The Guardian's Blog, page 9
May 5, 2016
‘They’: the singular pronoun that could solve sexism in English
You only need four letters to take a stand against the prejudice embedded in the English language
I got in trouble over a four-letter word the other day. None of the ones you are thinking of: it was “they” that caused a fracas that Jeremy Clarkson would have been proud of.
At the start of 2016, the good folks of the American Dialect Society got together to crown their Word of the Year. They (see what I’m doing here) have decided that the word could now be used as a singular pronoun, flexing the English language so a plural could denote a singular, genderless, individual.
Related: Eight words that reveal the sexism at the heart of the English language | David Shariatmadari
If the English language had been properly organised … there would be a word which meant both ‘he’ and ‘she’
Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish, Persian – are entirely genderless
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May 4, 2016
Literary Mixtape: David Means's soundtrack for reflecting on the Vietnam War
David Means shares the music that inspired his latest book – part Vietnam War novel, part reflection on the nature of memory. From the tunes soldiers listened to, to The National, here is his playlist
By David Means for Literary Mixtapes by Electric Literature, part of the Guardian Books Network
The best books and music pairings: your recommendationsCertain songs seem to be addressing the future while also casting an eye back into some deep, strange history; other songs – for me – seem to be about not only the soundscape but also the landscape around the song as it relates to time and history.
Hystopia, set in my home state, Michigan, is partly a Vietnam War novel, but it’s also about the nature of memory, of trying to reclaim memory. When I was researching the novel, I became interested not only in music from the era, which I grew up on and loved anyway, but on something else – a cultural feedback loop that formed during the Vietnam War. The troops in the field listened to music – The Doors, The Rolling Stones, James Brown – and heard, somehow, a response to the war they were fighting. Then when they got home, if they were lucky enough to go home quickly, when tours of duty were finished, without transition – via airline flights – some of them fed language and intensity back into the loop. There’s an interesting book, just published, called We Gotta Get out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam Era, in which vets write about their musical experiences in Nam. One essay in the book was written by a friend of mine, Gerald McCarthy, whom I interviewed when I was researching. He’s also a character in the book. The playlist below is relatively arbitrary, songs that that seem – sometimes retroactively – to provide foreground, or perhaps background to the work, along with songs that somehow magically touch some aspect of the thing I created.
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Continue reading...If The Borrowers are 'unviable', what about other children's classics?
A shocking new report claims that Mary Norton’s miniature people would struggle to survive in real life, casting doubt on many other much-loved characters from childhood reading
Diving intrepidly into the Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics, the Telegraph has unearthed a troubling new paper for all fans of Mary Norton. According to Jonathan G Panuelos and Laura H Green’s What Would the World Be Like to a Borrower?, it seems Arrietty, Pod and Homily would have rather a tough time of it.
Being 16 times smaller than an average human, they would “lose heat much faster than humans do”, they’d have terrible hearing, their speaking voices would be “much higher than any human speaking naturally” so they’d be unable to talk to humans. And with scaled-down eyes, they would be “nearly blind, as very little light would enter [their] eyes”, according to the paper.
Continue reading...When authors' prejudices ruin their books
The unsavoury attitudes found in novels from writers such as GK Chesterton and Susan Coolidge have ruined some of the fiction I loved most as a child. But where do you draw the line when you return to tainted classics?
When I was 10 or 11, I was consumed by a passion for Golden Age detective fiction. I browsed mildew-smelling secondhand bookshops for Dorothy L Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle, developing secret proto-crushes on both Lord Peter Wimsey and Sherlock Holmes (and wishing I could carry off a monocle). I burned through Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion books, and Agatha Christies by the score and I adored GK Chesterton’s Father Brown.
But recently, rereading the stories of the round-faced, stumpy cleric, with his flapping black cassock and his encyclopedic knowledge of human evil, left me feeling cold rather than cosy. Chesterton’s glorious evocations of light, landscape, and unnerving, lurid strangeness remain compelling. But his frequent use of racial stereotypes now slams me repeatedly out of his text. References to “the yellow man”, “a big white bulk … but with the needless emphasis of a black face”, “the fashionable negro … showing his apish teeth” – even the intrinsic evil of a “Turkey carpet” – leave me feeling that the padre’s much-touted broad-mindedness boils down all too often to mere mistrust of any skin-shade other than white.
Continue reading...May 3, 2016
Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, where we talk about discovering the sublime poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, revisiting Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls and getting over our Shakespeare/Cervantes anniversary hangover.
Magrat123 finished Helen Garner’s collection of essays Everywhere I Look:
... and I am still getting my breath back. It is no wonder that she has just got the Windham, she is one of our greatest living writers. She can be likened to Clive James, reflecting on her experience of life, the universe and everything, but the resemblance is more apparent than real. James is often too clever by half, and smugly aware of it; his attempts at self-effacement are an often unconvincing attempt to mollify the reader. Garner’s humility is genuine, but so is the self-esteem which she has spent a lifetime painfully building. Everything she writes about – books, films, criminal trials, toddlers, furniture – is considered through her personal experience, and yet there is no sense of overweening ego.
