What's Wrong with Us: The Anthropathology Thesis

What’s Wrong with Us? The Anthropathology Thesis Colin Feltham What’s Wrong with Us? What’s Wrong with Us? The Ant...

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What’s Wrong with Us? The Anthropathology Thesis

Colin Feltham

What’s Wrong with Us?

What’s Wrong with Us? The Anthropathology Thesis

Colin Feltham

Copyright © 2007

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England Telephone (+44) 1243 779777

Email (for orders and customer service enquiries): [email protected] Visit our Home Page on www.wiley.com All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England, or emailed to [email protected], or faxed to (+44) 1243 770620. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The Publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Other Wiley Editorial Offices John Wiley & Sons Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741, USA Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH, Boschstr. 12, D-69469 Weinheim, Germany John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, 42 McDougall Street, Milton, Queensland 4064, Australia John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd, 2 Clementi Loop #02-01, Jin Xing Distripark, Singapore 129809 John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd, 6045 Freemont Blvd, Mississauga, Ontario, L5R 4J3, Canada Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Anniversary Logo Design: Richard J. Pacifico Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Feltham, Colin, 1950– What’s wrong with us? : the anthropathology thesis / Colin Feltham. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-470-01954-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Philosophical anthropology. 2. Civilization–Philosophy. I. Title. BD450.F426 2007 303.45–dc22 2007013728 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-470-01954-2 Typeset in 10/12 pt Century Schoolbook by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper responsibly manufactured from sustainable forestry in which at least two trees are planted for each one used for paper production.

Contents About the Author

vii

Preface

ix

Acknowledgements

xv

Chapter 1

What is Anthropathology?

Chapter 2

Origins and Development of Anthropathology

43

Chapter 3

Support and Evidence for the Anthropathology Thesis

71

Chapter 4

Anthropathology Today

95

Chapter 5

Mainstream Arenas of Anthropathology Transmission

117

Chapter 6

What’s Wrong with Religion?

142

Chapter 7

What’s Wrong with the Psychological Therapies?

165

Chapter 8

What’s Wrong with ‘What’s Wrong?’? Denying and Refuting Anthropathology

192

Proposed Solutions to Anthropathology

209

Chapter 9

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Chapter 10 Taking the Anthropathology Thesis Forward

231

Glossary

254

References

263

Index

277

About the Author Colin Feltham, MTheol, MSc, PGDipCouns, PGCE, PhD, FBACP, FRSA is Professor of Critical Counselling Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. He is course leader for the MA Professional Development in Counselling and Psychotherapy. He is a past editor of the British Journal of Guidance & Counselling. He has written or edited over 20 books and many chapters and papers. His publications include Psychotherapy and its Discontents (edited with Windy Dryden, Open University Press, 1992), Controversies in Psychotherapy and Counselling (Sage, 1999) and the Sage Handbook of Counselling and Psychotherapy (edited with Ian Horton, Sage, 2006). He is a member of Crisis: Forum for the Study of Crisis in the 21st Century.

Preface FROM COUNSELLING TO ANTHROPATHOLOGY The ‘wrong’ in the title points to much more than isolated or minor moral failures or individual neuroses. This is a transdisciplinary study of the pervasive and incorrigibly dysfunctional aspects of human beings and human societies. I am best known as a writer in the field of counselling and so some explanation for the way in which this book has come about and what it has to say to counsellors and others is called for. My imaginary reader is anyone who feels that our current way of life is dreadfully misguided and probably not substantially improved by minor interventions and adjustments. Those who know me as a promoter of or ‘authority’ on counselling may want to know why I am making a radical departure in this book from the normal parameters of counselling theory, indeed into a great deal of material that at first sight may appear completely irrelevant to the immediate needs of those individuals seeking help or those offering it. Those who are affiliated with other disciplines, or none, may be helped to understand its genealogy in this preface. There are several lines of development. First, I do not have a background in psychology, as many counsellors do and much counselling theory does, but in theology. Although I am an atheist, I have almost inevitably been influenced by the powerful ideas and metaphors from the Christian religion that have been a big part of British society – and elsewhere in ‘mystical’ thought, especially the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti – and I value some of the structure of theology. Indeed, I believe it might be helpful to us if we had a discipline resembling a secular equivalent of theology, and unfortunately anthropology, and indeed none of the social sciences or humanities, currently offer this. Theoretical physics is an ambitious and privileged academic discipline, yet we ignore the possibility of a discipline asking similarly large questions about the human condition: a kind of theology-without-God or holistic anthropology, or study of man-in-the-cosmos.1

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Second, while I am steeped in counselling practice and theory, I have always been mindful of the shortcomings of counselling, as many of my previous publications demonstrate. The practice of counselling focuses predominantly on the individual and its theoretical base seems to be built in mid-air, with little or no epidemiological, historical, philosophical or other groundwork. In spite of its main professional body’s requirement for courses seeking accreditation to identify their view on human nature and human dysfunction, these aspects of theory are very poorly explicated. Many counselling courses have added a rather tokenistic module on ‘social contexts’ but most contain no reference to the vast literature on human suffering in theology, philosophy, history and evolutionary science that underpins the human experience. Why stop in counselling training at current social contexts instead of embracing historical and even cosmic contexts? We also do not ask in counselling why human distress is so endemic and stubborn, thus tending to place any ‘blame’ for practice failures on clients’ resistance and counsellors’ limitations. We do not ask, in addition to what’s wrong internally, what we’re up against externally. We ignore the rather obvious misfortune that clients must remain part of a society that exerts many oppressive, elusive and sickening forces against them. Finally, we conveniently ignore the fact that counselling can thrive as a profession only by allowing itself to become immersed in the bureaucratic and public relations structures of the professions that capitalism demands. In doing so, counselling loses its autonomy and radicalism in much the same way as original, vibrant Christianity lost itself within state-affiliated churches. For counselling to retain and deepen its understanding of the roots and perpetuating mechanisms of suffering, counsellors would need to delve much further into the kinds of anthropathological ‘shadows’ I outline in this book. Third, and linked to the previous point, is the challenge posed by the grossest kinds of optimism. Counselling is not wholly optimistic but contains a fair share of almost obligatory and uncritical optimism. These Pollyannaish or Panglossian elements are also found among many religious adherents, apologists for science and positive psychologists. While some claim that the devil has the best tunes and writers like Tallis (1997) feel that pessimists hog our attention, my own experience has been the reverse of this – that negativity is unwelcome and often suppressed: it doesn’t make for good public relations and it doesn’t sell books! The road less travelled is not that of fuzzy spirituality in the service of warm communal aspirations but of thoroughgoing commitment to error-exposure and truth-seeking, embracing the possibility that no ultimate solutions exist.

Preface

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Fourth, I have to declare that one of my own undeniable personal characteristics is a certain chronic, mild to moderate depressive tendency which probably colours my view of the world (Feltham, 2004a, 2004b). It has been argued that depressives tend to make more realistic estimates of life circumstances than others.2 Although this is a flattering idea for depressives, I am not sure this is necessarily the case. However, the converse argument – that a thesis constructed by a depressive is tainted by overly negative projective assumptions – is also not necessarily the case. The principle that we are unlikely to understand the world, analyse its components or construct ideologies, outside our own range of convenience, or what I refer to as egomorphism, is one I explore in this book. Whether we insist on seeing the glass as half full or half empty, believe we are always looking ‘through a glass, darkly’ (Bible, 1 Cor. xiii, 11) or indeed whether we can free ourselves of such mesmerizing clichés, is an unavoidable part of a rigorous consideration of what is wrong with us. In exploring aetiologies for the state of the world as well as balanced accounts of present social health and damage, and forecasts for its future, we inevitably swing between personal, emotional and political biases and something, hopefully, approaching the most probabilistic and objective evaluation. Fifth, and also a ‘personal’ matter, is the problem of vanity. It is now well established that texts are not written from the ‘view from nowhere’ (that is, spurious objectivity) but by self-interested human beings in their own peculiar circumstances. I suspect that very few books are written in a spirit of pure desire to find truth, inform and stimulate readers, with no desire for positive feedback, personal and professional satisfaction, and even fame, glory and wealth. This vanity, perhaps embedded in patriarchal competitiveness, is part of the human condition that must itself come within our scrutiny of anthropathology: there is always a me seeking recognition, and this egotism is problematic. The other side of this coin is a reading public who may uncritically praise the writer (any writer) or – expressing aspects of their own vanity, envy and anger – rubbish everything the writer has to say. We are quite poor as dispassionate evaluators of arguments. But we have also become disingenuous in disguising personal beliefs when writing; better that the reader should know that here I allow out much that is opinion and polemic as well as some writing that is traditionally reasoned and evidenced. My sixth and final point, seemingly contradictory, is a ‘selfless’ belief in the urgent need for transdisciplinary, or perhaps postdisciplinary, development and a wish to assist this in coming about. In this book I have drawn on numerous sources, partly in an attempt to

xii


show what links can and perhaps should be made. Academia is still wedded to arcane divisions between disciplines, to scholarly analysis of micro-factors rather than major social factors, traditionally to esoteric obfuscation, and increasingly to unreflective provision of merely mechanical training for short-term employability. E.O. Wilson, promoting the concept of consilience, puts the concern this way: Most of the issues that vex humanity daily – ethnic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation, abortion, environment, endemic poverty, to cite several most persistently before us – cannot be solved without integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that of the social sciences and humanities. Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is, not as seen through the lens of ideologies and religious dogmas or commanded by myopic response to immediate need. (E.O. Wilson, 1998, p. 12)

