Will Buckingham's Blog, page 36

Introducing Happiness due out in January

I'm very pleased to say that my "practical guide" to happiness is to be published next January by the lovely Icon Books. And one of the most immediately striking things about the book is that it is very yellow – which is just what you need in the middle of the January darkness (just a glance at the cover, and you will find all traces of Seasonal Affective Disorder fading away…)

It's not just a pretty face, though. The book is a pretty brisk and breezy exploration of practical philosophies of happiness, and has been an enormous amount of fun to write. It is practical not in the sense that it tells you how to be happy, or provides you with the One Great Secret of Happiness, but in the sense that it serves up a whole load of ancient philosophy – from Zhuangzi to Epicurus, from the Stoics to Buddhism, and from the pleasingly disreputable Cynics to the uprightness of Confucius – along with good dollops of more recent research, to propose a number of experiments in living that you can put into practice.

My main contentions in the book are these: firstly that happiness is not one but many things; and secondly that there are many other things that are not happiness that also matter. And so there is no One Great Secret (don't believe anybody who tells you that there is); and even if there was, we'd need to balance concerns with happiness against concerns with other things.

If you want to pre-order the book, then you can do so by clicking here. The publication date is 5th January 2012, or thereabouts.

Introducing Happiness: A Practical Guide

I'm very pleased to say that my "practical guide" to happiness is to be published next January by the lovely Icon Books. And one of the most immediately striking things about the book is that it is very yellow – which is just what you need in the middle of the January darkness (just a glance at the cover, and you will find all traces of Seasonal Affective Disorder fading away…)

It's not just a pretty face, though. The book is a pretty brisk and breezy exploration of practical philosophies of happiness, and has been an enormous amount of fun to write. It is practical not in the sense that it tells you how to be happy, or provides you with the One Great Secret of Happiness, but in the sense that it serves up a whole load of ancient philosophy – from Zhuangzi to Epicurus, from the Stoics to Buddhism, and from the pleasingly disreputable Cynics to the uprightness of Confucius – along with good dollops of more recent research, to propose a number of experiments in living that you can put into practice.

My main contentions in the book are these: firstly that happiness is not one but many things; and secondly that there are many other things that are not happiness that also matter. And so there is no One Great Secret (don't believe anybody who tells you that there is); and even if there was, we'd need to balance concerns with happiness against concerns with other things.

If you want to pre-order the book, then you can do so by clicking here. The publication date is 5th January 2012, or thereabouts.

More Ramblings with Dave Bonta from Morning Porch

Back in April I was fortunate enough to get a chance to meet up with Dave Bonta – poet, editor, thinker and photographer – and spend a couple of hours in Birmingham chatting about philosophy, Buddhism, Chinese thought, Levinas, happiness, religion and almost everything else. Dave has done impressive things attempting to wrestle our ramblings down into something more or less coherent and posted it as an epic two-part podcast.

Somewhat foolishly, when Dave asked about where we should meet, I suggested the Museum and Art Gallery Café. Foolishly on two counts: one that the food is terrible; and the other that the only noisier place to meet in Birmingham is probably spaghetti junction. Anyway, if you want to have a listen – and see me making such spurious assertions as "Zhuangzi is perhaps one of the only philosophers for whom misreading the text is justified by the text itself" – then both parts of the podcast are now online. You can subscribe to the Woodrat Podcast via iTunes.

Introducing the Snorgh

It was several years ago now that my good friend, the shockingly talented illustrator Thomas Docherty (not to be confused with Thomas Docherty the literary theorist…) suggested that we might perhaps work together on a children's picture book. And so after a great deal of discussion and much behind-the-scenes fun, we ended up putting together an idea for a story about a lonely, miserable and decidedly antisocial marsh-dweller called the Snorgh, and his unexpected adventures with a shipwrecked sailor.

I'm delighted to say that The Snorgh and the Sailor is going to be published next year by the wonderful Alison Green Books, and that in the last week the book has quietly appeared on Amazon.co.uk so that the extra-keen can buy their advanced copies. I'll be posting more Snorgh-related news closer to the publication date; but I thought it time that I formally introduced the Snorgh. So, here goes: Everybody, meet the Snorgh; Snorgh, meet everybody… (This is the point at which point the Snorgh, being antisocial, snuffles off to be by himself. What can you do with such people?)

A Philosophical Lunch

Back in the spring, I had a delightful couple of hours having lunch with poet, editor, writer of morning porch, photographer, and Woodrat podcast supremo Dave Bonta. Dave was in the UK for the launch of The Book of Ystwyth, and we met up in Birmingham's cavernous Museum and Art Gallery cafe. Dave left his tape-recorder running as we had lunch, and the conversation was free-ranging, digressive and hugely stimulating (at least, it was from my point of view – Dave is a fascinating conversation partner).

You can find the podcast here: Woodrat Podcast. This is part one of two, so I'll post here when part two goes live.