Garner is not a poet, but often her use of language is quite beautiful.
... an author I’ve never read and whose books I rarely see. I expected something solemn, full of gravitas and grandeur. Wow, was I wrong! Tagore’s writing absolutely sparkles, underpinned with a gently mocking, satirical tone. “Amit’s father was a barrister of formidable repute. The fortune he had amassed was sufficient to ensure the moral downfall of the next three generations.” And the translation by Radha Chakravarty is sublime. Where has Tagore been all my life?
Tagore has simply been waiting patiently for you to arrive. No frowning nor watch-tapping. It’s very good stuff. Read it all.
Try The Postmaster, his short stories and combine with a trip to Kolkata or west Bengal.
Last week I was helping a very elderly aunt to move into a (very nice) old folks home and while packing her favourite books, I found a Penguin edition of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls from 1963 – that’s before ISBNs were invented. And I started reading but unlike so many years before when I would follow the story about girls and convents and moving to Dublin etc. I noticed how beautifully Edna O’Brien described the country side. In the end I spent most of the night rereading the book from a completely different angle.
The sun was not yet up, and the lawn was speckled with daisies that were fast asleep. There was dew everywhere. The grass below my window, the hedge around it, the rusty paling wire beyond that, and the big outer field were each touched with a delicate, wandering mist. And the leaves and the trees were bathed in the mist, and the trees looked unreal, like trees in a dream. Around the forget-me-knots that sprouted out of the side of the hedge were haloes of water. Water that glistened like silver. It was quiet, it was perfectly still. There was smoke rising from the blue mountains in the distance. It would be a hot day.
Six English-speaking and six Spanish-speaking authors take their inspiration from the great writers. Greatly enjoying Deborah Levy’s short story based on the true tale of a princess who believes she has swallowed a tiny glass piano, which takes as its starting point Cervantes’s story of the glass student.
Continue reading...John James Audubon and the natural history of a hoax
Brilliant work in the archives has unearthed evidence that the great ornithological artist also enjoyed some rather more fanciful work
Artist and naturalist John James Audubon was a master of ornithological illustration, and also, it turns out, master of the prank.
A new paper in the journal Archives of Natural History, Pranked By Audubon, sees the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History curator Neal Woodman lay out how the author of The Birds of America took time out from his superb illustrations to invent a series of “wild rats of the western states” and other creations with which to fool the naturalist Constantine Rafinesque.
We had all retired to rest. Every person I imagined was in deep slumber save myself, when of a sudden I heard a great uproar in the naturalist’s room. I got up, reached the place in a few moments, and opened the door, when, to my astonishment, I saw my guest running about the room naked, holding the handle of my favourite violin, the body of which he had battered to pieces against the walls in attempting to kill the bats which had entered by the open window, probably attracted by the insects flying around his candle. I stood amazed, but he continued jumping and running round and round, until he was fairly exhausted, when he begged me to procure one of the animals for him, as he felt convinced they belonged to ‘a new species’. Although I was convinced of the contrary, I took up the bow of my demolished Cremona, and administering a smart tap to each of the bats as it came up, soon got specimens enough. The war ended, I again bade him good night, but could not help observing the state of the room. It was strewed with plants, which it would seem he had arranged into groups, but which were now scattered about in confusion. ‘Never mind, Mr Audubon,’ quoth the eccentric naturalist, ‘never mind, I’ll soon arrange them again. I have the bats, and that’s enough.’
Related: William Boyd: how David Bowie and I hoaxed the art world
Continue reading...May 2, 2016
Poem of the week: Yangtze by Sarah Howe
An elliptical account of a journey down the Chinese river subtly registers the impact of massive environmental damage
Yangtze
The moon glimmers
in the brown channel.
Strands of mist
wrap the mountainsides
crowded with firs.
Related: Poetry, music and identity with Sarah Howe, Emmy the Great and Solomon OB – books podcast
Continue reading...April 28, 2016
Jenny Diski in quotes: 'Nobody is better at having cancer than me'
The prolific author and essayist, who died on Thursday, was famous for her wonderfully honest way with words – share your favourite quotes
Author Jenny Diski dies aged 68Obituary by Kate Kellaway: ‘Depression, withdrawal, extinction: all these she was able to transcend in words’Death, drugs, Doris Lessing – there was no topic Jenny Diski could not tackle with her pithy wit and personable honesty. Diski, who died aged 68, wrote most frequently about her cancer diagnosis in her last months – but retained her ability to write in the erudite and inimitable way that attracted so many readers to her London Review of Books column. Here are 10 of our favourite quotes of hers – if you would like to contribute more, please add them in the comments.
