Category Archives: Society

Alternatives to Neoliberalism

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The Financial Crisis of 07/08, followed by the ensuing ‘Great Recession’, has hugely undermined faith in Neoliberalism. As Colin Crouch argued in his 2011 book “The Strange Non-Death of Neo-liberalism”, it seems that in many ways neoliberalism is actually stronger than before the crisis. Indeed, the main groups attracting protest votes are very much neoliberal, and heavily influenced by the neoconservative (the two ideologies often go hand in hand) scepticism about the stability of multi-cultural and multi-religious societies. Yet 2011 was also “the year of the protestor” thanks in large part to people’s frustration with its dominance. Moreover, if you listen to the left then No Alternative to Neoliberalismneoliberalism might be in for a fall. Even mainstream (left wing) opposition groups (e.g. Labour in the UK and Die Linke in Germany) now voice their opposition.

But what are the alternatives? After all, when the UK Labour Party was in power between 1997-2010 it governed from within the neoliberal consensus, and its elite became more as opposed to less convinced in the truth behind that consensus as time went on.

To answer this question first let us define neoliberalism. Essentially, it is a political and economic ideology very close in thought to classical liberalism. Andrew Heywood’s “Key Concepts in Politics” defines it as an ideology of the “new right”. It uses models based on the rationality of markets and individuals, places faith in the capitalist economic structure, and espouses a limited role for the state given the capitalist market’s natural tendencies towards long term growth, and the balance of supply and demand. In terms of policy it emerges as a preference for privatisation, de-regulation, low taxes, and anti-welfarism (e.g. austerity cuts to public spending and benefits).

The espoused alternatives are commonly thought to be some sort of mix or variety of Mercantilism (whereby the state makes all economic decisions) and/or Socialism (whereby control is collectively managed without regard to socio-economic differences). However applications of these alternatives don’t take the big picture into account. And in this sense it is right that they are heavily critiqued. Neo-liberalism is the antithesis of the collectivisation and nationalisation seen in the USSR, and perhaps also an echo of the corporatist third way first employed in fascist Italy. To oppose it by lurching back towards the USSR’s tactics is ultimate folly, since the same reasons why we rejected that path in the first place still stand today.

Instead of choosing between letting the state dominate the economy, and letting private capital holding elites dominate the economy; we should be looking for a third choice – and a novel one! There are plenty of new ideas out there without us constantly looking back to the twentieth century. Moreover, it’s no wonder neo-liberals have found it simple to convince people of the economic strengths of their model. Capital holding elites, and especially since the so-called “managerial revolution” and the rising strength of managers and corporations, give high priority to increasing the amount of capital. Indeed the dominant model of corporate governance around the world is that which has one prime goal: maximising shareholder value. States don’t seek the same thing, and so it’s no wonder why people have become convinced that neoliberalism is a necessary evil to keep our economies strong. But answers are out there. The German model of Corporate Governance for example, also empowers the workers, and gives them say over corporate governance. So should we all seek to copy Germany? No.

Solutions must always be adopted, and tailored, relative to local demand. But the German model of corporate governance does carry the seeds of an interesting idea. It recognises that there are other stakeholders besides state and economic elites, and it also recognises that empowering other stakeholders can potentially regulate the excessive short-termism and risk-taking that especially ambitious managers, are often willing to take.

capitalism-is-not-democracySo what would the optimal solution be for Europe? Simple. The neoliberal consensus, which has been growing since the time of Reagan and Thatcher, has reversed our prior agreement that capitalism must conform to democracy as opposed to it being the other way around. To reassert democratic control, we must seek to empower all stakeholders in the economic system (e.g. consumers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, neighbours, and the broader public). Rather than socialism or capitalism, this would be an economic democracy; a model and an ideology that has thus far been unrealised in practice, and should reflect the new counter-argument to the modern neo-liberal consensus.

“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.” Do you agree?

