thought gravely undermines group life and that, past a certain threshold, no society can survive it’.2 In saying this, Freud was surely right. More specifically, he was right to claim that too much critical thought undermines the myths and stories we need in order to retain a commitment to each other. Moreover, it is also true that too much thought is inimical to our individual well-being. Thus, while it can illuminate our lives, and bring us pleasure, and while it is essential in order for us to function effectively in society, too much of it is exhausting and debilitating, especially when it is focussed on our mortality, or when it reminds us of what we do to each other, or the damage we continue to inflict on the environment, or the unspeakable suffering we continue to impose on other forms of life. Popular discourse around the question of our disengagement from thought tends to focus on tabloid, or celebrity, culture, or the technology revolution which has bequeathed to us the wonders of the internet and social media. There is a significant literature on the effect that this technology has had on us as individuals, and on what it means for the cohesiveness, and the politics, of our societies in the future. The most damning criticism of it is that, rather than bringing us together in the way the term ‘social media’ implies, its effect is to cast us adrift of each other, to harden our ‘identity shells’, to depoliticise us, and to render us prisoners of virtual worlds, devoid of books, and devoid of the contact we need with each other if we are to flourish. While this reaction may seem overwrought, or slightly hysterical, there is little doubt that this technology, while having significant potential for good in many respects, inhibits our capacity for critical thinking. Even if this is rejected, it is difficult to share Marshall McLuhan’s hope that advanced technology will lead to the emergence of a ‘benign global village’. However, the debate about technology, while important and necessary, distracts us from acknowledging other potentially more significant barriers to the world of thought. Some of these barriers can be understood in the context of the demands of our emotional lives. Before examining them, it should be clear that my argument is not that emotional life is the enemy of thought, or that it is destructive of ethical life. Far

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from it. This is because, as I have explained, emotional experience constitutes an important stage on our journey to ethical subjectivity. However, as we will see, a problem arises when the balance between our emotional lives, and our ‘thinking lives’, the balance which must be sustained if we are to live well with each other, is disrupted. The analysis begins with an examination of identity and ‘emotional intensity’. I then look at three other ways in which we have become unbalanced, namely, by withdrawing into the world of work, into mindfulness, and into a culture of ‘forgetting’.

Identity and the search for intensity In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche warned what would happen to human beings when they realised that there is no God. This realisation, he argued, would be catastrophic for our happiness and well-being. Perhaps it is for this reason that we hold so resolutely to faith, and why we remain determined to maintain a safe distance from the world of thought; a world which reminds us, in the most unrelenting and unsparing way, of our predicament. In the previous chapter, we looked at how identity is manufactured and sustained by populists. However, our need for identity is fundamental, and it is significant beyond the context of populism. There is a significant literature on the topic of identity, and it is not my intention to examine it in detail here. I raise it only to ask a different question, namely, whether one of the reasons we cling tightly to our identities is that, as with faith, they provide us with a space to withdraw from thought. The problem with posing the question in this way is that it is not clear that the feelings and emotions promoted and sustained by identity can be separated from thought quite so easily. Perhaps a better way of thinking about the relationship between feelings, emotions, and thoughts is to say that type of emotions generated by identity claims inhibits the type of thought which is necessary for ethical life. We can consider this question in more detail in the context of the cultural polarisation which is now a reality in all societies. This polarisation is typically understood in the context of ethnicity, class, the aspirations we have for our families, how we understand our obligations to society, and what we consider to be culturally worthwhile. For those on the Left, these divisions are typically understood as symptomatic of a dysfunctional economic system. For those on the Right, difference tends to be seen as the result of something which is natural, or innate, and, therefore, unalterable. Whatever interpretation is favoured, it is clear that societies which are disfigured by these cultural fault lines are not conducive to well-being. This is the view of David Isaac, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the United Kingdom, who argued that, while identity politics has been hugely important in advancing the civil rights of many groups, there is a danger that ‘individual interests are narrowing people’s views and diminishing their connection to wider society’.3 This is also the view of the journalist, Douglas Murray, who argues that ‘in public and in private, both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like

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and simply unpleasant’.4 For Murray, the embrace and defence of identity claims around, for example, ethnicity, and gender, is irrational because the conditions which led to the oppression and persecution of ethnic minorities and women have been eradicated. His argument is that, despite the eradication of these conditions, these identities persist because people enjoy the drama of the struggle for equality, and the attention it affords them. Commenting on the work of Murray, William Davies wrote the following: The decline of ideologies at the end of the 20th century created a vacuum of meaning, which was waiting to be filled. This coincided with the birth of a whole range of critical cultural studies, race studies and queer studies. Most damagingly of all, for Murray, was the rise of intersectional feminism which assumes that different types of oppression (especially racial and patriarchal) tend to ‘intersect’ with each other and reinforce one another. The bitter irony, as far as Murray is concerned, is that these new theories of oppression arose at the precise moment in human history when actual racism, sexism and homophobia had evaporated.5 While William Davies is scathing of Murray’s attack on the identity claims of these groups, he agrees that there has been a shift in contemporary society in terms of how we understand the relationship between reason and emotion. For Davies, the origins of this shift lie in the Enlightenment’s legacy of a culture underpinned by the principles of reason, progress, and logic. He argued that the problem here is that this way of seeing the world does not reflect how the world feels to many people and, as a result, they seek refuge elsewhere in a world beyond facts, mathematics, logic, and conventional expertise: The hostility directed towards experts stems from a deep-lying sense that, in their attention to mathematical laws and models, they are not really interested in individual people, their desires, fears and lives. Facebook doesn’t suffer the same alienation because its ‘front end’ and ‘backend’ are so utterly different. Its users express themselves in their own words and feelings.6 Implicit here is the idea that the more we privilege reason, objectivity, and progress, the more alienated people become because this narrative fails to reflect the reality of their lives. Into this emotional maelstrom, enter populism which, like nationalism, does not arise unbidden, but occurs when emotions such as fear, anxiety, and, ‘I would suggest, loneliness, can find no democratic voice’.7 I accept, with Davies, that we must accept that discourses about, for example, meritocracy, equality, and progress, do not equate in any shape or form to the lived experience of many people who have every right to be angry, and resentful, on the grounds that they do not feel valued, they do not feel recognised, and they continue to be subject to discrimination. Therefore, in arguing that emotions can inhibit critical thought, my point is certainly not to dismiss the emotions and feelings experienced

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by those in this situation as irrational, or unjustified. Neither is it to say that this angry and intense experience of emotional life is unconsciously desired because it provides an escape from thought. The point, rather, is that the effect of being in the world in this way is a widening of the distance between our emotional lives and our thinking lives. This is important because when we are caught in a maelstrom of hurt, anger, and pain, we are unable to step back from it to allow for more critical reflection on the damage being inflicted on us. However, my more substantive point here is that those of us who have no genuine reason to feel beleaguered, or oppressed, or discriminated against, should desist from lashing out at those whose genuine anger they can barely begin to imagine. To be clear, my argument is not that we should only respect the identities of those who are oppressed. However, privileged members of society such as Douglas Murray should accept that they have an additional responsibility to wear their identities more lightly, to manage their emotions more carefully, and to reflect more critically on the damage they inflict to others, to society, and to themselves, when they rage against those whose anger is far more genuine and justified. We can think about the question of identity and intensity in a different way. In The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession, Tristan Garcia imagines the world of thought, and our search for emotional intensity, existing in a relation of profound tension. More specifically, in this work he suggests that thought lacks intensity or, more worryingly, that it ‘nullifies life’. The question this poses for Garcia is about how we can maintain the intensity of our feelings while, at the same time, avoiding the interruption of thought. For Garcia, this is the most ethically significant question of our age. The idea that intensity has become the ‘ethos of our age’ is also considered by Steven Poole who argued that: whatever we do, we must feel it intensely; we must be the most intense version of ourselves. We must pursue ever heightened intensities in our diversions: extreme sports, extreme pornography, extreme metal.8 In other words, we must, in the words of Garcia, pursue ‘existential intensity’. For Tim Adams, this quest for an ‘overwhelming experience of interiority’, or of living life to the limit, ‘has become another way to fill the God-shaped hole, to prove to ourselves that we are fully alive’.9 Adams also points to the political implications of this quest: ‘the electorate, wanting to know only the best, or the worst, is drawn to the purity of extremes rather than the pragmatism of compromise’.10 In his book, The Art of Losing Control, Jules Evans examined why we might be drawn to experience the world in this way. He cited the words of Aldous Huxley that: all humans have a deep-seated urge to self-transcendence. Always and everywhere, human beings have felt the radical inadequacy of their personal existence, the misery of being their insulated selves, and not something else, something wider, something, following Wordsworth, more deeply infused.11

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This quest for self-transcendence was understood by the novelist, Iris Murdoch, in the context of what she called ‘unselfing’, the idea that we desire to leave the world of thought, and the idea of ourselves behind. On observing a kestrel she wrote: I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly, I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment, everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel.12 Evans’ argument is that the Enlightenment legacy is damaging because it privileges thought and reason over ecstatic experience. What we need to do, he claimed, is to restore a balance in terms of how we imagine these different dimensions of human experience, restoring what the theologian Karen Armstrong called our ‘unbalanced ekstasis’.13 Evans made clear the importance of restoring this balance for our well-being: I’m not suggesting Western civilisation should become a permanent festival of ecstasy. That would be dangerous escapism, not to say impractical. The ecstasy of Dionysus needs to be balanced with the rational scepticism of Socrates. Without Dionysus, Socratic rationality is arid and soulless, but without Socratic reflection and practice, Dionysian ecstasy is just a rush.14 This need for balance is echoed in the work of Aldous Huxley who has one of his characters ponder on the following question: ‘Which did more for morality and rational behaviour – the Bacchic orgies or The Republic? The Nicomachean Ethics or the maenads?’15 His response that the value of one only has meaning in the context of the other is right, but it fails to grasp a more important truth. This is that the experience of ecstasy, in the form of Bacchic orgies, psychedelic drug use, dangerous sports, or whatever else, while not without value, does not provide us with the form of experience which thought can shape into a sustainable ethical subjectivity. More damagingly, it inhibits our search for a slower, more philosophically and ethically informed, emotional experience which, on reflection, we would recognise as having greater intensity. The important point about this is not that we should abandon our exploration of the limits of human experience. This is neither possible nor desirable. The point, rather, is to reflect that our search for limits, and for ecstasy, might also be motivated by a desire, or a need, to escape from something which is necessary for our well-being. This hardly seems like a compelling argument for change. However, we should also reflect on how our desire to escape from ourselves has led to a culture which is devastating for a world which is scarred by injustice and suffering. It is not clear how we should make a judgement about how our duties to ourselves should be balanced by our duties to others. There is no formula for this judgement which is waiting to be revealed to

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us. However, we can agree that, while it is difficult for us, as individuals, to find the right balance for ourselves in our own lives, we can agree that, as a society, we have become chronically out of balance. Moreover, while we have a sense of it, we remain far from certain about what, if anything, can be done about it.

Work Our condition as ‘out of balance’ is evident in our approach to, and understanding of, the world of work. While we know the reasons why so many people are condemned to work increasingly long hours, often in soul-destroying environments, the commitment made to work by others is more difficult to discern. For Weber, our work ethic was understood in the context of our need for a sign from God that we were among those chosen for salvation. However, this explanation means little today. A more likely explanation for our obsession with work today is that we are trying to escape from something which we find difficult or impossible to endure, for example, a bad marriage, annoying children, or the lack of living space. Alternatively, the explanation for it might be the sense of well-being provided by the experience of having a role and a routine, or the avoidance of loneliness. It should also be said that many people commit themselves to their work because it is genuinely important, not just for them, but for all of us. In the context of what is happening in the world today, we see many examples of people going far beyond what would reasonably be expected of them. I refer here, most specifically, to those in the NHS, and to all of the other workers helping to save lives, and to keep society functioning. I accept that all of these reasons why we work are important. However, as with the aforementioned point about identity, another part of the explanation for it might be that we are seeking refuge from something which we sense is more injurious to our well-being than the presence of a partner we don’t love any more, or the grinding ennui of home life. I refer here to the prison house of thought. To be clear, the argument is not that, when we work, we stop thinking. However, for reasons indicated earlier, there are different types of thinking. In the context of work, we identify problems, and we think about the most effective way to resolve them. It is true that this form of thinking can be deeply stimulating and rewarding. On the other hand, there is the form of thought in which we engage when we reflect on what we are doing with our lives, or what we are not doing, the type of thinking which can also be rewarding, but which can also be devastating for our well-being. In Not Working, Why We Have to Stop16, Josh Cohen examines our relationship to work, most of which he regards as utterly pointless. While he concedes that being roused from his lethargy can feel like a ‘metaphysical disturbance’, or a ‘violation of cosmic justice’, he is not advocating indolence, or what he calls far niente. His claim, rather, is that work, or some forms of it at least, disconnects us from our inner rhythms, or what Roland Barthes called our ‘idiorrhythmy’; rhythms to which we need to be attuned if we are to be creative, rhythms which are vital for a sense that life is worth living. More specifically, his argument is

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for a form of solitude, or quiet, for something that the analyst, Donald Winnicott, called the ‘still silent spot at the heart of the psyche’,17 the spot which gives a spark to creativity. Cohen contrasts this life of creativity with what the stoics called apatheia, a state of numbness, or a state of feeling nothing. I am sympathetic to this view insofar as I think that much of the work to which we are committed is corrosive of creativity; a point, incidentally, made by Marx many years earlier. However, Cohen might have expanded on his argument to suggest that, while silence and solitude are important for creativity, they are also important for a life of thought, and for ethical life. The concern here is that, when their significance is seen only in the context of individual creativity, silence and solitude emerge as no less damaging to ethical life and well-being than mindless work, or our search for intensity and ecstasy. There are no easy ways of thinking about how we can resolve this situation, and it is certainly difficult to do so in a way which is equitable. In this latter context, I am thinking about the point raised earlier that, while many are condemned to work until they drop, others are able, to a far more significant degree, to maintain a balance, and to ensure that their work allows for periods of solitude and quiet. However, following Hamlet, here’s the rub, because those ‘in balance’ in this way might find that they become out of balance in another way, that is, where they find that they have too much time for thinking. In light of the changes to the world of work which await us in the future, this is a serious concern. We know already about the difficulty many people have to adjust to life after work. For some, this time at the end of a life of work is precious. However, for others, the reality of a new life, devoid of routines and rhythms, a life with too much time for thinking, is unbearable. While we all have to try to find the right balance between engaging in thought, and withdrawing from it, in ways which work for us, the wider question, and this echoes the point made above in the context of intensity, is that when, as a society, we are out of balance, it has devastating consequences for our politics, and for the collective well-being of the world.

Mindfulness If it is accepted that we seek intensity and work in order to escape from thought, and to leave ourselves behind, it seems surprising, at first sight at least, that we seek solace and respite in the form of mindfulness, a practice derived from Buddhism designed to return us to ourselves. However, this is no longer the purpose of this meditative practice. This is because, in its contemporary form, it is an industry dedicated, above all, to the eradication of the form of critical thought which allows us to understand our deeper needs. In other words, while it may help us to cope with the immediate pressures of modern life, it does so without addressing the root causes of them. More generally, as noted by Ronald Purser, the problem is that the practice of mindfulness helps to maintain the status quo while using the language of transformation to allow us to mindfully endure the ravages of capitalism. Moreover, ‘a truly revolutionary movement would seek to overturn

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this dysfunctional system rather than reinforce its destructive logic’.18 Purser also claimed that ‘stress has been pathologized and privatised, and the burden of managing it outsourced to individuals. Hence, the pedlars of mindfulness step in to save the day’.19 The founder of the modern movement, Jon Kabat-Zinn, argued that when we fail to pay attention to the present we get caught up in regrets about the past and fears for the future. He has a name for this condition: the ‘thinking disease’. In response to this, the political theorist, Wendy Brown, provided the following analysis of the philosophy of this practice: it is not the nature of the capitalist system that is inherently problematic; rather, it is the failure of individuals to be mindful and resilient in a precarious and uncertain economy. In allowing this retreat to the private self, mindfulness has come to be seen as something like a religion of the self.20 Brown went on to observe that, with mindfulness: the body politic ceases to be a body, but becomes, rather, a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers. The assumption is that ethical behaviour will arise naturally from practice. However, the claim that major ethical changes will follow from paying attention to the present moment, non-judgementally, is patently flawed.21 I agree that it is ‘patently flawed’ to imagine that ethical life will magically spring from focussing, non-judgementally, on the self in the way recommended by mindfulness gurus. In this sense, we might think of mindfulness more as a form of mindlessness. Therefore, while it is important to concede that it may have a therapeutic value, the problem with it, as has been noted, is that it empties the public space of that which is required for change. More specifically, it leads to what Ronald Aronson has referred to as the ‘privatisation of hope’: Today, what must command our attention is not the radical falsity of the privatisation of hope, which denies everyone’s deep social being, but its debilitating consequences. We are collectively losing the ability to cope with the most urgent problems. People who experience themselves as random, isolated individuals will never find the wherewithal to understand or agree upon, let alone master, the reality of climate change. The increasingly dangerous effect of two centuries of uncoordinated actions and dangers blurred by self-interest can be brought under control only if we accept that there is an us that has transformed nature and our relationship to it. To protect our common home from disaster, humans must form a responsive global collective. We must recover and enlarge social hope in the name of survival. But how to do this if a critical mass is in denial about the problem and lacks the ability to form a consensus and act together?22

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A similar point has been made by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman: with the supra-individual factors shaping the course of an individual life out of sight and out of thought, the added value of joining forces and standing arm in arm, is difficult to spot, and the impulse to engage (let alone engage critically) with the way the human condition, or the shared human predicament, is shaped, is weak or non-existent.23 In response to these critiques of mindfulness, the ethicist Jeff McMahan reminded us that we ‘do not condemn a doctor who treats the victims of war for failing to devote his efforts instead to eliminating the root causes of war’.24 A similar concern that mindfulness is being unfairly targeted by those seeking wider political change is noted by Jonnie Wolf: In our big, rainbow-coloured world, war, doctors, anti-war activists and activist doctors can all contribute. Similarly, we should not condemn mindfulness teachers who treat the bewildered victims of neoliberalism for not also fighting neoliberalism itself. There seems to be scope for both palliative mindfulness and mindful activism to add layers of value.25 On the face of it, this seems fair. After all, as Wolf argued, it is important to ensure that the quest for ‘truly revolutionary mindfulness’ does not end up ‘fulminating against evidence backed interventions that can ease suffering in the here and now’.26 Again, this is fair. However, it makes it difficult to be optimistic that our fear of the loss of a collective political consciousness will take precedence over individual needs experienced in the here and now. Moreover, it is also difficult to see how ‘progressive moments’ articulated by the Left can help to restore this loss. I referred earlier to the populist right’s argument that it was during the 1960s when the glue which held us together as a moral community began to dissolve. For the Left, a different problem is raised by the events of these years: The political activism of the New Left accelerated revolutionary change: women’s liberation, gay liberation, the overthrow of segregation in the South, and the broader attack on racism in the advanced world. But there is another side to these changes, which points to the paradox of the New Left. These movements of emancipation have had an individualising and privatising effect. In making the personal political and pushing self-esteem – e.g. black is beautiful – they have heightened the personal, while distancing people from the political.27 While it is important to be critical of mindfulness, it is also important to avoid hypocrisy, sanctimony, and self-righteousness in our response to it. As I said earlier, this is not an argument for ascetism. However, acknowledging our needs in the here and now should not prevent us from acknowledging the dangers these

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industries pose to us. One of these dangers, as we have seen, is the reinforcing of logics of capitalism, and the emptying of the public places which are necessary for political debate. Another, and in the context of this book this is a more significant danger, is that practices, or industries, like mindfulness, when they assume such a significant presence in our cultural landscape, have the effect of emptying our heads of the type of thought in which we need to engage if we are to reflect critically on what is happening in the world, on what we are missing out on, and on the value of political life and philosophical reflection for ethical life, and for a more sustainable experience of well-being.

