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Hi all<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Trebor has asked me to post this blog I published in the Guardian earlier this year - it's an attempt to link the recent happiness/wellbeing debates taking place in the UK, coming off the writings of people like Daniel Kahneman and Barry Schwartz and Richard Layard, and a much less equilibrial vision of human becoming, substantiated by the society and culture of networks, and theorised radically by the autonomists (Virno, Deleuze, Negri, etc). I'm somewhat hopeful (typical North European social democrat) that an enlightened, network-literate state could support well-becoming. The original publication has tons of hotlinks, if you want further depth of research.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/pat_kane/2007/02/theres_been_so_much_thats.html">http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/pat_kane/2007/02/theres_been_so_much_thats.html</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Be interested in your general responses, best pk</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 19.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="6" style="font: 24.0px Times"><b>Not wellbeing, but wellbecoming</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 19.0px Times"><b>Pat Kane</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">February 26, 2007 3:30 PM</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times"><a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/pat_kane/2007/02/theres_been_so_much_thats.html">http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/pat_kane/2007/02/theres_been_so_much_thats.html</a></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">There was so much that discomforted me about the well-being debate last week - probably because I found myself (using an appropriate mental-health metaphor) feeling like Steve Martin in <a href="http://www.mvps.org/st-software/Movie_Collection/images/2677f.jpg"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>The Man With Two Brains</u></font></a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">One brain was delighted that the political argument was shifting away from the old narratives about "work", "prosperity" and "consumption" as the main goals of British life. The other brain was horrified at the level of behavioural meddling and social prescription that this shift seems to imply. And both brains were dragging me round the room in different directions, at the same time.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">I find Richard Layard's <a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_layard/2007/02/i_agree_with_oliver_that.html"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>argument</u></font></a> more than a little creepy, if you think about his biography. His first claim to fame was as the core adviser to the incoming New Labour government in 1997 on their "<a href="http://cep.lse.ac.uk/layard/welfare_to_work.pdf"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>welfare to work</u></font></a>" scheme - that classic piece of applied Presbyterianism by Gordon Brown, where "them that shall not work, shall not eat" (or in Brown's words, "<a href="http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=54997"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>no fifth option</u></font></a>").</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">Layard's input was to bolster the notion of work - any work - as the essential tool of socialisation. Anything to banish that Brownite spectre of "people sitting around all day, watching television, doing nothing" (a favoure phrase from pre-1997 speeches, and barely changed to this day). This is such a demeaning conception of the human self - that without <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/08/08/do0801.xml"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>the compulsion of wage labour</u></font></a>, we will simply sink into indolence and passivity.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">In that sense, Layard has been entirely consistent as a <a href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050304/ai_n11847368/print"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>bureaucrat of bliss</u></font></a>: he still thinks the citizen-worker is too weak-minded to know his or her own best interests, and that policy-makers must herd us all to a median state of happiness. It's the implicit paternalism in the wellbeing debate that constantly rings my alarm bells.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">So if the stats say "marriage makes them more contented", then let's make divorce harder. If the research says "our media landscape saturates us with perspectives and world views, and leaves us dissatisfied", then we must control the media (or even, in one submission to this series, enforce a <a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_vernon/2007/02/wellbeing.html"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>national switch-off</u></font></a> of the telly at mealtimes).</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">Every other day I walk by the Hampstead towers where Beatrice and Sidney Webb planned their giant Fabian schemes to "improve the <a href="http://economics.gmu.edu/pboettke/workshop/Spring_06/JEP_Retrospectives.pdf"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>eugenic stock</u></font></a> of the worker". I often idly imagine their spectres are twirling happily together at the sight of all these social-scientific shepherds, meticulously planning the micro-behaviour (if not eugenically, then at least neuro-psychologically) of the ex-working-class.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">And I mean <i>ex</i>-working-class, because they are now the service class, mostly - which is the deepest problem underlying our angst about wellbeing. How can one have a genuinely happy society where one large chunk of it is in the position of <a href="http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2003/proceedings/re-investigating/Nickson.pdf"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>servicing the domestic and hedonistic agendas</u></font></a> of another large chunk?