27 May 2006

The media mainstreaming of the language of the BNP

The political agenda of the UK appears no longer to be driven by elected representatives, but is being determined by the reationary politics promoted by News International (News Corporation) and the commercial imperative of the purveyors of what the news media chose to define as news. It used to be the case that although the national newspapers were politically partisan, political action took place in the political arena: Westminster, the soapbox and demonstrations. In May 1997 the news media wrested from the UK Consertvative Party the mantle of quasi-formal opposition to the newly-elected Blair government. I am unsure about precisely when the Blair government lost control of the agenda, possibly in the run-up to the most recent (5 May 2005) general election. Maybe control of the political agenda has been ebbing away from Westminster over a period of years. This current period reminds me of the time between Tony Blair's election to leadership of the UK Labour Party (21 July 1994) and his defeat of Conservative John Major (2 May 1997), except that it is now Rupert Murdoch for whom we are waiting to move into 10 Downing Street.

Current so-called revelations about the UK Home Office appear largely driven by an agenda of xenophobia. The rehtoric focuses on the deportation of foreign nationals, 'bogus' asylum seekers, 'economic' migrants, refugees and people trafficking. For reasons I find it difficult to understand many people in Britain have become addicted to this unpleasant, bunker propaganda that should be the sole preserve of Nick Griffin's British National Party, the Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen, and paranoic, white-supremicist, North American redneck militias. (The one difference is that the UK media appear to be anti-Arab rather than anti-Jewish.)

The phrase that prompts my wry smile is "this island nation of ours". The UK is neither the most densely populated country in the world, nor the most densely populated country in Europe. The UK ranks 33 in the world league table, next to Germany, whereas the Netherlands (15) and Belgium (17) have considerably higher population densities. I am unfamiliar with people complaining about living in Jersey, Guernsey or Barbados: real islands with much higher population densities; and even London ranks well down the list in the world and in Europe.

I am not claiming that what is being stated in the headlines is necessarily factually inaccurate, but that it is being given a maliciously-twisted relevance.

... to be continued ...

However, vox pop suggests that not only is the UK population buying into this de facto deceit, but also appear immune to the facts and their significance. To illustrate this point, regarding law and order, to anyone in the UK it is self-evident both that there are fewer police officers and that crime is all but out of control - whereas despite better recording, recorded crime has been on the decline for the past 15 or more years, and there are more police officers, as well as civilians working for the police, than ever before. Regarding health, the UK public focuses on the fact there are one-third fewer hospital beds than at some point in the past, rather than the relevant facts that life expectancy has risen so much that there is a major crisis in pension savings; or that the rate at which new drugs to address this or that illness or condition are being introduced appears to be accelerating; or, perhaps most significantly, that medical procedures have advanced sufficiently that the need for lengthy stays in hospital has thankfully been signifiantly reduced. Regarding tobacco smoking, the UK public demand a right to damage the health of allcomers (smokers and non-smokers alike), whingeing plaintively about hospitals that ban smoking, and confetti-ing with cigartette butts the entrance to public buildings, when all the evidence for decades has unequivocally, adequately and graphically illustrated that smoking should be stopped immediately; as well as buying from the informal economy significant quantities of cigarettes on which no duty has been paid (are these the same people who buy newspapers that peddle myths about crime being out of control?).

... to be continued ...

05 May 2006

Satisfaction: pleasure versus fulfilment

In pursuing thoughts about happiness from an earlier posting, I got to thinking that I am seeking to earn myself a sense of satisfaction by means of pleasure. I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of listening to Vivaldi ('Four Seasons), Sandy Denny ('Who Knows Where the Time Goes?' or Van Morrison ('Madame George'). I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of watching Spirited Away, Amelie or Koyaanisqatsi. I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of a well-prepared Indian, Thai or Chinese meal. I feel satisfied when I when I experience the pleasure of Monet's water lilies, Van Gogh's Provençal scenes, or Pollock's swirling rhythms. And what if I spent my life engaged only in consuming? As vital as each source of pleasure is to me (other than in matters of taste and preference, little different from football and soaps), and I should dearly love to have more of every source of pleasure-induced satisfaction in my life, something would be missing.

I have spent a significant part of my life volunteering, and I continue to volunteer in one respect or another. The paid work that I now do is about helping people, which makes my work much more satisfying to me than were people not helped as a result. It is important to me that my work (whether voluntary or paid) is meaningful in some way, so that while I am engaged in it, and also when I have completed a task, I enjoy a sense of fulfilment, and consequently satisfaction. Visiting cities overseas can be remarkably hard work, due to my travel sickness, difficulties in locating vegan-suitable food, and ensuring adequate wheelchair access to museums (I telephoned the Musée Marmottan in Paris, and was assured that access was no problem as there is a stair-lift at the entrance, but when we arrived the stair-lift was not only out of order, but looked as though it had been out of order for a long time), to hotels (I have discovered that the doors to most bedrooms in Holiday Inn hotels are too narrow to admit a wheelchair) and onto public transport (on each wheelchair-accessible bus for La Guardia that arrived over a 90 minute period the wheelchair lift was non-functional, generating considerable anxiety that we might miss our flight to DC). Perhaps because of having to overcome such difficulties, I can achieve a considerable sense of fulfilment, as well as pleasure, from visiting cities such as Paris, Berlin and Venice, New York, Washington and Vancouver, contributing to my overall sense of satisfaction with the experience. Constructing my website, or developing my photographic skills, or improving my ability to communicate in some other language, is often demanding in one way or another, and consequently offers the satisfaction of fulfilment, especially on those occasions when the discipline involved fails to generate pleasure in the experience.