Forgetting In Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche argued that ‘all unhappiness derives from a deficiency of forgetting’.28 In the final part of this section of the chapter, I examine the value of memory for our well-being, and for ethical life. I referred earlier to how, in many respects, our experience of well-being is involuntary. The same is true of memory. Perhaps the most well-known example of involuntary memory in literature is provided by Proust in Remembrance of Things Past, when Marcel, on tasting a madeleine cake dunked in a cup of tea, is reminded of his childhood in the most dramatic way. On this occasion, the memory which was summoned was one which Marcel was happy to entertain. However, as we know, not all memories are welcomed in this way. Indeed, some of them are devastatingly injurious to our well-being, and to be resisted at all costs. This was not the view of Freud. For him, integral to a healthy psyche was our capacity to bring to the surface those repressed memories which are the cause of so much human misery. While controversy continues around Freud’s interpretation, there is consensus that memory is not always a reliable guide to the truth of the past. We are not, in other words, reliable narrators of our own lives. Consider, for example, the phenomenon of ‘false memory syndrome’ which allows us to imagine, quite mistakenly, that all sorts of things have happened to us. In his novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera reminds us of a different form of historical distortion, namely, how authoritarian regimes, in pursuit of public conformity, seek to render obsolete our private memories. He might also have referred to how these regimes, as well as democratic states, are also complicit in the manufacturing of collective memories which are conveniently cleansed of the horrors inflicted over the centuries on native peoples. While memory is a highly complex issue, we can, in the context of ethics and politics, identify two distinct ways of thinking about it. The first is that it is vital, not only to enable us to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again (as, in the words of Marx, as tragedy and farce), but also in allowing us to honour the memory of those who sacrificed their lives in the many conflicts of the past. In this latter context, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur noted that ‘we must remember because remembering is a moral duty. We owe a debt to victims, by remembering and telling we prevent forgetfulness from killing the victims twice’.29 The other interpretation of memory holds to the idea that we would

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be better without it, at least in some of its forms, because it keeps us locked into endless conflict with each other. In his book, In Praise of Forgetting, David Rieff makes a powerful argument for this latter interpretation: What if the collective memory of a nation is not just widely overrated as a measure of that society’s coherence, and not just ultimately futile, but often actively dangerous? And what if, instead of heralding the end of meaning, a decent measure of communal forgetting is actually the sine qua non of a peaceful and decent society, while remembering is the politically, socially, and morally risky, pursuit?30 In a similar vein, the Irish critic Edna Longley suggested that we raise a monument to amnesia and forget where we put it. This is a view shared by Ernest Renan who argued that the forgetting of facts is an essential factor in the creation and maintenance of a nation and that, if called upon to choose, nations would be well advised to opt for myth, codified in collective remembrance, over historical memory.31 However, it is Rieff who makes the most systematically compelling argument for forgetting. The following is a summary of his general argument: Far too often, historical memory as understood and deployed by communities, peoples, and nations – which, again, is always selective, more often than not self-serving, and historically anything but unimpeachable – has led to war rather than peace, to rancour and resentment rather than reconciliation, and to the determination to exact revenge rather than commit to the hard work of forgiveness32…without the option of forgetting, we would be wounded monsters, unforgiving and unforgiven, and assuming that we have been paying attention, inconsolable33…the benefits of memory are overrated, no matter how many commemorations we hold, we will repeat the same crimes. However seductive the thought may be, to imagine otherwise is not going to help us to remember ‘better’ and more usefully in an ethical or social sense, despite Todorov’s injunction that it is possible to make use of the lessons of past injustices to fight against those taking place in the present.34 It should be clear that Rieff is not advocating what he calls a ‘moral Alzheimer’s’. Far from it. He is at pains to stress that to ‘obliterate memory entirely would constitute a species of moral and psychological mutilation of tragic proportions’.35 However, his argument, as the above makes clear, leaves us in no doubt about his deep suspicion of memory’s dark consequences: If Freud is right that there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s ‘aggressive tendencies’ then it is at least possible that forgetting, for all the sacrifices it imposes (and, to be clear, these can be terrible indeed),

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may be the only safe response – and as such, should be cause for a measure of relief, rather than consternation.36 How should we respond to Rieff’s analysis? Well, we can certainly agree with some of it. For example, his claims that one day everything will be forgotten, that forgetting things which we find unsettling is inevitable, that too much memory can inhibit processes of reconciliation and forgiveness, and that memory of the past does not mean we will learn from it, are incontestable. However, this should not be interpreted to mean that we should actively seek to forget. What is important is that we remember in the right way. That is to say, we must respect the integrity of facts, even those, especially those, which are difficult to accept, and those which go against the grain of our established way of seeing the world. In this context, it is important that we remain cautious about ideologically motivated, revisionist historians whose concern is to articulate a reading of the past in order to close down the type of thinking which can open our minds to a different and better future. However, perhaps the most important lesson to be learnt is that we must not forget what happens when we forget to think. This is the lesson we must remember from the work of Hannah Arendt in the context of the Holocaust. Her argument, as is well known, is that when we forget to think, we do terrible things, things which can, after endless repetition, come to seem banal. While memory will not protect us from atrocities being committed in the future, it is vital that we commit to it because, while it shows us no mercy, and while it leaves us in no doubt about who we are, and what we are capable of, it is vital if, from the wreckage of history, we are to imagine how the world can be better in the future. The same argument can be made for thought, or critical thinking. As with memory, this is also disorienting and destabilising. As with memory, it also impinges on our easy way of experiencing well-being. However, and here is the paradox, without it, the form of well-being which we would be likely to choose for ourselves will remain out of our grasp.

Why retreat from thought is not inevitable The preceding section reflected on different ways in which we have withdrawn from thought. In the context of identity, and the desire for intensity, the concern was that we withdraw from it because it cannot compete with the emotional experience afforded by these ways of being in the world. The other question we considered was whether our retreat to the world of work, to mindfulness, and to forgetting, is, to some degree at least, motivated by an attempt to escape the burden of thought. In light of this analysis, we might be drawn to think that our withdrawal from thought is inevitable. While I am not advocating the view often mistakenly ascribed to post-modern thought that everything is possible, and that all potential outcomes are equally likely, it is important that we are not drawn to accept this way of thinking about the future. In other words, not least for strategic

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reasons, it is important that we remain sensitive to the fluidity of history, to its relative autonomy, and to the significance of human agency. Why is this relevant? One reason is that, when we view the future through a narrow historical lens, our capacity to imagine different futures is compromised. Another reason is that, when we allow this way of thinking about history to become established, we provide fertile ground for those with a political purpose, for those, more specifically, who claim that, because our nature is fixed in some way (for example, that we are acquisitive and competitive), it is futile to try to change society in a way which goes against this reality, or which goes against our ‘natural grain’. Conservatism is a good example of such a discourse. However, there are other discourses which, while not having an explicit political agenda, have the effect of narrowing our capacity to think imaginatively about alternative futures. In this latter context, I want to examine the work of Daniel Kahneman, who can, with some justification, lay claim to being one of the world’s most influential thinkers. More specifically, I want to examine his argument that we are subject to what he calls a fast, or ‘system one’, mode of reasoning; the mode related to emotions and impulses, the mode which overrides our slower, more reflective, and analytical mode, whose function is to allow for more informed and considered judgements. He explains that ‘system one’ has the upper hand because ‘system two’ is lazy, and is content to accept the easy, but unreliable, story about the world that system one feeds to it.37 Kahneman is known as the founder of behavioural economics; an approach which holds that, contrary to the well-established view within Economics, we are not rational, utility-maximising actors. This is because our decision making is vulnerable to cognitive bias. One example of this bias is our tendency to remain optimistic about a situation even when confronted with irrefutable information which should lead us to adopt a more cautious approach. For Kahneman, the reason for this irrationality is that we are drawn to certain decisions and judgements because they represent useful fictions, because they make sense of the world for us and, to go back to the earlier point, because the emotions they generate enhance our well-being and allow us to continue with our lives with a degree of confidence and optimism that things will work out for the best. He also argues that our capacity for bias affects the way we remember the past. More specifically, his claim is that we choose to remember the past in a way which allows us to filter out memories which are painful for us. In this context, he distinguishes between what he calls our ‘experiencing self’, and our more significant ‘remembering self’. Indeed, for Kahneman, because our remembering self exercises a tyranny over our experiencing self, we are strangers to ourselves as actors in the present, with the result that we only come to know ourselves as a result of highly imaginative acts of memory. Joshua Greene38 shares Kahneman’s analysis of the dual structure of mind. However, he comes to a very different conclusion about its ethical significance. More specifically, his claim is that, despite the fact that our ‘fast’ mode remains our brain’s default setting, it is possible to transcend our intuitive responses. This is because of our ‘deep pragmatism’: a form of utilitarian and rational thinking

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which will lead to universal moral improvement. In her review of Greene’s work, the writer and Jungian psychotherapist Sally Vickers wrote: Greene uses a parable to illustrate what he calls ‘commonsense morality’ – in his view, ‘the central tragedy of modern life, and the deeper tragedy behind all the moral problems that divide us’. The parable is of tribes with a common resource that can be depleted or sustained according to the rules that determine its usage and the degree of willingness to sacrifice self-interest for the collective good. It runs as a theme throughout the book to highlight the mounting global danger of humankind’s apparently inbuilt parochialism. According to Greene, our moral brain is programmed to operate on an emotional basis to serve a select community or tribe. But what functions to promote harmony within a group becomes the source of antagonism when encountering other groups who give different moral weight to what determines the good.39 Despite this inbuilt parochialism, Greene appeals to our capacity to reason to override our instinctual response to make decisions that favour our tribe. The philosopher John Gray is known for his scepticism about the idea of moral progress, so it is not surprising that he raises a critical eye to Greene’s Rawlsian-inspired, ‘deep pragmatism’ claim. Implicit in his critique of it is the claim that, rather than understanding our deeply sedimented emotional dispositions as the antithesis of morality, we should understand them as constitutive of our rational deliberations. In response to the view that we are the prisoners of our emotions, or our biology, Greene stated that: If people are asked to give an account of the policies they favour and those they oppose, they are liable to be brought face to face with their manifest ignorance, incompetence and confusion. After that they can be expected to moderate their rhetoric and even change their minds.40 This appeal to reason cuts little ice with Gray who questions why ‘anyone would or should renounce their way of life for the sake of a highly disputable theory about what might be rational in a hypothetical situation that might not even be imaginable?’41 This is a fair point. However, in the context of this wider debate, a more important concern relates to the distinction between systems one and two, and whether it is possible to distinguish between them in the way Kahneman describes. My contention here is that, when we act in a ‘system one’ way, it is not, as implied, a blind course of action uninformed by reason, thought, or deliberation. It is, rather, one based on experience of what works for us, and what we remember as having promoted our well-being in the past.42 If this is accepted, it is not clear that ‘system one’ decisions and actions can be dismissed as irrational quite so quickly. This may not be a form of rationality which is recognised by economists, but that is hardly sufficient grounds to dismiss it. More significantly though, when we think about the relationship between thinking and emotions in

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this way, it allows us to imagine its significance for ethical life in a different way. More specifically, the claim is that, if we had experience of a different life, a political and ethical life, a life, following Greene, informed by a ‘deep pragmatism’, our slow, ‘system two’, mode of reasoning would draw us to accept and embrace it. We would be drawn to this conclusion on the basis that, on reflection, it was conducive to our long-term well-being. In the context of Kahneman’s argument, this point may be conceded. However, in response to it, it would be argued that the greater, and more immediate, emotional charge afforded by ‘system one’ would lead us to resist it. However, if Kahneman’s argument for the dominance of system one is that it makes sense of the world for us, and that it provides us with a feeling of optimism about the future, and that it promotes well-being, it is not clear why it cannot be brought into alignment with ‘system two’. I acknowledge that this is a highly complex question, impossibly complex perhaps, and that it is certainly not reducible to any easy resolution. I acknowledge, therefore, that my response to Kahneman, which I make in a spirit of genuine intellectual engagement, is no more than a tentative first step to open a space to allow us to think in different ways about the future, and what we can do to shape it. More specifically, in raising this issue, my intention was to question those discourses which have the effect, intended or otherwise, of leading us into a way of thinking that we have little or no control over ourselves, or the future, because we are somehow bound by our psychology or our biology. These discourses are problematic because, as with the discourses of optimism we examined earlier, they constitute a mood which leads us to think that ethical life, or a slow and examined life, is not for us because it lacks intensity, and that it cannot provide us with a philosophy of life which is consistent with our ‘system one’ nature. I accept that the emergence of such a life is not inevitable. I accept, for a thousand reasons, that it might not even be possible to align our ‘systems’ in the way I have described. However, it may be that a slight rebalancing is possible. Moreover, it is important to remember that this is a political question and there is always something we can do about that.

Cultural pessimism As indicated, the idea that the culture in which we live is not good for us is not new. The cultural historian Oliver Bennett provides a sense of how it has informed the outlook of writers and artists: From the Berlin Dadaists to the Surrealists in Paris, from T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland to Franz Kafka’s Trial, from the dystopias of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell to the bleak landscapes of Samuel Beckett, writers and artists repeatedly denounced or despaired of the societies they inhabited. Their denunciations were delivered from radically different positions and, politically, they could be seen to divide in extreme and polarised ways; but they shared a profound disillusion with the kind of world that philosophies of progress had bequeathed.43

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For the sociologist Max Weber, the twin processes of rationalisation and bureaucratisation which displaced God, tradition, ritual, and myth, culminated in a culture of ‘disenchantment’. For Marx, the origin of our cultural malaise was an economic system which prevented us from realising ourselves as free, creative, and autonomous subjects. For Adorno, the Enlightenment’s promise to banish unreason from the world resulted in a new and more virulent form of unreason: ‘thus humankind’s rush to gain intellectual, technical and political mastery was accompanied by a failure to understand that human flourishing in the world is a complex matter that is not well served by claiming to intellectual omnipotence’.44 Another of the philosophers in the critical theory tradition, György Lukács, considered how a society capable of launching rockets to the moon and curing diseases that once ravaged the world could also become a civilisation plagued by social atomisation, crime, and an addiction to escapism.45 The work of the philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, specifically around the idea of habitus, makes a similar argument. Habitus refers to how all of the different ways we acquire of being in the world, our moods, dispositions, habits, and perceptions, are informed by the social and class positions we occupy within it. For Bourdieu, one of the problems with the cultural settlement which emerges from these multiple and heterodox acts of shaping is that we become estranged from each other in ways which are not good for us, and in ways which are certainly not propitious for the pursuit of justice. There are other, less politically and sociologically oriented analyses which make the same essential point about how this thing we call culture can condemn us to live against the ‘grain of our nature’. The transcendentalist poet, Walt Whitman, for example, thought that contemporary society impeded our quest for self-reliance and independence. This view was shared by the essayist Thomas Carlyle, for whom our advanced culture of mechanisation has rendered us unable to commune with our ‘inner world’. It also resonates in the visionary outlook of the artist and poet William Blake, for whom the ‘dark satanic mills’ were only the most obvious symbol of a culture that embodied a damagingly mechanistic conception of human life. However, perhaps the most explicit account of the rift between culture and nature is that of Freud who thought that the constraints culture imposed on us could lead, at any point, to an explosion of aggression and self-destruction.46 For the cultural historian Oliver Bennett, these dispositions have their roots in the classical, early Christian, and Renaissance periods. He noted, for example, how the Greek poet, Hesiod, traced the history of the world through five stages, each being inferior to the one which preceded it, and all ending in catastrophe. In the context of the Judeo-Christian tradition, he wrote: The fall from Paradise is inextricably bound up with the idea of decline; and, in visions of the apocalypse, man’s prospects in the world (though not, of course, in the next), appear in an undeniably pessimistic light.47 For Renaissance thought, the idea of cultural decline was understood in the context of the ‘non-linear’ nature of history. In this way, we can understand the work

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of Erasmus, Machiavelli, and Francis Bacon, who imagined history as ‘an endless sequence of ups and downs’ and as a ‘multiplicity of recurrences’.48 It may seem that the argument I am making here shares what Wittgenstein called a ‘family resemblance’ to some of these analyses about why we feel ‘out of joint’ with the world. After all, central to it is the claim that we are living in the wrong cultural skin; a skin that is not good for us, a skin which will be difficult, if not impossible, to shed.49 Before developing the argument, it is worth noting something important about a pessimistic outlook on the world. I refer here to how, when we mourn for something we feel to have been irretrievably lost, we reveal our capacity to care for the world. As we will see, while pessimism can be misused, in this sense at least, it is a disposition, or way of being in the world, which is not without value. My task here though is to establish a critique of a group of cultural pessimists who lament the passing, and long for the restoration, of a world which was not, is not, and cannot be, good for us. This discourse is different to those examined above. This is because, rather than examining how we seek to escape from thought to protect our well-being, it is about an attempt by one group to block another group’s access to thought on the grounds that it would be damaging to the social fabric of society. I refer here to the analyses of T.S. Eliot, George Steiner, F.R. Leavis, and Roger Scruton, whose thinking was, to a greater or lesser extent, influenced by the work of the doyen of cultural pessimism, the 19th-century thinker, Oswald Spengler. It might be argued that engaging with the legacy of this group of figures is a narrow concern. However, their way of thinking about the world, which remained deeply infused by nostalgia for a lost past and, in some cases at least, an explicit racism, remains prevalent today, and it is for this reason, above all, that it must be challenged. Let me start with a brief introduction to the work of Spengler. In The Decline of the West, he wrote the following: Culture and Civilisation. On the one hand the living corpse of a soul and, on the other, its mummy. This is how the West European existence differs from 1800 and after. The life in its richness and normalcy, whose form has grown up and matured from inside out in one mighty course stretching from the adolescent days of Gothics to Goethe and Napoleon – into that old artificial, deracinated life of our large cities, whose forms are created by intellect. Culture and Civilisation. The organism born in countryside, that ends up in petrified mechanism.50 For Spengler, because culture was understood as an organic entity, it was destined to decay after a life expectancy of about a thousand years. As with those in the Romantic movement,51 he argued that the coup de grâce delivered to Western culture was the arrival of industrialism and the machine age. In other words, by civilisation. For cultural pessimists such as Spengler, this deeply profound cultural shift was epitomised by the emergence of a ‘rationalised intellect’: a new world of thought which led to the erasure of a way of life based on tradition and faith. In Aristotelian terms, this change was characterised by the demise of praxis,