Unfortunately, I have come to believe that counselling – while usually stemming from genuine human goodness and giving worthwhile if transient succour – is a myopic and inadequately informed response to need. Rowe (1987) criticized her fellow psychologists on the same grounds – for ignoring the glaring problematic of everyday environmental threats. It is my hope that the recognition of something pervasively wrong with human beings on individual and societal levels might take on a new, thoughtful form in which counselling and other compassionate, pragmatic responses to suffering will still have a place, if a necessarily modest one. Likewise, the academic and applied discipline of psychology cannot be presumed to be above essential error, particularly if we take on board views like those of Rhinehart (The Search for the Dice Man) that ‘the sickness permeates . . . the very way we think about ourselves’. We may think of the current study as a quest for a grand universal theory of the aetiology of human distress; and following this a better chance of identifying non-self-deceiving remedies. This kind of unified theorizing is surely hinted at but unfulfilled by the painfully, absurdly slow movement towards integrative psychotherapy and counselling. Anthropathology is necessarily broad in its scope in the way that Freud (1930/2002) achieved breadth in his essay Civilization and its Discontents. It asks us to consider that our habit of labelling and burdening individuals as sick, mentally ill, criminal or ‘stressed’ might be balanced, at least, by seriously considering our civilization and its major institutions as sick and sickening. Recently evolutionary psychiatry has made profound moves in the direction of a serious ‘clinical anthropathology’ (Steven and Price, 2000) and I hope that this book

Preface

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will make some further contribution. Although I take a via negativa through many dark intellectual terrains, it seems likely to me that only by stripping away our illusions and complacencies are we likely to come anywhere near genuine contact with the truth of our human condition. This is surely what Karl Menninger, in Man Against Himself, meant when he said, ‘If such is our nature, it were better that we knew it and knew it in all its protean manifestations’ (1938, p. vii). Notes 1. On ‘man-in-the-cosmos’: the question about acceptable, non-sexist terminology is inevitably present here as it has been in most literature for about the last 30 years. I acknowledge the bias and limitations of the term ‘man’ but also find it conveniently concise. Rather than conceding to cumbersome compromises, I vary terms throughout this book: man, mankind, humankind, humanity, human beings. There are, of course, anthropathological problems of patriarchal momentum and emotional attachment to symbolic language traditions involved here. We can certainly dispense with terms like ‘anthropathology’ too. There is the question of language itself as frequently misleading, even a cul-de-sac; but instead of seeing this, we typically immerse ourselves in further fruitless linguistic refinements and analyses. 2. The problem that is variously known as projection, self-fulfilling prophecy, seeing only what you are equipped to see, phenomenology, or egomorphism (and one that may permeate this book) is well illustrated by the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick: In essence, Fat monitored his own mind and found it defective. He then, by the use of that mind, monitored outer reality, that which is called the macrocosm. He found it defective as well. As the Hermetic philosophers stipulated, the macrocosm and the microcosm mirror each other faithfully. Fat, using a defective instrument, swept out a defective subject, and from this sweep got back the report that everything was wrong. (Dick, 1992, p. 44)

Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Colin Whurr of the former Whurr Publishers for accepting my original proposal for this book and to all Wiley representatives for their patience with delays and their support. The following have contributed either knowingly or unwittingly and in degrees of substance to the shaping, content and modification of views in this book: Sue Campbell, Frank Engel, Gail Evans, Jo Fayram, Alex Howard, Sue Marshall, Chris Middleton, Sheila Middleton, Jane Orchard and Brian Thorne. I hope the references adequately honour those writers who have helped to stimulate my own thoughts. As the trite but unavoidable author refrain goes – only I am responsible for the views put forward in this book and for any inadvertent errors. It is a particular challenge to write well, well beyond one’s own discipline, with insufficient time and resources, with the various handicaps of a butterfly mind, on emotive matters, on topics of the largest scale. And in a way this book is only a first step, of far less importance than any ensuing dialogue with like minds. I am grateful to Weidenfeld & Nicolson for permission to reproduce a short extract from Michele Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island. Colin Feltham Sheffield, April 2007

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What is Anthropathology? The term ‘anthropathology’ came to me as I was searching for a word that might encapsulate the breadth of ‘humanity’ and the weight of ‘sickness’; and something that would encapsulate the concept of universal rather than abnormal psychopathology. Later, I did an Internet search and found the term already in use, but not quite in my sense. It was used (i) in a racist context from the 1940s, suggesting that African Americans had some intrinsically degenerative tendency; (ii) in material on Kierkegaard and his views of the sickness of humankind; and (iii) by Hazlett (1999) of impending anthropogenic environmental disaster. Needless to say, my association is quite close to Kierkegaard’s and Hazlett’s and has no link at all with the former usage. ‘There is something pervasively wrong with us’ is the starting point, but of course this is not a new, exact, or uncontestable statement. I hope that by using the neologism ‘anthropathology’ and my elaboration of it, a useful discussion can be generated. Let me underline here, however, that new or newly hijacked concepts have an unfortunate tendency to take on a life of their own, to be used and reified uncritically. While believing that there is something deeply wrong with all human beings and societies, I shall endeavour to retain some critical guard against reification of the concept, and invite readers to do the same. There may well, for example, be no single ‘disease entity’ to be identified as anthropathology; rather, perhaps there are many tendencies combining to create an overwhelming case for the anthropathology thesis. I can only fantasize about the pictures others create in their minds when they hear the word anthropathology, something wrong with or sick about humanity.1 For me, it conjures up a range of pictures or associations from original sin to existentialist alienation, genocidal tendencies, oppressive and absurd social systems, widespread neurotic behaviour, unhappiness and failure to achieve organismic wholeness or enlightenment. Some think even more negatively of humankind as

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a scourge, better wiped out to leave the earth to the animals. I am not quite this misanthropic. Others may concede that some sections and eras of humanity are sick but generally we’re healthy, rational, noble and progressive. My own vision is not totally bleak but it is fairly negative in its initial impact. Unlike Gray (2002, 2004) who sees us as an incorrigible species locked into cycles of destructive history, or Cioran (1998a) who speaks of our ‘essential rottenness’, I am unsure whether we are innately and irretrievably sick or if our anthropathological state is simply related to a certain period (a very long period) in our development (DeMeo, 2006; Taylor, 2005). I vacillate between seeing the hope of necessary change realized and the conviction that no fundamental change in us is possible. However, it is fair to say that I am not an optimist and I do not hold a cheerful progressivist view of us as individuals, societies or as a species. This is not to say that an evaluative anthropathology cannot be aimed at.

ANTHROPATHOLOGY IN A NUTSHELL Although the full anthropathology thesis waits to be unrolled throughout this book, I shall try here to supply a preview. The human species (and we no longer even know quite what to call ourselves, perhaps – a race, species, human animal, humankind, man, humanity, human beings) now numbers towards 6.5 billion individuals (up from 2 billion in 1940, predicted to rise to 8 billion by 2050). Estimates vary as to how long we’ve existed in this current form – ‘Homo sapiens sapiens’ – but probably about 100 000 to 150 000 years, with our distinctiveness from other pre-human apes going back some 2 million years or more. We still don’t have complete consensus about whether we evolved or were created,2 or about the degree to which we are genetically determined or free, or something in between, or whether an essentialist concept of ‘human nature’ is valid (Ashworth, 2000). We can’t ignore the fact that we seem very different from other animals in our progress, that is in our civilizations, language,3 technology and uncontested mastery of the earth. But we are also selfconscious in a way animals aren’t, we are far more (extensively and gratuitously) violent than animals and capable of creating dire peril in the earth’s environment. Even when we realize that our course, in terms of personal ambitions, social policy or international relations, is ‘off course’, we tend to persist, unable to learn quickly from experience. At best, it is a mixed picture that we paint of ourselves, as magnificentcum-miserable beings.4 Some will want to emphasize our magnificence. Some accuse me of creating a pessimist’s cherry-picking charter in


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selecting some of the worst of our behaviour. I ask you here simply to examine the more miserable, pessimistic view of us and our predicament. Whatever our human character, we do also face a predicament – the ‘problem’ of existence itself, not only philosophically but practically – to which we have to respond explicitly or implicitly (Schopenhauer, 1851/1970). Below, I list what I regard as the main threads of anthropathology in order to initiate the thesis.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH US? One has only to stand back briefly to acknowledge various ‘things wrong with us’. I talk freely about ‘we’ and ‘us’ in defiance of the counselling convention that ‘one’ speaks only for oneself, and as a challenge to the postmodern opposition to grand narratives. I do not apologize here for making broad generalizations but I realize there may be many exceptions; however, when attempting to render a thesis about human nature, assailable generalizations must be risked. Most of the following sketched items of anthropathology are, I suggest, universal but a few are not. Most are long-standing but some are of more recent origin. Some manifest more at the level of the individual, others at the societal. Some (for example, serious crime, terrible illness, terrorism and other evils) may seem to relate more to exceptional extremes of behaviour than to average lives (Jenks, 2003). Some are perhaps specific to, or more apparent in, the West. Some will be largely accepted and some disputed; what appears axiomatic to me will seem highly selective and unfairly opinionated to others. Indeed, our common habits of disguising opinions as facts or pretending to liberal, opinion-free neutrality are themselves rather silly characteristics. The following items are in no particular order and some overlap with others, indeed some are probably aspects of each other. I let them spill out randomly here to be focused on more specifically elsewhere. They are observations, perhaps naive observations that could be made by almost anyone, but I include within most sections some pertinent references on each topic.

