Two Dogmas

Much of our political and social dogma consists in just two basic assumptions: that personal freedom is good and that economic growth is good. Both democracy and capitalism are based on giving us more personal freedom, by giving us more choice over our own politics and how we spend our money, and more economic growth, by stimulating competition, production and spending.

Yet each of the two unchallenged mantras (that personal freedom is good and economic growth is good) can be easily undermined by practical research and luckily for us someone has done that research for us.

The curse of personal freedom:

The ability to make our own decisions and not be supressed by anything more powerful than ourselves is seen as perhaps the most basic goal of western society: If we have choice then we will be happy because we will be able to opt for whichever choice benefits us the most.  This idea has led us into a world where we have almost infinite choice is every area of our lives. We can choose from thousands of brands of clothing and hundreds of mobile phones, we can also choose our own religion and sexual preference. However, the American psychologist Barry Schwartz has flipped this all on its head and argued that choice actually brings unhappiness.

He claims that the more we have to choose from the higher our expectations are. The higher our expectations, the more difficult it is to make us happy. I may have the choice of hundreds of mobile phones but whichever one I choose I will always be wondering if another was better. If my new phone is anything but perfect I only have myself to blame because with so much choice out there I should have found the right one.  Schwartz is not naïve and he recognises that a lack of choice is also a bad thing. He argues that the wealthiest in society suffer from too much choice whilst the poorest suffer from too little.

If my hasty five lines haven’t convinced you then just watch the man in action and I guarantee you will come round: The Paradox of Choice.

The Cost of Money:

Overall economic growth is the standard cure-all solution trotted out by every politician regardless of the problem. It is thought that wealth and productivity will solve our problems yet research suggests that the average affluence of a nation is not important. Instead the deciding factor is the wealth gap between the richest and poorest. The wider the gap between the highest earners and the lowest the more social problems we will face. In their book The Spirit Level, Richard G Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, show that there is a direct correlation between almost every social ill and the wealth gap. They also show that not only does the correlation exist but that it is the inequality that causes the problems and not the other way around.

Once again, if my mini-paragraph on the matter is not enough to woo you into dropping the basis of capitalism (and it would be surprising if it was) then have a read for yourself. The book is on Amazon here, and Polly Toynbee from the Guardian has done a nifty review of another of Wilkinson's books here.

One and the same?

Each of these two reassessments of our most basic political thinking can stand alone. However, it may also be the case that the ideas complement one another. If both choice and social inequality cause problems then perhaps they are really part of the same root problem.

Wealth and choice are inextricably linked in the modern world. The more money an individual has the more choice he or she has over how to spend their time, where to live, what to eat, which car to drive etc. Thus, countries with a higher level of social inequality will have some people who have loads of choice and more who have (relatively) very little. Wilkinson and Pickett have shown that inequality leads to unhappiness and Schwartz has shown how. Inequality of wealth leads to inequality of choice, and inequality of choice results in people burdened by the curse of too much choice and people burdened by the curse of too little.

Personal freedom and economic growth are achieved through choice and inequality and it is these two things that together plague our world.

Memeconomics

The Dismal Science:

After the twenty four regular assumptions of the ‘perfect market’ are listed on encycogov, the encyclopaedia of corporate governance, there is another small list of additional assumptions. Buried within this list is additional assumption no.4:

“Each person knows how to rank alternative commodity combinations available to him.”

This is a specific example of the unfounded single-mindedness that exists at the root of our economic systems. All free market economics assumes that there is such a thing as ‘complete information’ which ‘rational agents’ can acquire and use to make decisions, which are somehow objectively right. To put it simply, free market economics, and thus Capitalism, refuse to recognise the fact that different people have different ideals. There is scope within the system to recognise that different people opt for different combinations of commodities, but there is no recognition that some people (even ‘rational agents’) might not value commodities at all.

These people, colloquially known to the suited man as hippies or fools, not only make the free market economist’s job difficult, they show that his field of expertise is not a universal one. Economists generally assume that their profession is an attempt to understand, classify and predict the actions of the population. However, if the population (or one strand of it) reject the idea of giving value solely to commodities the economist is lost.