In conclusion, I guess that I am motivated to achieve an only-occasionally fully-satisfied sense of satisfaction (who else but the Rolling Stones?), in part through pleasure, and in part through fulfilment, neither of which alone is sufficient, but in combination and balance can offer considerable satisfaction for a while.

04 May 2006

Happiness and satisfaction

I read, today, on the BBC news website, that happiness is in decline in the UK. According to the report, compared with fifty years ago, significantly fewer people in the UK are very happy. Over the same time period, wealth in the UK has increased three-fold. A question was implied: being so much better off now, why are people in the UK less happy? A second, more explicit, question was asked: should government focus either on creating happiness or on creating wealth?

I feel uncertain about several points: what is happiness? is happiness made up from component parts, such as contentment, satisfaction and joy? does happiness exist other than as a generalised concept? how can blunt, ticky-box social surveys hope to understand the delicacy how each individual makes sense of their ever-changing human emotions? how can anyone imagine that it should be the business of government to attend to, and respond to, how people feel?

According to the BBC news website, it has long been recognised that it was many years ago that the US population ceased getting happier with increasing wealth. Whilst I understand what is intended by this statement, I also have many doubts about it. For example, apart from not knowing what happiness is, and what exactly was being measured, I have no knowledge of which social, demographic and geographical factors were correlated; nor of how much account was taken of wealth differentials (compared with wealth in the US and the UK, wealth in Scandanavia is more evenly distributed across the population). Were it the case that wealthy people get happier, poorer people become less happy, and wealth differentials have increased, then maybe there is nothing suprising to be discussed.

It has become a commonplace in the UK that winning millions of pounds (GBP) from the national lottery is more likely to result in a reduction in happiness. Yet the hope and belief of many people is that to become wealthy, or at least significantly wealthier, is sufficiently desirable that, for every child, woman and man in the UK, 75 GBP each year is handed over to Camelot (the company that runs the UK lottery). Accordingly to a Camelot press release from March 2005, weekly takings are between GBP 85,000,000 and GBP 90,000,000.

What is not a commonplace is that, over the past fifty years, the expectations of people in the UK have skyrocketed. Most people in the UK expect to be able to travel with ease at speed around the UK, probably in our own car; many people expect to be able to travel cheaply by air to tourist destinations throughout western Europe; it has become imaginable and feasible for many people to travel around the world. By contrast, the UK of Brief Encounter, shows a very different world. Regarding food, entertainment and recreation, expectations have changed out of all recognition. Regarding health, we have come to expect specialised medication (regardless of how expensive) as our right, and have become impatient for new techniques and cures. Regarding technology, we are so sophisticated that a cellphone without texting capability, a television incapable of receiving digital pictures, a laptop computer without wi-fi, would feel like a medieval throw-back. Regarding communication, we expect to be able to sit on a beach in Margate, Marbella or Miami, and call home, text our friends, maybe send a e-photograph or e-video; to find a means to post a weblog of our travels; to have booked our holiday on-line; to have e-mailed our pillow preferences to the hotel; and to have checked out the websites of cafes / bars / restaurants that serve food suitable for vegans or vegetarians, or food that is kosher or wheat-free or nut-free.

Were it the case that our expectations were being met faster than our expectations were being raised, life would feel more satisfying and we would become happier. However, the dual-fuel engine for the satisfactio of our expectations is powered by money and further-elevated expectations. Paradoxically, therefore, in a market-driven capitalist society the more we seek to have our expectations satisfied, the further out in front of satisfaction our expectations will streak. In western society, it is only by reining-in, or even reducing, expectations could satisfaction increase. In the later 1950s, a British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, famously told the British electorate that they had "never had it so good", reminding them of post-war shortages, rationing and inflation. However, the purpose of his message was for people to rein in their expectations about rising wages (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/20/newsid_3728000/3728225.stm). Successive UK governments have attempted to deliver a message of wage restraint, and suffered for their pains at subsequent elections. Living in a globalised world, in which people in Connecticut, Chad and China are able to converse together in a chat-room, it would be barely possible for a country to attempt, unliaterally, to reduce the life expectations of its people - to my understanding, the Taliban regime attempted this in Afghanistan.

I am likely to feel happier when the bad things that have been going on in my life are being relegated to the past. This is about transition. Ironically, I may feel happier while recovering from a serious illness than when I am ordinarily healthy; when my bank balance is nearing solvency after a period of debt than when I have been sitting on comfortable financial cushion for some time; when the sun breaks through after a week of perpetual drizzle than when yet another day dawns with a clear blue sky.

Talking with a colleague, Jo, reminded me that when I have a self-imposed goal, the attainment of which would give me satisfaction, I tend to feel a contented anticipation. Simple examples of this include planning a holiday abroad; learning sufficient tourist language to get by in a non-anglophone country; re-organising and redecorating a room; and slimming.

How happy I feel may also concern the absence of bad things going on in my life. When I am healthy, feel safe at home, feel financially secure in my job, and feel supported by family and friends, I am less likely to feel unhappy. However, I may be bored and doubt where I am going in life, and consequently not feel happy.

I recognise different qualities of happiness. For example, I recall something of the overwhelming excitement and joy I experienced when I first attended a Promenade concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London; when I first piloted a Piper Tomahawk; and when I stepped out onto the observation deck of the Empire State Building in Manhattan. I recall something of the serene joy I felt when crossing by jetfoil from Vancouver to Victoria, on sighting a pod of orca whales. I recall something of the awe I felt, surrounded by the Canadian Rockies, witnessing the Perseid meteor shower (13 August 1993); and surrounded by darkness on the hard shoulder of a French motorway witnessing the totality of a solar eclipse (11 August 2000). I recall something of my intensely moving joy when my daughter was born.

To be continued ...