The thing is, nobody is better at having cancer than me, in the sense that I like nothing more than sitting on the sofa doing fuck all and trying to write. – interview with the Observer.
It isn’t important what you do, it is the attitude with which you proceed through the world that matters. – in Stranger on a Train.
The difference between travelling solo and travelling alone is a state of mind. I’ve been travelling alone for decades, long before I could call myself a “travel writer” – not that I do call myself a travel writer. – writing for the Guardian in 2010.
I’d wanted to be a writer since I got the idea that each book I read was actually written by someone, that there was such a thing you could do and be in life. Increasingly it seemed like the only thing in the world to be. – Diski’s address at Doris Lessing’s memorial service in 2014.
One thing I state as soon as we’re out of the door: ‘Under no circumstances is anyone to say that I lost a battle with cancer. Or that I bore it bravely. I am not fighting, losing, winning or bearing.’ I will not personify the cancer cells inside me in any form. – from her first diary entry serialised in the London Review of Books.
My eyes were made of diamonds, not the glitzy sort that sparkled and shone, but the implacably black kind that knew the worth of concealed things (some called them ‘your coal-black eyes’). Those eyes radiated the truth of the matter to anyone who dared look at them. And the darkness drew in the world and showed me what the world could do and was doing.– in the London Review of Books.
I’d been impossible from the start. Asking questions that shouldn’t have been asked, thinking they had an answer. I’d sulked: I don’t remember about what, but I’m sure I did. I brought men home. I fucked men in Doris’s house. I wasn’t doing enough work at school (my new school) and for a while I had a boyfriend whose main wish was that I wore a uniform and who met me for a little fellatio before the school bell rang. I skipped lessons I thought didn’t matter and sat in the coffee bar across from the school smoking and drinking coffee, reading or sometimes with a friend. I didn’t work hard enough to fulfil my potential. I wasn’t grateful to Doris for the opportunity she had given me. – on her time with Doris Lessing in the London Review of Books.
But I do know a kind of madness that lies low in the mind, half-buried in consciousness, which lives in parallel to sanity, and given the right circumstances or even just half a chance, creeps like a lick of flame or a growing tumour up and around ordinary perception, consuming it for a while, and causing one, even when not at the movies, to quake in fear of the world and people and what they - I mean, of course, we - are capable of. – in Stranger on a Train.
Choose the pursuit of happiness if you really must, but there are better things to do with a life, unless freedom from difficulty is the only acceptable existence. If you’re Ford [Madox Ford] you can be sad, despairing, happy and do some good work. What’s so tragic about that? It sounds more like ‘everything’ to me than Elizabeth Gilbert’s version: a year shlepping, shopping and praying around Italy, India and Indonesia. – in the London Review of Books.
There is of course nothing else to really think about except death. But that’s not a new realisation for me. I have always been perfectly aware that one could drop dead at any moment, and I have really tried to think myself into that idea since I was a child. Still, now it has more reality, I can’t see I will be skipping off with a hey and a ho and all that. I can, though, get behind the idea of not having to worry about anything any more. That is quite an appealing thought. – interview with the Observer.
Continue reading...April 27, 2016
Warsan Shire: the Somali-British poet quoted by Beyoncé in Lemonade
She was London’s Young Poet Laureate, becoming a voice for its marginalised people – now her work has been recited by the queen of pop
She writes of places where many Beyoncé fans rarely go, the portions of London where the faces are black and brown, where men huddle outside shop-front mosques and veiled women are trailed by long chains of children. Warsan Shire, the Somali-British poet whose words are featured in Beyoncé’s new globe-shaking Lemonade album, is a bard of these marginalised areas – she was even named the first Young Poet Laureate for London at 25.
Beyoncé reads parts of Shire’s poems, including For Women Who Are Difficult To Love, The Unbearable Weight of Staying (the End of the Relationship) and Nail Technician as Palm Reader in interludes between songs in her 12-track, hour-long video album that premiered this week. Truly, Shire was a brilliant choice for Beyoncé’s unapologetically black and female album: like the people and places from which they are woven, Shire’s poems – published in a volume titled Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth – are laden with longing for other lands and complicated by the contradictions of belonging in new ones. In Conversations about Home, she writes: “I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. I’m bloated with language I can’t afford to forget”, and: “They ask me how did you get here? Can’t you see it on my body? The Libyan desert red with immigrant bodies, the Gulf of Aden bloated, the city of Rome with no jacket.”
Related: 'Beyoncé is not a woman to be messed with' – Lemonade review
Related: How Beyoncé's Lemonade became a pop culture phenomenon
Continue reading...Alain de Botton – your questions answered, on art, God and ugliness
The philosopher is back with a new novel, The Course of Love, and answered your questions in a live webchat – addressing everything from the refugee crisis to rejection in love
2.10pm BST
Thanks very much to everyone who left a comment. Sorry I was only able to scratch the surface. If a question is burning, please come to visit me at www.alaindebotton.com - and I'll do my best.