For example, if a shop owner is selling his goods at an unnecessarily low rate, the economist will assume that it is either an attempt at undercutting the opposition to drive them out of market or the shop owner simply lacks information. The possibility that the man is lonely and, unconcerned for monetary wealth, he is doing anything he can to bring in the punters in order to make some friends, cannot be accounted for within the economic system. When a wealthy businessman ‘finds god’, gives away all his worldly possessions, and becomes a monk, we should not assume an inability to “rank alternative commodity combinations available to him” but recognise his acceptance of a non-capitalist system. My point is that even when it comes to business our decision making has a range of goals and the acquisition of goods and wealth is just one of them.

With the possible exception of Steven Levitt, whose philosophy centres simply on “explaining how people get what they want”, economists are intrinsically single-minded. According to his co-author of the Freakonomics books even Levitt might not make the grade as an all encompassing, open-minded economist because, “Many people – including a fair number of his peers – might not recognize Levitt’s work as economics at all.”

Memeconomics:

So if the actions which economists call irrational or under-informed are normally in fact rational actions aimed at non-wealth-driven goals, what are people’s reasons for action? Well, now we have stumbled upon an interesting, if unfathomably difficult, question. One relatively new concept, which gives us some insight into quite how diverse and unpredictable our reasons for action are, is that of the meme. Memes are units of ideas and memetics is the science dedicated to explaining the existence, spread and destruction of ideas. The terms were coined by Richard Dawkins and attempt to capture the way in which, like our genes, ideas evolve through a process of natural selection. They survive from being passed from host to host through any manner of teaching, preaching or indoctrination. They die and go extinct when nobody believes them anymore.

If you are unfamiliar with memetics I strongly suggest watching this lecture by the American philosopher Dan Dennett (link). In it Dennett draws a wonderfully precise analogy between a physical parasite and a mental one. He gives the example of an ant which is continually climbing to the top of a blade of grass, this is a natural phenomenon that can be seen in nature and is a seemingly unproductive process. For no recognisable reason some ants just climb up blades of grass over and over again. As a society dominated by Darwinism we ask, “What is the biological purpose of that action?” The answer is that there isn’t one; not for the ant at least. In truth, the ant has been infected and hijacked by a brain parasite which literally burrows into the ant’s brain and forces it to climb grass. Now what is the purpose of this I hear you scream! Well, the parasite can only lay its eggs in the stomach of a sheep or a cow, and thus it needs some way of getting in there. The answer: steal an ant as transportation and then climb up grass in order to be eaten by the next passing grazer.

Very quickly we can see a parallel with a frightening amount of human action. It is not too difficult to find human behaviour that seems genetically detrimental. When we see anyone die for their ideas we ask the same question that we asked with the ant, “What is the biological purpose of that action?” Again, we find that there isn’t one. Except of course for the idea: if someone dies in the name of freedom then the idea of freedom is propagated; and if someone forgoes having any children in the name of faith then that faith gains recognition. The moral of the story is that ideas are like viruses. This does not mean that they are all bad, some can help to bring happiness or prosperity, but that they are living things which exist in us and can use us to procreate. Ideas drive us to unbelievable lengths and the fact that we have a communicative society accentuates the point; the ant can only climb alone, we can convince others to climb with us. Imagine if the ant was capable of communicating his desires, soon there would be anthills as high as skyscrapers as the infected ants convinced the others that climbing up is the only ideal worth striving for. An ant-built tower of Babel would not be far behind.

Going back to the question of human action in commerce, we now see that any economic model that assumes that commodities and wealth are man’s only goal is going to miss the mark. The Capitalist ideal of a free-market is a very basic Darwinian model: everyone strives for one goal and those most suited to the environment survive. Capitalism is founded on the thought that it’s a dog eat dog world. But what happens when we encounter phenomena which cannot be explained by such a simple survival-of-the-fittest model? The existence of memes shows that in many cases our original instincts concerning the actions of man are incorrect. Why do the ‘hippy’, the monk, and the lonely shop owner forgo wealth? The same reason the ant climbs to the top of the blade of grass: there is something in their heads that tells them to. Striving for cash is no different though: why does the entrepreneur give up family and friends just to make money? Because he has a brain parasite of sorts too.