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understood as the actions we perform without thought; the actions integral to our nature as ‘species beings’, the actions which flow from a deeply embedded cultural settlement, in other words, from the ‘social unconscious’. Interestingly, for Spengler, the sense of loss which resulted from this rupture was not because there was anything intrinsically valuable about Western culture. In other words, in reaching the end of its allotted life span, the demise of the West was no more or less cataclysmic that the demise of any other culture. However, this does not mean that the causes and effects of the loss of different cultures are the same. In the case of the demise of the West, Spengler pointed to a debilitating sense of guilt, a loss of appetite, and the emergence of false sympathy with the oppressed of the world; symptoms which, presumably, he imagined as both the causes and the effects of its demise. There is uncertainty among Spengler scholars about whether, despite his inevitability doctrine, and despite the West having become the ‘hellhole of the world’, with its cultural and political inventory depleted, there was, after all, hope of cultural renewal. Tomislav Sunić speculated on this interpretation as follows: One is led to the conclusion that Spengler extols historical pessimism as long as it translates his conviction of the irreversible decadence of the European polity; however, once he perceives that cultural and political loopholes are available for moral and social regeneration, he quickly reverts to the eulogy of power politics…one wonders why pessimists like Spengler bemoan the decadence of the West if this decadence has already been sealed, if the cosmic die has already been cast, and if all efforts of political and cultural rejuvenation appear hopeless? Moreover, in an effort to mend the unmendable, by advocating a Faustian mentality and will to power, these pessimists often seem to emulate the optimism of socialists rather than the ideas of those reconciled to impending social catastrophe.52 I have referred to how culture can be understood in the context of the ‘social unconscious’. To repeat, this is the idea that well-being is only intelligible when we live in harmony with our nature, and when we are attuned to the established rhythms and traditions of our culture. For T.S. Eliot, the social unconscious referred to the whole way of life of a people. However, for him, and this is crucial, ‘the same culture will be lived out unconsciously by the common people, and self-consciously by the minority’. He held to this view because self-conscious analysis, and critical thought about what they were doing, would ‘play havoc with the common peoples’ spontaneous loyalties and allegiances’.53 It is for this reason that he preferred semi-literate readers of The Wasteland, as they were more receptive to the unconscious implications of his poetry. In this sense, for Eliot, the activity of thinking for the common man was, first and foremost, a ‘bodily affair’. It should be clear that, in holding to this view, Eliot’s primary motivation was not to enhance the reading experience of the common man. Far from it. It was, rather, to protect the quality of the reading experience which is, and can only be, appreciated and enjoyed by the few. In this context, Terry Eagleton noted Eliot’s

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claim that ‘to aim to make everyone share in the appreciation of the fruits of the more conscious part of the culture is to adulterate and cheapen what you give’.54 Implicit here is the idea that if the deep meanings which inhered in poetry were to be more widely disseminated, they would be distorted and corrupted. A similarly elitist argument was made by the literary critic F.R. Leavis, who claimed that ‘in any period, it is upon a very small minority that the discerning appreciation of art and literature depends’.55 This idea of arrogance masquerading as humility is not new. However, we need to ask about these dangerous insights from which the common man must be shielded. For cultural pessimists on the Right, one of them is the appreciation of tragedy. In Poetics, Aristotle argued that without such an appreciation, that is, without a sense of the cosmic injustice of the world, we are cut adrift morally, unable to enjoy solidarity with each other, and unable to cope with the vicissitudes of life. In this sense at least, Aristotelian teaching shares an affinity with stoicism. However, while we might point to tragedy’s utilitarian aspect, its aesthetic appeal about the search for authenticity is more significant. As we saw earlier, for Nietzsche, it was the appreciation of tragedy which allowed for the experience of ‘primordial unity’, and which allowed for the possibility of greatness. This was also the view of the late cultural critic George Steiner, for whom the notions of salvation and redemption are to be resisted because they deprive culture of its human life blood. It is for this reason that he remained critical of the work of Shakespeare, who he regarded as a writer unable to grasp fully the tragic dimension of human existence. If the culture of reason and instrumentality were held responsible for the demise of tragedy, these dark forces are also held to account for the demise of the virtues of loyalty, obedience, and friendship. This at least was the view of Roger Scruton, a philosopher for whom the tendency of contemporary culture to abstract idealising and codifying stripped vital human capacities of their moral force; capacities whose value lies in their spontaneous and voluntary nature. It is for this reason that Scruton was so hostile to projects such as the European Union, which led to what he called the ‘planning fallacy’. This was the idea that things go wrong when we imagine we can impose order, from above, on disparate communities, each with their own traditions and ways of life. It was also the reason why he championed the idea of common law which, unlike EU law, does not derive its legal answers from top-down abstract premises.56 One problem here is that it is not clear how, without planning and organisation, in other words, without civilisation, the most grotesque injustices such as slavery would ever have been eradicated. This points to a deeper problem with cultural pessimism, namely, the priority it gives to aesthetics over ethics. It is true that, for Scruton, there is ‘some core of aesthetic constants [such as beauty and music] to which human nature is attuned, that aesthetic judgement is closely related to moral judgement’, and that aesthetic experience brings self-knowledge, and allows for a ‘dance of sympathy’57 with others. Fine words indeed. However, I don’t find any compassion for the suffering of the world in these sentiments, or in the words of those other nostalgists summarised above.

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This is because their priority is not the eradication of this suffering, and it is not with promoting a commitment to a new way of thinking which might address it. The real tragedy here is that this way of being in the world has a quite different priority, namely, to preserve a world of suffering and pain; a world necessary for aesthetic enjoyment. To be clear, I am not underestimating the experience of cultural loss, nor am I seeking to devalue the cultural significance of tragedy, or of art, and I am certainly not suggesting that we should dispense with the idea that there are qualitatively different forms of aesthetic experience. This is because I also want to see the restoration of a world in which authenticity and beauty are valued; a world in which a sense of mystery at the extraordinary fact of being in the world is acknowledged. However, it is only when we accept that these experiences are of value to everyone that we will transform our cultural settlement from one of resentment and discrimination to one of mutual recognition and respect.58 Moreover, it is only when we promote the value of thought as a universal good that we will be able to reject the spurious claim that aesthetic enjoyment is cheapened when it is more widely experienced. However, the more important reason why cultural pessimism in this form should be rejected is that a culture of thought, along with political engagement, are the most necessary of all the conditions for justice and ethical life.

Summary and link to next chapter The argument of this chapter has not been that we should resist the urge to withdraw from thought. This is because withdrawal from it is necessary in order that we can care for ourselves. Moreover, it is futile to suggest that the things which are integral to what it means to be human can be closed down. In other words, this is not an argument against identity, or ecstatic experience, or the world of work, or meditation, or forgetting. Such an argument would make no sense because the emotional experiences afforded by these ways of being in the world allow us to experience such a strong form of well-being. The claim I made was different. It was that it is important that we remain sensitive to how these experiences can have the effect of desensitising us to a different form of well-being, one which is more sustainable, and one which is vital if we are to secure ethical life and justice. As indicated, it is not clear if even a modest rebalancing which would allow for a more informed appreciation of the importance of thought is going to be possible. In the next chapter, I identify and examine some of the other reasons why it is difficult to be optimistic about the prospect for change.

Notes 1 For a fuller discussion of the relationship between art and empathy, see A. Clohesy (2013:57–64). 2 D. Rieff, (2016:9). 3 J. Doward and H. Boahen, (25.5.2019). 4 D. Murray, (2019:1).

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5 W. Davies, (21.9.2019). For Afua Hirsch, Murray’s ‘weaponisation’ of identity argument amounts to a demand that ‘the woke’ should accept that the world does not revolve around them, and that they should stop complaining about everything. 6 W. Davies, cited in D. Runciman, (24.11.2018). 7 S. Moore, (28.10.2018). 8 S. Poole, (8.12.2018). 9 T. Adams, (23.9.2018). 10 Adams claims that Goethe’s ‘Werther’ provides us with the first ‘adrenaline rush’ in Western literature: ‘I felt exalted by this overflowing fullness to the perception of the Godhead, and the glorious forms of an infinite universe became visible to my soul’ (Adams, 23.9.2018). 11 A. Huxley, cited in J. Evans, (2017:x). 12 I. Murdoch, (1970), cited in J. Humphreys, (16.5.2019). 13 J. Evans, (2017:xxv). 14 J. Evans, (2017:xxvi). 15 J. Evans, (2017:xxvi). 16 J. Cohen, (2019). 17 D. Winnicott, cited in B. Taylor, (12.1.2019). 18 R. Purser, (2019). 19 R. Purser, (2019). 20 W. Brown, (2015), cited in R. Aronson, (6.6.2019). 21 W. Brown, (2015), cited in R. Aronson, (6.6.2019). 22 R. Aronson, (6.6.2019). 23 Z. Bauman, cited in R. Aronson, (6.6.2019). 24 J. McMahon, cited in J. Wolf, (4.8.2019). 25 J. Wolf, (4.8.2019). 26 J. Wolf, (4.8.2019). 27 R. Aronson, (6.6.2019). 28 F. Nietzsche, cited inJ. Cohen, (16.8.2019). 29 D. Rieff, (2016:56). 30 D. Rieff, (2016:57). 31 D. Rieff, (2016:35). 32 D. Rieff, (2016:39). 33 D. Rieff, (2016:145). 34 D. Rieff, (2016:118–119). 35 D. Rieff, (2016:119). It is true of course, that in time all will be forgotten. However, as Rieff shows, certain events are slow to fade in the collective memory of divided societies. In Northern Ireland, for example, we note how events from many centuries ago, for example, the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, still retain a deep resonance in the loyalist community. In A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past (2019), Lewis Hyde argues that forgetting is an essential condition for imaginative as well as political freedom. His claim here is not to downgrade the importance of memory. Rather, it is to allow for a form of closure, not an ‘amnesiac amnesty’, but an ‘accountable amnesty’. In this sense, the claim is that it is only when it operates in concert with memory that forgetting can clear new ground, without foreclosing the past. 36 D. Rieff, (2016:122). 37 J. Holt, (25.11.2011). 38 J. Greene, (2013). 39 S. Vickers, (12.1.2014). 40 J. Greene, cited in J. Ree, (January, 2014). 41 J. Gray, (18.1.2014).

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42 A similar criticism is made by John Kay for whom the decisions thought irrational by Kahneman might be perfectly rational. He notes: ‘is it really irrational to be hopeful and cheerful? Optimism is a characteristic that sometimes leads us to make bad decisions or take foolish risks, but it helps us to get through life…and of course a positive attitude to life makes us more attractive to potential mates, the property that evolution selects for’ (Experiments with Truth, Prospect, February, 2017). However, my argument is different. It is that we would be less likely to make ‘irrational’ decisions after experience of something which we would judge to be in the interest of life satisfaction. 43 O. Bennett, (2001:4). 44 A. Clohesy, (2013:2). 45 T. Sunić, (6.6.2019). 46 O. Bennett, (2001:2). 47 O. Bennett, (2001:10). 48 O. Bennett, (2001:9). 49 For Bennett, this way of seeing the world might be the result of a form of mental illness. More specifically, he suggests that seeing the world through the prism of cultural loss might be a symptom of a minor depression. This might be right. However, the direction of causation can be reversed. 50 O. Spengler, cited in T. Sunić, (6.6.2019). 51 What emerges with the Industrial Revolution, however, is an impassioned revolt against civilisation as such, which now appears spiritually bankrupt as a whole. This is the view of observers as Friedrich Schiller, John Ruskin, and William Morris. It was also the opinion of D.H. Lawrence, who writes of industrial England as involving ‘the utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast has’ (T. Eagleton, 2016:10). 52 T. Sunić, (6.6.2019). 53 T. Eagleton, (2016:88). 54 T. Eagleton, (2016:88). 55 T. Eagleton, (2016:146). 56 D. Johnson, (September, 2019). 57 R. Scruton, cited in R. O’Brien, (July/August, 2017). 58 For Terry Eagleton, the problem with cultural studies is that it focusses on the wrong issues: ‘the teaching of cultural studies is strikingly exclusive; by and large, it deals in sexuality but not socialism, transgression but not revolution, difference but not justice, identity but not the culture of poverty’ (Eagleton, 2017:34). While I am sympathetic to this view, without political experience, and without the capacity to make sense of it, the cultural revolution we need will not be realised.

Chapter 6

Nihilism

The argument I defend in this chapter is that nihilism is a necessary condition for ethical life. However, it should be clear that I am not proposing an unqualified defence of Nietzsche, a figure who remains modern philosophy’s most celebrated nihilist. His view was that living well required the repudiation of God, and the rejection of the idea that we had obligations to others. My claim, by contrast, is that living well with others is vital for well-being, and that we can only realise the experience of it by creating meaning for ourselves by engaging in political and philosophical life. Why is nihilism relevant to this claim? The study of nihilism is usually considered under the headings of moral nihilism, epistemological nihilism, existential nihilism, and ontological or metaphysical nihilism. Broadly speaking, these approaches refer to the following beliefs: that morality is a human construct, that we cannot be certain about our knowledge claims, and that our lives, and the existence of the world, are ultimately without meaning. While these views are often rejected as dangerously life-denying, they have more adherents than we might think. Perhaps our reluctance to acknowledge them more openly is because of the reputation of Nietzsche, the ‘bad boy’ of philosophy, and the bête noire of those who wish to restore religious faith in the world. However, while we can and should be critical of Nietzsche in many respects, it is worth noting, by way of providing a more balanced interpretation of his legacy, that he did genuinely fear for the fate of humanity when it had to confront the undeniable truth that ‘God is dead’. He feared for it because of the trauma, and the profound sense of loss and disorientation, caused by his own confrontation with it. Moreover, as an epistemological nihilist, he accepted that he could not be sure if God was dead, or very much alive. In the context of the argument I want to make, the most important point to note about Nietzsche is his claim that our loss of faith in God did not render meaningless other aspects of human life. The distinction Nietzsche made in this context was between ‘passive’ and ‘active’ forms of nihilism. For Nietzsche, passive nihilists were those who, to compensate for their loss of religious faith, sought refuge in other, equally untenable, belief systems such as racism or nationalism. In other words, those who fell prey to what he called a ‘will to nothingness’. Moreover, for Nietzsche, despite their inability to maintain religious faith, passive nihilists

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often lacked the courage to fully renounce it. His response to his own loss of faith, a response he understood as a fundamental moral demand, was to become an ‘active nihilist’, and to create new sources of meaning for himself. Those with the strength to accept this challenge would find greatness, dignity, and glory because, for Nietzsche, it demonstrated, in the face of the ultimate meaninglessness of the world, what the human spirit can aspire to.1 However, the problem with this vision of a liberated world is that there is no place in it for ethical life, and a sustainable experience of well-being. Let me be clear about the argument here. I accept, with Nietzsche, the claim that we are passive nihilists. However, this is because we have, to a significant degree, lost faith in ourselves. Moreover, the way to restore this lost faith is not, pace Nietzsche, to embrace a ‘will to power’ philosophy. The solution, the only solution, to our passive nihilist condition is to engage in political and philosophical life, and to acquire experience of ourselves as ethical subjects. Or, to put it differently, it is this engagement, and only this engagement, which will allow us to emerge as active, and ethical, nihilists. However, as I argued in the earlier chapters, this transition from passive to active nihilism is difficult to realise because of the cultures of optimism, populism, and escapism, cultures which distract us, and blunt our capacity to think critically about our condition. In this chapter, I examine some of the other causes of our passive nihilist condition. As we will see, these causes are quite different to each other, and it is not possible to categorise them together under a single heading. However, I have brought them together because their effect is the same, namely, the further erosion of our capacity to believe in ourselves, and to imagine ourselves as ethical subjects. I will present the chapter under the following headings: altruism; materialism; posthumanism; the Anthropocene; and the sacred. Before proceeding, let me pose two thoughts about nihilism. The first is about Nietzsche and nihilism. The question here is whether he thought that the sense of loss we feel when we lose our faith in God is a price worth paying for the experience of authenticity and greatness which comes to us in our post-faith life. It might seem that the answer is clear, namely, that he would have thought that, while painful, the loss of faith is a price worth paying for the emergence of truth and dignity. However, I am not sure that this would have been his response. We will never know the answer to this question.2 I raise it only to repeat my claim that, after experience of ethical life, we would be drawn to accept the loss of ‘weightlessness’, and the loss of our freedom from responsibility, as a price worth paying for it. We would be drawn to it because as beings hungry for meaning, and for a sense of purpose, the weight of ethical life would be seen less as a barrier, and more of a gateway to well-being. The second point is about the importance of nihilism for political life. This refers to how, in order to give birth to something new, to something better, to something more just, it is sometimes necessary to lose faith in, and to destroy, that which inhibits its emergence. In other words, nihilism, understood in this way, as something enabling, can be seen as a force for good. An example of this is provided in the novel, Fathers and Sons, in which Turgenev casts Bazarov as a nihilist who, in order to create a more just and democratic society,

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was determined to destroy the social and political values which defined bourgeois society in Russia in the nineteenth century.

