Posts in Wisdom
Perennialism and fascism

While I was in San Francisco, I got the chance to meet Michael Murphy, one of the founders of the Esalen Institute. It's a cross between a spiritual retreat centre and an adult education college, perched on the cliffs of Big Sur next to some hot springs. It's been very influential on transpersonal psychology and American spirituality.

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The Quakers on how to balance inner and outer work

Last week I visited Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat centre outside Philadelphia, nestled between the gorgeous Quaker liberal arts colleges of Haverford and Swarthmore. I made a sort of mini-pilgrimage there as part of my research into the ‘mystical expats’ – Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood and Alan Watts, four English writers who moved to California in the 1930s and helped invent the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ demographic (which is now 25% of the US population).

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Life is a game

The other day I came across one of those ubiquitous articles about the Problem with Men. And it had this line: 'life is not a race, it's not a game, and it's not a fight'. The problem, the author suggested, was men were attached to the wrong metaphor for life. He preferred 'life is a dance' - that frames life in a non-competitive and open way.

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How to fake vulnerability

It's a confusing world, but there are some things we know for sure. We know for sure that it's good to be vulnerable, don't we? That humans - particularly men - need to learn to open up more, because that's the way to better connection and higher self-worth. That much we know. Right?

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Spiritual materialism

Hello. Well, this is awkward. I stopped writing this newsletter two months ago, just before travelling to the Amazon jungle for an ayahuasca ceremony. The good news, back then, was that I'd been handed a philosophy column for the New Statesman magazine - the culmination of a dream I'd had for over a decade.

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What UK universities can learn from the US about promoting well-being

As regular readers will know, I've begun a new research focus, looking at well-being in higher education. British universities have started to focus on this issue a lot more, spurred by worrying headlines about an 'epidemic of mental illness on campus'. But, judging by the events I've attended so far, universities don't yet get the complexity of this issue, and see it simply in terms of increasing funding for counselling.

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Universities should try to teach wisdom, not just knowledge

Should a university provide a moral or spiritual education to its students? The idea seems ridiculous in the age of the mega-university. Universities today are enormous corporations, employing tens of thousands of academics and staff, with anything from 5000 to 30000 undergraduates studying there at any one time. The university is a microcosm of our multi-cultural society - there can be no one over-riding ethos in the 'multi-university'.

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Everybody's mental

It's been a tough week for the UK -  mental illness went up 164%. Previously, mental health charities assured us that one in four people have been diagnosed with a mental illness in their life.  But this week, abruptly, one mental health charity suggested as many as two in three adults will suffer from some mental health problem at some point in their life, whether that's a panic attack or a period of depression.

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James Mallinson, the sadhu-academic

Dr James Mallinson is unique among British academics. Not only is he a widely-respected Sansrkit scholar at the School of Oriental and Africa Studies in London, he’s also the only Westerner ever to become a mahant – a senior sadhu [ascetic holy man] in a sect of yogis, which he has spent time with since he was 18.

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Anthony Seldon on venturing beyond happiness

Sir Anthony Seldon is the former headmaster of Wellington College, one of the first schools to introduce well-being classes into its curriculum. He's also a co-founder of Action for Happiness. In his new book, Beyond Happiness, he suggests we need to look beyond 'workaday happiness' to find something more non-rational and spiritual, which he calls joy or bliss. I interviewed him about this, as well as his thoughts on the 'politics of well-being' and his plans to create the first 'positive university'.

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'Take ethics out of the classroom and you just make robots for the production line.'

Peter Vardy is a theologian and perhaps the leading Religious Studies teacher in the country. After teaching theology at Heythrop College and writing several best-selling books on ethics and religious philosophy, he and his wife Charlotte - also a theologian - set up Candle Conferences, which runs huge events for RS students around the country.

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Philosophies for Life pilot: the results

This year I’ve developed and trialled an eight-part course in practical philosophy, called Philosophies for Life. The pilot was financed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via Queen Mary, University of London.  I trialled the course with three partner organizations: Saracens rugby club; New College Lanarkshire and HMP Low Moss prison; and Manor Gardens mental health charity.

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Where next for well-being policy?

I went to the book-launch of a new book on well-being policy yesterday, which brought together some leading figures in this nascent movement - including David Halpern of the government’s ‘nudge unit’, Canadian economist John Helliwell, psychologist Maurren O'Hara, and Juliet Michaelson of the new economics foundation.

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Further thoughts on philosophy in prisons (from a rank amateur)

Yesterday I finished a pilot course in practical philosophy at Low Moss prison. It’s an eight-session course that introduces people to the ideas and life-philosophies of various ancient philosophers, including Socrates, the Stoics, Plato, Rumi, the Buddha, Jesus and Lao Tzu. I've been running it in partnership with New College Lanarkshire, which runs the learning courses in west Scottish prisons.

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Wisdom, critical thinking, well-being or faith?

Apologies for the lack of newsletters recently - I’ve been in the depths of a project to design and teach a course based on Philosophy for Life. This month, I started teaching it in three organizations - a mental health charity in London called Manor Gardens; Saracens rugby club; and Low Moss prison in Glasgow (via New College Lanarkshire, which runs learning courses there).

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