What this all leads us to is an undeniable recognition of the various actions of man and their multifarious aims. We are prone to thinking that at the end of the day, even though we go about it in different ways, everyone is striving for the same thing. That thing we tend to dub ‘happiness’, but because of its diverse nature, the concept is all too easily bastardised. The capitalist model assumes that happiness is equivalent to prosperity, the Christian model assumes happiness is equivalent to God, the communist model assumes happiness is equivalent to equality; the list goes on. Of course, none of these belief systems gets it quite right. These systems are examples of the memes that control our minds, they are in no fit position to dictate any omnipresent, human value.

I am not trying to claim that capitalism, Christianity, and all other belief systems are inherently wrong. I only say that we must recognise them for what they are, namely selfish ideas which have evolved through a process of survival of the fittest to control and guide the minds of men. I am also not claiming that we should attempt to kill off these controlling memes, I will not be out in the streets tomorrow with a hand-painted sign which reads “Kill communism” or “Lets make religion extinct”. The most frightening fact of all is that ‘meme’ is just a byword for ‘idea’ and the mind free of memes will also be free of ideas. I only hope that through a recognition of the way that ideas spread through us and guide us, we can become less attached to them. If we see the free-market as a useful idea which has endured in us over time through a process of survival of the fittest, then we will also be ready to let it mutate when it is not doing its job. Just as in the animal kingdom a species will die out if it cannot mutate to a change in its habitat, in the memetic kingdom ideas will die out too. This is not a sad thing to be fought against. No beliefs are absolute and dogma brings nothing but danger. We must accept change in our ideas and see them as one of the many equal species rather than hold them up as immaculate productions of a human God.

A reply to love

I received this reply to my most recent post in an email and thought it deserved some space:

I liked this blog…but I didn’t love it.

I’m afraid I may well be one of these quasi-philosophers that impose their scrooge-like cynicism upon the rest of the kind-hearted souls of the world, but this isn’t because I don’t want people to be happy.  We all know that the world may appear a better place through rose-tinted glasses, but that doesn’t mean that it is so.

I think that the reason that ‘romantic’ love is targeted so much is because of the ideologies that society places on it.  People frequently talk about love in the same breathe as ‘destiny’ and ‘fate’ and coin the phrases ‘meant to be’ and ‘the one’, speaking as if the magical forces of the universe have united their souls with another.  It has become a form of religion, where this mystic force is the saviour of the modern world; it can perform miracles.

But a religion needs a god.  For us tiresome atheists there must be a source for this ultimate power.  Unless the likes of Cheryl Cole and her contemporary counterparts have been brought to Earth from another planet, preaching their gift of love through the medium of song, then who else is there to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight for this love?  Without a benevolent god beaming his love rays upon us surely the evolution of love can be explained pretty neatly through said Darwinism and the analysis of the human psyche.

As you suggest, this does of course suggest that one must analyse all emotions in such a way, and although this is never an easy train of thought, it does follow a line of logic.  It is not the fact that we feel an emotion that is in dispute here, but what causes it.  I’m sure I would shit many a brick if locked in a cell with a lion, but as you snidely comment from the safe side of the bars “don’t worry, you aren’t really afraid; it is just your genes telling you to be scared in order to keep their host alive until they can spawn”, I’d frantically rebuttal “actually, I am terrified, but you’re right as to why…now get me out of here before I get eaten alive!”  There must be complex psychological reasons behind our emotions for we are indeed complex psychological monsters; love is neither more nor less important than the others, it just gets trounced on a little more as people put in on a pedestal.

So of course love exists in some form.  The word has definition and rings clear in our head when we hear it uttered, but it is the dependence and reliance upon finding salvation in the romantic form that seems to shield people from the wider world.  This is now the love of rom-coms and trashy chick-lit that people seem to find great pleasure in escaping to.  These are teaching us how to feel the emotion in a false light.  Whilst they may promote a world of happiness on the surface, it seems that in the long run people strive for a life that is unachievable and unrealistic.  But there I go being all pessimistic again.