Altruism In this section, I examine how our knowledge about how we evolved as moral agents in the world has the effect of eroding our faith in ourselves as ethical subjects. How is altruism relevant to this question? For the philosopher, Mark Rowlands, there is a mystery at the heart of evolution. More specifically, his argument is that the reason we love our offspring is because this love makes them more likely to survive and, if they survive, they will be more likely to pass on their genes – which are our genes: ‘it is the genes which are driving everything: love is simply a mechanism designed by genes to facilitate their continuance’.3 It follows from this that the reason, the only reason, we value justice, fairness, and kindness, is because they are deemed important for our genetic future. However, for Rowlands, the critical question raised here is why, if this is true, we care for the survival of others: This, then, is the puzzle of empathy. If the evolutionary rationale for empathy is explained in terms of the benefit it brings to my own genes, then why should my empathy at the suffering of another extend any further than those genes?4 In response to this question, he argues that the coincidence of self-interest, and concern for the well-being of others, is the result of ‘an accident, a magnificent accident, perhaps the happiest, noblest accident in the history of the universe, but an accident nevertheless’.5 To explain this accident, he refers to the distinction between ‘false negatives’ and ‘false positives’. The argument is that we are programmed to react when we detect the distress signal of those with whom we have a genetic relationship. However, in the past, it was not always clear whether the distress signals we heard came from someone within our own gene pool. If, in light of this uncertainty, we failed to do anything, the result could be devastating. If, on the other hand, we responded to the signal, only to find that it came from someone beyond our gene pool, the consequence was no more than a minor inconvenience. From this simple premise, Rowlands claims that empathy has endowed evolution with a heavy bias in favour of false positives: This is not what evolution had in mind. But, of course, evolution never has anything in mind. I can understand what motivates this thought. There is something about this expanding circle of compassion that is so inimical to – so contrary to the spirit of – the evolutionary pressures which produced it. I agree. But, nevertheless, it exists. There are no real accidents, of course. This glorious accident that is so inimical to the spirit of evolution was nevertheless built into evolution, among the bricks and mortar of its foundational principles. The possibility of goodness lies there is us: the legacy of an ancient accident that lies coiled in the core of our biological being.6

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Does it matter if the origin of ethical life lies in our quest to ensure the survival of our genes, to ensure, in other words, our own well-being? One response to this question is an emphatic No. This is because, while it is clear that our actions are selfish, we should celebrate that things have evolved in a way which allows us to experience well-being by promoting the well-being of others. This, presumably, would be the response of Rowlands, and I am not unsympathetic to it. After all, beyond an appeal to metaphysics, it is difficult to sustain an alternative interpretation of the motivation for human action. However, in accepting it, we are forced to accept the loss of a sense of ourselves as beings who can be motivated to act solely for the benefit of others. In response to this, we might argue that, because our well-being, and the well-being of others, have become fused in this way, when we pursue our well-being, we secure the well-being of others. This is the view which underpins the economic philosophy of, among others, Adam Smith, who argued that the best outcome for all is achieved when we, as individuals, pursue our own interests. However, this is problematic because, despite Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ argument, it is clear that we are far from unequivocally motivated to promote the well-being of others. One reason for this, as indicated earlier, might be that the suffering of others is necessary in order to provide us with a sense of purpose, with a moral cause, with what is necessary, in other words, for ethical life and well-being. There are other arguments we could cite here about why, beyond self-interest, we find it difficult to sustain a sense of ourselves as beings who care for the well-being of others. This is a traumatic issue for most human beings, and it is not surprising that we seek to conceal it. In my last book, I described how we might think that, despite ethical life’s origin in the ‘glorious accident’, it has evolved into something which is no longer bound by it, that, in other words, ethical life has evolved into something which is relatively autonomous of self-interest. Perhaps this is a useful myth for us. However, I am not sure that we can sustain it. This is a problem because, if we cannot restore faith in ourselves, as beings who can love each other, as beings worthy of salvation, the struggle for justice cannot be won. There is no easy solution to this problem. However, it is important for us to confront it and to think about it. The point here is not to sever the link between self-interest and the promotion of the well-being of others. In other words, the point is not to engage in a futile quest to try to establish a foundation for ethical life beyond self-interest. The point is precisely the opposite, namely, to remind us that it is only when we live well with others, and it is only when we engage in political life to promote their well-being that we can enjoy a sustainable experience of well-being ourselves. We have considered the relationship between thoughts and feelings in preceding chapters. I raise it again here because it allows us to examine the question of altruism in a different way. For Montaigne, the key to living well lies in our capacity for judgement; a capacity which can reveal what is right for us. It was because of his concern to think in terms of what is right for us that Montaigne was opposed to universalistic, and rationalistic, approaches to ethics which downgraded the importance of our emotional lives, the significance of how things feel to us, and

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how we intuit things to be. Crucially, he argued that, when we learn to exercise our judgement properly, we acquire a sense of what is good for us and for others, and, as a result, we learn about our obligation to allow them to pursue what is good for them in a way which is free of interference. His philosophy of life in this respect has been summarised as follows: In order to increase joy and diminish sadness, two conditions need to be met; we should learn to know ourselves, and also regulate our judgement so as to discern what it the best for ourselves, without thereby harming others.7 However, while I am sympathetic to Montaigne’s work in many respects, my concern with it is that it hinders the emergence of the critical thinking we require if we are to address our condition as passive nihilists. Let me be clear about the argument here. While I agree with him about the importance of experience, and about how our capacity to judge can lead us to understand what works for us in a way which takes account of the well-being of others, it is clear that this is not enough to secure ethical identity. I am not referring here to how his appeal to what works for us undermines a conception of the good which transcends self-interest. My concern, rather, is the emphasis he placed on intuitions and feelings. As indicated, I accept the significance of intimations and feelings for ethical life. However, while we must reject imposing ways of life onto others on the grounds that we know what is best for them, we must avoid the inadvertent downgrading of thought. I have indicated that Montaigne was concerned to promote the importance of judgement and reflection, so it cannot be said that he dismissed the significance of thought. Far from it. However, in rejecting universalism, it is important that we do not lose sight of the importance of establishing a cognitive framework, or what I will call an ‘ethical constitution’, which can promote consensus about what works well for us. This returns us to the point I have made repeatedly about the importance of politics, philosophy, language, and imagination to constitute new truths about how we should live, and new ways of thinking about what works for us. I accept that this is something which Montaigne would have rejected outright on the grounds that philosophical formulas are dangerous things which deny rather than secure our well-being. This is essentially the point we examined earlier in the context of the work of Hannah Arendt. In response to Arendt, I argued that while our feelings cannot be ignored, they can lead us astray. I would make the same response to Montaigne. To be clear, this is not to argue that there are no risks involved in seeking to oversee the life of the emotions in this way. However, without philosophical orientation, the greater danger is that the emotions generated by political life will not be articulated in an ethical context. To explore the question in more detail, we can turn to another philosopher who was deeply interested in the relationship between emotions and thought. While there are significant philosophical differences between Montaigne and Spinoza, they agreed that emotions, feelings, and desires, are the driving force of human life. However, unlike Montaigne, Spinoza acknowledged the importance

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of reason as the faculty which allowed us to control them, and to ensure that they do not lead us to a state of unhappiness. Let me summarise this important aspect of his philosophy because it provides an interesting context for the argument I want to make. For Spinoza, because we are part of a universal system of causation, we are determined to live in a way in which we ‘persevere in our own being’: Spinoza calls ‘good’ a reasonable and firm mode of existence, one that endeavours to organise our life in tune with what makes us grow, suits our nature, makes us happier and more joyful, and ‘bad’ a disordered mode of existence, senseless and weak, which makes us unite with things or persons that go against our nature, lessen our power, and eventually plunge us into sadness and unhappiness.8 It is because of the anarchic nature of our emotional lives that, for Spinoza, the exercise of reason was necessary. More specifically, reason was necessary to allow us to understand the emotions which led us to sadness, and to replace them with those which promoted joy, harmony, and well-being. Crucially, his point in this context was not that our emotions can, or should, be smothered. Rather, the function of reason is to allow us to break free of the bondage in which they confine us if we fail to understand them or, to put it differently, the function of reason is to allow us to reconfigure our emotional architecture in a way which allows us to establish a deeper harmony with our inner nature, and with the rhythms of the universe: In this way, for Spinoza, the philosophical journey will be a path leading from an imperfect understanding to a correct grasp of things, from disordered desires to good desires, from limited joys to the perfect joy which he calls blessedness. In the meantime, all progress, every new stage, every step forward comes with a new and greater joy, since it increases our power of being. From joy to joy, human beings can thus travel towards blessedness and the higher freedom in which our being coincides with that of God – or Nature, as Spinoza adds.9 Crucial for Spinoza, therefore, was the need to cultivate self-knowledge about what works for us. In this sense, like Montaigne before him, he replaced Christian notions of good and evil with what is good or bad for us. Moreover, when we learn to understand ourselves, and what works for us, we no longer live under the ‘blind sway of our passions, the cause of all violence’.10 Moreover, this self-knowledge allows us to live well with others whose lives are also bound by the same desire, or appetite, for perfection. There is much to commend here. Indeed, Spinoza’s argument about the importance of understanding our emotions, and what works well for us, is fundamental for the argument I am making. In what way, therefore, can this account be construed as something which inhibits thought? My concern with Spinoza’s account is that, despite its extraordinary breath and originality, it

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presents us with a rather static view of ourselves, one which does not acknowledge that the role of philosophy is not just to account for the world, but, following Marx, to promote change. I accept that the work of Montaigne and Spinoza provides a rich foundation for the articulation of the important questions we need to ask if we are to emerge from our passive nihilist condition. It is for this reason that it is vital to rearticulate it in a way which works for us today, in a way which acknowledges that we are denied access to alternative ways of life which would work well for us and, more importantly, for others. In other words, despite their concern for the well-being of humanity, the problem with these accounts, and the many other accounts which they have inspired, is that they overlook the importance of political life as the activity which produces new emotions, new ethically oriented emotions, which we can judge to be good for us, and for others.

Materialism For the philosopher Mary Midgley, our materialistic culture has become all pervasive. She argued that this is a problem because, as well as being intellectually implausible, it leads to a form of nihilism which is deeply damaging for ethical life, and for our sense about what it means to be human. It should be clear that, in referring to materialism, she did not mean a culture of consumerism or acquisitiveness. Her target, rather, was a way of thinking about the world, and human life, as wholly reducible to ‘material reality’. It is for this reason that she was so fiercely critical of those such as Richard Dawkins whom she regarded as guilty of a selfdeceiving fatalism, namely, the conviction that the universe has no purpose, that it contains, at bottom, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. One of the other targets of her ire was the molecular biologist Francis Crick. To illustrate her concern about his work, she cited the following passage from his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis: You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their attendant molecules.11 Midgley was right to note that a materialistic, or deterministic, way of seeing the world is deeply embedded in our culture. For the behavioural scientist Nick Chater, it is a way of seeing the world which forces us to confront some uncomfortable truths, for example, that the idea of a unified self, a ‘me’, is a mythical construct: ‘considered in isolation’, our ‘selves’ turn out to be ‘partial, fragmentary and alarmingly fragile; we are the most lightly sketched of literary creations’.12 For Midgley, a more problematic position would be that held by the evolutionary anthropologist Avi Tuschman, which holds that language and culture cannot shift our moral and political orientation. More specifically, his argument is that the way we think about, for example, our relationship to the country we call home, and

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the way we relate to outsiders, are the product of sources of morality which were encoded in our genes millions of years ago.13 if we imagine that our rightward or leftward leanings depend on our views about the main issues of the day, on our economic circumstances, or on our long-time affiliations, then we are simply deceiving ourselves. This is because all of the research proves that our political orientation depends almost entirely on our genes which determine the extent to which we are loyal to our tribe, suspicious of others and how predisposed we are to be kind or generous to those beyond our immediate in-group.14 A similar, although less deterministic, account is provided by the neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky, who claimed that all of our actions, good and bad, are determined by previous events, and by the genes which govern all aspects of human life.15 However, Sapolsky retains a space in which change can occur; a space in which new ideas such as, for example, ‘peaceology’, can become part of a new chain of determining forces which will shape future events.16 There are other accounts which adopt a similar philosophical perspective. For Midgley, the concern with materialism was not that it denied the existence of God (she did not have a religious faith), and it was not that it failed to acknowledge the existence of a non-physical world. It was, rather, that it manifested a spiritually impoverished way of being in the world, which failed to account for the possibility that there is order and purpose to the universe. More significantly, her concern was that it promoted a culture which led to the neglect of the ideas which inform our actions. In holding to this view, she was at one with her fellow philosopher Thomas Nagel, for whom ‘the possibility of the development of conscious organisms must have been built into the world from the beginning. It cannot be an accident’.17 While I am not clear what it means to say that there must be order and purpose to the universe, and while I am also not clear about how, even if we were to accept their existence, they provide us with meaning, I am sympathetic to Midgley’s position on this question. This is because the materialist way of thinking about the world does, as she rightly argued, have the effect of blunting our capacity to think creatively and imaginatively about what it means to be human, and about the conditions for ethical life. In saying this, I am not appealing to a Cartesian argument for the autonomy of mind. While the nature of consciousness is, and will remain, a mystery, this remains an implausible position. Neither is it to argue for free will, or for the existence of the soul, and it is certainly not to denigrate science. However, while we must place the highest priority on scientific knowledge, we must, at the same time, resist the idea of scientism, that is, the idea that science provides us with the only means whereby we can determine normative values. As I see it, the relevant point at stake here is that we must remain sensitive to how the dissemination of scientific knowledge about what is can limit our capacity to imagine how things might be different or, more specifically, how we can think

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of ourselves as different, as something more than specks of dust, as beings who can have their faith restored. Albeit in a different context, this was the concern raised by Marx’s account of dialectic materialism. In other words, if the future was already determined, and determined by materials forces, why do we need to do anything? The important point here is that, while the universe might be indifferent to our suffering, we are not indifferent to it, and in order to address it, there are new stories we can tell ourselves about what is possible, stories whose effects are not determined or pre-ordained. For Hannah Arendt, when we forget our capacity to tell new stories, to create something new, we miss what is important about humanity: ‘its potential to act and to be distinct individuals whose earthly lives are meaningful’.18

Technology and the spectre of posthumanism In the previous section, the concern raised was that a materialistic way of being in the world was a threat to our capacity to think imaginatively and creatively about the nature of ethical life and well-being. However, it might be argued that our yearning to escape the material reality of our bodies, a yearning for a virtual or dematerialised existence made possible by technology, constitutes a more significant threat to ethical life. In this section, I examine how this technology revolution allows us to imagine a transhuman or post-human future; a future to which, for some at least, we should be committed on the grounds that humanity is in dire need of an ‘upgrade’. However, the concern here is that, despite this promise of renewal and redemption, this vision of a transhuman or post-human future erodes further our capacity to have faith in ourselves, and plunges us deeper into the passive nihilist abyss. The terminology around this issue may be unfamiliar, so, before examining it in more detail, we should start with a definition of transhumanism and posthumanism, and an explanation of the difference between them. While early references to transhumanism can be traced back to Dante’s Divine Comedy, its contemporary usage derives, at least partly, from the work of the biologist Julian Huxley, for whom it signified no more than an enhanced form of humanism. In what is known as the Transhumanist Declaration of 1998, the philosopher Nick Bostrom, expanded on this definition by noting that it was a movement which sought to build on the principles of secular humanism by the use of technological transformation, for example, nanotech, biotech, and AI, in order to uphold the well-being of all sentient beings.19 The important point to note here is that transhumanism does not seek to overcome what it means to be human. Its task, as indicated, is one of refinement, or enhancement, of humanity. Although there is some confusion about how transhumanism and posthumanism differ, one of the contexts in which the latter is considered is a world in which humans have created new forms of intelligent life. An example of this is Ridley Scott’s film, Bladerunner, which charts the attempt to ‘retire’ a group of human-engineered replicants. Another context in which it is sometimes understood is of a future world in which our consciousness

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is downloaded to a microchip, or to another form of inorganic material. Therefore, while it is clear that differences exist between transhumanism and posthumanism, it is also clear how the former, if unchecked, could easily evolve into the latter. However, for now at least, while transhumanism is well underway in a range of different environments, for example, medical science, posthumanism remains, for many at least, a science fiction fantasy. There are two sets of reasons why we might be drawn to embrace the technology which makes these future worlds possible. One is the belief that, while our existence as homo sapiens is, in evolutionary terms, entirely contingent, we are exceptional, and deserving of a special place in the order of creation. However, it is clear that, as a species, we have a range of design flaws. We saw earlier how we are prone to cognitive bias, irrational emotional outbursts, how we retain a capacity to inflict suffering on an unimaginable scale to other forms of life, and how we nurture a capacity to destroy the conditions for all forms of life. If this diagnosis is accepted, as it must be, there is a compelling argument, not least on utilitarian grounds, for an upgrade, an enhancement, a refinement, or for something more transformative, on the grounds of its promise to eradicate our design flaws, restore our faith in ourselves, and grant us the gift of immortality. In other words, in posthumanism, we have something Nietzsche himself might have approved, namely, a form of active nihilism which embodies an unequivocal commitment to a better, if not an ‘all too human’, future. The second reason why we might be drawn to embrace this technology is different. For Nick Bostrom, posthumanism is important because it allows for the restoration of ethical life. However, in order for this restoration to be realised, we have to imagine human life as part of a simulation being played by post-human future generations for their entertainment. Where is the ethical moment here? For Bostrom, it lies in the capacity of this technology to restore our faith in the goodness of our programmers: our creators are benevolent because the capacity to build sophisticated technologies requires long term stability and rational purposefulness. These qualities could not be cultivated without social harmony, and social harmony could be achieved only by virtuous beings.20 Implicit here is the idea that posthumanism compensates us for our loss of faith in God by creating something else in which we can have faith. Reflecting on the loss of her religious faith, Meghan O’Gieblyn wrote the following: to confront this reality, after believing otherwise, is to experience perhaps the deepest sense of loss we are capable of as humans. It is not just coming to terms with the fact that you will die. It has something to do with suspecting that there is no difference between your human flesh and the plastic seat of a train. What makes the transhumanist movement so seductive is that it promises to restore, through science, the transcendent hopes that science itself has obliterated.21

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O’Gieblyn noted how, for her, transhumanism and posthumanism provided a new ‘evolutionary approach to eschatology, one in which humanity took it upon itself to bring about the final glorification of the body’. Moreover, because they satisfy the ‘elemental hope that the tumult of the world was authored and intentional’, these philosophies allow us to imagine the possibility that ‘Christ’s promise of the resurrection of the flesh and eternal life would be realised through technology’.22 However, despite the revival of her faith, her transcendent hopes were unable to sustain her: I had disavowed Christianity, but had spent the last 10 years hopelessly trying to recreate its visions by dreaming about out post-biological future – a modern pantomime of redemption. What else could lie behind this impulse but the ghost of that first hope?23 What are we to make of these responses to the promise of technology to, on the one hand, end our suffering and, on the other, to restore our faith? For the philosopher Francis Fukuyama, there is only one response to this question. It is that, despite the promise of transhumanism to use ‘technological transformation to uphold the wellbeing of all sentient beings’, we must reject it because it is the ‘most dangerous idea in the world’, and because it ‘undermines the universality of our human essence, and therefore our claim to universal and equal rights’.24 This view is shared by the writer and activist Paul Mason, who argues that buried deep in the murky world of transhumanism is the threat of eugenics, and the opportunity for capital to widen the divisions which already disfigure our world so grotesquely. His question is ‘who controls this technology and what happens when the “rights” of enhanced or modified humans come up against those without the resources to avail of these “upgrades”?’ The other targets of Mason are those ‘post-modern theorists’ for whom we already live in a post-human and decentred world, and for whom, following Althusser, history is a process without a subject. For Mason, this theoretical approach is dangerous because it rejects the idea of humans as materially grounded subjects who can use their reason to know, and to shape, the world in a way which attunes them to their essential nature as ‘species beings’. While Mason dismisses Althusser a little too quickly, his concern about transhumanism and posthumanism is well founded. I also accept that Mason’s appeal to the humanism of Marx provides a legitimate response to this threat. However, in the context of the argument I am making, my concern about these new humanisms is different. It is that they have the effect of reducing us to beings to be overcome, to beings unworthy of protection, to beings whose ethical deliberations are without value, to beings necessary only as means to a future end. In short, it is a vision of the future which strips us of our capacity to believe in ourselves, and to care for others, as we are in the here and now. I accept that these visions are compelling in many ways, and I accept that, as a species, the search for knowledge, and for new ways of thinking, is hardwired into our DNA. However, herein lies the problem, namely, that this technology, which cannot be un-invented, and these new ways of thinking about its capacity to

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transform us, lead to the neglect of a different type of thought; the type of thought we need to prioritise if we are to attend to more materially grounded issues, and to find something in this world in which we can have faith. It might be said that the fear engendered by this technology is no different to that which resulted from the rise of science four centuries ago. However, it is different because nothing in the past has ever threatened to erase us entirely, or to transform so profoundly our sense of what it means to be human. I understand that this plea will not be accepted by many people who, for perfectly legitimate reasons, are concerned about the intolerable amount of suffering experienced in the world, and see the only solution to it in the context of redesigning ourselves in these ways. I understand it because there is a part of me that shares this concern, and is tempted to imagine these futures. However, this is a double-edged vision of an alternative future; one which, on the one hand, restores hope, and on the other hand, annihilates it.

