The documentary maker Adam Curtis wrote in 2010: ‘In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.’
Read MoreBritish universities have been severely hit by the pandemic. Over the last decade, they came to rely on a river of revenue from visiting Chinese students, which never looked like ending. Floating on this Yangtze of cash, universities got rich and launched grand plans to expand. Every university town you visited, you’d see tower blocks being constructed, to provide luxury apartments for the Chinese visitors.
Read MoreWe’re in an entirely new level of interconnection, and we’re freaking out. Breathe.
Read MoreOne of the figures in the controversial Tube protest by Extinction Rebellion is a Buddhist teacher who has embraced a new form of revolutionary Buddhism put forward by Rob Burbea. The blowback from the protest show the limits of this philosophy in practical terms.
Read MoreAmid all the debate about the student mental health crisis, one idea is never put forward by the academic experts.
Don’t go to university.
It’s taboo to challenge the idea that a university degree is the right choice for everyone.
What if it isn’t?
Read MoreCan education help us to become more well-rounded, integrated, wise and whole people? This was the project explored both by Aldous Huxley, and by his ancestors - Thomas Huxley and Matthew Arnold - in their famous dispute over the role of sciences and the humanities in education.
Read MoreRowan Williams on the role that mysticism and spirituality can play in helping us confront the systematic unreality of our economic and cultural system.
Read MoreLast week I came across a small book called The Making of a Counter Culture, written in 1969 by an American historian called Theodore Roszak. I loved it. Roszak was the first to coin the phrase ‘the counterculture’.
Read MoreAs you may know, I’m researching a book about Aldous Huxley and his friends Alan Watts, Christopher Isherwood and Gerald Heard, and how these four posh Brits moved to California and helped to invent the modern culture of ‘spiritual but not religious’.
Read MoreWe’re so used to stories of snowflake students having meltdowns over Halloween costumes that it’s refreshing to remind ourselves they really can change the world for the better.
Read MoreI was walking to the Extinction Rebellion protest last weekend, and I suddenly started crying.
Read MoreRoy Bahat is the head of Bloomberg Beta, a venture fund backed by Bloomberg. He also works on the future of work, and - like a lot of people in Silicon Valley - is a vocal supporter of Universal Basic Income (UBI). I met up with him in San Francisco to talk about the future of work and the importance of lifelong learning.
Read MoreApologies for the delay in writing. I’ve been in California for the last three weeks, immersed in preparing for Burning Man, then going to Burning Man, then recovering from Burning Man.
Read MoreThe only thinker whose popularity on YouTube comes close to prophet-of-rage Jordan Peterson is Alan Watts, the British popularizer of Eastern wisdom. Watts’ talks from the 50s, 60s and early 70s have millions of views on YouTube, and are often edited to the accompaniment of orchestral or ‘chillstep’ soundtracks and jazzy collages of modern life.
Read MoreThis week I took the train out to Milton Keynes, then a taxi through the golden fields of Buckinghamshire to the University of Buckingham, where Sir Anthony Seldon recently became vice-chancellor. He was previously headmaster of Wellington School, where he became prominent for his advocacy of happiness classes. Now, he has brought that vision to higher education, outlining his plan to make Buckingham 'Europe's first positive university'.
Read MoreShould a university provide a moral or spiritual education to its students? The idea seems ridiculous in the age of the mega-university. Universities today are enormous corporations, employing tens of thousands of academics and staff, with anything from 5000 to 30000 undergraduates studying there at any one time. The university is a microcosm of our multi-cultural society - there can be no one over-riding ethos in the 'multi-university'.
Read MoreOn Monday, a new free online course is starting, exploring the mental health benefits of literature (you can sign up here). It's made by the author Paula Byrne and her husband, literary academic Jonathan Bate, and features interviews with Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry, Melveyn Bragg and others, about how poetry has helped them through difficult times.
Read MoreHow are you feeling? How well are you? Is your weight where you want it to be? Smoking too much? How happy are you on a scale of one to ten? Are you optimising your personal brand? How fast was your last five kilometre run? Would you like to share that via social media? Would you like a life-coach to help you overcome these challenges on a way to a better, happier, more awesome you?