Lots of love

R/C, the cynic.

Love-cynics? Feed them to the lions.

Apparent wisdom is often a mask for pure cynicism, and there is nothing more satisfying than recognising a piece of dismal folk-philosophy as such. Not only is there the thrill of dispelling the myth, but you have the added joy of creating optimism along the way.


Perhaps the most common failed-truism currently plaguing the collective mindset is that human emotions, and most notably love, are simply selfish brain settings designed to aid the procreation of our genes. It is a claim against the existence of our very emotions. There are countless references from popular culture in which we are told that love is nothing more than an egocentric tool for bribing sex from another hapless gene-drone and with each one I encounter I lose some faith in the intelligence of humanity.


The uplifting truth is that no scientific explanation of our action can remove its personal meaning. Yes, it is the case that in evolutionary terms one good reason that we posses such amorous sentiments is that they can lead to procreation, along with a statistically safe environment for offspring. However, this scientific fact passes no judgement on, and causes no conflict with, the way we genuinely feel these feelings.


Perhaps it is an attempt to deny the existence of love in order to remove the risk of never finding it - cynicism does also bring safety – but whatever the reason, the use of loosely Darwinian ideas to refuse the existence of erotic love is particularly fashionable. Anyone who tried to claim that mothers do not ‘really’ love their children, but just want their genetic code to survive would be branded a monster. Yet in the social realm of sexual relationships, without any recognition of their ignorant anti-humanism, love-doubters abound.


If you ever meet a pessimist, who tells you that “deep down” no man “really” loves any woman (or visa versa) but that they are just after sex, lock him in a room with a starving lion. Not only would it be fun to rid the world of so negative a person, but you could also whisper calmly through the keyhole, “Don’t worry, you aren’t really afraid; it is just your genes telling you to be scared in order to keep their host alive until they can spawn.” The look on his face would undoubtedly warrant the intricate planning that would be needed for such an elaborate, expensive and might I add hilarious hoax.


Ed Thornton

An Experiment

Let’s try an experiment…

Sadam Hussein’s vaunted weapons of mass destruction turned out to be a chimera and the cost in American, and especially Iraqi lives, has been hideous. We need to ask ourselves how we reached this point of zero empathy for those hurt by our way of life. Of course, I don’t want to be president. But I digress.

Iran, for its part, insists its uranium work is non-negotiable, now or ever. Look at us! We are not politicians. Everywhere it is becoming clearer how social, economic and political misery will endure for a long time yet. We stand on the far promontory of centuries of struggle. A new constitution needs writing. To put it bluntly, I’d say we are asleep at the screen.

In his new book, “Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership”, Warren Bennis, a management theorist, tells a story about Sigmund Freud’s flight from Vienna to London in 1938. In essence, the research suggests if you feel that you should be taking certain actions or that you are not living up to you true ideals, you will probably be a happier person if you take those actions and live up to those ideals. The big fashion these days is to focus on the supply side of innovation: for example, by encouraging everyone to think big thoughts. That is why we dream of nothing less than a global emancipation, a spiritual insurrection that sets this false world ablaze. After firefighters extinguish a blaze they usually look carefully for glowing embers before rolling up their hoses and heading off. This means that we have to publish our private opinions and interrogate our private lives as if they were on display.

Still a word of caution is in order. You can’t fight an enemy you can’t see. Instability afflicts the whole country. I tell you plainly that a dark, dangerous future lies ahead and that it is your duty to resist and to serve Islam and the Muslim peoples.

So, what did you think? What did the article make you think?

The text above is not in fact an article at all, but an amalgamation of around twenty different articles; the sentences are taken alternately from The Economist (28th Aug- 3rd Sep 2010) and Adbusters (Sep – Oct 2010). The articles used range in topic from the Pakistani floods to the Australian hung parliament, and back to Brazilian farming methods. The two publications have very different editorial directions. Adbusters is a not-for-profit, anti-consumerist magazine of social activism, whereas The Economist’s principles are rooted in free trade and globalisation. However, the link they share as ‘forward thinking’ intellectual publications brings out a striking similarity in some of the language that is used.