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Modern society places great emphasis on not giving or taking offence. It is the reason why so many people support, and so many others are annoyed by, the idea of ‘political correctness’. But should we?Offence

The quote was from Abraham Lincoln; and we have a prima facie (at first sight) urge to agree with it. But this does not mean it is beyond dispute. In fact the statement is both imbalanced, and also inconsiderate of human emotion. The taking and giving of offense is both part of human nature, and also purposeful. Indeed as Thomas Carlyle once said:

“No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.”

Offense giving and taking are most often the least honourable courses to take. And nobody likes the person who’s quick to give or take offense. But let’s face it; emotions get a point across as reason just never could. And taking offense is an emotive reaction. Imagine you’re a Palestinian or an Israeli person, and while you live in London you meet someone who doesn’t know anything about Israel and the holocaust, or Palestine and the human rights crisis (if you don’t know already, you should note that the number of Palestinian refugees stands at a similar figure to the number of Jews killed in the holocaust). Imagine not taking offense when that person makes stupid remarks about people in the region. Wouldn’t that be a good time to start taking offense, in order to ensure that such stupid remarks are not repeated?

In the political world, umbrage seems to be a powerful tool in twenty first century politics. Announce that the opposition’s or media’s tactic is outrageous and offensive, and you will immediately frame a public response; not in terms of whether that opposition/media point has logic, but rather, whether or not they are in the wrong. In other words it shifts the negative focus somewhere else, and leaves only sympathy behind. After all, who can’t empathise with someone who’s been offended?

There are two responses to such umbrage in politics. One comes from the logic of Voltaire:

“I disapprove of what you say. But I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

The quote actually comes from Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her 1906 biography of Voltaire, whose opinions she was attempting to summarise. It was her interpretation of Voltaire’s attitude towards Claude Adrien Helvétius, and his controversial book De l’esprit. But nevertheless, the quote has gained a great deal of attention, and been repeated many times by those who believe that we should be entitled to both give and take offence as we please.

The second response is captured by widespread laws and conventions against denying the Holocaust (it is illegal inRacism in tabloids Germany, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Belgium, France, Israel, Luxembourg and many other places – in Austria it can earn you 6 years in jail), by Germany’s ban on the publishing of Mein Kampf (to be lifted in 2015), by the Islamist reaction to a series of Danish cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and by even neo-liberal groups who aim to censor the press as a means to mitigate the spread of false and misleading information such as is spread about by tabloid papers.

The two opposing views understandably create quite a bit of animosity, and trigger a lot of offence.

against press censorship

But the very fact that a debate on whether or not we should be permitted to offend causes a torrent of offence giving and receiving, surely proves that it is both natural, and also to an extent unavoidable. In the economist’s ‘ultimate game’, designed to teach us about human nature, Player A is given 20 $1 bills, and told that in order to keep any of the money, A must share it with Player B. If B accepts A’s offer, they both pocket whatever they’ve agreed to. If B rejects the offer, they both get nothing. Economists expected pure rationality at first; A would propose the lowest possible amount i.e. 1 dollar. And B would accept, knowing it was better than nothing. But in fact what happened was that when the amount given was 7 dollars or less, most people took such offence that they preferred rejecting the offer in order to teach A a lesson, rather than taking the lower amount. Indeed in Descartes’ Error, neurologist Antonio Damasio argues that humans who behave purely rationally are in fact brain-damaged. Now one could of course argue, as I would, that punishing player A based on the offence caused was in fact entirely rational. But the offence which lies at the heart of the matter still seems to call the shots.

The question that remains for you to answer, is, should such offence giving and taking be calling any shots? Was Lincoln right that “we should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it”?

Does Civilisation Lead to Fragmentation, or Collapse?

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If civilisation is that which broadens society, within the framework of a social contract between people, (if you wish to dispute this definition then please see the previous posts: what is civilisation & what is it to be civilised) then what happens when society grows too big/civilised?