VIOLENCE AND HATRED A certain amount of aggression is necessary to survival in the animal world. If we consider violence as gratuitous or disproportionate aggression, we will find instances of it among some groups of animals, but ‘normal’ aggression and attempts to displace it are found in most

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animals (Lorenz, 1963). Male chimpanzees have famously been known to violently attack and kill colobus monkeys, as well as other chimpanzees, in a frenzy of gratuitous proportions (Wrangham and Peterson, 1996). But human beings stand out for their long record of intertribal conflict, war and genocide, with estimates for deaths caused by twentieth-century wars tending towards 190 million (Beebe, 2003; Ferguson, 2006; Glover, 2001; Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, 2004; Schmidt and Schroder, 2001).5 Some archaeological evidence points to extreme violence and cannibalism among the common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals from as long ago as 800 000 years (Pinker, 2003, p. 307). A majority of commentators treat violence as synonymous with destructiveness and this with the intractable nature of the human condition (Fromm, 1973; Staub, 2003). Gross violence is a feature of the human race and continues to be so in the twenty-first century. We are, according to Gray (2004), the species ‘Homo rapiens’. This may trigger the potential objection that only some of us are violent and warring, for instance particular nations or men. But look even cursorily at Hitler, often held up as one of the most evil and callously destructive men ever. A growing literature argues that not only Hitler’s militia and close followers were complicit but masses of bureaucrats, academics, women and Pope Pius XII too. One of the opening lines in the boxing film Million Dollar Baby is, simply, ‘people love violence’ and of course many do enjoy competitive controlled violence in the form of ritual sports and games, and media representations. That in fact we love the excitement of war and cannot extricate ourselves from the age-old complex of religion and war, is the thesis put forward by Hillman (2004) and Nelson-Pallmeyer (2003) among others. We know that violence occurs often enough at the community and domestic levels, and that it occurs between significant numbers of men and women and parents and children. Men are visibly more physically violent, but some have argued that the extent of women’s violence is massively underestimated (Pearson, 1998). The smacking of one’s own children remained legal long after such assaults were made illegal against adults. Greater acknowledgement of bullying at school and in the workplace has been made in recent years. Violence is also a feature of increasing urbanization. Suicide – self-murder as it was known in English more bluntly until quite recent times (Minois, 1999) and still is in some languages – may also be regarded as a form of violent selfhatred or hatred of life that is unique to human beings. To self-harm of the grossest kinds can be added common, tacitly condoned chronic selfharm by sugar, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, illness-inducing dietary habits and other biologically self-sabotaging behaviours. These are sometimes imperceptible violations of our bodies to which we have become


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desensitized. Kitzinger (2006) claims that modern, technological birth procedures can be violent, often causing women to feel violated, even ‘raped’, and prey to post-traumatic stress disorder. Similarly, Odent (2004) and others warn of the lifelong negative effects of violent births for babies. These may be examples of unintentional violence. Small acts of common selfishness and threat that violate our everyday social expectations, such as queue-jumping and road rage, might also qualify as a level of violence to which we are quite desensitized, until they erupt into gross violence. And, as Pinker (2003) points out, many of our civilized professionals, such as academics or politicians, have few compunctions about ‘shooting down, defeating or destroying’ others in arguments. Now, we probably need to add to physical, visible violence, mental violence, otherwise known as hate, of which there is plenty, perhaps in small proportions in even the nicest of us, or even in large proportions if we’re sufficiently provoked (Chesler, 2003). And outward physical violence, on whatever scale, probably begins as inward hate (Dozier, 2002).6 Hatred, especially when combined with fanatical religious and/ or nationalistic beliefs, can result in the most terrible violence, such as suicide bombings and the suicidal and homicidal phenomena of 11 September 2001 (‘9/11’), in which hate overrides even the hysteria to survive (Jurgensmeyer, 2001). But individual acts of gross, even gratuitously sadistic, violence, as seen in torture and psychopathic crime, also mark out humans (Scott, 1940/1994). While some may regard violence as an unfortunate or unavoidable but manageable part of our make-up, many of us see it as intrinsically ugly and damaging in many ways and across time. Let us also not forget the cold or implicit violence – sometimes called the ‘hidden fist’ – of government authorities (mainly police and military) which helps to keep us obediently in our place as stooges of capitalism when we are tempted to public protest, industrial action and revolt (Jensen, 2006).7 Violent eviction may await us if we fail to pay our rent or mortgage. Wars don’t end neatly with surrender, treaties and war crimes tribunals but continue as psychological scars for decades (Hoffman, 2005). And one day we may unleash a global war to end all wars, and all of us. Another major war may be brewing now, as some believe, with all the unpredictability but inevitability of a massive earthquake.

CAPITALISM’S NEGATIVE CHARACTERISTICS Capitalism as such is a relatively recent phenomenon dating from about the industrial revolution (the word came into use in the 1860s)

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but its roots in the survival of the fittest and quickest are long. ‘Ruthlessly (and sometimes desperately) capitalizing on our advantages’ might describe what I mean. Etymologically, capital is related to cattle, and cattle trading was one of the earliest forms of capitalism. We exist in a ‘biological marketplace’ (La Cerra and Bingham, 2002) where we must all assert our advantages and often disguise our disadvantages. The history of the emergence of predation, parasitism, the alpha male, division of labour, feudalism, slavery, the industrial revolution, asymmetrical trade and other hierarchies of privilege, wealth and poverty, is a long one. Ferguson (2006) argues that ‘economic volatility’ is a primary cause of modern wars. But we can see for ourselves today the negative drivers and symptoms of so-called free market capitalism: greed, exploitation, oppression, alienation, wage slavery, huge differences between rich and poor, global commercial expansionism, inseparability of politics from commerce, disregard for the primacy of health and safety needs, and workplace stress. The term ‘global workhouse’ has been used and cautions are issued about our forthcoming 24-hour economy which rests on dangerous bioderegulation for humans (Brennan, 2003) and depletion of earthly resources.8 James (2007) discusses the social disease of ‘affluenza’ linked with the ‘selfish capitalism’ of our times. Much business is built on greed, on exploitation of employees and deception of consumers; and is then promoted as the virtuous engine of prosperity. Capitalism has been referred to as ‘greed institutionalized’ (Portmann, 2001). An observer as informed and astute as Galbraith (2005) shows capitalism as shot through with fraudulent features, including its disingenuous rebranding as the ‘market system’. Bakan (2004) argues that the modern commercial corporation is intrinsically pathological and its leaders psychopaths. In many ways, however, we cannot see all this clearly for ourselves since it is the very milieu in which we live our daily lives (Smail, 1993). Here, there is something wrong with us that we are told is good for us, indeed is ‘the only way’ since Communism has been discredited. Alternatives like communitarianism, the ‘third way’, and participatory economics are touted but remain weak or unconvincing. We are so conditioned in the symbolism of the monetary (as we are with regard to time) that we may struggle to imagine a lifestyle without it, even while accepting that in itself money is nothing. Desai (2006) summarizes some interesting views on money and usury as the ‘root of all evil’.9 Many of us cannot seriously envisage any viable alternative economic system and appear relatively ‘happy’ with, or at least resigned to, our socioeconomic lot. Ormerod (2005), who is prepared to acknowledge the ubiquity of failure, including failed businesses, cannot seri-


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ously envisage the ultimate failure of capitalism itself. Lifelong work and consumption are two of our most taken-for-granted activities, yet we know just how dehumanizing and despair-generating work can be (Gini, 2001; LaBier, 1983; Robinson and Willcock, 2004; Terkel, 1972). We may be partly grateful for work, not only for the money it provides but for the structure it brings to our lives; but this latter point is also problematic. So many of us work in roles that support commerce, at various menial and bureaucratic levels. We may like to regard ourselves as professionals (better than the unskilled and valued for our specialist knowledge) but avoid analysing our contributions to society too closely for fear of seeing the exploitation and ultimate pointlessness of much of what we do on a daily basis. Also, we do not want to look too closely at the increasingly dumbed-down, imagination-throttling culture that accompanies late capitalism (White, 2003).