2.09pm BST
benist asks
Is there such a thing as selfless love, where one does something entirely for the benefit of someone else?
A lot of parental love is like this: we don't expect our kids to ask how our days are, or to worry that we might be needing a nap. As a parent, we give love rather than expect it, it is the most selfless of all daily kinds of love. In my view, we should learn some lessons from the way we love children and apply them to the love of adults too; ie. a focus on giving love, and on interpreting the troubles that others give us in benevolent ways (ie. they haven't slept very well rather than 'they are evil...')
2.07pm BST
Frugal_Dougal asks
Do you see any positive signs of change in the UK housing market since you made your Perfect Home series?
Not focusing on the price of houses directly, there are some real signs that architectural quality has improved a lot. Much has to do with the moves of the last Labour government, that put the quality of housing delivery at the heart of its agenda (some of this has been scrapped, but not all of it, fortunately). But an ordinary housing block going up now in London or Inverness has a better chance of following best practice than it did 10 years ago. As with food, we in Britain are very slowly catching up with ideas that have been common in Holland or Germany for a while.
2.03pm BST
neutralpaddy asks
How did your father’s work ethic inform the writing of this book? (I was privileged to work closely for him for 18 months – he had astonishing focus and discipline.)
Small world! I've grown up with a very strong work ethic, which in me is really animated by a sense of just how short our time on this spinning planet really is. So I'm constantly guided by a guilty sense that there is a lot to do and very little time left to do it. At best, I can put out another 8 books or so. That's a scary prospect in terms of choosing what might be the best topics and how not to mess them up too badly.
2.02pm BST
ID9552055 asks
The poet Shelley said: “We are all Greeks.” In this respect, if we take out the Greeks from our civilisation as it stands today, what are we left with?
I would say that we are a mixture of Greek and Judeo-Christian ideas. The latter have just as much of an influence of the former. Our idea of human rights, of equality, of democracy are as much Christian as they are Greek.
2.00pm BST
MsMooch says
Lately you have been very down on love: in the otherwise excellent TSOL videos for example. I loved your Essays in Love and I can’t wait for the sequel, but do tell me, are you still in love with your wife, or is all that doom and gloom stuff because you fell out of love but are clinging on for the sake of remembrance of temps perdu In which case, are you free for dinner next week?
I should say that the films on Youtube are not the ongoing story of my life and my marriage. They are heartfelt perspectives, but arise from a number of sources. There is a very understandable temptation to connect up what a writer discusses - say - in a novel with the events in their life, but the awkward truth is that it's immensely fun and liberating to invent perspectives on problems one hasn't necessarily directly experienced. All this to say - thank you so much for dinner, but not this time around.
1.57pm BST
ptah1972 asks
Hi Alain, what is your view about ethics and education for young people? If young people were introduced to ethics as part of the national curriculum and how different moral choices/problems that we might end up growing a population of more moral, responsible adults who would be more likely to take custodianship over issues such as the environment, poverty and inequality?
The tricky thing is HOW such an education would work. I recently was reading David Hume who was very against delivering lectures on ethics to young people. He cheerfully explained why: they won't listen, they'll find it boring. So for Hume - and he was right I think - what those with ethical ambitions need to do is find ways to make 'the good' not just true but convincing and - to use a doubtful word - charming. Hume believed that popular history and plays could help to reform character far more than dry lectures in philosophy. In short, any ambition to reform the young always has to start with the true enemy one is facing: boredom, disengagement, and the unbelievable charms of twitter. These are the things that any educator has to overcome in a quest to reform the world.
1.54pm BST
ellalw asks
Is a sense of purpose necessary for a fulfilled life? If so, how should you navigate the consequent feelings of failure and shame if you can’t find out what yours is? The overwhelming pressure to find one makes all options seem inauthentic.
It is immensely hard to find a sense of purpose, but if you are feeling very actively that you haven't found it, that you are on the wrong track, these are signals that imply - like a negative implies a positive - that somewhere within you you do have a sense of what might be meaningful for you. A feeling that things are inauthentic wouldn't be possible without an underlying (even if still veiled) belief in authentic possibilities. It's important not to panic or despair because the answer hasn't manifested itself yet. It may well take a decade or two till one can start to know oneself well enough to realise what might bring purpose to life. In the meantime, sympathy for the scale of the challenge one's facing is important - that and an accurate sense that one is far from alone (even though society constantly presents us with examples of people who seem to know exactly what is what; people who in fact constitute a painfully small majority, who nevertheless make it to the front pages of websites too often for our mental well-being.
