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1118   11 December 2005  

Happiness?  It's about avoiding anxiety...

New research suggests that "success" in life, in any sector, is a consequence of happiness, not vice-versa: thus reported The Guardian this week.  I would put it differently. 

I suggest that the natural condition of the adult human is one of anxiety and pessimism. That is the inevitable effect of man's intelligence, self-awareness, and sheer inquisitiveness, the drive for understanding.  Let's face it, it has never been easy, at any time in human history, to be a great optimist about the future.  Job was quite right.  But in evolutionary terms, pessimism and depression are killers: depression and despair can inhibit the urge to procreate.  And so mankind is continually devising new ways of overcoming anxiety. 

Indeed every individual, I say, develops a distinctive combination of techniques to combat anxiety.  We are always deploying counter-measures, consciously or sub-consciously, to relieve the anxiety which is our natural lot.  Politics and religion play their part, as does art, insurance, falling in love, being around children, the creative arts and crafts, immersion in sports and hobbies, seeking oblivion with drugs or alcohol, absorbing the continuities of history, cultivating tribal loyalties, and the deliberate truncation of horizons.  Each of us has a distinctive cocktail of counter-measures, which keep us sane and operational, if only in Darwinian terms.  And the high incidence of depression, in all societies is - I say - only to be expected.  It's natural.

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1119  11 December  2005   

Marketing gone mad

The institutions of Government themselves should not be "spun".  It is demeaning to Government, and disrespectful to the citizen.  I have just received a letter from the Treasury Solicitor, bearing this new logo: I am helping an asylum-seeker, as her "MacKenzie Friend" to challenge a legal mistake by the Home Secretary.   

  • "Law at the heart of Government"?  Tell that to those who launched the Iraq Invasion, and to those who suffered from it. Tell that to those "rendered" prisoners, conveniently spirited through Northolt. Tell that to the failed asylum-seekers, hunted throughout the UK, moved from pillar-to-post to avoid legal intervention, arbitrarily arrested and arbitrarily released.  The Law has abandoned them.

I do not want to be "sold" the agencies of my own Government, as if they were chocolate bars.  Government is essentially a coercive institution, not a retailer seeking customers.  No prisoner "chooses" his jailer. And as for the Home Office's own slogan, it is insensitive and distasteful - "Towards a safe, just and tolerant society" - what po-faced pomposity!  Who approved this strap-line?  Tell that to those who are imprisoned without charge, or destitute asylum-seekers on our streets, or those roughed up by the Police, or subject to incessant stop-and-search. 

  • This marketing practice is both trivial and trivialising,
    and should be discontinued.

What do you think?  Drop me a line

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