The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed there was no newsletter last weekend. Apologies. The reason for this is I have journeyed deep into the warm, pulsating heart of the happiness movement.
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This week, Lena Dunham, the very talented writer and star of the HBO series Girls, got a $3.5 million advance for her first book. I mean, I really do think she's very talented, Girls is an exceptionally good TV show, and perhaps she really is "the voice of my generation...or at least a voice of a generation", as she puts it in the first episode. But $3.5 million!!
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One of the most unchallenged and unexamined narratives in our culture is that the culture is dumbing down. High culture is disappearing beneath the toxic sludge of reality TV. The dark ages are around the corner. We are in the End Times, culturally speaking.
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Skepticism is an interesting and vibrant movement that has arisen in the last 40 years, which is to some extent part of the grassroots philosophy landscape. Skeptics might baulk at that affiliation, as they often see themselves as pro-science and, on occasion, anti-philosophy. Nonetheless, philosophers have played an important role in helping modern Skepticism grow, and the Skeptic movement’s vibrancy offer useful lessons for other philosophy groups.
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There's a cognitive bias which supposedly causes emotional disorders, whereby you minimize your own achievements while maximizing those of other people. I feel the authors of Britannia Unchained, a new book about how to save the UK from national decline, suffer from this bias.
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The latest episode of In Our Time is a particularly good one. Melvyn Bragg gathers three contemporary scholars of Druidism, who reveal some fascinating stuff about the druids. We find out, for example, that when the Romans encountered the druids, after their invasion of Britain and Gaul in the first century BC, they were very impressed with them and thought of them as natural philosophers in the mould of Pythagoras - both the druids and Pythagoras believed in the transmigration of souls, apparently.
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As regular readers know, I’m researching the rise of grassroots philosophy groups for a project called Philosophical Communities. This has got me thinking about the roles of groups and networks in the history of ideas, and I’d like to sketch out some initial thinking. I hope the following isn’t too pretentious...
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I was at a drinks party of a history conference this week, talking to a young academic who was writing a PhD. ‘And what are you working on?’ she asked me. I said I was researching philosophy groups, and was interested in the role of support groups and self-help networks in education and health.
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A few newsletters back, I talked about the idea of the ‘mass intelligentsia’, and posted an interview I did with Melvyn Bragg about the term (he used it in this programme on class and culture back in March). I’ve been digging into this idea a bit more since then, for an academic research project I’m doing on philosophy clubs. I’d like to unpack the idea some more, if that’s alright by you.
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Here is a great short vid by Leah Green, doing a broadcasting MA at Warwick, on the future of philosophy. It features Dr Angie Hobbs, and lots of members of the London Philosophy Club, including me looking a little bug-eyed. Must learn not to do that!
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An academic got in touch with me last week, inviting me to a seminar on Stoicism, which was nice of him. On the seminar programme, he described me as 'an author of books on happiness'. Alas I've only written one book (one that was published anyway), and it's strange to have it described as 'on happiness'.
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This week, I interviewed the philosopher and scientist Massimo Pigliucci as part of my research into philosophy clubs and the Skeptic movement. Massimo is a fascinating figure: he grew up in Italy, then moved to the University of Tennessee to become a professor in ecology and evolution, before moving to City University of New York to become a professor in philosophy.
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Does philosophy still matter?
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Welcome to another PoW newsletter. At the moment I am deep in research for a project I am running at Queen Mary, University of London, looking at the history and contemporary rise of philosophy groups. The hope is it will build links between academic philosophy and 'street philosophy', and also encourage people to get involved with grassroots philosophy, by joining clubs or setting up their own.
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Below is a video of a place on Second Life called The Philosophy Garden, set up by Portland community College. I'm not a big Second Lifer myself, but am curious - do any of my readers know of other philosophy groups, schools, cafes or communities that exist in massive multiplayer online games like SL? Let me know if you do, it would be useful for my research on philosophy clubs. Tnx.
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Yesterday, as you probably know, a girl punk band called Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for singing a protest song in Moscow's cathedral. Later that day, another Moscow beauty staged her own protest. Putin has, literally, lost his cool, and Russians have apparently lost their fear.
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A global bank's reputation is at rock bottom after a string of money-laundering scandals, fraud cases, and government bail-outs. A new CEO is appointed, with a mission to clean up the bank’s profile. He introduces a ‘five point ethics plan’, including strengthened risk controls, more enlightened incentives for bankers, an 'ethics hot-line', and a huge ethics training programme for the company’s 300,000 employees - arguably the biggest ethics training initiative in the history of American business.
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I've been researching the Chautauqua movement in the US, which was an adult education movement that began in the late 19th century and really blossomed in the first two decades of the 20th century. It typically involved groups of lecturers and entertainers touring rural America, setting up a big tent, and then giving talks and performances to the locals.
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Philosophy and comedy share certain characteristics. At the most basic level, both philosophers and comedians ask the question, why? Why do we do things this way and not a different way?
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Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of blog-posts and newsletters the last couple of weeks - I'm on holiday in Venezuela, travelling around and visiting the rather beautiful beach below, and will resume normal service next week. Thanks to all the people who've recently signed up to the newsletter - we've now passed the 1,000 mark of subscribers!
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One of the non-fiction writers of my generation who I most admire / envy / emulate - Jonah Lehrer - has just performed one of the steepest plummets from grace I've ever seen. At 31, Lehrer had already authored three best sellers: Why Proust Was a Neuroscientist, How We Decide, and Imagine, which came out in May 2012, the same month as my book.
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My city hosts the Olympics today, and I feel a bit anxious - like when you hear guests buzzing on the door bell, the house is a mess, and you've just had a raging argument with your wife. Well, I am very proud to be British, and proud to be a Londoner. I hope the games go really well and my fellow Londoners aren't too grumpy to the tourists.
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Here are some quotes from my favourite living artist, David Lynch, about the creative process. They're from Chris Rodley's book, Lynch on Lynch:
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