Yesterday I received two emails from Matthew Taylor in quick succession, back to back in my inbox, and I felt a bit confused by their content, until I realised they were sent by completely different people.
The RSA Chief Executive has been musing about adult development, in the context of our '21st century enlightenment' mission, and forwarded me something about that, relating to our recent report on the relationship between adult development and the Big Society.
However, the second email was written by the Matthew J Taylor, who is the producer of 'The Play's The Thing' and Director of The Social Arts Network. This Matthew made a particularly interesting connection between a line in another RSA report and a prediction by Aldous Huxley, who was obviously a great author, but also had a great deal of insight into behaviour change, and we have mentioned his 'reminder birds' here before.
I have Matthew's permission to share the email here:
Dear Jonathan,
I was (am) reading your very interesting RSA paper, Transforming Behaviour Change: Beyond Nudge and Neuromania, when I came across these words:
"In the UK, this has led to the creation of a Behavioural Insight Team in the Cabinet Office, leading to fears amongst some of Government manipulation and control."
They immediately reminded of these words from Aldous Huxley's 1950 introduction to Brave New World, in which he says:
"The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored inquiries into what politicians and the participating scientists will call 'the problem of happiness -'.
It looks as though his predictive powers were spot on. And quite scary that he should link the creation of the atom bomb to the 'problem of happiness'.
Many thanks for participating in Play's the Thing last November. We're currently working on plans for Play's the Thing 2 and I hope that you might be able to be involved in some way.
Best wishes
Matthew
I hope so too!
Jonathan.
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Thanks a lot Simon. Your comment reminded me of a famous line- I think in Brave New World- about the problem with Soma, and the importance of 'the freedom to be unhappy'.
In terms of whether gross national happiness is evil, I am not sure I feel that strongly yet. I can see why people fear such a development....but it is a very important corrective to the greater madness of pursuing GDP without pausing to consider in what ways it matters to us...and what we might irreparably harm (our health, our relationships, the planet) if we don't have an alternative measure.
The deeper problem is the logic of bureaucracy, and patterns of accountability in politics- the claim that 'what gets measured gets done' is perhaps closer to the evil we need to be concerned about....if only because, as reflexive creatures, when we start measuring things that matter to us, we change them, and often corrupt them.
Brave New World is entirely about the problem of happiness - or rather that the government (I refuse to give it a capital) would take it upon itself to pursue happiness on behalf of 'citizens'. Yet that happiness wasn't about Aristotle leaping from his bath crying 'eureka' but rather a lowest common denominator - the idea of 'contentment'.
These governments don't want 'eureka' but what Potter, the crabby banker in 'It's a Wonderful Life' called a "thrifty, contented, working class". And Huxley rather nails this in the book (to the extent on occasion of almost labouring the point):
"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the
over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so
spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour
of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a
struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt.
Happiness is never grand." Brave new World Ch 16
Disruption, innovation, change - all these things imply losers, create that instability - Huxley again:
“You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies
without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy;
they get what
they want, and they never want what they can't get."
The last part of this quotation is the problem - the reason why the "problem of happiness" contains the same degree of threat to humanity that the Manhatten project contains. By 'happiness' government means 'contentment' - and contentment requires social control and the management downwards of aspiration and expectation.
This is why 'gross national happiness' and all that goes with it is wrong - I would say evil.