PSYCHOLOGICAL/NEUROTIC PROBLEMS A significant proportion of any population suffers from diagnosable mental health problems (or ‘psychiatric disorders’) or seems to experience life markedly differently from the majority. The claim to be able to differentiate psychopathological and merely neurotic states is contested, famously for example by Foucault (2001), who rightly challenged those who justify themselves and their ‘other form of madness’ (p. xii) by labelling, treating and incarcerating others. One estimate of the prevalence of personality disorders in the general population is 15% and Board and Fritzon (2005) suggest a relatively high incidence of psychopathic personality disorder among senior managers, and speculate that millions of those of us assumed to be normal could be regarded as mentally ill. We could say that anything less extreme than incapacitating psychopathology or extreme psychological difference is not a problem but ‘just life’, with its trials and hassles, that part of being human is to live with its ups and downs (including the emotional effects of divorce, bereavement, unemployment, accidents, etc.), to face adversity with resilient maturity or stoicism. Some psychotherapies indeed aim to promote such stoicism. But we all probably know people, not mentally ill, whose lives are blighted by shades of depression, anxiety, crankiness, inability to cope with difficulties; and many of us, perhaps all of us, are such people (Charlton, 2000; Feltham, 2004a; Ratey and Johnson, 1997). Possibly even worse are those who protest they have no such problems yet who visibly inflict them on others. I do not know anyone who is free from some variant, in some degree, of psychological or neurotic problem.

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The probability is that all such problems result from a combination of inherited predispositions and vulnerabilities, from each of us being a unique entity that doesn’t fit unyielding social templates, from childhood damage, ‘losses and crosses’, bad luck, and unsuccessful attempts to cope with the bombardment of demands of modern life (Kegan, 1994). It’s also probable that our species’ success at surviving means that we pass on our susceptibilities to mental health problems, and that our long dependent childhood, increasing longevity, nuclear families and constant exposure to the pressures of social regulation predispose us to neurotic suffering. Human beings have an extraordinary emotional vulnerability. This is evident from babyhood separation and discomfort, through the tribulations of infancy and onwards; loss, shame and other interpersonal and social hurts easily bring us low. Consider the common phenomena of sexual desire, unrequited love, possessiveness and general heartache over love gone awry; we do not categorize these as psychiatric conditions (unless very severe) but they can nonetheless involve acute psychological suffering. Unlike most animals (as far as can be inferred), we tend to accumulate psychological suffering and often react ‘neurotically’ to current circumstances from such stored suffering.10 And let’s not forget that the sheer weight of anthropathology – the realization of what a terrible world it is – can also get some of us down, resulting in a certain volume of depression, anxiety and suicide (Bourdieu, 1999; Dunant and Porter, 1996; Minois, 1999).

IRRATIONALITY Here, we are treading on much more contentious ground. Most of us may agree that the schizophrenically deluded person is irrational in the midst of his or her delusions. But the term ‘irrational’ is also thrown around as an insult; hence, some men will insist that women are often ‘irrational’. Scientists, mathematicians and analytical philosophers may find most of the rest of us quite irrational, illogical or woolly in our analyses of intellectual phenomena (Sagan, 1996; Sutherland, 1992). Being in love, it’s sometimes said, is like being in a state of heightened irrationality. Passionate, uncritical belief in anything may perhaps be deemed irrational. The topsy-turvy nature of so many of our social and political institutions is sometimes so irrational that we seem to be desensitized to it. Elliott and Rotherham (2006), for example, calculate that about £82 billion out of the United Kingdom’s 2005–2006 total spending of £519 billion was demonstrably wasted on incompetence, greed, poor planning and so on. But the figure for waste ignores the £28 billion spent on defence, which some calcu-


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late would offset the costs of environmental repair; and if we went further, we might argue that much of the £68 billion spent on mass education is wasted on useless subjects. I believe that much of our society is structured irrationally, and this includes, in my view, religion, politics, education and work. Debunkers of superstitions and widespread irrational behaviour include Carroll (2003), McKay (1841/1995), Van Boxsel (2004) and Wheen (2004). For now, I take religion as my exemplar for irrationality. Most religion rests on claims of divine realities, divine interventions, necessary rituals, special places of worship, anointed leaders and a mission to convert others. I believe (unlike Dawkins and others who are wholly dismissive of religion) that a genuine mystical inspiration probably lies at the heart of all religions, and that the essential moral systems of many religions have been useful temporarily at some point in history. But I also believe that all persistent notions of God, miracles (from immaculate conception on), resurrection, heaven and hell, priests, special rituals, diets, clothing and lifestyles, are ultimately irrational. It is not God who insists that we maintain long hair, turbaned or scarf-covered hair, a shaved head and all the other permutations of sartorial holiness, but one or a group of opinionated males who disseminate such strictures through their various cultures, which are then reinforced by centuries of habitual superstition. Creationists insist God created the universe just 6000 years ago, in spite of all scientific evidence that it began billions of years ago. And these are not harmless beliefs, since religion fosters fantasy, guilt and other mind games11 and religious divisions fuel enormous swathes of conflict and war, not to mention unwillingness to face life for what it actually is (Harris, 2004). Nietzsche’s well-known dictum that ‘convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies’ is most salient here.12 Our personal views cannot be disguised or hidden if we are seeking to analyse the depths of our anthropathology. I may be wrong, even irrational, in my atheism, but you know where I stand: all hardened religion is a sick and dangerous anachronism that sustains illusion and impedes understanding. But I am not claiming that ‘rationality’ or science necessarily have all the answers either.

TRADITION AND HABIT In so many domains it is evident that we create systems and institutions that persist beyond the point that they are helpful. Where there is a need or void, we automatically seek a solution or structure (indeed, we are structure junkies) and, when we think we have it, we tend to

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elaborate and defend it. Anachronisms abound in society and in our own lives. Whether we are talking about the church, monarchy, marriage, universities, Christmas, wearing a suit and tie, or whatever, once we have a long-standing tradition or habit that was originally novel and sustaining, we find it very hard to let go of it. Hypothetically, some of these may be eternally necessary, in their original form or refreshed in some way, but I doubt it. Over any long enough time span, every social arrangement outlives its usefulness. We do as individuals and one day we probably will do as a species. But we hang on to things, we’re attached, and irrationally so. Why see drug addiction as so bad and odd when addiction to everything else is the norm for us? Why are we mystified about not being able to change our problematically protracted personal behaviours (unhealthy sedentariness, overeating, overspending, workaholism, procrastination, etc.) when we are all enmeshed in anachronistic social and cultural traditions? Christmas is a good, if rather trivial example, since increasingly people regard it as a stressful, often depressing annual obligation to overspend, overeat and spend ritual time with undesirable companions, rather than a genuine pleasure or meaningful occasion, and yet they continue unhappily with it. In any problematic behaviour, from over-eating to unwise forms of energy use, we see how hard it is for us to change, regardless of the damage we inflict on ourselves or our environment. To summarize: even when we realize, dimly or powerfully, that something isn’t working, we carry on with it, as if in a trance, not knowing how to change it, not believing it could be at the end of its useful life, fearing the void that might be left if we abandoned it.

MEN AS AGGRESSIVE AND PROBLEMATIC ‘Aggressive’ is only one aspect of what’s wrong with men. I am certainly not trying to be disingenuously politically correct when I draw attention to the unavoidably obvious: men have dominated so many areas of life to our human and planetary detriment. It is men who initiate and sustain wars and other forms of violence; men who are involved in most crime; men who dominate hierarchical politics and religion; men who drive damaging commercial ventures leading to exploitation and pollution; men who intellectualize, who are cut off from feelings, are poor communicators, misogynistic.13 It is largely women, not men, who must be exceptionally vigilant if walking alone after dark. Indeed, we easily forget that men’s physically greater size and propensity to anger and violence underpin millennia of male domination and female fear, the very engines of patriarchal civilization. Patriarchy – or a


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particular version of masculinity (Dudink, Hagemann and Tosh, 2004) – has so much to answer for that it would not be surprising if some women argued that anthropathology be equated with it (Cook, 2004; French, 2002a, 2002b, 2003; Lerner, 1986; Segal, 1990). And some men (e.g. Sykes, 2003) look forward to a male-free time when ‘the world no longer reverberates to the sound of men’s clashing antlers’ (p. 369). Of course, we can argue that these phenomena are merely the flip side of men’s creativity and that we should not overlook their enormous contributions to a safer, healthier and more comfortable life. In some ways it is very hard to disentangle the destructive from the positive elements of men’s input, and we could also look at the negative side of women’s.14 Perhaps we should also hold in mind what has been called gender rancour in its particularly modern forms. But patriarchy is the culture in which most of us humans seem to have lived – at least, probably, for the last 12 000 years – and how our societies have been structured for millennia, and this is still how we are constituted – including psychologically internalized patriarchal assumptions – so we have to face all this. Whether it is ‘merely cultural’ or entrenched at some biological level, as Sykes and others believe, is part of the debate.