Read MoreWatch out folks. There is a murky world lurking behind the scenes, a sinister cabal of policy-makers, psychologists, CEOs, advertizers and life-coaches, watching you, measuring you, nudging you, monitoring your every smile, all to try and make you happy. We must resist. This, broadly, is the message of sociologist William Davies’ book, The Happiness Industry: How Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being.
Read MoreThe documentary maker Adam Curtis wrote in 2010: ‘In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.’
Read MoreAs most of you know, I'm working on a book about the place of ecstatic experiences and altered states of consciousness in post-religious / secular / rationalist society.
Read MoreI gave up booze for Lent. This is long overdue - I have had a drink, usually more than one, pretty much every day for the last 20 years. Stoicism and booze helped me through PTSD and social anxiety. My stiff upper lip was soaked in beer. Twas ever thus - why do you think Edwardians called cocktails ‘stiffeners’?
Read MoreThis year I’ve developed and trialled an eight-part course in practical philosophy, called Philosophies for Life. The pilot was financed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via Queen Mary, University of London. I trialled the course with three partner organizations: Saracens rugby club; New College Lanarkshire and HMP Low Moss prison; and Manor Gardens mental health charity.
Read MoreIt's been a busy couple of weeks, hence no newsletter last week. I feel like I am spinning plates at the moment. Luckily I'm off to Cornwall tomorrow to take it easy with some good friends. In the meantime, here are three insights I have taken from this weekend's wild adventure.
Read MoreJane Davis says that literature saved her life. She grew up in a broken home, with a single mum who died of alcoholism. She left home and lived in squats, with a husband who also eventually died of substance abuse.
Read MoreI write this from York, where yesterday I went to the ‘Story of Chocolate’ museum, and was shown around by a delightful and learned historian, Alex Hutchinson, who is the world expert on the Rowntree family and thus able to tell me some fascinating family gossip.
Read MoreMy great-great-great grandfather, a York Quaker called Henry Isaac Rowntree (that's him on the left), set up Rowntree's chocolate company in York in 1862. He was an amiable young man, 'perhaps the only Rowntree with a sense of humour' according to one historian.
Read MoreI went to the book-launch of a new book on well-being policy yesterday, which brought together some leading figures in this nascent movement - including David Halpern of the government’s ‘nudge unit’, Canadian economist John Helliwell, psychologist Maurren O'Hara, and Juliet Michaelson of the new economics foundation.
Read MoreI attended a seminar on wonder at the Centre for Medical Humanities in Durham last week. This post comes from our discussions there. Thanks to all the participants and to Martyn Evans for a great day.
Read MoreApologies for the lack of newsletters recently - I’ve been in the depths of a project to design and teach a course based on Philosophy for Life. This month, I started teaching it in three organizations - a mental health charity in London called Manor Gardens; Saracens rugby club; and Low Moss prison in Glasgow (via New College Lanarkshire, which runs learning courses there).
Read MoreYesterday I interviewed Simon Nelson, CEO of FutureLearn, which is the new UK platform for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The interview is for a New Statesman piece I'm writing on adult education, but it was so interesting I thought it'd be useful to publish the whole thing here. How can academics get their research turned into a MOOC, and potentially reach a huge global audience? Turns out you only need £10K or so.
Read MoreThis year I got some funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to teach a course in practical philosophy with three partner organizations - Manor Gardens, a mental health charity in North London; Low Moss prison in Glasgow; and Saracens rugby club.
Read MoreI was up in east Scotland on New Year's Day, and found myself walking along a path called the John Muir Way. A few days later, a book I was reading mentioned a famous naturalist called John Muir, so I looked him up. It turns out John Muir was a father of modern conservationism, and the founder of many of California’s national parks. He is also a perfect specimen for my research into ecstatic experiences in nature.
Read MoreHere's a talk I gave last month at TEDX Breda.