The rhetoric that is printed every day to argue for a diverse range of ideals can all too easily merge into one long rant. If we are not careful that rant – which we see throughout our lives as a constant stream of media produced information and comment – can rustle up some semi-formed, subconscious thoughts in our unsuspecting heads.

The next time you skim through a magazine, reading one or two sentences of each article, remember what you have just read and beware of the subliminal messages that are inevitably seeping in.


Ed Thornton
(thanks to my brother who collaborated on this piece)

The Mouse and the Tiger

A story of our collective action:

After recently watching a lecture given by Matt Ridley, titled When ideas have sex, I have been thinking about the amazing power we possess as a society to create things that are beyond any individual’s innovative capability. By this I mean that as a global community we have produced both objects and systems which require a huge pooling of knowledge. Matt Ridley focuses on the way this is manifested in producing new technology but it can easily be adapted to our creation of other non-physical social structures.

Ridley tells us about the wealth of information which is required to manufacture a humble computer mouse. He points out that there is not one individual in the world who has the capability to build a mouse from scratch. That person would not only need to understand the wiring of the electronics but also how to make plastic; and hence, even how to drill for the oil needed to make the plastic. His point is that through global communication and trade we have created objects which no individual (or even small population) could make on their own. His lecture is a positive appreciation of the wonderful ability of man, but whilst insightful he does not recognise that the same process that allows us to use technology to make our lives easier, also brings interesting ethical questions.


If you own a computer mouse and want to thank somebody for creating it for you, to whom do you show your gratitude? There is no individual responsible: literally thousands of different people through history have been responsible for both the invention of the techniques used and for the actual production of the object in a factory. We can find no one person to thank but are forced to thank that ubiquitous presence, humanity. This means that I should be grateful to everyone who exists now and in history for the technology that I have, I must even thank myself a little bit; as part of the species who created comfortable living I am party responsible for my own situation.


Before we get ahead of ourselves and start cheering for the great innovation of our species and partying in the streets in respect of our brilliant co-operation, we must recognise that the same traits that have brought about an exponential rise in easy living have also had their side-effects. In London Zoo the other day I saw a sign that read, “The future of the tiger is all of our responsibility.” It was saying that if the imminent extinction of this animal finally takes place, we have no one to blame but ourselves. There was no individual who killed the tigers and even the few who did go out and poach did not also make their own rifles; they most certainly did not create the demand which gave them the incentive to kill the tigers. In short, the downfall of the tiger, much like the invention of the computer mouse, is a shared responsibility. I must thank everyone for the amazing technology which allows me to live my life in relative comfort but similarly I must blame everyone for the death of our wildlife; everyone including myself.


The overpowering globalisation that has occurred in relatively recent history is in danger of disconnecting us from our moral obligations. We do not recognise either our part in the creation of brilliant new innovation, which can raise human living standards, or our part in the slow destruction of our planet. It is right that the mouse should make us proud and we should congratulate ourselves on our productivity, but the story of the tiger is an example of a wider problem that should frighten us and remind us of our responsibility. The mouse may be nice, but the tiger will always be scary.

Ed Thornton

Ponderlusting: A beginner's guide

Philosophising beyond the pub…(Olly)


So here’s something: I’ve actually already written this alleged mission statement.

You see, in order for me to finish it before my partner-in-crime Ed strangled me through facebook chat, it’s taken the switching off of my laptop, and I am writing this with a biro on the back of a bank statement. The admirable intention was for my fondly loved fountain pen to sing these words onto the high-quality paper of my ex-diary. Both diary and pen have, for some reason, disappeared from my desk.

There is a point. For some time, we’ve been coming across more and more ‘for some reasons’. ‘For some reason, it’s a surprise when England are knocked out the World Cup’. Or ‘for some reason, the debate over the Iraq war, in mainstream media at least, lies not on the thousands of murders committed by British and US soldiers but on whether we should have waited for the UN to say it was ok to kill innocent people’.