CULTURE OF LIES AS NORMAL Many of us were brought up with the refrain that ‘honesty is the best policy’ and truthfulness is still widely held as an expectation in personal and public life. But lies are so pervasive, and apparently necessary, that I think we must accept lying as normal for us; and not only as moderns but as an evolved species (Smith, 2004a). And of course stealth and deception are necessary to animals’ survival in the world of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. We humans are steeped and trained in lies from our earliest days. Very young children do not lie; they say or non-verbally express what they see and feel. But one of the earliest lessons we learn is that we must watch our tongues and not say whatever comes to mind. In particular, we must not offend but be polite. Duplicitousness is drilled into us. Although the degree of lying may vary from person to person and culture to culture (criminal culture partly thrives on deception and some cultures practise face-saving dissembling), all of us practise it (King, 2006). There is barely any way we could get through life – through school life, job interviews, working life, close relationships – without lying. We may like to distinguish between white lies (telling someone what a lovely gift they’ve bought us); nice, morale-boosting lies (Father Christmas is coming, Jesus loves you); bland, politically expedient lies (‘our staff are our most

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valuable resource’; ‘the economy is the strongest it’s been for years’); and grossly, blatantly ‘bad’ lies (adulterous alibis, fraudulent statements, political deception) but ultimately the same mechanism is involved: lying in order to minimize discomfort, to survive or obtain advantage. Lying – whether outright or through exaggeration, minimization and omission, dissembling, being ‘economical with the truth’ – is the very basis of politics, advertising, public relations, sales and diplomacy; and then we disingenuously protest that it is not (Stauber and Rampton, 2004). Journalists may distort facts to make their ‘stories’ more interesting, tobacco companies lie about the deadliness of their products, research scientists can lie about their results (Broad and Wade, 1985), universities may lie about the excellence of their courses, and so on (Robinson, 1996).15 The British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a Christian, famously lied (or ‘misrepresented the facts’ to use typically evasive parlance) about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a justification for the 2003 war with Iraq – in which, it was estimated in 2005, some 100 000 Iraqis had already died16 – and in spite of considerable public protest suffered no significant consequences (Oborne, 2005). We have many accounts by environmentalists of dangerous US and UK government lies (Davis, 2002; Kennedy, 2005; Smith, 2004b). But perhaps it is naive to expect any compatibility between truth and politics. We have created and we all acquiesce in a culture where a jigsaw of lies is necessary. No longer having to outwit other animals, but immersed in vast human communities, we employ as second nature our cunning against each other. And lying confuses us and probably makes us stressed and ill at some level (Blanton, 1994). This is to say nothing of embellishment, a species of lie, and a good deal of culture is embellishment, that is, dressing civic life in unnecessarily complex intellectual, aesthetic, romanticized, rhetorical garb in order to bedazzle ourselves and impress each other. We have become desensitized to just how much our tongues are forked and our webs are tangled.

HYSTERIA TO SURVIVE We all (or the huge majority of us) want to survive, which means that we all want to avoid dying. And this has always been the case: we are here because our ancestors survived. A key, maybe the key, characteristic of humans is our ability to survive, plus our belief in the necessity of survival. While we no longer face the daily need to defend ourselves from predators, our collective efforts have ensured that the human


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race multiplies and multiplies. A majority of adults still want children of their own, even if a current fall in some populations is being fuelled by individuals’ actuarial hedonism and, in cases like China’s, by governmental population control policy. Science and technology help us to put off death, so that life expectancy rises bit by bit, and cryonic and other biomedical technologies even suggest the possibility of some form of immortality. We have technology that can keep us alive, even during severely disabling, terminal illnesses. Many religiously motivated people want to deny the right to abortion and euthanasia even when babies are wholly unwanted or lives utterly depleted, pain-wracked and wretched. Nations may be so determined to survive that they are ultimately willing to drop nuclear bombs on other nations, and unleash widespread destruction, to ensure (so they think) their own survival. During the mid-twentieth-century cold war between the United States and the USSR this was coolly referred to as ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD). Fashions in enemies change, and some predict an American–Chinese end of the world scenario (as in the remake of the film of Nevil Shute’s novel, On the Beach). Some even defend genocide as a population control mechanism. I provocatively refer to survival as hysterical to make the point that while the will to live and aversion to death are rational or axiomatic, our insistence on sustaining and extending life at all costs is a kind of madness that creates paradoxical threats to survival and to quality of life. What exactly is the purpose of extending average life expectancy to 80, 90 or 100 or more17 (increase in quantity), if much of that life is spent imprisoned in miserable jobs and circumstances, in unhappiness and impoverished well-being (decrease in quality)? Similarly, what is the point of multiplying indefinitely if problematic overpopulation is the result (Calne, 1994; Desai, 2004)? Here, fundamentalist religious decrees against contraception, abortion and euthanasia have much to answer for.

COSMIC-EXISTENTIAL ABSURDITY Consider this picture: life happened to evolve on this planet, and Earth is one of many planets in a solar system in a cosmos that we barely understand, that is still strange to us. We do not yet know if life exists elsewhere, although we are told that statistically it ‘must’. Some of us believe that God is behind it all, that he’s in control, so we needn’t worry. And some of us ‘just get on with life’. But some of us see life as having evolved randomly and as having no particular purpose, and it worries us. We may be the only ‘intelligent’ life form in the universe

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and sooner or later we’ll have to face the fact that God’s ‘gone’ (the myth of the patriarchal overseer, once necessary, has run its course) and we’re alone to make of this vast space what we will, before the sun dies in 6 billion years or some other fate overtakes us sooner (Moran, 2003; Rees, 2003). Originally, we had to forage and hunt just to get by, but now we have enough leisure and myth-eroding knowledge to wonder just what we’re doing here, and how and why we should proceed. We’re here because we’re here, we’re as strange, perhaps, as the rest of the cosmos. We sense the randomness of our situation. We are programmed perhaps to need purpose, even if that purpose was originally only to find our next meal. Now there are no purposes other than those we invent or re-invent,18 some associated with making worthwhile concrete improvements (as in medical research) and some, like conceptual art, reality TV, or new religious movements, that we design to entertain or psychologically sustain ourselves. For many, invented purposes, myths, meanings, seem ‘real’ and sufficient, especially if they have existed for a long time. But behind even the certainty of believers there is arguably a gnawing sense that our cosmic context is vaguely threatening; there is the suspicion that we’re just going to the office or shop-floor in order to get through the day, in order to go to the office or shopfloor tomorrow, and in the grand scheme of things this routine is all pretty weird, meaningless and insufficient. Absurd, in fact. Some of us never think of such matters and deem such thoughts themselves to be weird, while others (like astronomers, cosmologists and theologians) are fascinated by cosmic questions. But all of us must get through the day, get through life, with this knowledge – that we are transient beings in a vast space, spending our bit of time on repeated menial, mundane and/or ultimately meaningless tasks and routines (Camus, 2000; Cohen and Taylor, 1992). None of this is our ‘fault’; you could call it, indeed, cosmopathology – each of us is ultimately a result of the long series of events commencing with the presumed Big Bang (and whatever may have preceded it). And even if God existed, you might well ask exactly what he had in mind when he invented us: to worship him, to keep him company? It doesn’t add up.

CHILD ABUSE AS NORMAL Child abuse or neglect is generally understood as gross physical or emotional violence towards children, or serious and wilful deprivation of some sort. There is, and always has been, plenty of this. Any history of childhood attests to the incidence of child abandonment, swaddling, slavery, violence, infanticide, sexual abuse, circumcision or female


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genital mutilation (de Mause, 1982; Miller, 1987). Any young urban child who is separated from its carers and family more than briefly seems to risk abduction and murder. Only in very recent times have we begun to face up to the scale of child sexual abuse. What many are still not willing to consider seriously is the damage we do to fetuses and babies through unhealthy lifestyles during pregnancy and traumatic birth practices (Odent, 2004). On top of this, consider that we often want to hurry the development of children, to curtail childhood itself so that we can return to work and our children can rapidly learn to compete successfully on the capitalist treadmill. Children must learn too to be ‘sociable’, to tell lies, fit in and develop into ‘normal’, standardized adult people. Much of this is accomplished via schooling, where children are compelled (they have no rights in this matter) to attend, sit still in large classes, associate with children who may bully or tease them, subject themselves to teachers’ discipline, listen to topics and complete tasks they may have no interest in. They must usually do this for 12 years or more, and much of this is in preparation for the 50 years of work that lie ahead of them. Things have slowly improved for children in many (not all) parts of the world, but are far from optimal.19 We may ‘love’ our children fiercely but at the same time, in our own sleepwalk through tradition, and cowed by the capitalist lash, fail to consider and act on their real needs. We irrationally combine a sentimental protectiveness towards children and a kind of paedophobia. The journalist Matthew Parris argued contentiously that: ‘of the myriad ways adults in modern Britain hurt children and children hurt each other, paedophilia ranks right down the scale – way behind neglect, bullying, indifference, divorce, cruelty, bad parenting and bad example’ (quoted by Humphrys, 1999, p. 70). In other words, paedophiles, while devious and brutal in their actions, also serve as scapegoats. Dawkins (2006) also suggests challengingly that the religious indoctrination of children be considered a form of child abuse and avers that in many cases it may be worse than minor instances of what we call paedophilia. We often argue, too, that all that children experience rolls off them harmlessly. As psychohistorians argue in response, what happens in birth and childhood may in fact fuel a great deal of later individual and collective violence and irrationality (de Mause, 1982, 2002).