You could debate the extent to which civilisation is growing or shrinking (the sick society post seems to suggest that we may in fact be at the beginning of our decline). But if/when it is expanding, then this broadening of society seems doomed to lead towards societal fragmentation.

More InfoAs civilisation has grown, we have built more complex identities & more complicated lives; we have explored far and wide; we have built bigger social networks than ever before; we have settled in more places; we have constructed more buildings, groups and works of art; and we have more commitments on what precious resources we have. How can we keep up with all of these developments?

In short, due you think civilisations come to ends in ‘Big Crunches’, when the gravitational forces that held civilisations together (e.g. ideologies, nationalism, religion etc) begin to crush the spirit of civilisation? Or do you think, like scientists currently think about the universe, that modern societies could continue to expand, until one day that one society has become ten, or twenty or more?

This question is in fact much more difficult than it seems. And you can see this by thinking about fallen civilisations from eras past. The ancient Sumerian civilisation (the civilisation which invented writing, and whose name means ‘land of the civilised kings’) collapsed under the strain of repeated invasions. The Mayan civilisation came to an end palenque-overview_mg_1198as a result of the Spanish invasion in the 16th century, due to war, disease, and a foreign civilisation determined to assert its own supremacy. The Khmer civilisation in modern Cambodia came to an end due largely to environmental changes. Ancient Rome fell as a result of repeated invasions, but over an incredibly long period of internal economic decay. All of these falls are caused by very pragmatic things: food resources, safety, environment and economics.

Are you still following? Good! Because almost all of the above ‘falls’ were in fact the falls of political and economic entities; and not civilisations! That one requires the other could be true, and should be the topic for another day. But that point aside, if civilisations are primarily about societies, then how much do those above examples really help? Was Roman civilisation expanding when it fell? Did it end up splitting into various smaller civilisations, all of which bore the mark of its ideas, art, music, writings and religion? Or was it in fact being pulled towards a ‘big crunch’, by entrenched ideas of aristocracy, hierarchy, militarism and hedonism? Did Mayan civilisation get destroyed by the Spanish? Or did its spread get temporarily halted, only to re-emerge and fragment into various different territories, such that signs of it can be seen today in Guatemala, Mexico and Belize?

Author and historian William R. Everdell once said that the rise and fall of civilizations is

“more a pattern in the mind than a pattern in the world.”

If this is true, and civilisations are carried not by the size of your guns, but rather the potential within the minds of your society, then what is the future for modern civilisations today? Are we headed towards a big crunch? Or are we headed towards accelerated expansion and fragmentation?

Is Society Sick?

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I heard it said once that people who are overly competitive are showing signs of insanity. It was a native American tribe who held this view, and it is a view that I immediately sympathised with, even if I would never have used the word ‘insanity’. Many of my strongest political convictions are reflected in this view; that homelessness and extreme poverty should be eradicated, that all people have value to contribute within society, and that extreme capitalist and individualistic thinking has corrupted our pursuit of happiness.

However it was when I set up the Democratic Reform Party that I really started thinking about our mental/spiritual health as a society. The more I learned, the more it seemed to me that our entire socio-Anorexiceconomic system is designed to defeat itself. We are taught in homes and schools alike what “success” actually is, not explicitly of course; but we nevertheless emerge at the end with three distinct ideas: the first idea of success is fame and fortune; the second is a highly paid job, a house, a marriage, and kids; and the third is to become a hero, but we are warned away from this latter route by dint of the fact that for every hero there are a thousand failures. In fact a quote of Dorris Lessing springs to mind:

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do.”

Through this indoctrination we, in our ‘careers’, are encouraged to pursue one thing above all others: money. It is polyp_cartoon_Rat_Racethis pursuit that drives so much of us into competition, that eats up our free time, limits the pursuit of leisure, results in more emphasis on career than social relationships, and indeed encourages us to move away from friends and family in the name of money. So it encourages us to spend more resources on ourselves, and also in ways which, statistically speaking, are in fact more likely to limit rather than increase, happiness.