Anthropocene In 2003, the philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the term ‘solastalgia’ to refer to a form of psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change. More specifically, he was referring to the unhappiness experienced by people whose landscapes were being transformed around them by forces beyond their control; an unhappiness he saw as a form of homesickness, which renders unfamiliar that which was once seen as home.25 For Robert Macfarlane this experience of homesickness is symptomatic of the age of the Anthropocene: The new epoch of geological time in which human activity is considered such a powerful influence on the environment, climate, and ecology of the planet, that it will leave a long-term signature in the strata record. And what a signature it will be. We have bored 50m kilometres of holes in our search for oil. We remove mountain tops to get at the coal they contain. The oceans dance with billions of tiny plastic beads. Weaponry tests have dispersed artificial radionuclides globally. The burning of rainforests for monoculture production sends out killing smog-palls that settle into the sediment across entire countries. We have become titanic geological agents, our legacy legible for millennia to come.26 There is a significant literature on this topic of the Anthropocene. Very broadly, it is possible to identify three different interpretations of it. The first, as evidenced by the above, imagines it in the context of an apocalypse, as the most significant threat to our survival, to the survival of other species, and to the survival of nature: As a species, we now hang over the abyss of a geo-engineered future we have created for ourselves. At our insistence, our voracious appetite is consuming nature itself. We have refused to heed the warnings Earth has been sending, and there is no rescue team on the way.27

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In a similar vein, Edward Wilson notes how ‘we thrash about, appallingly led, with no particular goal other than economic growth and unfettered consumption. In the meantime, nature withers and dies’.28 For David Wallace-Wells, our condition ‘is worse, much worse than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all’.29 There is a litany of similarly bleak interpretations of our situation that one could cite here. However, the point is clear, namely, that we have created a crisis of tragic proportions, the consequences of which are unimaginable. A different response comes from the right of the political spectrum, which remains relatively sanguine about the situation. For Stephen Pinker, whose work we examined earlier in the chapter on optimism, apocalyptic talk such as this should be rejected because it is laced with misanthropy, and characterised by indulgence in ghoulish fantasies of a depopulated planet, and Nazi-like comparisons of human beings to vermin and cancer.30 This view is evident elsewhere: Today climate science is not really science at all. The goal of climate scientists is to shame humanity. Climate change alarmism at its very core is a despicably anti-human ideology as we are told to look down at our achievements with guilt, with shame and disgust, and not even to take into account the many major benefits we have achieved by using fossil fuels as our main energy source.31 This is a widely held view. However, in order to sustain it, its advocates have to construct increasingly elaborate lines of defence. The most familiar are that climate science is unreliable, that the motivation of the scientists who practise it is to wrest more research money from government, that environmentalists are motivated by their anti-capitalist agenda, that the whole climate change psychodrama is a conspiracy to undermine the West, that the temperature of the earth has always fluctuated or, on a more theological note, that God would never have bequeathed to us such a weak and vulnerable home. Two different lines of defence are that, while there is, or might be, a problem, capitalism will solve it by developing new green technologies and, in the meantime, it is not rational for us as individuals, or for individual countries, to curb our economic activity if others refuse to do so. In other words, there is a collective action problem at the heart of this question which cannot be easily resolved. In any event, so this line of thought continues, what are we supposed to do? If things are so bad, we are already past the tipping point, so why should we embark on change which is likely to be futile, as well as economically disruptive. The focus of the third interpretation, while sensitive to the first response, is quite different to it. The claim it makes is that, because the crisis is so unprecedented and serious, it can lead to a renewal of critical thinking: I think, though, that the Anthropocene has administered – and will administer – a massive jolt to the imagination. Philosophically, it is a concept that does

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huge work both for us and on us. In its unsettlement of the entrenched binaries of modernity (nature and culture; object and subject) and its provocative alienation of familiar anthropocentric scales and times, it opens up rather than forecloses progressive thought. What Christopher Bonneuil calls the ‘shock of the Anthropocene’ is generating new political arguments, new modes of behaviour, new narratives, new languages and new creative forms.32 A similar argument is made by Timothy Morton for whom our consciousness of what is happening around us is all encompassing: We live in a world with a moral calculus that didn’t exist before. Now, doing just about anything is an environmental question. That wasn’t true 60 years ago. Tragically, it is only by despoiling the planet that we have realised just how much a part of it we are…the uncanny feeling of being present at the birth of this extreme age leads to a traumatic loss of coordinates…if we give up the delusion of controlling everything around us, we might refocus ourselves on the pleasure we take in other beings and life itself. Enjoyment might be the thing that turns us on to a new kind of politics.33 While it is true to claim that an event, or an existential threat on this scale, can force us to think differently, more critically, and more ethically about our responsibility to respond to it, it is far from clear that this third response is possible. Indeed, a more likely response, in order to assuage the feelings of guilt and remorse we experience as a result of our knowledge about what we have done, is to stop thinking about it, and to retreat to some version of ‘response two’ in order to find some soft sand in which to bury our heads. It should be said that, on one measure at least, such a retreat is perfectly rational. This is because it saves us having to confront some highly unpalatable truths about ourselves, for example, that we don’t really have a genuine commitment to the future, and that we don’t really care so much about the well-being of those who will come after us. Let me be clear about my point here. I am not suggesting that we are all monsters who are indifferent to the suffering of others. Far from it. My point, rather, is that, while we care for the future, we do so in an unexamined way; in a way which is philosophically uninformed, in a way which is fragile, in a way which does not sustain us as ethical subjects, in a way which haunts our well-being, and in a way which condemns us to political inactivity. I accept, as in the previous section, that there is no easy way out of this situation. However, unless and until we are able to articulate a reason why we should care about the future, we will remain as passive, rather than active, nihilists.

The sacred In my 2013 book, I argued that religion, while divisive in many ways, was important for ethical life. More specifically, the argument was that, when faith is seen

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as a symbol of our finitude, rather than a symbol of transcendence, it allows us to come together in solidarity with others who share our sense of loss, and it allows us to realise the obligations and duties we owe to each other. In support of this view, I cited the work of the theologian Karen Armstrong, who argued that, rather than thinking about the claims of religion in the context of logos, we must learn to think of it metaphorically, in the context of mythos. This was important, she argued, in order to allow transcendence to shine through its symbols, and to allow it to be attuned to the rhythms of our everyday lives. However, in the context of the argument I want to make here, it was her claim about the importance of apophatic theology that is significant. This is the idea that, rather than believing in the literal presence of God, we must learn to imagine what is astir in his name; what, in other words, it allows us to imagine, for example, beauty, peace, justice, and selfless love. While I remain sympathetic to this argument, the claim I want to make here is that we must reject the idea of the sacred because what is astir in its name inhibits critical thinking, and prevents us from emerging from our condition of passive nihilism. It should be clear that I recognise our need to imagine the existence of a world in which our differences are reconciled. I also recognise how the sacred, uniquely, allows for the restoration, at least in some form, of a sense of meaning and purpose, and a sense of the good. However, as we will see, our longing for it can lead us to pursue it in ways which are damaging to us, and to others. There are different ways in which the concept of the sacred can be invoked to give form, and to sustain, a political discourse. The historian Conor Cruise O’Brien, reminded us how it informed Irish republican thinking throughout its history. He maintained that, while it would be inaccurate to understand the nominally secular Republican movement as unduly influenced by Pearsean mysticism, it remained receptive to the call of ‘ancestral voices’: ‘they hear the ghosts that call for blood, and they obey that call’.34 Richard Kearney, in his discussion about the Maze prison protests, observed a ‘similar recourse to mythic idioms – in particular, the idiom of sacrificial martyrdom’.35 Referring to the hunger strike period, he claimed that the ‘prisoners negated their actual political paralysis by realigning their suffering with a mythico-religious tradition of renewal through sacrifice’.36 In this context, Mircea Eliade noted how: ‘by imitating the exemplary acts of mythic deities and heroes, man detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great time, the Sacred time’.37 For the writer and economist David Goldman, it is precisely because revolutionary, secular, and nationalist movements can engage and mobilise a political community by appealing to the eternal, the mythic, and the sacred, that it needs to be reclaimed, and rearticulated in the context of religious faith. I want to look at Goldman’s work in a little more detail because it is a good example of a discourse which has the effect of inhibiting thought, and locking us further into a condition of passive nihilism. We can begin with his account of the sacred: By ‘sacred’, I mean that which endures beyond our lifetime, and beyond the lifetime of our children, the enduring characteristics which make us unique

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and will continue to distinguish us from the other peoples of the world, and which cannot be violated without destroying our sense of who we are. The sacred is what a country’s soldiers are willing to die to protect; unless there is something for which we are willing to die, we will find nothing for which we are willing to live.38 A similar point has been made by Comte-Sponville, who noted the existence of values which seem absolute, which impose themselves unconditionally, and can be violated only on pain of sacrilege and dishonour.39 The important point, for Goldman, is that, without this sense of the sacred, we disintegrate as individuals, and our societies collapse. He cites examples of what he calls the ‘new nationalisms’ as a warning about what happens when we ignore the traditions and values which bind us together in a nation. From the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the rise of Trump in the United States, and the emergence of right-wing political parties in Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the evidence is clear, namely, that people will be willing to die to protect that which most fundamentally defines them as a people. For Goldman, however, integral to the notion of the sacred is religious belief: The West cannot survive long without restoring a sense of the sacred, that is, repairing and adding to the work of many generations. The only successes we observe occur when the sense of the sacred arises from a biblical foundation. Restoring the sacred will require a hardy alliance of reflection and commitment. In some cases, the past may be irretrievably lost.40 It is for this reason that he argues for the protection of the nation state as it is only this entity which can ‘embody the language, customs and ethos that found our identity’ and allow for the maintenance of the social contract. In this context, Goldman writes about how the literary tradition of the United States reinforces the idea of the ‘City on the Hill’ founded by the English separatists who founded the Plymouth bay colony: America’s high culture is sparse and, in many ways, deficient, but its provenance and purpose are unmistakable. It is unimportant that not one American in a thousand has actually waded through Bunyon’s allegory. All of our popular fiction, from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, to the protagonists of Westerns and hard-boiled detective fiction, descend from John Bunyon’s Pilgrim’s Progress. American literary critics have given little thought to the provenance of their popular heroes. They are not the knights errant of European Romanticism, but hard men and sinners who hold to their own code of honour and stand up to authority.41 Interestingly, and seemingly without irony, he enlists the support of Donald Trump as part of his crusade to restore a sense of the sacred. On the President, he notes

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that he is ‘instantly recognisable as the protagonist in a Christian drama: the lone avenger who stands up to the wicked powers of the world, and calls them out for combat’. It is true that Trump can be relied on to denigrate globalism, the ‘psychic content of which [for Goldman] is to leave not one stone of our past atop another, so that the ground may be cleared for the arbitrary assertion of individual identity’. Describing this culture of identity, Goldman observed that: the conceit that we can define and express our own identity is perhaps the cruellest hoax ever perpetrated on civilised peoples. Who was responsible for this assault on our sense of the sacred which has rendered tradition a black museum of past instances of racism, misogyny and colonialism?42 In answering his own question, Goldman cites the following culprits: ‘Rousseau’s New Man, Nietzsche’s nihilism, Heidegger’s historicism, Ibsen’s assault on bourgeois society, Freud’s conjuring of the unconscious, and of course, Sartre’.43 While those on the Left have a different political agenda, some of its leading figures make a similar claim about the relationship between religion and the sacred. For Terry Eagleton, no symbolic form in history has matched religion’s ability to link the most exalted of truths to the daily existence of countless men and women. For Jürgen Habermas, it is only religion that can provide a sense of a moral whole, and a world of collectively binding ideals. However, Eagleton insists that the transcendent impulse must be rejected: ‘there is no cosmic view and therefore no test of cosmic significance that we can either pass or fail’.44 Moreover, while the idea of sacred is irreplaceable, ‘the idea of redemption, and the impoverishment of the spirit to which it leads, provide sufficient grounds for rejecting it’.45 For Roger Scruton, by contrast, it is precisely with the idea of redemption, or more specifically the example of sacrifice provided by Abraham and the crucifixion, which ‘binds us into a single moral community’.46 This view would be rejected by the novelist André Gide for whom the problem with the sacred is that, in relegating the particular to the universal, it forces us to miss out on the present. In his appeal to Husserl, he argues for the independence of things, and that the ‘voluptuousness of objects is all that there is. It can be terrible but it can also be exhilarating’.47 Eagleton is right to note that the idea of the sacred is irreplaceable. However, while he and others are concerned about it primarily on aesthetic and philosophical grounds, my concern is that it upsets the delicate balance between our thinking and emotional lives, a balance which we need to maintain in order to allow ourselves to remain attuned to ethical life. More specifically, my concern with it is that it sustains us in a state of awe which negates our capacity to understand what is happening to us, and to understand, to go back to Montaigne and Spinoza, what works for us. In one sense, the danger posed by our longing for the sacred is not different to that posed to us by the optimists, the populist snake oil salesmen, and the mindfulness gurus, whose agenda, as we have seen, is also to keep us suspended in a state of thoughtlessness. However, because the sacred attunes us differently, because it disrupts our emotional/thinking balance so profoundly,

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because, in other words, it is so emotionally intoxicating, it poses a problem to our well-being of a different magnitude. I remain uncertain about whether we can retain a meaningful, but less damaging, experience of the sacred. In the context of my argument, perhaps a better question is whether the experience of ethical life in the way I am imagining it can be felt, and thought of, as something which, while not sacred, is nevertheless vital for hope.

Summary and link to next chapter This chapter examined some of the reasons why it difficult for us to emerge as active and ethical nihilists. We can summarise it as follows: we cannot think well of ourselves because we lack the capacity to be altruistic, and we lack the capacity to think about ethical life beyond a context of what is ‘good for us’. Moreover, we are beings who are only more significant than specks of dust because of our capacity, and willingness, to destroy the natural world which sustains us. Finally, because our loss of faith in ourselves is so profound, we are reduced to seeking meaning in other forms of life, in silicon or as part of a community of the sacred. It is clear that identifying these issues is not remotely sufficient to allow us to emerge from our passive nihilism condition. However, while we have to be realistic about the capacity of ideas, of philosophy, of thinking, to change anything, it is true, as indicated earlier, that change will not happen without them. It is for this reason that we must keep going, and why we must keep saying the same things over and over again. It may be futile, but the attempt to make things better is another ineradicable aspect of what it means to be human. It is just what we do. In the next chapter, I look at another seemingly ineradicable aspect of our humanity, namely, our capacity to hope.

Notes 1 For Heidegger, because Nietzsche failed to acknowledge the significance of Being, his philosophy embodied the triumph of nihilism, rather than the overcoming of it. 2 In his book Nothing to be Frightened of, the novelist Julian Barnes noted that, while he no longer believed in God, ‘he missed Him’. 3 M. Rowlands, (2015:197). 4 M. Rowlands, (2015:200). 5 M. Rowlands, (2015:198). 6 M. Rowlands, (2015:204). 7 F. Lenoir, (2015:138). For Montaigne, what was good for us was a simple life, a life attuned to nature and its rhythms, a life in which we took time to focus on our happiness, a life unencumbered by metaphysical burdens too heavy to bear. 8 F. Lenoir, (2015:161). 9 F. Lenoir, (2015:167). 10 F. Lenoir, (2015). 11 F. Crick, cited in Andrew Anthony, (23.3.2014). 12 N. Chater, (1.4.2018). 13 A. Tuschman, (2013). 14 A. Tuschman, cited in J. Ree, (2014).

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15 R. Sapolsky, (2017). 16 In my earlier book, I cited a similar argument made by Jonathan Haidt, who claimed that our deeply ingrained political positions are the result of deep evolutionary forces, rather than the product of ideological frameworks. This analysis implies that political change is extremely difficult to effect because of our genetic predisposition to be loyal to the values of our tribe. See J. Haidt, (2012). 17 T. Nagel, cited in A. Andrew, (23.3.2014). 18 P. Hayden, (2014:29). 19 P. Mason, (2019:168). 20 M. O’Gieblyn, (18.4.2017). 21 M. O’Gieblyn, (18.4.2017). 22 M. O’Gieblyn, (18.4.2017). 23 M. O’Gieblyn, (18.4.2017). 24 F. Fukuyama, cited in P. Mason, (2019:170). 25 R. Macfarlane, (2.4.2016). 26 R. Macfarlane, (2.4.2016). 27 D. Jamail, (8.1.2019). 28 E. Wilson, cited in R. McKie, (10.4.2016). 29 D. Wallace-Wells, cited in D. Snyder, (1.1.2020). 30 S. Pinker, cited in J. Lent, (21.5.2018). 31 S. Kirchgaessner and E. Holden, (28.2.2020). 32 R. Macfarlane, (2.4.2016). 33 T. Morton, cited in A. Blasdel, (15.6.2017). 34 C.C. O’Brien, (1994:59). 35 R. Kearney, (1984:5). 36 R. Kearney, (1984:5). 37 M. Eliade, (1978:6). 38 D. Goldman, (2018). 39 A. Comte-Sponville, (2008:18). 40 D. Goldman, (2018). 41 D. Goldman, (2018). 42 D. Goldman, (2018). 43 D. Goldman, (2018). 44 T. Eagleton, cited in P. Watson, (16.6.2014). 45 T. Eagleton, cited in P. Watson, (16.6.2014). 46 R. Scruton, cited in P. Watson, (16.6.2014). 47 A. Gide, cited in P. Watson, (16.6.2014).