THE RESTLESS MIND Buddhists refer to our tendency to crave what we do not have; mostly, we want more pleasure and less pain. Christianity has suggested that envy, covetousness and lust are common sins, and that to think bad

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thoughts is as sinful as doing bad deeds. Cognitive therapists base their work on the notion that we suffer from negative automatic thoughts. Others have argued that thought itself is perhaps the key culprit in anthropathology, since we endlessly turn over in our minds words, images and feelings that we mistake for reality (Adamson, 2004; Bohm, 1994). Some of us are not aware of thinking much, or wish to deny the content of our thoughts, so that when asked, ‘What are you thinking?’ we may reply, ‘Nothing’. Others are painfully aware of their anguished, guilty, terrifying, weird and seemingly unstoppable thoughts. Restless thought sometimes takes the form of creativity, in art, literature, philosophy, science. It is difficult to say exactly what ‘the mind’ is and how it differs from or is identical with the brain and body. But we all ‘have’ a mind and know more or less what we think and how much we think. A great deal of thinking is probably dedicated to planning what to do next and what to do in the medium and long term. But it is also involved in worry, regret, dissembling, plotting, fantasy, dreaming, desire, jealousy, the struggle to understand, an endless stream of preoccupations. We imagine what would make us happy, we get it, its novelty soon palls, and then we think up new aims in a cyclical fashion. Then we drink, pray, meditate, take drugs or try to escape from our restless minds in various ways. Perhaps we grasp that our interminable musings are not often productive and wonder why we think so much. And paradoxically we also manage not to think, sleepwalking our way through life by sticking with tradition, momentum, irrational social structures and the like. But whatever we think or don’t think, we remain trapped. And it may be, as Pascal said, that ‘the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room’ (quoted by Taylor, 2005, p. 23).

HISTORICAL MOMENTUM It is calculated that the universe is perhaps between 11 and 20 billion years old, life on earth is 4.5 billion years old and we human beings are over 100 000 years old (with predecessors dating from around 2 million years ago). We have evolved from amoeba-like organisms to this upright, bipedal, large-brained organism that we are today. Along the way we have created language and technology and all kinds of institutions. We have lived through terrible ice ages, famines, earthquakes, volcanic destruction, wars. Inevitably, we pass on our traditions and assumptions. We do much of what we do simply because that is what we have always done, but also because we are enmeshed in the complex of institutions we have inherited and by which we are now surrounded. Things


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move forward and there is no stopping them. Technology is now one of the most visible of such phenomena. Forward movement is relentless, no doubt partly due today to capitalism and the competitive global market but also due to the sheer fact that we have to (or believe we have to) keep going, as sharks need to keep swimming. We drag the past with us as tradition, as I have argued, but we also relentlessly create new forms. The point is that there seems to be no possibility to stop or even pause. The principle of a Sabbath, a holiday and even ‘World Such-AndSuch Day’ is there, but it is a mere token. We may meditate, but only for a token respite. Our civilization must keep moving and we, as individuals, except when very young or old, or ill, must keep aboard this juggernaut. Radical changes are all but impossible. All our errors are carried forward with us. Even after a major war or revolution, or period of so-called peace, renaissance or Enlightenment, we keep moving with pretty much the same skewed consciousness. Human momentum – our inability to stand still, to take stock and start anew – may itself be anthropathological. A moratorium would be useful but we will not or cannot give ourselves one.

THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS Paradoxically, while we move forward relentlessly and obviously do concretize certain visions into realities, we make little progress morally or anti-anthropathologically. This has been pointed out often enough, but to no avail. We move forward materially because that is apparently all we can do, and we make concessions or adjustments socially when we must (as in ending obvious forms of slavery, apartheid, cold war, or in the emancipation of women) but we also carry forward concealed forms of oppression and create new forms. We make medical advances but we also create medical and genetic dilemmas, iatrogenic problems – for example the thalidomide scandal, MRSA and so on.20 We know that something radical has to happen to address environmental disasters in waiting, but we procrastinate, deny or deceive (Davis, 2002; McNeill, 2000). One of our shared problems is the illusion that we have all the time in the world. Another example is the way in which much research is pursued and knowledge constructed, in a characteristically leisurely yet competitive and esoteric manner, with little or no sense of collective moral engagement and urgency. Concerns about the nation’s health may lead to political action to instigate reforms in the health service, but these reforms are non-holistic and bureaucracyheavy, which leads to as many new problems and doubtful progress as to anything worthwhile.

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According to Gray (2004) our assumption, indeed religion, of liberal humanist progress is woefully mistaken in the domain of international relations, history being read more accurately as cyclical and the unavoidable fate of humanity being one of eventual extinction. The failure of real moral–political progress is due to a seeming inability to perceive and act holistically and urgently. We tend to believe that as long as we are doing something we are making progress and we refuse to engage in necessary in-depth dialogue and soul-searching. Ironically, our human momentum pushes us forwards, keeps us believing that we must be making progress, and sustains our illusions. Tallis (1997) argues that we have made considerable progress since the barbarism of Genghis Khan, but the historian Hobsbawm (1998, p. 335) says ‘after about 150 years of secular decline, barbarism has been on the increase for most of the twentieth century, and there is no sign that this increase is at an end’. The form of barbarism changes but not the degree or impact.21

THE TRAPS OF DUALISMS We talk a lot about the illusion of the body–mind division, the Cartesian error of seeing our minds as housed within a slightly alien entity called the body. We may agree that some error is involved but not really be freed from it. Similarly, we may agree there is something in the claim that as individuals we are responsible citizens and beings-inthe-cosmos, that we are not really wholly separate. But we do not lead our lives as if this were true. Historically, matters have been seen in terms of yin and yang, public and private, and so on. These examples may appear academic or abstruse, so let’s take something closer to home in our own time. Isn’t it true that we respect outward manifestations of thought, and thought itself, as more important than feelings and bodies? This is reflected in the suppression of crying and other public displays of hurt feelings and in the fact that young children and women express feelings of hurt and distress more openly or copiously than men. For the world to go about its business – thinking, planning and doing – inconvenient and messy emotions must be banished or at least marginalized (Janov and Holden, 1975; Berman, 1998; Fineman, 2000). This is true of the workplace and of school and higher education: rational, purposeful, task-oriented talk and action is valued, and emotion is not. We separate the public and functional-occupational from the private and personal. Even in our free time, we try to present ourselves on the whole as happy, rational


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individuals and reserve our unhappy and chaotic feelings for close friends or counsellors. There are many extensions of the problems of dualism in the way we live our lives and some of these have changed a little in the searchlight of feminism. But our lives are lived dualistically for the most part. This is about alienation from the natural environment (Shepard, 1982) and the products of our labour but it’s also about much more. The very attempt to establish a discipline of and understand the realities of anthropathology becomes enmeshed in a dualism of good and bad. In some ways our dual ‘nature’, our being sundered, sinful, in need of atonement or transcendence of good and bad, is at the core of all our bids to save ourselves.

BEAST IN ITS OWN ZOO Few now deny that we are ‘evolved from animals’, to put it crudely. Most will concede that we share much genetic material with animals, indeed 98% or more with chimpanzees. We are bodies and need oxygen, food and water, sleep and respite from extreme weather conditions. Although these are available now to a majority, the need remains significant and eating problems besiege many of us. We have mostly lost touch with any natural instincts that we may have had as to what food and other substances are bad for us and we have to be told. We have sexual instincts and, probably, what may be termed territorial instincts. Although there is disagreement about what is instinctual, innate, or even bestial in us (and it may well vary a great deal from person to person), it’s hard to ignore this stubborn dualism between our animal selves and our civilized selves (Freud, 1930/2002; Marcuse, 1987; Zerzan, 2005). For Malik (2001) we must simply recognize that we are neither beasts nor zombies but human beings; but this is merely playing with words. We have built ourselves this civilization, a kind of zoo in which we must behave in a civilized manner. This means that we must wear clothes, indeed standardized clothes, and public nakedness is illegal. It means that we must conform to sexual norms, or be part of a named sexual minority; and some forms of sexuality are illegal. In general, we cannot speak freely and naturally about sex.22 It means that we are expected to behave sensibly and ‘rationally’, which in turn means that we must behave in a somewhat restrained manner. We expect each others’ behaviour to be quite linear and predictable, and if you act too oddly, wildly, or whatever, you run the risk of being deemed mad or criminal, and incarcerated and/or given medical treatment. At the very least, if you depart from civilized norms you will

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probably be deemed eccentric and marginalized. A caveat here is that we reserve a few places of ironic honour for exalted eccentrics (artists, mad scientists, writers, entertainers, etc.), who may be permitted to act oddly to some extent. But overall, most of us are aware of some tensions between what we want to do at times and what we must do, for example, stay in the office when we want to run off into the sun; force your mind, like a wild stallion, into submission so as to write a dreary and pointless report; go home when we’d rather get a flight to a foreign city; have sanctioned sex instead of ‘meaningless’ sex with strangers; act ‘out of character’; be playful, bizarre, rude and perhaps even aggressive. Some of us have suppressed these ‘animal’ instincts so well that we’re unaware of them and we may hate those who act on them. Some of us are painfully aware of these tensions and become ill trying unsuccessfully to suppress them (Glendinning, 1994).