Since this experience I have not learned anything which has shaken these ideas and thoughts from my mind. I’ve known many friends with severe depression, several of whom have attempted suicide. I received a message only two days ago from the mother of a close friend, saying that my friend needed help. I have even experienced the loss of one of my family members in a manner which seems to me certain to be linked to the depression which plagued his mind. It was hard writing that. It’s been quite some time now, and I have talked about it, if fleetingly; yet even a sentence brings tears to my eyes.

So yesterday, when I heard Tim Macartney (social entrepreneur and leadership expert) talking at the London School of Economics about the ‘Children’s Fire’, I thought that this is definitely something I wanted to blog about. The ‘Children’s Fire’ was literally a small fire placed at the heart of decision-making councils in some ancient native American tribes. It served as a reminder to those present that no decision should be passed which might harm a child, irrelevant of whether that child be human or animal.

Tim Macartney told his audience that he had once introduced this idea to a council of leaders, and been told that it was a little naive, and perhaps even childish, to think that we could employ the same idea today. Yet Tim responded by asking the audience to think in the exact opposite manner. He asked them to think of a society where that fire was never used.

“Don’t you think” he said, “that this society without the children’s fire, is sick?”

A few years ago I read a report explaining that clinical depression would, on current trends, become the world’s second most disabling condition behind heart disease by around 2020. I felt saddened, and immediately wanted to raise money for charities working to help people with depression. Yet I, like many others I guess, held hope that the trend would slow. In fact however, it sped up. In late 2013 experts reported in the journal PLOS Medicine that depression had already become the second biggest cause of disability in the world! You can see the BBC report here: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-24818048.

Based on the work of psychiatrists, psychologists and academics such as Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller, this trend in fact seems to be much broader than depression. They published a book in 2007, arguing that the rapid increase of mental illnesses since 1750 was an invisible plague that urgently needs to be tackled. The prevalence of insanity for example, according to their research, was once considerably less than one case per 1,000 in the total population, and yet by today has risen beyond five cases in 1,000. If true, the implications of such findings are quite scary.

sick_society_quote-text11875

Unfortunately the data over the period analysed by Torrey and Miller is sketchy, and so we can’t be sure of the validity of this argument. However we can be a lot surer of records gathered since the 60s and 70s. Based predominantly on census data from the period stretching back to 1971, researchers at the University of Sheffield found that a staggering 97% of communities studied in the UK have become more fragmented and “rootless” over this period, and also levels of “anomie” (social instability caused by erosion of standards and values) have risen significantly. In the US, over a similar period, it was also found that the rate at which Americans invite people into their homes has declined by 45%. Indeed findings such as these are not hard to find. Robert Putnam, in ‘Bowling Alone’, reported significantly increasing levels of dis-cohesion and social fragmentation. Cacioppo & Patrick published similar findings in 2008. Carne Ross had a significant rant about such statistics in his book published in 2011, ‘The Leaderless Revolution’. Professor Mark Stein drew the conclusion in a ‘Psychoanalysis of the Financial Crisis’ in 2012 that Western Society has been behaving neurotically for 20 years (http://www.businessinsider.com/a-psychoanlytic-guide-to-the-financial-crisis-2012-6). And I could cite many more sources!

Statistically speaking, happiness is no higher today than it was in the 1950s. And what’s worse is that our replacement for it i.e. the pursuit of money, isn’t helping us either. Since the 1970s the average income of the most wealthy has skyrocketed. But the median income of the average person has if anything fallen slightly. What does that suggest to you? Is our system broken? Is society itself sick?

Of course we could take any time or place in history, list the problems, and somehow come out with an argument that society is sick. So maybe these problems aren’t nearly so huge as they seem. But to me personally, they certainly seem to be pretty huge. How do they seem to you? Is society sick?