Chapter 7

Hope

In this chapter, I argue that hope is necessary for well-being. This is a view which is widely shared. Perhaps, in the minds of many, it is a more important condition for well-being than ethical life. However, I want to make an argument for hope which I think is less widely shared, or understood; an argument which understands hope in a broader context of desire, faith, and love. I want to begin though with a different way of thinking about hope. As we will see, rather than understanding it as a good thing, this way imagines hope as something which should be avoided if we value our well-being. This is also a widely held view, and it is for this reason that it is important that we respond to it. Implicit in the Greek myth of ‘Pandora’s box’ is the idea that hope is a curse, and that we are better without it. While scholars continue to debate the meaning of the myth, it is hard not to interpret it in this way. After all, given Zeus’ desire to punish Prometheus for stealing fire from heaven, it is hard to think why he would have presented him with an effective antidote to the evils of sickness and death. On this reading, Zeus included hope in the box because it would be a source of further torment for Prometheus, one which would condemn him to perpetual disappointment when his aspirations and desires were dashed. There are other reasons why ambivalence informs our understanding of hope. One is its association with optimism and conservatism. This is a fair point. After all, if one is optimistic and cheerful about the present, it is less likely that one will see the need for radical change, or to hope for something better. It is for this reason that Terry Eagleton argues that ‘bleakness can be a radical posture. Only if you view your situation as critical do you recognise the need to transform it’.1 A similar point was made by Walter Benjamin who noted the importance of organising pessimism for political ends, and who also claimed that the refutation of optimism was an essential condition of political change.2 Spinoza thought otherwise. For him, because everything in the future was subject to the law of necessity, the dispositions of hope, optimism, and pessimism were futile and meaningless. In Shalom Auslander’s Hope: A Tragedy, a different concern about hope is raised. In the novel, Auslander has Professor Jove advising his patient, Kugel, that ‘Hope is dangerous. Hope gets you killed. Hope is futile. Best to be stoical, best not to imagine that anything is better anywhere else, best not to imagine that things will

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get better in the future’.3 He goes on to remind Kugel that hope is cruel and futile because there will always be suffering wherever we look, and wherever we go: The chicken crossed the road because he thought that there might be something better on the other side. Tell me, Mr Chicken: there are no wars on the other side of the road? There is no suffering, no divorce, no failure? No hunger, no disease, no tears, no pain? They don’t commit genocide on the other side of the road Mr Chicken? On the other side of the road, parents don’t bury their children, sons and daughters always get the love they need, men and women don’t grow old and bitter and die of regret?4 While this view cannot be easily dismissed, it is one which we should, nevertheless, strive hard to resist because, without hope, political life dies and, without political life, ethical life cannot be sustained. However, as we will see, the reverse is also true, that is to say, without political and ethical life, there can be no meaningful experience of hope. For Martin Hägglund, the important point to understand about hope is that we should be careful what we hope for. In saying this, his target is religious faith, and the promise of eternal life it makes to us. Hägglund acknowledges that it is part of being human to hope for a life free of suffering, and for a life of eternal bliss. However, the problem he notes is that, when we hope in this way, we are distracted from the task of thinking about what we should do in this life. One consequence of this distraction is that our well-being is denied. This is because it prevents us from valuing, and celebrating, the limited, and therefore infinitely more precious, time we have available to us in this, what for Hägglund, is the only life we will have. He summarised the problem as follows: ‘if I believed that my life would last forever, I would never take anything to be at stake’.5 A similar argument about the double-edged nature of hope was made by Mark Manson: We are a culture in need not of peace or prosperity or new hood ornaments for our electric cars. We have all that. We are a culture in need of something far more precarious. We are a culture and a people in need of hope. Hope gives life a sense of purpose. Not only does it imply that there is something better in the future, but also that it is possible to go out and achieve that something. This is not easy to do. And in the twenty-first century, [achieving and maintaining a sense of hope] is more difficult than ever. Nihilism, and the pure indulgence of desire that accompanies it, are gripping the modern world. It is power for the sake of power. Success for the sake of success. Pleasure for the sake of pleasure. Nihilism acknowledges no broader ‘Why?’. It adheres to no great truth or cause. It’s a simple, ‘Because it feels good’. And it is this which is making everything bad.6 However, Manson agrees with Hägglund’s claim that, without a more nuanced understanding of hope, our well-being is denied. In making this point, he draws

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on Nietzsche’s notion of ‘amor fati’ to argue that, while we should have hope, it should be for the pain and suffering which define our lives so profoundly in this world. In short, he argues that we should hope for the ‘suffering that comes with freedom, for the pain that comes with happiness, and then act, despite it, this is our calling, to act without hope, to not hope for better, [but] to be better’.7 In his appeal to Nietzsche, Manson also appeals to the more ancient traditions of Buddhism and stoicism which hold to the view that we go tragically wrong in our lives when we imagine that a world free of pain and suffering is possible. For these traditions, living well requires not the repression of these truths, but their full and unconditional acceptance. He suggests that our acceptance of the inevitability of suffering is important because it allows us to differentiate between two different ways of being in the world, namely, an immature way, characterised by a lack of philosophical clarity and a lack of understanding about what is good for us, and a mature way which acknowledges the reality of our situation and understands it as a condition for flourishing. It is, he argues, only with knowledge of this distinction that we can dare to hope: [to] dare to hope for a hope-free world, where people are never treated merely as means but always as ends, where no consciousness is sacrificed for some greater religious aim, where no identity is harmed out of malice or greed or negligence, where the ability to reason and to act is held in the highest regard by all, and where this is reflected not only in our hearts but also in our social institutions and business models.8 It is clear that, unlike Professor Jove, Hägglund and Manson are not calling on us to ‘abandon all hope ye who enter here’.9 They are, rather, calling on us to abandon naïve hope for a world which does not exist; a world which distracts us from the here and now, a world whose presence in our imagination leads us to do terrible things to each other. I am not unsympathetic to this analysis. More specifically, I agree that we can, and should, only have hope for that which is realisable. This is the point made by Aquinas that ‘the objects of our hope are unlikely outcomes, or outcomes that are hard to achieve, but which are nevertheless in the realm of possibility’.10 In this context, we can draw the distinction between hope and expectation. Thus, while a person may have little expectation of, for example, recovering from a serious illness, they may still hope, to do so. This question about what is, and what is not, realisable, what, in other words, it is reasonable to hope for, is of course highly subjective. It might be argued that it is not reasonable, or realistic, to hope for the ethical world which I have been describing; the world made possible by our experience of political and philosophical life. Indeed, this conclusion might be drawn precisely on the basis of the arguments I have made in the preceding chapters which identified the seemingly impregnable barriers to these forms of life. However, and this is crucial, acknowledging these barriers does not mean that we have to dispense with hope. What is does mean is that we have to think differently about it. More specifically, we have to think differently about its significance

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as part of a political strategy for change. There are two parts to this strategy. The first is about the articulation of a new philosophical framework, or imaginary, which will allow us to understand hope in the context of faith and love. The second is about the changes which are necessary for political and philosophical life to be revived, and for a more meaningful understanding of hope to emerge.

Thinking differently about hope For Augustine, hope was integral to our understanding of the virtues of faith and love: Only if one loves the future fulfilment of God’s will, and thus hopes for it, can one arrive at the correct form of faith. As love provides the normative outlook that underlies hope and faith (and thus, in some sense, the desire component of hope), love is seen as a more central virtue than hope.11 Implicit here is the idea that hope must have an object in order to be meaningful. In other words, we must know what it is that we are hoping for, and why it has value for us. For Augustine, the object of our hope is the fulfilment of God’s will. However, for him, in order for us to have hope for it, we must also love it. This is necessary because, without love, we cannot have the correct form of faith. While love is seen as a more central virtue than hope, and while both are necessary in order for us to have the correct form of faith, it is important to note that, for Augustine, it is faith which is the most significant virtue. While this account is intelligible in the context of a Christian worldview, my concern with it is that it doesn’t help us to understand the importance of hope in a secular world and, more significantly, it doesn’t help us to understand its role in securing justice. Let me begin by returning to the point made above that, in order for hope to be meaningful, it has to have an object; an object whose value is transparent to us. In the context of the argument of this book, the problem I have acknowledged is that the ethical world which we would be drawn to choose if we had experience of it, the world which would be revealed to us if we had experience of political and philosophical life, is not known to us or, to put it differently, is not sufficiently well known to us to allow an unconditional commitment to it to be realised. If this is accepted, it follows that we cannot have hope for it, and we cannot have appreciation of its value for us. The implication of this is that hope can only do its work, or at least it can only do its most valuable and effective work, retrospectively, that is, after experience of something which we can then hope will be preserved. However, let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that we were able to have experience of ethical life in the form in which I have described it. On what grounds would we hope to preserve it? My claim is that we would do so on the grounds, and only on the grounds, following Montaigne, that it worked for us, and that it enhanced our well-being. In the context of the general argument of the book, this is not to say anything new. However, it allows hope to emerge as an important

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element in that argument. Thus, if it is accepted that ethical life provides us with what we would judge to be the most sustainable form of well-being (the realisation of which is always our primary motivation), it is realistic to assume that we would hope for its preservation. I acknowledge that there are concerns about thinking about hope in this way. One of them is that, when we imagine hope in the context of well-being, we fail to discern something more fundamental about what it means to hope, something about its spiritual richness, something which cannot be easily captured in language. In light of this concern, it can feel almost blasphemous to sever the thread which ties hope so securely to the other theological virtues of love and faith. However, while I am sensitive to this concern, my claim is that, to allow the affinity it shares with these other virtues to be felt in a more emotionally resonant way, and to allow it to function as a more significant and effective political signifier, it is necessary to reconfigure hope in a less theologically oriented context. One way to do this, and I accept it is not the only way, or necessarily the best way, is to replace the love of the fulfilment of God’s will with the love of justice and ethical life. However, as indicated, this love can only be realised fully retrospectively, that is, after experience of justice and ethical life. The important point to note here is that, after this experience, we would love justice and ethical life. We would love them, and we would hope for their preservation, because they would restore the faith in ourselves which has been lost, they would allow us to feel reconnected to others, they would allow us to feel more deeply attuned to our nature and culture, they would allow us to feel committed to the future, and, perhaps most importantly, they would provide us with a renewed sense of meaning and purpose. This way of thinking about hope can be challenged by those without a theological agenda. I am thinking here, for example, of those who hold to the view that, in order for hope to have meaning, and in order for the re-moralisation of society to be realised, we need to articulate, as its object of hope, a ‘substantive moral ideal’. This is the view of the communitarian philosopher Michael Sandel: The reason modern liberals are so keen to put to one side questions concerning the good is that they think them unanswerable. They are, on the whole, moral sceptics, they hold that there is no such thing as moral truth, or at least none that is accessible to us. To tether questions of the right to questions about the good appears to them a recipe for civil war.12 While I have general concerns about communitarianism, I am not unsympathetic to this view. My intention, therefore, is not to contest the idea of a substantive moral ideal. It is, rather, to reiterate that it is something which only becomes meaningful when we judge it to be something which works for us, and as something for which we can, as a result, sustain hope. The idea that moral life is reducible to well-being is problematic on the grounds that it can lead to a culture of relativism. However, how else are we supposed to account for what it means to live well? Moreover, why is political life, and the pursuit of justice worthwhile, and why do

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loyalty, friendship, kindness, empathy, and compassion have value for us if not understood in the context of well-being? My point here is not to defend a crude utilitarianism. It is, rather, to insist that substantive moral ideals can be realised in different ways. In other words, while I accept that my argument alters how we might think about their provenance, I do not accept that it alters our appreciation of their ethical significance. However, because our capacity to reason can lead us to different conclusions, I accept that it is not certain that, even after experience of ethical life, we will choose to preserve it as an object of hope. This is one of the reasons why philosophy is important. I refer here to its capacity to frame a narrative which draws together the seemingly disparate variables of hopes, love, and faith in a way which makes sense to us; a narrative which can lead us, however tentatively, to embark on a political life, a life which can transform our sense of who we are. This is the role philosophy has forfeited to literature. This forfeiture is a problem because, in seeking to reveal to us the eternal truths of the world, philosophy has forgotten its capacity to tell a good story. In referring to storytelling, I do not mean to imply that philosophy should, like religion, invent things in which we cannot believe. It is, rather, to point to its capacity to construct what George Sorel called ‘mobilising myths’; myths which allow it to realise the role ascribed to it by Marx to change the world. Crucially, these are not myths or truths which should be understood as coming from nowhere. They are, rather, truths rooted in the reality of our experience, but which, nevertheless, need naming, framing, and bringing into language in order to make them a part of our everyday way of being in the world. Lewis Carroll captures this point well when he has Humpty Dumpty tell Alice that words mean just what he wants them to mean – ‘neither more nor less. The question is, said Alice, how you can make words mean so many different things. The question is, Humpty Dumpty answers, which is to be master – that’s all’.13 I am aware of the dangers in overinvesting in philosophy, in language, in theory, in ideas, in thinking, as things which can change the world. This is because, while they are vital, without political life, that is, without action, and without experience of the emotions to which it leads, philosophy can only do so much. In other words, it cannot, by itself, constitute the experiences which lead us to ethical life, and it cannot, by itself, allow us to constitute objects of hope to which we can declare allegiance. However, and this is crucial, it can create a space in which seeds of hope can be sown, where journeys to ethical life can begin, and it can help us to make sense of what is happening to us as we progress on this journey. There is one other reflection on hope which I would like to note. In his book, A Letter to a Young Contrarian, the late and much missed Christopher Hitchens wrote the following: After all, believing what I believe about the likely randomness of human life, why do I care to write a tract like this one, advocating what I consider to be the glories of Promethean revolt and the pleasures of sceptical enquiry? What’s the point? I have no answer to the question, which I believe to be

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unanswerable, and that is the one unassailable reason why I so heartily distrust those who claim that they do have an answer. But at least, they have the question, and that’s something.14 While Hitchens didn’t have an answer to the question ‘What’s the point?’, he argued that, in light of our existential predicament, and in light of the terrible political situation in which we find ourselves, the only way to maintain hope was to follow the example of Václav Havel, who recommended that we live ironically. In other words, that we live in a way as if not everyone in the world was a liar and cheat, that we live in a way as if there was a quality to kindness and love which transcends self-interest, and that we live in a way as if there was justice. I agree with Hitchens about the value of irony in some respects. However, I’m less certain about its value to those in the most need of hope, to those whose hope, first and foremost, is simply for life. Yet, at first sight at least, it is not clear how what I am arguing for here, namely, the reconfiguration of the theological virtues, is any less insignificant to those without any meaningful form of hope. However, I think it is significant. In other words, I think there is a point, and I think there is an answer to the question which, for Hitchens, is unanswerable. At least, I think this is how we might think and feel about the question after an experience of something which felt meaningful to us, after an experience which emotionally engaged us, which reconnected us to each other, which allowed to feel restored, and which allowed us to feel happiness, joy, well-being; call it what you will, but something we would consider to be worthy as an object of our hope.

What else do we need to do to restore hope? A shared cultural system stabilises human interaction, but is also a system of value – a hierarchy of value, where some things are given priority and importance and others are not. In the absence of such a system of value, people simply cannot act. In fact, they can’t even perceive, because both action and perception require a goal, and a valid goal is, by necessity, something valued. We experience much of our positive emotion in relation to goals. We are not happy, technically speaking, unless we see ourselves progressing – and the very idea of progress implies value. Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence. We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being. We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Then, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair.15 The section above argued that, while philosophy can lead to us to a place where we can begin a journey to ethical life, the problem is that, without experience of ‘the thinking life’, we cannot constitute it as an object of hope. The same problem

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applies to political life. In other words, how can we value this life if we do not have experience of it? The concern here is that we can end up in double catch-22 situation in which political and philosophical life rely on each other in order to evolve, but we lack the means to realise either of them. Let me be clear on this point. My argument is not that, without experience of political and philosophical life, we are stuck where we are, and unable to move forward. In other words, while we may lack appreciation of the profound ethical significance of political and philosophical life, we do have a sense about how life without them denies us something which is important for us. This is the point I made earlier in the context of our intimations that we are missing out on something which is important for us. Moreover, there are things which can be done in order to promote change. My argument throughout has been that, in order to realise it, we need to be aware of the forces which block it, namely, the cultures of optimism, populism, escapism, and passive nihilism which cloud our vision of a better and more ethical future. While it is clear that more critical awareness of our situation in this respect is important, it is also clear that more, much more, is required if change is to be realised. Before identifying and examining some of the things we need to do, let me respond to the claim that the problem with this diagnosis of our condition is that it is based on a false premise or, more specifically, that it is simply not true that we lack an object for hope. This object of hope is for a better world in which our faith in ourselves, which is far from depleted, is fully restored; a world in which our capacity for love, which is also far from depleted, is realised more fully, a world of peace, justice, equality, fairness, kindness, a world in which we accept our responsibility to care for the environment, and to protect all the forms of life which rely on it for their survival. Moreover, we don’t need experience of this other, and better, world in order to appreciate that it is good for us and for others; we don’t need it to be explained us, we don’t need it to be ‘framed’, and we certainly don’t a need a lesson in critical thinking about it. We don’t need any of these things because we know in our hearts what is good for us, and what it is that we hope for. Moreover, and this is something worth remembering, our hope remains despite the many things in the world which conspire against it.16 This is, I think, a widely held view. And yet, knowing these things is not enough. It is not nearly enough. This is because we also know a lot of other things about ourselves, things which lead us to a very different sense of who we are, and it is precisely for this reason that we do need guidance, directing, framing, naming, and thinking. There is nothing patronising about this. I can say it because I am in no less need of this ‘rebalancing’ than anyone else. Moreover, and more significantly, it is for this reason that the political world in which we live now, a world in which there is a defining absence of anything even remotely compelling to guide and inspire us, is so profoundly troubling. This is not to attack liberalism, a philosophy which is often accused of lacking a meaningful conception of the good. It is, rather, to remember that, as human beings, we don’t flourish in a void which, as we have seen, provides an open door for those such as populists who have little concern for ethical life, thought, hope, or anything else which is important for our well-being.