TRIBALISM, NATIONALISM, US-AND-THEM-ISM We have evolved in small groups that have become larger groups, from small packs to global citizenship. But tribalism is still a large and dangerous part of our nature, it seems. The world is currently structured – with less inevitability and history than we often imagine – into nation states and alliances between certain nations, against others (Anderson, 1983). Ferguson (2006) suggests that ethnic conflict was one of three major factors contributing to twentieth-century wars. Some of us are emotionally attached to the country we were born in and some are not, but such ties are very hard to break since we are enmeshed in a particular language, citizenship and economic circumstances. As well as the approximately 200 nation states the world is currently carved up into, we are likely to belong to other groups – religions (and denominations or sects within religions), races, classes, castes, and linguistic groups, packs, crowds, mobs in various relationships of power to each other (Canetti, 2000). There are different and ‘warring’ groups or schools of counsellors and psychotherapists, politicians, philosophers, feminists. We are often organized into dominant and oppressed groups but what these have in common is the sense of us and them. We are good and they are bad; we are believers and they are infidels, kaffirs, heathens; we are civilized and they are savages. God (or justice or penetrating insight into truth) is on our side and not theirs. We do things rationally and sensibly but they do not. We may if necessary enact sanctions against them, invade and colonize them, or even obliterate them. Or we may just keep up a lengthy cold war against them,


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keeping ourselves pure and isolated. This happens at every level of our societies. And rather than getting better (some in the 1960s and 1970s railed against ‘isms’ themselves and some advocated colour blindness, for instance), tribalism has worsened. We are asked to recognize and celebrate difference and heritage, as if it has some eternal and sacred significance. Hence, we get stand-offs between groups, tribes and nations that can persist for centuries. We are urged to value cultural differences (multiculturalism) rather than become blind to them or to see the dangers of conflict inherent in them. We are encouraged to see neurotic problems only in individuals and not in groups, races, religions, cultures and nations. We have a stand-off between pessimistic anthropathologists and robust optimists.

SCARCITY OF INTELLIGENCE AND VISION Here, I do not mean the narrow form of intelligence (school-cultivated cleverness) or even so-called genius, but the sense of passionate interest, seeing to the heart of the matter, of having penetrating insight into and wisdom about nearby and universal issues. By its relative absence, I allude to the dominance of unintelligence and lack of vision. Most people are content to be led and to follow uncritically or, if they are critical, they take it no further than complaining impotently. Perhaps most of us are somewhat like this, seeing it as someone else’s job to analyse and understand, to run politics and change society, to ask questions about our social and cosmic context. So we delegate all such tasks to politicians, philosophers, priests, psychoanalysts, academics, most of whom are somewhat disappointing (Furedi, 2004b), narcissistic or corrupt (Storr, 1997). We expect others to know the answers and to lead. Yet, even when it is clear that our leaders have no solutions, or act unwisely, we continue to rely on them. Isn’t it glaringly obvious and tragic that we elect and tolerate such uninspiring, ineffective and corrupt political leaders (Cook, 2004; Flynt, 2004; Paxman, 2002; Singer, 2004a; Sternberg, 2002)? Why do we not depose them and create political structures that disallow dishonesty, corruption and incompetence in leaders? Unfortunately, as higher education has become a mass market delivering neatly packaged modules and key skills for employability, it has downplayed critical, radical, creative and autonomous thinking about the big questions. It demands and rewards compliant students, not fiercely independent thinkers and activists. We have vacuous leadership courses producing mediocre leaders. But take another angle on this. We have surely had some shining examples of leadership

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in politics and religion, but why are there historically, and today, so very few? If you agree that we have a shared anthropathological problem, why have so very few individuals even acknowledged and tackled it in themselves and why have so few transcended it? If you agree that perhaps the Buddha, Jesus and a few others went beyond anthropathology, why is humanity so composed that the vast majority of us apparently cannot do this? This scarcity factor is itself a major question in the study of anthropathology. It is certainly complicated by, for example, anarchist objections to the very idea of leadership and the dream that in the right conditions we might all live nonanthropathologically, co-operatively, and need no leaders.

BEING TIME-BLINKERED Tradition, habit and the illusion of progress all relate to the medium of time. Many of us have wondered at the question of time: if the past has always already gone (as it has by definition) and the future has not yet arrived (and by definition never does), what exactly is time? So you may accept in theory that only the present moment, the ‘now’ is quite real, and all other ‘time’ is merely memory and anticipation. Time, in other words, is all in the mind. But in ‘reality’ we seem to live in, rely on, be structured by, even be imprisoned by time. The calendar and clock rule us: where would we be without them? Yet, we might say that our temporal expectations are anthropathological. Animals do not live by clocks, even if they are sensually and somatically tuned into seasons.23 Aborigines have their ‘dreamtime’. Yet, we are so used to our global temporal civilization, so calendar mesmerized, that we can hardly conceive of any other way of being. (See Zerzan’s essay Beginning of Time, End of Time (Zerzan, 1999) for his insightful anarchistic and historical take on the problem of time; and Taylor (2005).) Some meditators and mystics, and users of certain drugs, have had experiences of what timeless reality is like. We may wonder how anything would get done if we did not conform to rules about time but we fail to see just how plastic time is, and how relatively recent our industrialized version of time is. We are so locked into our daily routines, our working week, brief breaks, expected average sleep length, calendar horizons, annual rituals, life-stage markers and average life expectancy, that we live very little of our lives in the reality of the now. Indeed, we tend patronizingly to regard users of such expressions as self-evidently exotic and unrealistic. We elevate and ordain the arts as self-evidently worthy, to be commodified in schools in universities and publicly funded (Carey, 2006) while doing little if anything to encour-


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age citizens to appreciate the sensuousness and beauty of natural phenomena; capitalist time pressures and consumerism militate against leisurely contemplation and the free enjoyment of immediate surroundings. In summary, we ‘live’ most of our lives in our heads, in our mental (unreal) past and future, ignorant of the (real) ever-present moment in all its richness (Adamson, 2004).

THE INFORMATION-OVERLOADED, EXPLANATION-BEGUILED SELF If there’s any truth in my portrait of our cosmic-existential plight, then it’s understandable that we should seek and create purposes, meanings and explanations for why we’re here. The history of mythology, religion, philosophy and science attests to our collective emotional need for explanations. Some of this activity is driven by real and urgent need, for example, in science to discover causes of, and remedies for, painful and life-threatening illness. But a lot is driven by a desire, perhaps even a panic, for explanation that will banish or soothe existential anxiety and terror. Silence, stillness and emptiness bring us close to the sense of original purposelessness and it is understandable that we wish to fill ourselves with explanations (and, if not explanations, then with non-stop entertainment, ‘infotainment’ and activity of other kinds). But this in turn leads us (our restless minds) to demand explanations which others are only too happy to supply, even if they are bogus explanations, since explanation-mongers can thrive on the admiration and money this may bring them. But it also leads to conflicting, faulty, nonsensical and junk explanations and information; this includes not only political rhetoric, journalistic gossip, fanciful New Age literature and what Tallis (1999) refers to as ‘theorrhoea’ but also a great deal of trivial and unread academic research. We now live in a ‘knowledge economy’, we are told, and this is unquestionably good for us, or at least inevitable, so we must all tool ourselves up via socalled lifelong learning. And add to this the phenomenon of attachment to certain systems of explanation, to passionate belief, to ideologydefence. This is the basis of all religion. As well as firing us into emotional states, these can also mesmerize and stupefy us. Add to this the observation that we tend to tire of familiar explanations that lose their once-novel attraction, and it is clear why we seek ever-revised explanations and information. All this helps to explain why, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we are awash with data. It took 300 000 years to accumulate 12

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exobytes of information; now we’re creating about 1 exobyte annually for every person on the planet. Already by 1600, 20 million books had been printed (Febvre and Martin, 1976). But in 2002 we produced 800 megabytes of information, equivalent to 800 books, for every human being on the planet. Perhaps not all this is explanatory as such, but much of it is, and it constitutes a growing problem in its own right. McCrum (2004) tells us that 120 000 books were being published annually in the United Kingdom in 2004 (compared with less than 10 000 in 1900) and in the United States the current figure is 175 000 books annually, or a book about every 20 seconds. The Internet can tell us anything and nothing. But where does all this information take us? Now we have ‘information overload’, ‘information fatigue’, ‘data asphyxiation’ and experts selling us the secrets of how to manage it! We also have publications called The Book of Useless Information and Everything You Know is Wrong purporting to convey frank but fascinating trivia and serious guidance on disinformation.