1.52pm BST
hvadaltsaa asks
How do think we will look back on the current refugee crisis? With pride, guilt or shame? Do you think that we as a species will ever learn from our history and stop fighting wars?
The origins of the refugee crises will, I think, be what particularly concerns historians. The roots have to do in the catastrophic approach of the Western powers to the politics of the Middle East. Don't forget that Syria was a client state of France for many years, it's ancient tribal structures were destroyed and the current regime - responsible for the war in key ways - is the fruit of an entirely dysfunctional state, which took years to get into the shape it was in when the conflict broke out. In short, we are still - as a species - learning some basic principles of good statecraft: that intervention in the affairs of other nations causes problems that can last centuries, that human rights have to be respected, that economic liberty needs to go hand in hand with political liberty, that women's rights must be respected etc... The refugees we are seeing in the stations of Germany and the camps of France are the last link in an appalling sequence of mistakes that goes back to the mid 19th century. None of this is an argument for passivity. Simply that good governance is at the heart of the crisis and something humanity is still only just learning about.
1.50pm BST
Allan Ray Jasa says
Alain, I have two questions:
1. how long did it take you to write The Course of Love?
2. in what ways did The School of Life / The Book of Life affect your novel?
1. It took 3 years.
2. The School of Life provided a forum in which I could test some of the ideas, by presenting them to small audiences - and also, learn from the many people who come through our doors. We run a psychotherapy service and our resident therapist was extremely helpful to me in discussing some of the problems of couples. So all in all, it's very good to go into an office rather than spend all day alone in a room...
1.49pm BST
BaddHamster asks
Given that, with a long enough timeline, all life is ultimately futile, and sooner or later humanity will cease to exist, am I justified in calling in sick for the week and instead just watching movies in bed and drinking cheap wine?
The lack of 'meaning' as humans can conceive it when we look at our lives on a cosmic perspective should not be an invitation to do nothing. However nice beds and cheap wine are, knowing that our lives are short and our efforts fragile could as well be a goad to action - especially around helping others - as to indolence. That shouldn't sound hectoring or ungenerous. Most of all, I wish you a nice break.
1.47pm BST
Ian Batch asks
Yes, we will - I think - eventually reach a post-religious age. In many ways, in Western Europe, we are already here. This would be very desirable in my view; of course, there are better and worse ways of secularising. For me, the best way is to remember all the emotional needs that we once turned to religion with - and to try to find alternatives in the secular world. No longer believing generally isn't the end of some of the feelings that took people to belief.
Suspicion of intellects has many sources, not least, that many intellectuals have made enormous mistakes, especially around politics (think of the very misguided ideas of Sartre, or of Heidegger or other big mid 20th century names). That said, allowing a variety of voices onto the airwaves seems a way to achieve genuine plurality.
1.40pm BST
PatrickLee asks
I’m writing this from my office, where I feel under extreme pressure to get things done. I’m also working a freelance job simultaneously, and so am currently all about making money. Basically, I’m making good tracks career-wise. I’m ‘doing OK’, I’m saving money to one day have a house and am doing a good job. But I don’t know if this is what I want to be doing. I try and imbue it with as much meaning as pos, but it doesn’t really work. Surely it’s too late to start again and spend all my hard-earned money on re-studying. Three more years of poverty just to start from scratch again.
I'm sorry about the challenges of day to day life: yes, we do need a good communication person... But I would just ask what it is about further study that you're hoping will move you out of the current situation. In general, when people consider a job move, the risk is a faulty analysis of the current dissatisfaction, a flawed analysis of what one's true talents and interests are - and a misreading of the job market. All these are hugely tricky issues - which is why i'm a firm believer that one should spend a h ugely long time unpicking the dilemma, possibly with the help of a mentor - and only very slowly judge whether a big move is necessary. The tragedy of most job searches is that they proceed under the pressure of immediate feelings of instincts, which turn out not accurately to reflect the aptitudes of the people involved. In short, take it slowly and think a lot...
PS: I would add that there are many ways in which a greater deal of meaning can be found in existing jobs, without the need to throw everything in. At the School of Life, we're keen on what we call 'branching' moves, which involve a little shift to the right or to the left. These undramatic moves - which may involve a conversation with a colleague or boss about slightly changing how things are done - may hold a remarkably important part of the solution to a situation of dissatisfaction. We're often fatefully in love with the dramatic move.
1.38pm BST
Pagey asks:
Alain, do you really believe (as your recent Guardian opinion piece gives the impression) that most workers have the power to shape their destiny at work more than at home? Your theory seems to be based on an exclusive notion that doesn’t include people who don’t work in offices and are not highly paid.
I was pointing out, in a recent piece, that in certain ways, possibilities for good communication are greater in the work place than in the home. This was merely a suggestion and doesn't represent every home and every workplace. It's just that we operate in a society that very much valorises love and slightly demonises work. I was attempting to tilt the debate in a slightly different direction.