Is Freedom an Option?

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“O sancta simplicitas! In what strange simplification and falsification man lives!” So begins Nietzsche’s second Nietzsche freedomchapter of “Beyond Good and Evil”. It says that humanity has always contrived to retain its ignorance, so that we might realise “an almost inconceivable freedom”. Indeed to Nietzsche even our thoughts were suspect. For those who call themselves ‘free spirits’ in a philosophical sense are in fact often “glib tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its ‘modern ideas’ […] they are not free”.

Just a quick explanation here; note the use of “almost” in Nietzsche’s work. Contrary to what a lot of people think, Nietzsche did not oppose, or dismiss, freedom. To him it was something that we strive towards, but are simply very unlikely to really obtain.

Of course you might question what freedom is. Arendt explained the difficulty of this question well when she said:

“In its simplest form, the difficulty [of defining freedom] may be summed up as the contradiction between our consciousness and conscience, telling us that we are free and hence responsible, and our everyday in the outer world, in which we orient ourselves according to the principle of causality.”

As a philosophical concept freedom is most often discussed with reference to determinism, as its opposite, and moral responsibility as its partner. For if we are not free at all then our actions must be determined. And if we are free, then we must also be morally responsible for our actions. It is from these baselines of the philosophical discussion of freedom that Arendt notices the major difficulties. We all assume that we are morally responsible for our actions, because we at least have an illusion of free will in deciding what to do. And yet analyse it a little deeper, and our thoughts themselves seem to contradict this common sense; for just as when we make excuses, so too in any sense can we say ‘I acted thusly, because X, Y and Z had happened in the past. Had they not, I would have been forced to act differently.’

So there are contradictions. And it’s difficult to define in an objective sense. But even if we have different imaginations as to what it is; we definitely have at least the illusion of freedom/free will. But if nothing comes from nothing, how can we create an illusion of that which truly doesn’t exist? The illusion of freedom must either be an image of a conceptual reality, or at very least a modified version of a very similar concept; and if it is the second, it has since caused us to create the conceptual reality of freedom. So freedom does exist. But is it a real option in our lives? Or is it more as John Dewey said, that our activity results from impulses that emerge spontaneously in response to changes in circumstances?

Illusion-of-FreedomLet’s think. In most of the world escaping into the wild; where only nature would restrict our actions; simply isn’t an option. There isn’t enough wild to escape into, particularly in Europe. So, if we can’t hunt and forage for ourselves, we’re forced to live within those societies and economies which already exist. Within these societies we are forced to go to school throughout our childhood. And within these economies we are forced to either enter the labour market in order to earn enough to survive, or live off the benefits provided by those who feel themselves to be forced into the labour market. Freedom of entry into, and exit out of, the labour market, is not free. Society presents us with commitments that restrict our geographical location, creates expectations that further limit our options in the job market, and creates the economic demand which dictates what careers are going to pay. Flexible and part time roles aren’t allows offered, and thus to take a job we are usually forced to spend most of our time in the job. The competitive economy forces employers to work their employees hard enough that during their free time, many people are too tired to properly look after themselves by exercising or cooking healthy food. In order to stay alive we need a place to live, and to pay bills that often leave us with less than enough cash to freely pursue what we want during that limited amount of free time that we have. We are even imprisoned by society’s desires. Who reading this can’t remember comparing themselves to other classmates at school, and hoping that they would earn more in later life? Those people we call ‘weird’ are in most cases those people who for some reason don’t desire what society encourages us to desire e.g. money.

We could even go so far as to question what freedom is, for usually we talk of freedom within nature. But is not nature the biggest prison of all? Kant argued that space, time and causality are categories used by the human mind to interpret experience, and so in this sense physics and biology themselves limit what we are able to think, for they provide a finite, defined number of tools with which we may think. And if you ascribe to the Newtonian view of nature as being like a machine, or Spinoza’s view of freedom as an illusion, then we could say that even the most minute of human actions is determined.