Public knowledge (and some passing thoughts on waiting)

"The instrumental nature of ordinary waiting – where we usually wait for something that is supposed to be better than waiting – conceals this intimate, existential aspect of waiting…" Harold Schweizer On Waiting

I'm writing this from Bergen airport, where I am waiting for my delayed flight home to London after what has been a fabulous four or five days in Norway. Today I completed my various duties at the University of Bergen, where I've been examining a PhD (a successful PhD, I should say, so congratulations to the very gracious Dr. Heng Wu who defended her thesis today), and so I caught the bus up to the airport ready for the flight home.

Being involved in the PhD process in Norway reminded me of my own PhD at Staffordshire University. One striking difference is that in the UK there is almost no public element to the doctoral process, whilst the defence in Norway, as in much of Europe, is a public defence. The public nature of PhD exams here, as in much of Europe, seems to me to be a good thing. My own PhD exam was in a small room in a draughty tower-block in Stoke-on-Trent; and whilst the examiners were very good and raised lots of interesting questions, there was not much in the way of ceremony, nor was there any public dimension to the whole process. We shuffled into the room in the same way that we might do if we were about to spend an hour or two discussing the departmental coffee and biscuits budget, and we shuffled out later in much the same way. It seems to me that this is a weakness of our system: scholarship and study are not, whatever the authors of the Brown Report (cue pantomime-style boos from the audience…) may think, purely private affairs, nor should they be. Having at least an element of openness to the public might do a lot to help to convince people that what goes on in universities is, in fact, of wider public concern.

Anyway, after a few days meeting and working with colleagues here in Bergen – which has been an absolute pleasure – I arrived at the airport to find my flight delayed, hence the quote with which I began this blog post (one of those posts that you only write because, well, you have time on your hands, and writing seems like as good a thing to do as anything else). To tell the truth, I'm not sure if actually being on the BMI flight to Heathrow qualifies as being 'better than waiting'; but in the meantime, I'm waiting in the hope that the already delayed plane will turn up sooner or later, and that it will get me into Heathrow in time to catch the bus home. I've got a fortieth birthday party in Leicester tomorrow, and I feel that if at all possible, I should strive to be there…

Bergen

I am writing this from the cabin of a ship that is docked just behind the science centre in Bergen, Norway. I am over here for four or five days before the beginning of the new term back home, doing some work at the university of Bergen where I am external examiner for a PhD; and as my colleagues back at De Montfort University are a generous bunch, they suggested that I take a couple of days off beforehand to see the city.

So a couple of days ago I flew in from Heathrow and booked into my cabin in the Fjord Visjon, a tiny ship that, outside of the high tourist season, functions as a guesthouse. Since then I've been wandering the museums and galleries of Bergen, as well as exploring the paths through the woods above town. And this morning I woke up in my tiny, cosy cabin, and looked through the porthole at the lapping waves of the harbor, and thought about the fact that today is my fortieth birthday. Then I had a shower, sat down to meditate for a half hour or so, and packed my bags, because later on today I'm heading over to the hotel that the university here has booked for me, so that I am ready to start work tomorrow.

Until work here begins, I have another more or less lazy day in Bergen, meeting up with friends and colleagues from Bergen, and hopefully having time to drop in and see the exhibition of Chinese art at the Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum. It is traditional, I believe, for the onset of something like a fortieth birthday to occasion various kinds of melancholy, angst or existential terror. But I confess that I am not really in the mood for any of these things. So I'm continuing on as usual, putting together some thoughts on another possible book project, doing bits and pieces, and also keeping one eye on the fast approaching beginning of an academic year that promises a certain degree of turbulence, as those millionaire champions of craven self-interest who are currently in charge do their best to sow havoc amongst the universities of England (there is a greater reason for existential terror in this, I think, than there is in date on one's birth certificate).

But let's not get into that. It's my fortieth birthday. For today, at least, I reserve the right to enjoyment. So in a moment of two, I'm off for breakfast. Then I'll pour myself a mug of coffee and get back to doing a bit of work on the book before I have to gather up my things and move on to the hotel by the university. Waking up in a small wooden cabin on the waterfront, a wonderful city to explore, time to meet with friends, and the chance to do some writing: what better way to spend the day?

How to be wise

This is rather short notice, but tomorrow – on the 14th September – I'll be giving a talk at Leicester Library with the title How to be Wise. The event is between 2pm and 3pm (there's a link here), and there's no need to book in advance. I'll be talking a bit about what it might mean to say that philosophy is the 'love of wisdom' (or, as those naughtily louche French philosophers like to insist, the 'wisdom of love'), and perhaps I'll read a couple of short extracts from Finding Our Sea-Legs as well.

There are refreshments 'for a small charge' (because it would be unwise to expect that there might be any such thing as a free lunch – although the philosophy, of course, comes free of charge).