</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">This is the great psychological wound, ever more exacerbated since the workfare reforms of 1997, which causes disillusion and alienation and general grumpiness in this country. Among younger generations, who have now <a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/pat_kane/2006/07/dangerous_desirous_youth.html"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>grown up</u></font></a> nourished and watered by the globalism and diversity of the internet, this servile future induces a particularly acute form of cynicism.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">The book was much <a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1389821,00.html"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>derided </u></font></a>at the time, but Nick Barham's Dis/connected got something right about youth culture in Britain. Faced with so little real opportunity to realise their cultural and digital sensibilities, many youths are conducting an "<a href="http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/30/2044216"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>exodus</u></font></a>" into their <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2018787,00.html"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>own worlds</u></font></a>. Which, yes, can include environmental activism as well as gun culture, joyous drug-fuelled raving as well as isolated depression, McWorld as well as Jihad.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">The authorities might fret about youth disconnection from the norms of society. But their policy and institutional responses, particularly in education, show no imagination whatsoever. The spectrum of creative life-options that face our energetic millenials, thanks to the dull workfare-ism of Brown and Layard, is pathetic. Add to that the workaholic culture of too many of their parents, neglecting child-care in favour of jobs that seem close to absurdist in their lack of meaning and purpose, and the unhappiness of young people's existence is all too understandable.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">Let's push on through to the other side of this debate. As some <a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/neil_clark/2007/02/wanted_an_erich_fromm_party.html#comment-440640"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>commenters</u></font></a> have acutely noted, the wellbeing merchants are often frustrated old collectivists, looking for a new set of research stats to justify the construction of a solidarity and consensus that was left behind with the industrial era. Never mind trying to restore this lost unity (which was a negative, defensive, bruised-and-battered unity at that). Can't our policy-makers begin to see that their best role is to give us the support and resources to help us navigate our deeply complex societies?</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">Some great old gurus have been quoted in this debate - Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt - but I'd suggest that we should also be reading <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reclaiming-Work-Beyond-Wage-based-Society/dp/0745621287/sr=8-1/qid=1172260910/ref=sr_1_1/026-6744557-4262020?ie=UTF8&s=books"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>Gorz</u></font></a>, <a href="http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/rifkin207.htm"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>Rifkin</u></font></a>, <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/negri/"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>Negri</u></font></a> and <a href="http://info.interactivist.net/print.pl?sid=06/01/17/2225239"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>Virno</u></font></a>. From them, some obvious policy suggestions.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">Revive (and destigmatise) social housing, so that we can live well yet cheaply. Make all higher education free at the point of use, in order that the cognitive gap between the "serving" and the "serviced" classes become even more untenable. Strongly regulate capitalism (shorter working weeks, citizen's incomes, powerful public infrastructures and networks) so that men, women and children can experiment with new mixes of the productive and the emotional in our lives.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">In short: support our autonomy, don't prescribe our happiness.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">It's not well-being our state should be in the business of enabling, but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze"><font color="#002fd7" style="color: #002fd7"><u>well-becoming</u></font></a> - our multitude of life-journeys towards meaning and purposefulness, not some steady-state of managed contentment. The "happ" in happiness comes from the Norse, and it means "luck" or "chance": this week's parade of neo-Webbs should remember that. Help us to be strong and capable, so we can live interesting, surprising, memorable lives. Other than that, get your hands off my soul.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" color="#002fd7" style="font: 16.0px Times; color: #002fd7"><a href="http://theplayethic.typepad.com/"><u>theplayethic.typepad.com</u><u></u></a></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" color="#002fd7" style="font: 16.0px Times; color: #002fd7"><a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/category/the_politics_of_wellbeing/"><u><b>Click here</b></u></a></font><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times"><b> for a full list of articles in the Politics of Wellbeing debate. </b></font></p> <div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">Pat Kane</span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">+44 (0)7718 588497</span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://www.theplayethic.com">http://www.theplayethic.com</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://theplayethic.typepad.com">http://theplayethic.typepad.com</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://www.newintegrity.org">http://www.newintegrity.org</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://www.patkane.com">http://www.patkane.com</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">All mail to: <a href="mailto:patkane@theplayethic.com">patkane@theplayethic.com</a></span></div><div style="font-size: 12px; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span> </div><br></div></body></html>