‘For some reason, I’m surprised not find to my pen.’

A trivial and personal example, yet I can’t help avoiding the impression that not only are we not given answers to many things around us (my pen remains missing), but that we’re not asking the right questions (the novel idea of keeping my desk tidy has never occurred to me). What’s more, it seems we’re slowly being tricked, whether deliberately by an omniscient oligarchy or in an oblivious act of self-destruction on the part of civilisation, into ignoring the most obvious and fundamental of questions about the society in which we live (I am deceiving myself into thinking it would be no use to tidy my desk). Furthermore, we are encouraged, or convince ourselves, that these questions do not exist (there’s no such thing as an untidy desk).

An authentic philosophical superinjunction on uncovering the fabric of our everyday lives.

The seeds of the initial idea to begin a kind-of-writing-blog-thing-sort-of were probably first sewn when we contemplated, prior to finals in our much-mocked arts degrees, setting up a joint plumbing business. The faces which received our idea, among mothers and girlfriends alike, probably resembled those which received Galileo when, well oiled after an Italian wine or two, he plucked up the courage to absurdly pronounce that the world orbits the sun.

It may be time to reach the point: are we too reluctant to say ‘why not?’?

In fact, recently we’ve been chomping at the bit to ask. But then over the past couple of months, layabout soap-dodgers that we were/are, we have witnessed many a sunrise with a can of warm beer in hand. In those epiphanic moments, the negation of ‘why not?’ is magical. It is a question that wipes the slate clean, abolishing all possible previously conceived reasons…because you just know there is no ‘not’. Thought is stripped down and ready to be redressed. The apolitical mind can approach politics. The metaphysical soldier enters into battle on physical terrains. Essentially, the desire to transcribe these drunken ponderlusts onto paper (or screen) is what drove this blog from the start.

…and into the ring (Ed)…

“A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring” – Substitute ‘philosopher’ for a slightly more general, and less big-headed term, and this blog becomes our ring.

The so-called fighter who has never donned a pair of gloves will not only be terrible on the canvas but will also, without doubt, retire unfulfilled. This blog is thus a blow-by-blow account of our attempts to develop our own powers of thought, dialogue and writing; as well as gain more confidence and fulfilment from flexing our intellectual muscles in front of a crowd. Inevitably there will be some spurious beliefs in our collective heads and bringing them to the surface is likely to be embarrassing, but it should also be fun. Every boxer should enter the ring with conviction; weaknesses that arise can be ironed out afterwards in training. After all, even a series of first round defeats should be educational; and hopefully provide some catharsis.

Brawls will most probably centre on politics, philosophy, and sociology. However, you should always be ready for a wild haymaker-of-a-rant about more down to earth issues or a cheeky little uppercut-of-a-passing-thought about sport/music/literature.

…but unfailingly back for last orders (Olly)

Because, at the end of the day, ponderlust is a malleable state of mind. It doesn’t follow a political dogma and has an insatiable curiosity. It might produce a short story, it might produce an comment article, it might produce the transcription of a dream. It might produce a comment article in the form of a short story which appeared in a dream. Expect nothing and expect everything.

Take us with a pinch of salt, of course. Well might we, enlightened bloggers that we are, ridicule the illogical dismissal of a career path. We were able to ask why we should not start a plumbing business, but when we proposed offering philosophical conversations and Spanish lessons with the service, we simply laughed the thought off. But why not? Why not combine our talents and offer something different to the competition? After all, the market rules, doesn’t it? But we chickened out. We don’t offer philosophising plumbing, we offer a blog. Just like every other young start-up spouting their vision to save the world. As for the plumbing business, well my kitchen tap is still leaking.

Let’s be blunt. I was forced to write this on paper because, if the article which was the final prompt for the materialisation of this project is true, Google has already destroyed our ability to philosophise deeply. Maybe this blog exists to enable us to keep ponderlusting.

But then, why would you believe a word I write? I lied to you from the moment I began saying I’d already written this article, which I clearly hadn’t because I’m writing it now. And still am. And still. And. Still.

Beware of what you read, friends. But never stop enjoying it.