What do you think? Is everything pre-determined? Is, as Spinoza argued, the only freedom that we have the ability to see the world as it is and say yes to it? Does the probabilistic nature of reality mean that because everything is not determined, then we are free to choose between some limited, finite options? Do you think that freedom really is an option, and that it can be enhanced by politicians reforming the socio-political economic structures? Or do you think, as Jean-Paul Sartre did, that “man is condemned to be free [because…] he did not create himself and not only is he free to choose, but he must choose.”

What is it to be civilised?

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In fact this is an old debate from back in 2010. But I thought it could do with reviving. Feel free to check out the old debate here.

After giving a number of anthropological examples to explain what civilisation is not, Clive Bell (art critic and philosopher of art), writing in 1928, said:

“I think we must take it as settled that neither a sense of the rights of property, nor candour, nor cleanliness, nor belief in God, the future life and eternal justice, nor chivalry, nor chastity, nor patriotism even is amongst the distinguishing characteristics of civilisation, which is, nevertheless, a means to good and a potent one.”

funny-civilized-uncivilized-boat-trashIt seemed quite easy for Clive to refute the notion that one or two traits might be unique to civilised societies. And yet he found himself agreeing with a soldier who said this to him:

“I can’t tell you what civilisation is, but I can tell you when a state is said to be civilised. People who understand these things assure me that for hundreds of years Japan has had an exquisite art and a considerable literature, but the newspapers never told us that Japan was highly civilised till she had fought and beaten a first-class European power.”

This does not mean to say that power is a sign of civilisation either however. As Clive rightly said, few people would describe the eastern tribes and ‘barbarians’ who overran the Roman Empire, or the Tartars who overthrew the Sung Empire, to be civilised. Indeed we often think of fairness and civilisation as intrinsically linked. And yet in the era of Social Darwinism it was quite popular to say “leave it to nature”. They would say that true civilisation would only come when the weak are left to die, and it is formally recognised that might is right.

So what did Clive conclude about what civilisation is? He reached his conclusion by making assumptions about which societies were civilised and which were not (Periclean Athens and 18th century Paris seemed to be ranked number one and two), and then drawing a list of similarities and peculiarities. He used this assumption of the existence of both to prove that civilisation is not natural, but rather a product of education. And he did seem to think that the idea of what it is to be civilised stays constant throughout time. However he recognised that for those who don’t buy into his assumptions then agreement might not be found.

Do you agree with him? Can we distinguish what is civilised from what is not? And if so how do we do this? What is it to be civilised?

To what extent is innovation collective?

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Let’s not re-create the wheel they say, as if the wheel were one individual innovation, thought by a single great thinker from our ancestry: the genius cave man!

Genius cavemanMost of human history in fact seems to have been analysed this way (with a focus on great individuals) until relatively recently. Take the study of leadership as an example. Its first spot in the limelight as a subject of its own was with the Great Man theories of the 1840s. Subsequently, the subject’s theories have shifted through traits theories, behavioural theories, contingency based theories, charismatic based theories, and now only recently to more collective forms of leadership which, for example, take the followers into account as well.

None of these theories were ‘stupid’, and in fact despite the reduced popularity of the great man theories in the field of leadership, they have permeated a great deal of our culture. Think about the big events that you learnt in school history lessons; there were probably a few significant individuals at the heart of each study. Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Alexander the Great, Nelson Mandela, Julius Caesar; the list goes on and on. Indeed we seem obsessed with individuals across all subjects. Think about English, and Shakespeare probably pops into mind. Music; Beethoven and Mozart. Science; Galileo, Newton and Einstein. Maths; Pythagoras. Etc. It makes sense for us to link significant ideas with their proponents. And so you can see how the Great Man theories of the 1840s became popular. However the growing force of pragmatism is forcing these emphases into the history books as well. For what use is it to memorise a list of great names? Just as in leadership, so too in other studies, we are becoming much less interested in who did what years ago, and much more in how we can do those things ourselves.