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This is also the response we should make to those who argue that, while the idea of reimagining hope in a secularised version of Augustinian teaching might make for an interesting seminar discussion, it does nothing to address the more significant barriers to hope facing us as a global community. This is a serious point and I address it below. However, as I said earlier, these barriers will not be tackled if we fail to acknowledge that an enduring object of hope cannot emerge or be sustained in a philosophical vacuum. I have acknowledged that, while hope can only be fully realised after the experience of something to which we can declare our allegiance, after the experience of something whose preservation we can hope for, there are things which we can and must do now. In other words, if we wish for a world of hope, we have to will the means to realise it. As my argument has been about the importance of political and philosophical life, the focus of our discussion should be about what is necessary in order that these experiences can be realised. I should say that what follows is far from an exhaustive account of what we must do to embark on this journey. However, while it is not enough, it is at least a starting point; one which awaits the contribution of future thoughts. I will refer to two issues which are necessary, but insufficient, to set us on our way. The two issues are about the political and cultural revolutions which are necessary if we are to restore ethical life. This is not a call to the barricades. It is, rather, a call to acknowledge the need to restore faith and trust in our democracy, and to reimagine the role and purpose of our institutions of learning. Despite the many problems and challenges facing democracy, the restoration of our faith in it is vital if we are to acquire a sense of ourselves as political actors. As we saw in the chapter on populism, one of the problems with it is that it is not clear what it means. It is, in this sense, what Ernesto Laclau called an ‘empty signifier’. However, there is one thing on which we can agree, namely, that it is a system of government, a political philosophy, and a cultural disposition, in crisis. One widely held view of the cause of the crisis is its meaninglessness: Contemporary political science has devised a range of terms to describe this state of affairs: ‘audience democracy’, ‘spectator democracy’, ‘plebiscitary democracy’. These terms might be too mild: ‘zombie democracy’ might be better. The basic idea is that the people are simply watching a performance in which their role is to give or to withhold their applause at the appropriate moments. Democratic politics has become an elaborate show, needing ever more characterful performers to hold the public’s attention. The increasing reliance on referendums in many democracies fits this pattern. A referendum looks democratic but it is not. The spectators get dragged onto the stage to say a simple yes or no to a proposition they have had no part in devising.17 This is the criticism we tend to associate with Marxism and Anarchism; the criticism that democracy, at least in its liberal form, allows people to imagine, entirely erroneously and dangerously, that they are the authors of their destiny. Moreover,

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and more worryingly, viewed from these ideological standpoints, it is something which keeps us trapped in a world of capitalist exploitation, alienation, and false consciousness. However, one certainly does not have to be a Marxist, or an Anarchist, to hold to something like this view. However, while it is true that certain ‘democratic societies’ are a barrier to ethical life, rather than a gateway to it, it is important to resist the conclusion that democracy in all of its forms is bad for us. At first sight, this is an argument that hardly needs to be made, not least because it has been made so often, and so compellingly, by so many who have experience of what happens in the world when we dispense with it. However, in order that our trust and faith in it can be revived, we have to acknowledge the reasons why they have become so depleted. One appropriate place to begin is to respond to the criticism that democracy promotes, and sustains, a culture of optimism, populism, escapism, and passive nihilism. How can it be said that democracy promotes a culture of optimism? One concern here is that, while democratic life does not negate the need for law, or for the codification of constitutions, or for rights legislation, it allows us to think of ourselves as subjects who are able to live freely and harmoniously with each other without the need for excessive regulation. In other words, as well as being a system of government, and governance, democracy is also a cultural mood or disposition which allows us to imagine that the system of checks and balances which are integral to it, and its commitment to uphold the values of accountability and transparency, will ensure that ‘the worst can be avoided’. It is clear that this is a naïve and potentially dangerous way to think about democracy. However, there is another concern about it. This is that democracy is something which allows us, or encourages us, to live in a way which is not good for us, in a way which is inimical to ethical life. More specifically, the problem is that, in focussing on the protection of our negative liberty, democracy denies us the realisation of our positive liberty. In referring to positive liberty here I am not, as I think I have made clear, appealing to an Aristotelian notion of perfection. However, while I am suspicious of certain interpretations of positive liberty,18 I don’t want to dispense with it entirely. This is because it reminds us that, while we should enjoy the benefits and freedoms of democratic life, there is an important part of who we are which has not been realised; a part of us which we would acknowledge as significant after experience of it, a part of us we tend to forget about when we are living freely. However, does it really make sense to hold democracy to account for blocking our path to self-realisation in this way? After all, for many at least, it is a way of life which, more than any other, allows us the freedom to pursue intellectual enquiry, and to experiment with different ways of life, according to our own desires, beliefs, and inclinations. This is a fair point. However, in response to it, it is also fair to say that this is precisely the problem. In other words, for many of us at least, there is something empty about this freedom, and with the choices afforded by it; something which does not inspire passion, something which we take for granted, something which, as a result, tempts us to seek meaning elsewhere, and when we can’t find it there either, we retreat into escapism, and other

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ways of life, which force us to stop thinking altogether. Alternatively, we seek meaning by endorsing a different type of democracy, a populist form of it, which promises passion aplenty, and which promises to represent the will of the people, and to vanquish its enemies19. Finally, democracy is open to the charge that it keeps us trapped in a condition of passive nihilism. This is because it denies us access to the experiences which we need in order to defend it. In this limbo existence, we emerge as what Nietzsche called ‘the last men’; the men without dignity or uniqueness, who strive only for the preservation of their security and comforts. How should we respond to this ‘case for the prosecution’ against democracy? Well, if it were true that democracy promoted and sustained these barriers to ethical life, I would accept the guilty verdict delivered to it. However, while it is certainly not perfect, this is far from being the case. This is because, rather than seeing democracy as being responsible for these barriers to ethical life, it is more a case of it being the other way round; in other words, it is optimism, populism, escapism, and nihilism which distort democracy, which drain it of its energy, and which inhibit our emergence as citizens who are able to participate fully and meaningfully in it. I raise these concerns about democracy because, left unattended, they are corrosive of our faith and trust in it. However, as well as those identified in the preceding chapters, there are other reasons why our faith and trust in democracy has been corroded. Among the more significant of these is the sheer complexity of issues which demand our attention: a global population in excess of seven and a half billion, the shift of decision making from national to transnational forums, corrupt and dysfunctional electoral systems, pork barrel politics, fear of unpopularity, and lack of political education. If this analysis, or diagnosis, is accepted, as it must be, it is far from clear that democracy can survive and, as a result, it is far from clear whether it is realistic to imagine that ethical life as an ‘object of hope’ is realisable. Moreover, even if these barriers to democracy could somehow be overcome, it can be argued that this is not nearly enough to restore hope. This is because, while democracy is important, there are more significant reasons why hope is difficult, if not impossible, to sustain. However, we must not despair. A better response is to argue that it is precisely because of issues such as the climate crisis,20 that we must acknowledge the restoration of our faith in democracy as one of the most urgent tasks of our age. How will this political renaissance come about? One difficulty in settling on a start point is that one immediately gets drawn into a play of infinite regression, where x requires y, which requires z, and so on. However, we have to start somewhere. One good place is with the education system. Where better than here to instil into young minds the value of citizenship, and where better to cultivate an ethic of duty and responsibility? However, as anyone familiar with the university sector will testify, the transactional culture which has seeped into its every pore has fundamentally changed how we imagine the purpose and value of higher education. Despite the public relations spin provided on their glossy advertising material about an enhanced learning experience, the fundamental purpose of universities today is no longer to provide a space for young people to nurture a more

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critical and thoughtful personality. Their purpose, rather, is to lure clients to their lecture halls with the promise of material riches after graduation. The school system, on the other hand, labours under the burden of an oppressive and deeply unpopular regime of endless testing, rote learning, and league tables; a regime that provides little or no encouragement to promote a culture of critical thought. However, it is not fair to blame schools, or the tertiary sector, for this shocking dereliction of duty to properly prepare young people to enter the world. However, it should be said that the university sector should have been far more robust in resisting the commercialisation and commodification of its culture. I raise this issue, not to launch into a diatribe against this epic failure of the imagination, and the mindless culture of ‘growth for growth’s sake’, which is responsible for it, but to suggest that this is an area which has a critical role to play if democracy is to be restored and revived in the future. One of its first tasks in this respect should be to remind students how lucky they are if they happen to live in a democratic society in which, albeit to varying degrees, the importance of human rights is recognised, government is accountable, criticism of it is permitted, the legal system is independent, and there is a plurality of media outlets – benefits which were all conspicuous by their absence in every society in the not too distant past. This is an important lesson for many reasons, not least because these things are now taken for granted to such an extent that we have lost sight of their value and importance. The second task should be about learning to distinguish between different types of democratic society, for example, between most, although not all, of the countries in the European Union, and the travesties of democracy presided over by authoritarian nationalists such as Bolsonaro, Putin, Orbán, and a depressingly long list of others in the same populist mould. This is not for a moment to be complacent about the flaws which disfigure democratic life in states which can more plausibly claim to be democratic. In the United Kingdom, a country which ranks highly on many measures on the democratic index, there is a desperate need for a fundamental overhaul of its entire political and constitutional architecture. I refer here to its party system, its electoral system, its parliamentary system, its lack of a codified constitution, its lack of a strict separation of powers, and its lack of meaningful local and regional autonomy. However, democracy is about more than institutions and procedures. It is also about a mood, a culture, and a disposition. On this basis, the United Kingdom is also failing. It is a society which, rather than being meritocratic in any meaningful sense, is riven with cultural and educational divides, deference, and shocking levels of class inequality. Moreover, it is a society characterised by a toxic rightwing media culture, dismally low interest in, and knowledge about, how politics works, and a level of participation and engagement in it which is, to all intents and purposes, meaningless. It could be argued that this counsel of despair misses an important point, namely, that, despite this disconnect, people are desperate for a more meaningful political engagement. I accept this point. Evidence of it is provided by the high turnouts and interest generated by the Brexit referendum, and the 2014 vote on Scottish independence. However, these one-off experiments in direct

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democracy cannot disguise the extent of the democratic deficit21 in this country. It might be questioned whether, given the complete absence of political will to change how our system works, and given the financial realities it has to confront, it is realistic to expect the university sector to champion the cause of democracy and civic republicanism. While it is certainly true that it cannot foment a cultural revolution on its own, it must be at the vanguard of a bottom-up movement to demand change. This is because we cannot expect change to come from the top, from those whose security, interests, and privileges are well served by resisting change. This will not be an easy movement to sustain, not least because change in the form of a democratic revival, if it comes at all, will come slowly, incrementally, beginning with tentative steps, and with the sowing of small seeds of hope. While the long-term benefits from this movement will accrue in all societies, it is clear that the strategy which each has to adopt to realise them will be different. In some societies, nothing short of a fundamental challenge to state power will be necessary. In the context of the United Kingdom, initiatives such as citizens juries, which have been effective elsewhere in allowing people to become actively involved in decision making, are a good example of a small step which may generate an unstoppable political momentum for change. The hope here would be that, as more people become engaged, involved, informed, and energised, institutional reform will follow, which will then have the effect of encouraging more involvement. This is a good development in every respect. It would lead to better outcomes, and change the culture of political life from one which is increasingly partisan, and confrontational, to one which is founded more on a more empathic culture of listening, and consensus. At the time of writing, there is much speculation about how the Covid-19 pandemic might be an event which will lead to changes which were unimaginable just a few months ago. Well, perhaps. However, the danger is that, without a deeper and more profound cultural shift which will allow us to think differently about the value of political life, any energy generated by this seismic event will dissipate all too quickly. The biggest prize of all though is that, if the democratic world can reinvent itself in this way, by restoring its citizens’ faith and trust in its institutions, it can set an example to the world, and it can lead the way to a future from which we would look back to where we now, and shudder with relief that we have escaped from it. Following Hegel’s claim that the ‘Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk’, our problem is that this truth might be revealed to us when it is too late.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

T. Eagleton, (2017:5). T. Eagleton, (2017:5–6). S. Auslander, (2012:100). S. Auslander, (2012:100). M. Hägglund, (2019:30). M. Manson, (2019:16). M. Manson, (2019:128–129).

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8 M. Manson, (2019:228–229). 9 This is a reference from Dante’s Divine Comedy. 10 ‘Hope’, (2017), Stanford Encyclopedia. California. In his poem, The Cure at Troy, the poet Seamus Heaney (2018) reminded us of the importance of retaining hope even for those things which seem beyond our reach: History says, don’t hope On this side of the grave But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge Believe that further shore Is reachable from here Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

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‘Hope’, (2017), Stanford Encyclopedia. California. M. Sandel, (1.10.2009). Carroll, (2007:254). C. Hitchens, (2001:66). J. Peterson, (2018:xxxi). The philosopher Srećko Horvat has articulated a grimmer analysis: ‘today, we are living in a long winter of melancholy, not only in Europe but across the world. The past is forgotten, and the future is without hope. Dystopia has become a reality’ (21.04.2019). D. Runciman, (2019:47). This is the distinction I identified earlier in the context of Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty. The concern here is that the passion of the populist, however fake and manufactured, will win out. In this context, we are reminded of the words of W.B Yeats. In his poem, The Second Coming, he wrote the following lines:The best lack of conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. The thought that we need a philosophical justification for why we should care about the future seems shocking. However, one of the reasons why we do need it is that we have lost faith in ourselves, and that we have become what Mark Manson calls a ‘selfloathing species’ (2019:224). For a fuller discussion of this issue, see A. Clohesy, (2001:182–184).

Chapter 8

Conclusion

In his book, Why I Write, George Orwell noted that, when he sits down to write a book, he doesn’t wish to create a work of art. His intention, rather, is to expose a lie or a fact to which it is necessary to draw attention. He also noted that ‘writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand’.1 The reason I embarked on this ‘exhausting struggle’ was to get a hearing for an argument which I thought needed to be made, namely, that in order to realise ethical life, and a sustainable experience of well-being, it is necessary to engage in political and philosophical life. However, our problem is that we are denied access to these lives by the cultures of optimism, populism, escapism, and nihilism, which define and disfigure contemporary societies so profoundly. The argument, in summary, was that the problem with the ‘culture of optimism’ is that it lulls us into a false sense of security about the dangers we face in the future, and it downgrades the significance of engagement in political life. The argument against populism was that it denies our access to a form of political life dedicated to the realisation of solidarity and justice. The chapters on escapism and nihilism were different. The argument I raised in the escapism chapter was that our search to explore the limits of human experience has led to the emergence of a society which is ‘unbalanced’. In saying this, the argument was that our search for emotional intensity has led to a culture of thoughtlessness. This, I argued, is a problem because, without a capacity to think critically, we cannot be confirmed as ethical subjects. The chapter on nihilism identified and examined other reasons why this confirmation is not possible. More specifically, the argument here was that, as passive nihilists, we lack faith in ourselves. One of the reasons for this is we know too much about ourselves, about what we have done, and about what we continue to do. Let me examine these arguments in more detail. We can begin with a summary of the chapter on optimism. My concern with this way of thinking about how the future will be different, and how it will be better than the past, is not that I want to believe that things are bound to get worse.2 More specifically, my concern is that this way of thinking about the past, and the future, saps our political energy, dilutes our anger at the shocking level of suffering and injustice which continues

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to disfigure the world, and deadens our sense that we are missing out on something which is important for our well-being. In other words, the problem with the optimism/progress discourses is that they inhibit our emergence as citizens who understand the importance of political engagement, and who understand that progress cannot be measured, or promoted, by the production of elaborate data sets. It is of course true that not everyone is optimistic about the future. However, it is important to acknowledge the reasons why we are drawn to this way of being in the world. One of the most significant of them is that it exonerates our sense of guilt, and it relieves us of our responsibility to change the way we live. If this is accepted, how can we say that optimism is bad for us, or that it is inimical to our well-being? I acknowledge that this is a troubling question for my argument. However, I remain unconvinced that it is possible to live well in the world in an uncritically optimistic way. More specifically, I remain unconvinced that it is possible to silence the thoughts, and the intimations, which come to us in our private moments, when we are forced to reflect on how we are living our lives, and when we cannot erase the images of injustice, pain, and suffering which confront us every day. Therefore, while it is true that progress has been made, it is not easy to ignore, or to reject, the demand which is made to us to assume a more active political role to address the problems of the world. As I indicated in the opening chapter, it is these intimations which provide us a glimmer of hope that a more meaningful form of progress can emerge. In the following chapter, I argued that, despite my concern about the proliferation of optimism/progress discourses, the damage inflicted on us by the forces of right-wing populism represents a far more serious threat to ethical life, and to our well-being. How has this situation come about? One of the reasons for it is our seemingly insatiable demand for this form of politics. I acknowledged that, as human beings, we long for identity, for recognition, for belonging, for someone to speak up for us, and for someone to make sense of the world for us. I also acknowledged that we long for drama, for clear battle lines, and for solidarity with those who look and sound like us. The problem we noted was that, in a world full of anger, resentment, and fear, these human longings and needs provide an open invitation for populists to ‘ride to the rescue’ with their promises and pledges to meet them. I accept that there is much to be angry about, for example, the suffering caused by the ravages of capitalism, environmental destruction, oppression, rights abuses, poverty, inequality, and corruption. However, the priority of populists is not to hold to account those responsible for these ills. Their priority is to distract us from the real causes of our anger by reframing it in a nativist discourse of restoration and retribution. While it true that there is a genuine concern among right-wing populists about the erosion of traditional ways of life and cultural values, the main purpose of the ‘distraction policy’ which they pursue is to ensure the protection of an economic system which allows for further corporate enrichment. In the context of my argument, the point to note here is that this strategy works. It works because it unleashes what I described as an illicit and highly addictive form of well-being.