1.38pm BST
Coenj asks
Alain, do you hold out any hope that our education system could be restructured to once again recognise philosophy as a foundational subject, with critical thinking and discourse about values and the good life seen as central to the healthy life of both individual and society? If so, how do you think this could be achieved?
My view is that we should reverse engineer the education system from the problems of life. In other words, we need to look at the issues that most people struggle with and really critically examine whether the skills we acquire in school years are those that are helping us with these struggles. So, on my ideal curriculum, I would look much more closely at a range of issues that beset people around Love and Work: how to form satisfying relationships, how to deal with conflict, how to deal with reversal, how to understand the economic system we live within, how to be financially literate and learn all the skills necessary to take apart the financial machine we exist within... All these are topics which seem to be very neglected in the current education system, but which would be very rewardingly addressed in the future.
1.36pm BST
apodictic asks
Following your book Religion for Atheists, isn’t it a religious apologist approach. “Isn’t religion brilliant?” screams from your book, trying to provide positive spin that atheists should long for and missing out. You seem to rejoice in religious irrationalism as having superiority over us miserable rational atheists. What gives religion a special place to assume it is the best thing? Humans commune freely without the intrusion of religion and quite frankly do better without it.
I only ever meant to provide a very selective journey through religion, picking out aspects which seem to me important, wise or beautiful. For me, a lot of religion is utterly unpalatable and in no way something I would recommend or back. I am a committed atheist and always have been. That said, many of the problems of our age stem from our inability to notice the gap left by the disappearance of God and to fill it adequately. This is really the project that Nietzsche announced when he declared the death of god in the 19th century. He wasn't gleeful at the prospect. He realised that there would be many areas in which the disappearance of religion would cause great difficulties. My book was an attempt to rescue some of what still seems relevant and interesting (the ritualistic aspects, the ethical emphasis, the use of art as a didactic medium) from a lot that cannot seem true or good to me (doctrine, dogma, murderous commands etc.).
1.35pm BST
ajhurley writes:
I recently started reading one of your School of Life books: How to Find Fulfilling Work. I was struck by many things, but particularly that our “happiness” doesn’t increase beyond an income of roughly 45k (sorry, don’t have book to hand). Do you (& others) in the School of Life subscribe to this view, and if so, how has it affected your life?
It's a paradox that economists have been very wise to start to point out in recent years: levels of happiness do not keep rising in relation to incomes. Indeed, one striking fact sticks out: 60% of a person's life satisfaction can be connected up with the quality of their relationship. This is really rather a dazzling fact, given how much time politicians focus on certain priorities and how little time is ever spent trying to improve the quality of relationships. Yet serious political problems - drug abuse, family breakdown, criminality - always start in the home, with a range of psychological issues we're collectively very unsure how to address at a political level. We should start with the two ways in which people are educated: schools and media. In both areas, rewarding and emphasising the area of emotional intelligence seems key to me.
1.34pm BST
Namedoftherose asks:
Who is your favourite thinker of those covered on the School of Life?
Thanks for all the great work.
I'm especially fond of Montaigne; he is an extremely humane thinker, always alive to the possibility of absurdity and pomposity. You have to love someone who can write: 'Even on the highest throne, we are seated - still - upon our arses.' And who could write also: 'Kings and philosophers shit, and so do ladies.' This remains a refreshing attitude to take even in our own times.
1.32pm BST
MrJellyby asks
In France philosophers regularly appear on TV, prime time popular TV, and are asked to comment on current events – they are generally expected to be engaged in politics and have a clear affiliation to either the right or the left. In the UK, of course, things are substantially different. Do you think its because philosophers in the UK lack clarity and the courage to morally engage in the issues of our times?
The reason is simple. If you asked Tony Hall to put a philosopher anywhere on the BBC, the answer would be a flat out no. Philosophers are dying to be on TV; some of the worst dressed ones harbour particularly intense wishes to be beside Evan Davies on Newsnight. The problem is that the BBC, among its other failings, simply doesn't recognise the latent star quality in many of Britain's academic thinkers...
1.32pm BST
theearhole asks:
Which modern artists can best console anxiety? Many seem to aggravate it.
Indeed, Abba seems a good choice. Also Richard Neutra and Eric Rohmer and London Grammar and... well, pretty much any talented artist at work today, of which there are millions...
1.30pm BST
andrea14 asks
What can be done about the increasing contempt for the humanities among politicians?
Some of the problem must be placed at the door of the humanities themselves. Politicians pick up on the public mood; they don't create it. The problem is that academics have been singularly unable to explain to the society that pays for them quite what their value is. For the last 40 years, it's become ever harder for people in the departments of ENglish, Philosophy, German etc. to explain clearly to the public just why they matter so much - and they do! The result has been that in straightened economic times, the government can be very tempted to stop feeding a system that the public themselves show little love for.