However, it may also be that this move is more logical and truthful than simply pragmatic. Einstein, for instance, wrote the general and special laws of relativity. But could he have done this without the help of Max Telmud (a student who introduced him to several difficult topics), his teachers at Zurich university, the authors of those books that he read (and he read a lot), and indeed the entire advancement of science up until that point in history?! I could have extended this list, but hopefully you get the point. To give an other example; shortly into this century a broadsheet newspaper concluded that Marx was the most significant political thinker of all times. Whether or not you agree with this, it would be impossible to deny that a significant amount of what he said, was widely known and talked about when he was writing. Neither did Marx even try to deny it. For instance he started his academic career as a Hegelian, and this is where his concept of alienation came from. When he later wrote more about alienation he said not that he was adding to Hegel’s work, but rather that he was taking it, and “turning it on its head”.

When we come to innovation, many ideas seem to be echoed in nature. And so it is easy to infer that prior to the invention of the wheel someone might have seen a log rolling down a hill. Perhaps this log injured or killed several people, and started a lot of gossip. It’s quite possible that events such as this could have been talked about for generations before one creative individual, or perhaps team of individuals, decided to ‘take’ (not make) this idea, and use it for something else. How else can one realistically suppose that the wheel’s invention came about? Inventors/creators don’t just sit around and invent/create out of nothing. They learn from others all the time, amalgamate different ideas heard in different places, and build upon what other people have said.

invention of the wheelAlthough we don’t know exactly who created the wheel or when, we have in fact made numerous educated guesses. For instance the earliest wheels found come from Sumer, (around 3500BC – this empire was formed along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the Middle East) the empire which is also credited with the invention of writing. And the process of their invention is believed to have been a six stage progression, from placing rollers beneath heavy objects, to placing sledge like runners beneath them, through various combinations of the two led eventually to what we now call the wheel.

If the Sumerian invention of the wheel is correct, then this invention was indeed a huge one, over a huge period of time. But my contention is that all creativity is collective and social. After all, if you put someone in a room at birth, and kept them alive, but with no form of social interaction; do you really think that that person would ever invent anything new?

To what extent do you agree? Is innovation always collective? Or is it sometimes, or even more than sometimes, individual?

Is stress on the rise?

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The BBC has broadcasted a report noting that the number of people who suffer levels of stress so high that it affects their health was over 40% of those surveyed. No matter what the sample was this is a staggeringly high figure. So it’s perhaps sad that some readers won’t be surprised. Those people might highlight the number of new technologies introduced in recent years, particularly in developing countries, increased expectations from the recession, and also the sheer quantity of information to which we’re exposed today. It’s also possible to simply look at our way of life for an explanation. Stress hormones are produced naturally by the body, in order to prepare us for an action or event. We can in some cases burn them off through physical exertion, even taking a walk. But if we’re stuck in the car or the office this simply isn’t possible.

Given the above evidence of increasing stress, do you think overall levels of stress are increasing? If so do they look set to increase still further into the future? What can we do to reverse the trend as a society?

Is innovation increasing or receding?

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We have 3d printers, cars that park themselves, iPhones and apps, and advances in robotics. At 7 billion there are more of us to create and innovate than ever before. And yet this week the Economist’s main article is highlighting the number of scientists who think that we’re not only in an economic recession but also a recession of innovation, invention and creativity.

Given that one of the premises of a book that I’m currently writing is in fact the opposite (that we’re living in a creative revolution) I immediately sought to challenge their article. But what do you think?

How can we help others?

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Some people believe our ability to help is boundless. Such people think we can set our sights on helping the collective, where more individually minded people (often the majority) say that if we all help just the few in our inner circle everything will be ok.

Suppose that you buy the former argument; is it possible for just any of us to help the many? How should one do it?

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