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However, this is a cultural and political disposition, or settlement, which cannot be sustainable. We know that this is true because, in order to prolong it, and in order to prevent a more critical way of thinking about our situation to emerge, the populists have to keep it supplied with a steady stream of new reasons why we should be angry. More significantly, though, it is not sustainable because, despite being distracted and disoriented, there remains a part of us which knows that it is not right for us. It is not right for us because it denies us what we most long for, namely, to live well with others, with all others, in a world in which truth is valued, and in a world in which our faith in ourselves has been restored. In The Power of the Powerless, Václav Havel wrote that ‘in everyone there is some longing for humanity’s rightful dignity, for moral integrity, for free expression of being, and a sense of transcendence over the world of existence’.3 However, without experience of the form of well-being which is disclosed to us when we live ethically, and when we live in dignity and integrity, we have to rely on our intimations and intuitions that something is missing and, on their own, these are not enough to motivate change. This is the concern identified by David Brooks: ‘that’s one of the problems with being stuck on the first mountain: you can’t even see what the second mountain offers’.4 How should we respond to this situation? I acknowledged the reasons why many on the Left insist that our vision of an alternative political future must be based on the identification of the ‘friend–enemy’ distinction. However, while this appeal to the people is energising, and while it can lead to tactical battle gains, my argument was that this is not the strategy the Left should adopt to win the war. This is a complex and divisive issue for the Left. For left-populists such as Chantal Mouffe, it is only when the Left acknowledges the significance of identity, and the centrality of political frontiers, that it will be able to direct the passion which provides politics with its life blood into the articulation of a radical socialist agenda. The argument I made in the chapter was not that consensus is a necessary condition for ethical life and well-being. Far from it. It was, rather, that it can help us to frame the debate about the conflictual nature of political life in a different way; in a way which is less confrontational, in a way which makes it easier for those dismissed as ‘enemies of the people’ to see things differently, in a way which allows for the articulation of a more inspiring political vision, based on solidarity and justice to emerge. The important point at stake here is that, while our political theory may be sound, we must ensure that it doesn’t keep us stuck in trenches, and unable to reach out to those on the other side of the barricade. In his recent novel, Michel Houellebecq wrote the following: in principle the problem is solvable, but it no longer is in practice, it no longer is, and that’s how a civilisation dies; without worries, without danger or drama and with very little carnage; a civilisation just dies of weariness, of self-disgust – what could social democracy offer me? Nothing of course, just the perpetuation of absence, a call to oblivion.5

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In the chapter about escapism, I argued that there will always be a part of us which longs for intensity, and moments of ecstasy. In other words, there will always be a part of us which is curious to explore the limits and boundaries of emotional experience. I also argued that there will always be a part of us which demands withdrawal from the world or, more specifically, which demands withdrawal from thinking, particularly about those things which trouble us. I accept that retreating or withdrawing from the world is necessary in order that we can care for ourselves. In other words, I accept that we cannot enjoy well-being if we are condemned to relive every terrible thing which has ever happened, or if we are never able to enjoy the experience of feeling light, empty, free-floating, and unburdened. Therefore, this was not an argument for ascetism, and it was certainly not an argument that our indulgence in acts of withdrawal render us negligent, indifferent, or uncaring about the needs of others. The argument, rather, was that a culture has emerged which promotes, in the words of Houellebecq, the ‘perpetuation of absence’, and the ‘call to oblivion’. As with populism, this situation can be examined through the lens of supply and demand. While there is an endless supply of invitations to withdrawal, it is the demand for it which is of more significance. This is because our demand for it has become compulsive and, as a result, our societies have become dangerously unbalanced. How can we say that there is ‘too much withdrawal’? After all, if it is true that we desire emotional experience, and if it is also true that too much reality is bad for us, in what way can this be bad for our well-being? The answer to this question is the same as that outlined above in the context of optimism, namely, that too much withdrawal is bad for us because when we become too detached from the world, we become unattuned to the cultural demand to come together with others to realise shared goals, and to be part of the solution to the problem of suffering and injustice. This is significant because, as well as being bad for us, this culture of escapism and withdrawal is bad for our politics, and it is bad for the world. Does all of this mean that we have become passive nihilists? In other words, does it mean that the price we pay for finding comfort in the thought that the world is getting better, for enjoying the tribal solidarity afforded by populism, and for retreating into thoughtlessness, is the forfeiture of our faith in ourselves? The answer is, I think, yes. In the chapter on nihilism, I accounted for a number of other ways in which our capacity to believe in ourselves as a species which is worthy of salvation has been, and is being, undermined. I turned to Nietzsche in this chapter, not because I share his solution to the problem of meaninglessness, but because I think that his invocation of the figure of the ‘passive nihilist’ accurately describes our condition. This is because, as Nietzsche warned, the passive nihilist can be reluctant to acknowledge his condition, and he can be drawn to bind himself to other damaging and nihilistic ways of being in the world as compensation for his loss of faith in God. While alternative ‘political religions’ such as nationalism and racism should be rejected, we must also reject Nietzsche’s Ubermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself. My argument here was that, while we must restore faith in ourselves, our active nihilism must be imagined in the context of

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solidarity, compassion, love, and the pursuit of justice. However, for the reasons outlined in the chapter, I acknowledged that this will not be an easy task. In the final chapter, I accepted that acknowledging the damage caused to us by these barriers to ethical life and well-being is not enough to promote change. This is because, without experience of something to which we can bind ourselves, to something that promotes ethical well-being, to something that restores our faith in ourselves, we cannot love it, and we cannot, therefore, hope for it. However, and this is crucial, this does not mean that nothing can be done. This is because we are not tabula rasa; we are not without experience; we are not without insight into what works for us. In this sense at least, we can say that there are reasons to hope for something better in the future. I accept that there are reasons why this analysis might be rejected. It might, for example, be criticised on the grounds that its premises and assumptions are speculative and tenuous, that they cannot be measured, and that they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable. In other words, this is not political science. I accept this point. In response to it, I would say that I did not set out to provide this type of analysis. This is because there are many empirically oriented analyses in the well-being literature already, and I wanted to say something different. I said at the beginning of the book that I did not see it as a philosophical meditation on well-being, and certainly not a conventional one, which grounded its analysis in deep readings of the Ancients, or Kant, or Bentham. While these approaches have value, my concern with them is that they leave us without an agenda for change. It might be argued that, while what is presented here is a type of agenda, it is not one that sets out in any policy detail what needs to be done to help the billions of people in the world who are denied access to any meaningful form of well-being. I accept this point too. However, this is not something I set out to do either. It is clear that, as a global community, our first priority is to ensure that we all have access to the basic goods without which our lives, to borrow a phrase from Hobbes, are ‘nasty, brutish and short’. However, as human beings, we need more than freedom from fear if we are to flourish. Moreover, and this is a point I raised earlier, without ideas, and without experience of something to motivate us, to restore our faith in ourselves and the future, we will not be able to move forward. Finally, I acknowledge that many people dedicate their lives to help others, that many more are active in political life, and that all of us engage in thought about how we are living our lives. I also acknowledge that most of us, most of the time, do our best to help others, and seek to avoid committing harm to them. None of this is in dispute. The problem, therefore, is not that we are wicked, or that our nature has been corrupted. The problem is that we haven’t been able to tell ourselves a story about what works for us, about the value of political life, about our intimations, about the different experiences of well-being which are possible, about the damage caused to us by populist politics, and populist culture, and about the void which exists at the heart of the world where an inspirational and shared vision of a better future should be. In other words, while politics and ethics have seeped into every crevice of our lives, a shared and resonant sense of

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their significance for us is absent. I accept that stories can only do so much. They can’t, and they shouldn’t, erase our memories, and they can’t, and they shouldn’t, prevent us from reflecting critically on how we are living our lives even when, especially when, this causes us anxiety and pain. Moreover, they can’t recalibrate what it means to be human; a condition which will always be defined and marked, in some sense at least, by trepidation, by regret, by sadness, and by ‘weariness, fever and fret’.6 In other words, even for those of us fortunate enough to have been born at the right time, to a loving family, in a decent society, into a body which feels like it belongs to us, with access to knowledge, friendship, culture, and a myriad of other goods which make life infinitely interesting, worthwhile, and precious, our well-being is never complete, or without interruptions. However, there is more, much more, that we can and we must do to realise a form of it which is shared more equally and sustainably.

Notes 1 G. Orwell, (1946:8–10). 2 Reflecting on how we imagine the future brings to mind W.B, Yeats poem, The Second Coming in which he invites us to reflect on how our longing for redemption blinds us to the future which may await us: ‘And what rough beast, its hour come at last, Slouches towards Bethlemen’ to be born? 3 V. Havel, cited in F. Fukuyama, (1968). 4 D. Brooks, (2019:xxiv). 5 M. Houellebecq, (2019:137). 6 J. Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

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Index

Note: page references in italics indicate diagrams; ‘n’ indicates chapter notes. Action for Happiness movement 38 Adams, T. 77, 94n10 Adorno, T. 89 aesthetics 92–93 Albrecht, G. 107 altruism 98–102 Anthropocene 107–109 Aquinas, T. 117 Arendt, H. 23–25, 26n26, 68, 85, 100, 104 Aristotle 3, 16, 18, 21, 39, 90–91, 92 Armstrong, K. 78, 110 Aronson, R. 81 Augustine 118 Auslander, S. 115–116 autonomy 44 Badiou, A. 45 Baker, P. 61, 63–64 Ballard, J.G. 34 Bannon, S. 62, 70n6 Barnes, J. 113n2 Barthes, R. 79 Bauman, Z. 82 belonging 59 Benjamin, W. 115 Bennett, O. 88, 89, 95n49 bias 86 bio-morality 42 Blake, W. 89 Blanchflower, D. 38, 39 Bloom, P. 13n3 Bostrom, N. 104–105 Bourdieu, P. 89 Bregman, R. 33–34 Brexit referendum 27, 45n1, 54, 56, 126 Brooks, D. 15, 131

Brown, W. 81 Buddhism 117 bullshit 49 Burke, E. 60 Burkeman, O. 46n14 Cameron, D. 36–37 capitalism 33, 41, 51, 55, 71n37, 80–81, 83, 108 Carlyle, T. 17, 89 Carroll, L. 120 Cederström, C. 41–42 centre-left 59, 71n61 centrism 65 Charter, N. 102 Christianity 52, 56, 57, 89, 118 citizen juries 127 class 75 classical antiquity 89 climate crisis 29, 31, 41, 48, 51, 125; Anthropocene 107–109 Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) 19, 25n4, 42–43 Cohen, J. 79–80 communitarianism 119 Comte-Sponville, A. 111 consensus 67–68 consumerism 33, 40–41, 43, 44 control 40, 44 Corbyn, J. 59, 63–64 corporations 40–43 Covid-19 pandemic 31, 45, 127 creativity 80, 103–104 Crick, F. 102 critical thought 108–109 cultural pessimism 88–93 culture 73, 75, 95n58

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Index

Davies, W. 41, 42, 67, 76 Davis, E. 49, 58 Dawkins, R. 102 de Botton, A. 28, 32 democracy 48, 60–61, 123–127 democratic socialism 59, 64 denialism 51–52 desire theory 17, 21–23 difference, experience of 1–2 direct democracy 60 divisions, social 68 Eagleton, T. 30, 67, 91–92, 95n58, 112, 115 Eatwell, R. 54 education system 125–126 Ehrenreich, B. 41 Einstein, A. 64–65 Eliade, M. 110 Eliot, T.S. 90–92 elites 61, 92 Ellis, B.E. 71n58 emotional intensity 75–79, 88 emotional life 74–77 emotional literacy 49–50 emotions 16, 25n4, 76–77, 99–102, 112–113 empathy 1–2, 13n1, 13nn3–4, 73, 98 Enlightenment 29, 57, 76, 78, 89 escapism 12, 73–93, 125, 129, 132 ethical constitution 100 ethical future 5–8 ethical life 1–5, 8–9, 9, 12, 17, 18, 23–25, 36, 44–45, 48, 50, 58, 60, 69, 73–75, 80, 81, 83, 88, 93, 96–99, 104, 109–110, 113, 116, 118–120, 123–125, 129, 133 ethnicity 54–55, 61–62, 64, 75–76 eudaimonia (Aristotle) 3–5 Evans, J. 42–43, 77–78 Event, the 45 evolution 98, 114n16 expectation 117 experience 8, 13n18, 17, 23–24, 73, 99–100 externalism 4 faith 5, 75, 96–98, 104–107, 113, 118–120, 122, 123, 128n19, 131 fascism 56 fear 49, 54, 76 Fechner, G. 42 Flaubert, G. 13n11

Fontana, B. 29 forgetting 83–85, 93, 94n35 Foucault, M. 43–44 framing 27–28, 40–41, 53, 61 freedom 5, 23 freedoms from 16 Freud, S. 64–67, 74, 83, 89 frontiers 61, 64, 67–69, 72n68 Fukuyama, F. 56, 58, 106 Garcia, T. 77 gender 76 genetics 98–99, 114n16 Gide, A. 112 Gladwell, M. 28, 31 Goethe, J.W.v. 94 Goldman, D. 110–112 Goodhart, D. 54 Goodwin, M. 54 government 19–20, 43 Gramsci, A. 45, 47n30 Gray, J. 29–30, 87 Greenberg, G. 53 Greene, J. 86–88 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 37–38 Gunnell, B. 38–39 Habermas, J. 112 habitus 89 Hägglund, M. 116–117 Haidt, J. 46n2, 114n16 Haig, M. 35 happiness 18–21 Harari, J. 33 Havel, V. 121, 131 Haybron, D. 4 Heaney, S. 128n10 hedonism 17–23 Hegel, G.W.F. 127 Heidegger, M. 39 Hesiod 89 Hirsch, A. 94n5 Hitchens, C. 120–121 Hobbes, T. 18, 133 hope 5–8, 36, 47n30, 81, 113, 115–127, 128n10 Horvat, S. 128n15 Houellebecq, M. 131–132 human nature 3, 65 human relationships 32–33 Hume, D. 13n9 Huntingdon, S. 48

Index Hurka, T. 20–21 Huxley, A. 7, 77, 78 Huxley, J. 104 Hyde, L. 94n35 identity 1, 54–55, 59, 65, 67, 68, 72n68, 75–79, 93, 94n5 identity politics 62, 68–69, 75 ideology 23, 63–64, 69 Ignatieff, M. 67 imagination 103–104 immigration see migration Industrial Revolution 90, 95n51 irony 121 Isaac, D. 75 Jackson, A. 60 Joshi, K. 51 joy 15–16 judgement 99–100 Judis, J. 61 justice 118–121 Kabat-Zinn, J. 81 Kahneman, D. 15, 73, 86–88, 95n42 Kahn-Harris, K. 51–52 Kaltwasser, C. 63 Kateb, G. 24 Kaufman, E. 54 Kay, J. 95n42 Kearney, R. 110 Kierkegaard, S. 6, 7 Klein, N. 49 Kraus, K. 57–58 Kundera, M. 7, 83 Laclau, E. 123 Lakoff, G. 27 language 71n61 Larkin, P. 46n23 Lawrence, D.H. 95n51 Layard, R. 19–21, 37, 38 Leadbeater, C. 58 Leavis, F.R. 90, 92 Left, the 75, 82, 112, 131 left-populism 58, 59–69, 131 Leibniz, G.W. 46n14 Lenin, V. 50 life satisfaction 15–16 Lilla, M. 52, 57 Lippmann, W. 61 living well 18

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Locke, J. 60 loneliness 76 Longley, E. 84 Lotus-Eaters myth 20 love 68, 69, 118–120, 122 Lukács, G. 89 Macauley, T. 46n24 Macfarlane, R. 107 Machiavelli, N. 60 Manson, M. 116–117, 128n19 Marx, K. 89 Marxism 42–43 Mason, P. 55–56, 70n6, 106 materialism 102–104 Matrix, The 13n7 May, T. 54 McLuhan, M. 74 McMahan, J. 82 meaning 52–54, 97 meaninglessness 33, 34, 97 media 35 megalothymia 56 memory 72n68, 83–86, 94n35 Midgley, M. 102 migration 55, 59, 61–62, 65, 71n61 Mill, J.S. 4–5, 17–18 mindfulness 80–83 Mishra, P. 55, 56–57 missing out 4, 5, 13n10 Montaigne, M.d. 99–102, 113n7, 118 Montesquieu, C. 60 Moore, G.E. 18 Morgan, J. 64 Morton, T. 109 Mouffe, C. 58, 63–69, 71n61, 131 Mudde, C. 53, 63, 66 Murdoch, I. 78 Murray, D. 75–77, 94n5 myths 120; Lotus Eaters 20; Pandora’s box 115; of restoration/renewal 52–53, 55, 57–58 Nagel, T. 103 nationalism 96; new 111 nativism 54–55, 64–66 nature 18, 89–91 negative liberty 16, 26n5 neoliberal socialism 41 New Economics Foundation (NEF) 37, 39 Nietzsche, F. 5, 7, 40, 44, 75, 83, 92, 96, 113n1, 117, 125, 132–133

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Index

nihilism 12, 96–113, 113n1, 125, 129, 132–133 Norberg, J. 34–35, 38 nostalgia 52–53 nuclear weapons 29 Obama, M. 62 objective list theory 17–23 O’Brien, C.C. 110 O’Gieblyn, M. 105–106 optimism 12, 27–45, 115, 124, 125, 129–130 optimism agenda 28–32, 46n14 Orwell, G. 129 otherness 56–57 Pandora’s box myth 115 Paul, St. 52 perfectionism 18–19 pessimism 115 phenomenology 23–24 philosophical life 8–10, 9, 12, 23–24, 25n4, 96, 97, 117–118, 120, 122, 123, 129 Pinker, S. 28–32, 108 Plato 16, 24, 56, 60 poetic politics 9, 14n20 political engagement 21, 26n26 political experience 50, 70n8 political life 8–10, 9, 12, 14n19, 23–25, 25n4, 48, 50, 58, 64, 67–69, 72n68, 74, 83, 88, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, 116–118, 120, 122, 123, 127, 129, 133 Poole, S. 77 populism 12, 32, 45, 48–69, 70n6, 70n9, 71n37, 76, 82, 123, 125, 128n18, 129, 130–132 populist playbook 50–51 positive liberty 124 positive psychology 20–21 positivity agenda 36–44 posthumanism 104–107 power 44 privilege 77 progress 28–36, 46nn23–24, 76, 87, 130 Proust, M. 83 psychology 34; positive psychology 20–21 psychotherapy 19, 25n4; Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) 19, 25n4, 42–43 Purser, R. 80 race 54–55, 61–62 racism 96; see also nativism

reason 16, 25n4, 76, 87–89, 92, 95n42, 101 recognition 56, 93 Renaissance 89 Renan, E. 84 respect 56, 93 restoration/renewal myth 52–53, 55, 57–58 Ricoeur, P. 83 Ridley, M. 28, 30–32 Rieff, D. 84, 94n35 Right, the 74, 75 right-wing populism see populism risk 32 Romanticism 3, 90, 95n51 Rosling, H. 35–36, 38 Rousseau, J.-J. 55 Rowlands, M. 20–21, 98–99 Runciman, D. 31 sacred, the 109–113 Sandel, M. 119 Sapolsky, R. 103 Schmitt, C. 52 Schumpeter, J. 61 scientific knowledge 103–104 Scott, R. 104 Scruton, R. 90, 92, 112 Segal, L. 39 self-interest 99 self-knowledge 101 Seligman, M. 19–21 Shafak, E. 48 Smith, A. 99 social democracy 59 social media 74 social well-being 40–41 solidarity 68, 69; see also unity Sorel, G. 120 Spengler, O. 90–91 Spicer, A. 41–42 Spinoza, B.d. 100–102, 115 Steiner, G. 90, 92 stoicism 117 suffering 2, 8, 16, 19, 21, 92–93, 116–117 Sunić, T. 91 Taubes, J. 52 technologies of the self 43–44 technology 74, 104–107 theology 52 thought 23–24, 25n4, 80, 99–100, 112–113; retreat from 73–75, 85–88, 93

Index threat 54–56, 70n6 thymos (Plato) 56 Tiso, G. 55 tragedy 92–93 transhumanism 104–106 Trump, D. 49, 51, 56, 58, 70n6, 111–112 truth 50–51 Turgenev, I. 97–98 Tuschman, A. 102–103 unhappiness 3, 25n4 United Kingdom: Brexit referendum 27, 45n1, 54, 56, 126; political system 126–127 unity 52–54, 67; see also solidarity universities 125–126 utilitarianism 17–18, 39 values 1, 13n6 Vickers, S. 87 Voegelin, E. 57–58

Wallace-Wells, D. 108 Weber, M. 79, 89 well-being 1–9, 9, 12, 15–25, 25n4 well-being agenda 36–40, 47n33 wellness 42 Werner-Müller, J. 67 Western culture 90–91 Whitman, W. 89 will to power 5, 97 Williams, R. 28 Wilson, E. 108 Winnicott, D. 80 Wittgenstein, L. 90 woke-washing 43 Wolf, J. 82 work 79–80, 93 Yeats, W.B. 128n18, 134n2 Younge, G. 62–63 Žižek, S. 71n37

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