1.29pm BST
Carlos Hughes asks
Did you really say that people who work as TEFL teachers have failed at life? (As you were quoted in an article by Sebastian Cresswell-Turner in 2004) And what makes you an expert on working for a living? Especially regards TEFL teaching?
I'd like to put on record that I have the deepest respect for TEFL teachers, either those teaching now or those who have taught in the past.
1.28pm BST
Steve3931 asks
James Boswell once said: “I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.” This seems to be at odds with your approach that philosophy can make you happier. How do you stay cheerful at the same time as being a philosopher?
The task of thinking isn't so much to make people happy - happiness is a tricky word around which we are rightly suspicious. The task is to encourage us to come to a more consoled and consoling perspective on the disasters that befall us; to frame our sorrows more helpfully and to guide us towards a slightly less punitive and incensed attitude to the world. The greeks had a useful word 'eudaimonia', meaning fulfilment, which they preferred to use over happiness; the true goal of philosophy for Aristotle isn't to make people happy, it's to foster conditions for eudaimonia. This seems a good way to view things.
1.27pm BST
TommyTraddles asks
Have you ever had what can be loosely termed a “proper job”?
I published my first book, Essays in Love, at the age of 23. I then worked as a freelance journalists for my 20s before becoming a full time writer at 29 after the publication of my book, The Consolations of Philosophy. Since 2008, I've been running an organisation called www.theschooloflife.com - which now has a staff of 50 and branches in 12 countries. This keeps me fairly busy, but who is to say, really, whether that satisfies your criteria of 'work'?
1.26pm BST
DanHolloway writes
It’s great to see you webchatting here. I feel like I have grown up with you, since at least back in the 90s when I remember feeling mildly jealous that you had the kind of job I wanted, and had thought had become redundant since Jonathan Miller’s heyday.
In a mass society, it's really important to have a mass diffusion of ideas. And ideally, quite good ideas. So it's as important in my eyes to have intellectuals who speak only to the few as it is to have some that explicitly set out to address many .
1.26pm BST
Guarachero asks
Is it a forlorn hope that the therapy industry will ever stop prescribing art as a palliative for the customers whose vulnerability it has cultivated?
It's always been part of the ambition of art to help its audiences. In Ancient Greece, tragedy was a medium that sought to create a cathartic set of emotions - and to help spectators come to a less shameful and less punitive view of disgrace and failure. Later on, Christian art had similarly therapeutic ambitions: a painter like Bellini or Memling was setting out to render the truths of the gospels more intuitive and more visceral. It's only in the last five minutes in the history of culture that we've become suspicious of the idea of charging art with a therapeutic mission. Modernism wished to tie itself to a m ore abstract, internal agenda, shunning the work previously associated with the church. In my eyes, this has been a pity, cutting art off from its deepest roots and its true motivation.
1.24pm BST
Maygrey67 says
The school of life is such a wonderful idea - any plans for rolling out beyond London?
We exist in Melbourne, Seoul, Amsterdam, Paris, Antwerp and Istanbul.
1.23pm BST
paulinejeyasubha asks
I am your great fan and follower from India. I would love to know how a previous rejection affects the future relationship of a person? Have you experienced rejection in love personally and what was the drive to write this new fiction on love the 2nd time?? Also want to know your philosophical consolations for female Sex shaming and racism???
Rejection is an extremely challenging event, I'm sorry to hear it. I've known so much rejection i feel hugely competent to speak at length on the subject. But not now, not here (in the offices of the Guardian). For now, I feel for you.
1.22pm BST
Christopher Whalen says
A great frustration I have around dating is a lack of interest on the part of women to getting tested for STDs prior to any physical contact. I have tried to broach the subject many different ways, but I refuse to move forward with a physical relationship until we have both been screened for STDs. Can you elaborate on the psychology of why a person, man or woman, would refuse this request? It is a major stumbling block to my having romantic relationships. As we know, condoms are not 100% effective at eliminating the risk of STD transmission. [Plus contributions by Carlos Hughes and Cayo]
As ever, fear is at work. The trick is to suggest that love can co-exist along with a vigorous commitment to addressing and dealing with STDs. An atmosphere of benevolent acceptance of the risk of STD is a must; and can easily be achieved on many first dates - after the first course ideally.
1.22pm BST
paulinejeyasubha says
I am your great fan and follower from India. I would love to know how a previous rejection affects the future relationship of a person? Have you experienced rejection in love personally, and what was the drive to write this new fiction on love the 2nd time? Also, I want to know your philosophical consolations for female sex-shaming and racism
Rejection is an extremely challenging event, I'm sorry to hear it. I've known so much rejection i feel hugely competent to speak at length on the subject. But not now, not here (in the offices of the Guardian). For now, I feel for you.