Read MoreI’ll admit it, I was slightly nervous. I’d been invited to give a philosophy workshop in HMP Dumfries, a prison in west Scotland. Plummy-voiced and puny-framed Englishman that I am, I wasn’t sure what they’d make of me. Mincemeat, maybe. Anyway, I figured it was a low-security prison, otherwise they wouldn’t be inviting philosophers to give workshops, right?
Read MoreSteven Pinker, the Harvard cognitive linguist, would not make a very good ambassador. In his latest diatribe, he attempts to reassure humanities scholars that science is not their enemy. Science is good, and humanities scholars should stop complaining about 'Scientism'. Unfortunately, he says this in such a tactless and, er, Scientistic way that it’s guaranteed to annoy not just humanities scholars, but no doubt many scientists too.
Read MoreIs it possible to for a professional sports team to put character before external success? I visited Saracens rugby club to find out.
Read MoreImagine, if you will, the scene. The Enlightenment has defeated Religion, and its various champions meet to carve up the vanquished enemy’s territories. Philosophy takes the chair: ‘Right then, settle down everyone. Thank you. Now, let’s see...Religion used to offer ethics and laws.
Read MoreI’m in Holland again, this time in Utrecht, where yesterday I did a three-hour workshop at the University of Humanistic Studies. It was gratifying to have lots of bright students scrutinising my ideas, though also grueling in so far as the students very intelligently saw the limitations of Stoic philosophy.
Read MoreIt’s been five years since the launch of the government’s flagship mental health programme, Improving Access for Psychological Therapies (IAPT).
Read MoreI've just been at a three-day seminar at the Institute for Government, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to help academics learn how to influence public policy. The seminar brought together 15 academics in disciplines ranging from literary criticism to design and urban planning.
Read MoreBig day today. I’ve finally finished my report on grassroots philosophy groups, which you can download here: Connected Communities- Philosophical Communities.
Read MoreThere's a new spirit of self-help and mutual improvement blowing through public health policy. I first felt its breeze in Scotland's national mental health strategy, which was published in August, and which made much of its 'person-centred approach' to mental health in Scotland.
Read MoreThe eagle-eyed among you will have noticed there was no newsletter last weekend. Apologies. The reason for this is I have journeyed deep into the warm, pulsating heart of the happiness movement.
Read MoreThere's a cognitive bias which supposedly causes emotional disorders, whereby you minimize your own achievements while maximizing those of other people. I feel the authors of Britannia Unchained, a new book about how to save the UK from national decline, suffer from this bias.
Read MoreI was at a drinks party of a history conference this week, talking to a young academic who was writing a PhD. ‘And what are you working on?’ she asked me. I said I was researching philosophy groups, and was interested in the role of support groups and self-help networks in education and health.
Read MoreA few newsletters back, I talked about the idea of the ‘mass intelligentsia’, and posted an interview I did with Melvyn Bragg about the term (he used it in this programme on class and culture back in March). I’ve been digging into this idea a bit more since then, for an academic research project I’m doing on philosophy clubs. I’d like to unpack the idea some more, if that’s alright by you.
Read MoreWelcome to another PoW newsletter. At the moment I am deep in research for a project I am running at Queen Mary, University of London, looking at the history and contemporary rise of philosophy groups. The hope is it will build links between academic philosophy and 'street philosophy', and also encourage people to get involved with grassroots philosophy, by joining clubs or setting up their own.
Read MoreA global bank's reputation is at rock bottom after a string of money-laundering scandals, fraud cases, and government bail-outs. A new CEO is appointed, with a mission to clean up the bank’s profile. He introduces a ‘five point ethics plan’, including strengthened risk controls, more enlightened incentives for bankers, an 'ethics hot-line', and a huge ethics training programme for the company’s 300,000 employees - arguably the biggest ethics training initiative in the history of American business.
Read MoreI've been researching the Chautauqua movement in the US, which was an adult education movement that began in the late 19th century and really blossomed in the first two decades of the 20th century. It typically involved groups of lecturers and entertainers touring rural America, setting up a big tent, and then giving talks and performances to the locals.
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