How should we live?
The Young Foundation’s report ‘Sinking not swimming: Understanding Britain’s Unmet Needs’ is an important contribution to public policy debate. This is how YF Director (and my former colleague) Geoff Mulgan, sums up the report in today’s Times:
Our survey shows that Britain is a rich country but with many poor people; a generally happy country but with many unhappy people. It’s not broken. But it is brittle, anxious and stressed. To the public it is obvious that psychological needs are as important as material ones, that love, care, peace of mind are as vital to a good life as having enough heating or enough clothes to wear. Yet there is an odd gulf between this common knowledge and public policy. Whoever can bridge that gap may win the battle to convince the public that they understand poverty and what to do about it.
This is a nuanced and credible account. It suggests we should give more attention to three sets of issues:
1. How can we enhance individual resilience? Earlier in his Times piece Mulgan says that one of the most important findings from recent research is that people can learn resilience. This has implications for schools, for health care (the Government marked the YF report by announcing extra public investment in services to fight depression), and for community development strategies. Individual resilience as a psychological trait could come to be seen as ranking alongside literacy and numeracy as a core competence in the modern world.
2. The report once again opens up the question of the relationship between conventional economic growth and wider social well-being (an issue discussed in the RSA’s Journal and which I covered here a few weeks ago). Interestingly, in his talk here last night about the enlightenment, Tzvetan Todorov identified an unquestioning belief in technological progress as one of the weaknesses of enlightenment thought.
3. It may not be easy to have a national debate about growth and well-being nationally but how about at the local level? The RSA strategic partnership with Peterborough is exploring the concept of sustainable citizenship. Can public policy be shaped by a community wide exploration of the kind of place people want to live in and the kind of lives they want to lead?
After decades when policy debate seemed dominated by technocratic debates about how best to configure public services, the growing interest in more substantive questions of public good is surely to be welcomed. It is absolutely in line with the RSA’s way of thinking and working.
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Comments
5 Comments on How should we live?
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Livy on
Tue, 8th Dec 2009 2:46 pm
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Livy on
Tue, 8th Dec 2009 4:08 pm
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mas on
Tue, 8th Dec 2009 10:44 pm
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matthew taylor on
Wed, 9th Dec 2009 5:41 pm
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oldandrew on
Thu, 10th Dec 2009 9:33 pm
I vaguely remember newsnight mentioning something about this as I was passing out last night…
Ok, this whole concept of “Resilience” may have become the hottest new topic in pop-psychology lately, but actually an amazing body of work around the subject has existed for the past decade or more. (And not just for self-help junkies either, although they tend to gravitate towards people like Bandler and Grinder)
One of the newest additions to the debate is ‘Resilience, Bounce Back From Whatever Life Throws at You’ by Jane Clarke and John Nicholson, in which the new measure of a man stems from the “Resilience Quotient”. The idea is that psychometric testing can actually measure your resilience level just as IQ (supposedly) measures intelligence.
Essentially five character traits set the new ubermensch apart; optimism, freedom from anxiety, taking personal responsibility, openness and adaptability, and a positive approach to problem solving.
The idea is that the most successful and highest achieving people often come from humble backgrounds or unstable childhoods. Overcoming challenges at such an early age gives them the impetus to fight their way to the top. This is why self-made people like the Dragons Den lot (not you MT, the real ones) are so energised and rarely experience personal envy. They practice what Clarke refers to as “ritualised ingenuity” and have an “internal” locus of control, in that they are responsible for changes in their lives, not the government or outside influences. Those with an “external” locus (people-pleasers) will become reactive and miserable.
But…. the unfortunate truth is that there’s an 80/20 thing going on here, and then we get into politics and a concept of individualism… and some people don’t want to hear it.
Reading that back I just realised how bad it sounds…
Apologies, I only meant the actual Dragons Den show rather than the Newsnight mock up version.
“Individual resilience as a psychological trait could come to be seen as ranking alongside literacy and numeracy as a core competence in the modern world.” now that would be interesting, although I don’t see much prospect of it becoming so in the near future in terms of education for young people.
The current approach seems dominated by seeking to tackle peoples problems by focussing on their problems. In schools PSHE is mostly focussed on the awareness of issues, outside of schools youth work which supposedly targets the most disadvantaged focusses on similar issues – drugs, sex, bullying etc. etc. (do a twitter search for PSHE to get an idea of how kids feel about it – it’s not great)
At the other extreme and to counter this there’s also ‘positive activities’ which actually are just things to do – which is a need and a correct thing to provide – but…. there’s very little of quality inbetween – activities and programmes based on things that young people enjoy doing but designed to support them to develop skills, ambitions and aspirations in many of the things Livy mentions.
Some research done on a programme I set up a few years ago found that one of the main things young people gained from involvement in it was self efficacy. That’s not a term I was familiar with before then so I can’t claim it was an aim of the programme, although it was based on an idea of ‘competencies’ – supporting young people to acquire various ‘competencies’ that would support them to make a successful transition to becoming a successful adult. (research for that is here: http://ow.ly/K2FM )
Unfortunately I’ve not been able to build on that programme as yet but am hoping to next year now that I’m less tied down with childcare issues. Regardless of who does it though I definitely think much more consideration should be given to being a lot cleverer about what is actually on offer for young people.
Thanks you two. Great comments. In my Stockholm speech tomorrow I want to suggest three dimensions of shift in the way we think about the ambitions of the state: from welfare to capability, from remedy to resilience from growth and redistribution to sustainability and well-being. As usual with my speeches I won’t know whether it holds any water until I hear myself say it.
PS Livy I’m not that touchy!
“Earlier in his Times piece Mulgan says that one of the most important findings from recent research is that people can learn resilience. This has implications for schools…”
Oh please no, not something else to dump on schools.
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