1.20pm BST
AbstractClown asks
Is it possible for a work that is accessible to the majority to break new conceptual ground? Can anything middlebrow be academically significant?
The novel is a good example here. A novel like Madame Bovary is obviously not high brow in the technical sense. It enjoyed a large commercial success. It changed how we think of love to this day.
1.19pm BST
Daniel Helland says
Hi Alain. It is with no doubt that you are a huge contributing reason for me still studying philosophy. I am so inspired about your thought about philosophy being something more that just a boring academic “fight” about ideas that only high scholars can understand; it should be about ideas and thoughts that can help ourselves live true and meaningful lives.
My general view is that academic philosophy has done an enormous disservice to the true ambitions of the subject. Nietzsche, for one, would never have been offered a job in any university.
1.18pm BST
Daniel Helland asks
Any thoughts for people who want to study philosophy? What are your general thoughts on today’s academic philosophers? Why didn’t you finish your PhD?
My general view is that academic philosophy has done an enormous disservice to the true ambitions of the subject. Nietzsche, for one, would never have been offered a job in any university.
1.14pm BST
ID2844153 asks:
In your book Religion for Atheists you discuss aspects and practices of religions that you believe are beneficial and that should not be dismissed by secular and atheist societies. TSOL, like many other companies, offer a wide range of mindfulness products. Do you feel that removing aspects of religious practice from their traditional context (Buddhist 8 fold path) diminishes their potential for good or opens them up to a wider audience who would have been put off by religious association?
The shop is only at the start of its journey. We are launching The School of Life press in a few months, where we'll be putting together some very special books on a range of topics. At that point, our shop will reach its true audience and ambition.
1.11pm BST
Sergio Machado asks
Olá, Mr. Alain: do you think architecture will remain a cultural value in the future?
The future is in our hands - but I really hope so. The trick is to get people to see the connection between good architecture and well-being - as well as financial benefits to a region.
1.11pm BST
ID2844153 also says
In your article in the Book of Life, The Museum Gift Shop, you say that “The gift shop is quite simply the most important tool for the diffusion and understanding of art in the modern world” what do you see as the role of the TSOL shop within your organisation?
The shop is only at the start of its journey. We are launching The School of Life press in a few months, where we'll be putting together some very special books on a range of topics. At that point, our shop will reach its true audience and ambition.
1.09pm BST
ThisDay says
I agree that relationship education is one of the big issues we don’t address in the UK. However, because of this, it’s difficult to know where to start. People won’t come to ‘How to save your failing relationship’ courses.
i agree that there's a great challenge around reach when it comes to more serious ideas. The danger is that the elite is extremely suspicious of people who try to spread knowledge more widely. Immediately the accusation comes that someone is a populariser. Ask SImon Schama and listen to what people say about him in the common rooms of top universities. THis is very unfortunate. IN a mass society, we need really ambitious people to tackle the tasks of diffusing good ideas widely.
1.07pm BST
ID2844153 asks
Do you think that the ‘spiritual’ and ‘emotional well-being’ product markets serve to help individuals deal with problems caused by secular Capitalism or do they reinforce Capitalist values?
The chief emotional well-being product out there is probably music, closely followed by cinema and literature.
Many of the products of the music industry are deeply sincere and extremely helpful, allowing for a measure of catharsis and release.
That said, there is always the danger of abuse, but with any luck, the most talented producers can avoid it.
1.07pm BST
sinamon asks
Alain, do you think it’s possible, as a male millennial, to show one’s best side to and thus truly love someone whom one is not absolutely physically attracted to, given the Romantic culture we have grown up in? How can one content oneself with a partner who, although not stunning, is at least NOT ugly? Please share your wise words.
Romanticism suggests that love and sex belong tightly together: in fact, i think they often can exist at one remove, allowing for the ugly - i know whereof i speak - to be tolerated.
1.05pm BST
1.04pm BST
saldemar asks
Do you still stand by everything you said during the Munk debate on Progress?
Very little. Debates are a nightmarish medium for me. Along with quizzes, no more!
1.01pm BST
franzo asks
Do you see travel as a luxury afforded to only the middle and upper classes?
No, thankfully travel - in the UK at least - is a genuinely democratic, mass product.
10.17am BST
From the way we work to the way we love, Alain de Botton has considered the big questions in hit pop-philosophy books such as Status Anxiety and The Art of Travel. Recently, he has considered religious faith (Religion for Atheists), the era of 24-hour rolling news (The News: A User’s Manual), and How to Think More About Sex – the latter published by his adult education venture, The School of Life.
De Botton began his writing career in 1993 with Essays in Love, using fiction to think about affairs of the heart. It’s a an approach he returns to with his new novel, The Course of Love, exploring the ups, downs, children and affairs of a modern couple.
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