FEAR OF BEING WRONG If you recall how politicians being interviewed on television behave, you may agree that outstanding features are that they dissemble, avoid giving straight answers, generalize, repeat themselves, robotically stay ‘on message’, hog air time and generally lie. But one thing they rarely, if ever, seem to do is admit to having been wrong (Paxman, 2002). To confess to having been wrong in the past or being wrong now is perhaps the biggest no-no for a politician because it smacks of weakness and fallibility. But politicians are us. Most of us have some trouble admitting when we’re wrong or have been wrong. It means losing face. It is rare, and usually in the context of religion or political diplomacy, that a prominent spokesperson acknowledges a historical wrongdoing and asks forgiveness for past national atrocities or personal alcoholism, drug addiction, ‘sex addiction’ and so on. Papal infallibility and other postures of religious inerrancy probably constitute some of the most dangerous and irrational instances of the fear of being wrong (and yet not even the suspicion of being wrong is evident among the most fundamentalist). But for most of us, admitting that we have been in the wrong, or are now getting something wrong is difficult. It goes against the grain. Yet, it is highly irrational, since to err is after all human, so we say. There may be a place for inflexibility but the flexibility to respond to new circumstances with new views has been downplayed as unimportant. The ultimate in inflexibility, refusing to consider we may be wrong, is war. Along the way there are impasses,


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rows, fights, divorce, battles and heartache at personal and social levels. But we haven’t learned how to dialogue flexibly instead of fighting terminally.

FRAGMENTED/HYPOCRITICAL SELVES One of our tacit ideals is integrity, which means both an undivided, rounded self, and an ethical self. Yet, the common reality for most of us, I suggest, is fragmentation and duplicity We are torn between wanting to be whole and wholly honest, and wanting to defend ourselves against any threats. Hence, I may try to be outspoken at all times about my moral, political, aesthetic and other sensibilities and preferences but find that by doing so I offend my partner, friends, colleagues and bosses, so I temper my remarks and I often think one thing and say another. I do not want to court conflict and risk unpopularity, ostracism and its consequences. Or, I may be known for certain sympathies or views yet transgress these in my private life. For example, there is the TV evangelist who commits and conceals his adultery. There is the well-known socialist who owns a lot of property and investments and conceals this or plays it down; or who advocates state education but sends his own children to an expensive private school. Take the right-wing politician who advocates stern penalties for illegal activity, yet who is involved himself in shady, if not downright illegal activities. Are these unusual and dramatic examples only? I think not. Take the vociferous feminist who is willing to take advantage of her own physical attractiveness, or her father’s influential contacts, to get a prestigious job. Consider the Christian who espouses love and forgiveness yet within the privacy of his own thoughts hates many people.24 How many adherents of religions based on love kill others in the name of a God of love (McTernan, 2003; Nelson-Pallmeyer, 2003)? Rodgers and Thompson (2005) give an account of the ‘sometimes bad, sometimes sad, occasionally downright mad’ behaviour of philosophers who claim to guide us from perplexity. Among the many hypocritical politicians and political thinkers, Karl Marx is notable for his bourgeois house, two servants, adultery, exploitation of his wife to the point of severe illness, and misery of some of his children to the point of their early deaths (Zerzan, 1999). Is the counsellor or psychotherapist who doesn’t listen to his or her partner, or who bequeaths neuroses to their children, so uncommon (Maeder, 1989)? How about the radical environmentalist who self-righteously cycles everywhere, yet cuts up pedestrians and ignores red lights? And the justifiably angry,

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racism-denouncing Jamaican man who is, however, grossly sexist and homophobic. Scrutinize almost anyone, hear their views and compare these with their actions, and see if it’s possible to find a single soul who isn’t fragmented and hypocritical to some degree. Most of us say we believe in truthfulness, fairness, respect, courage and so on, so who are all the people who are not living up to these ideals? It’s us. It’s you and me, surely.25 And the reason for hypocrisy being so widespread? Total integrity is hard work, you are sure to suffer for it, unless you are securely wealthy and have a thick skin, or unless you are willing to pay the possible price of being fired, ostracized, shunned, crucified. In a culture of lies, how can you survive except by accommodating to it? And even if you struggle heroically against your own hypocrisy, such is the stealth of self-deceptive anthropathology, you have little chance of success.

THE DEMANDS OF MODERN LIFE There have always been pressures on us, I’m sure. But these change, so that today relatively few of us are starving, sick and homeless. (Let’s emphasize the ‘relatively’ and simply acknowledge for now that in some areas many are hungry, sick and homeless.) Although there is no totally typical lifestyle, many of us live lives like the following. We have to work hard at school, conscious that our qualifications may determine long-term success or relative failure. Careers are competitive. Yet, jobs are often stressful or boring, last a lifetime and can feel imprisoning (Bolchover, 2005). To have conventional shelter, we must pay rent or a mortgage, and these tie us into our jobs. We feel driven to have and maintain close relationships; increasingly, these break down – perhaps we expect too much of them, or perhaps they simply cannot sustain us in our increasing longevity. We have children whose needs we have to fit in. Although not impossible, it’s against the grain to live simply and austerely, and most of us must keep up with consumer culture, from some degree of fashionableness to running a car, understanding, using and upgrading technology, and so on. From all directions come demands, hassles, and we cannot ignore them; it is not accidental that the term ‘stress’ is so much in use today. Things seem to happen faster and faster and we must either try to keep up or fall behind and risk our place in society. The workplace, with its frictions, targets and relentless bureaucratic or other tasks, the home with its frictions, conflicts and expectations, all take their toll (Bourdieu, 1999; Cohen and Taylor, 1992; Feltham, 2004a; Kegan, 1994). We are asked to engage in ‘lifelong learning’, to update our skills,


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to be informed citizens, to take active responsibility for our health, to be informed yet economy-stimulating consumers. We may go to the gym, do yoga, have therapy, meditate and study in order to understand, keep up or get a perspective, but all this activity too becomes a pressure. Many argue that we are equipped for survival in primitive conditions, not for constant stress in modern times, and that perhaps only medication can rescue us from stress-related illness (Charlton, 2000), although this idea is far from being universally accepted.

THE WHIFF OF FUTILITY Much of what we do aims at betterment of ourselves and society. Constant research aims to identify causes of poverty, disease, crime, conflict, natural and artificial hazards, clearly with a view to eradicating these as far as possible (Worldwatch Institute, 2005). Science and technology aim at such goals. Religion and politics, and counselling and psychotherapy, whatever their qualified successes so far, all aim at moral or psychosocial improvement. My own implicit recommendations for the reduction of violence, child abuse, irrationality and so on, also point in this direction. Progress may be at least partly an illusion (Gray, 2004). But what if it wasn’t? What if, in fact, our betterment agenda eventually took us towards something resembling Utopia? After all, this banishment of adversity, injustice and suffering is the ultimate aim, perhaps even our responsibility (Mayerfield, 1999). Perhaps global capitalism will pay off. Or if anti-capitalists have their way, some sort of non-bureaucratic, non-totalitarian, Zapatista-style Utopia may one day prevail (Notes from Nowhere, 2003). Perhaps we really can achieve both material and moral progress and become enlightened individuals living in a fair, egalitarian, crime-free, sustainable technology, post-patriarchal Utopia. Taylor (2005), while fully spelling out our fallen, anthropathological nature over the past 6000 years (see p. 76), yet sees us as ‘returning to the Age of Perfect Virtue’. This is hard to imagine, given our record of anthropathology so far. Samuel Butler (Erewhon), Aldous Huxley (Island) and other Utopia explorers couldn’t sustain the required optimism, but what if we did achieve it? What then? It’s very hard (for me) to imagine a Utopia that wouldn’t somehow resemble a global series of rural, small-scale, vacuously happy-clappy communes. Maybe another alternative is conceivable. But it’s just possible that the best human will in the world still couldn’t produce anything that would in fact be worth the effort. In other words, a future Utopia, or even a highly cooperative, convivial society as an

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aim, smells a little of futility. If you managed to finalize the noblest of human aspirations in concrete form, wouldn’t you still be left wondering what it was all for? If we’d stayed, as it were, in an imaginary preFall Eden all this time, what would have been the point? None. If you are a Christian and you manage to lead a morally squeaky-clean life, and you believe in a heaven in which you’ll be bodily resurrected and rewarded, can you really see an eternity sitting on clouds, chatting to other righteous do-gooders and playing harps as such a great outcome? In some ways, we already have a glimpse of this, insofar as citizens of prosperous and peaceful countries often experience anomie: when the adversity’s been overcome, what’s next? In the view of Svendsen (2005) an accomplished Utopia would be synonymous with boredom, and the boredom would then corrode the Utopia. This brings us back to our irrationality and cosmic-existential absurdity. If we managed to live in the now, fully embracing this absurdity, resisting the busy hysteria to survive and our addiction to religious irrationality, I think it’s more likely we would diminish and perish as a species (perhaps ‘nobly’ and ‘happily’) than perpetuate ourselves indefinitely. The greater likelihood, however, is that we will be borne forward by historical momentum and hysteria to survive, eventually even learning to avoid asteroids, if not solar death, by the kinds of infinite planet-hopping migrations predicted by science fiction writers and some academic physicists (Kaku, 2005), carrying our anthropathology with us just as the transatlantic discoverers of ‘new worlds’ took physical illnesses with them in the sixteenth century.26 Ignoble survival motives will remain in tension with utopian aspirations but where are we ultimately heading? Schmidt (2001) portrays many such dilemmas.

ENTRAPMENT IN SYMBOLIC ACTIVITY Our survival has seen us move from immediate sensual experiences, from vitality, towards increasingly mediated, instrumental and symbolic activities. From primitive toolmaking, animal hunting, shelter construction and necessary domestic artefacts, we have developed many purely aesthetic activities, myths, religions and rituals, that have reassured, motivated and entertained us. Gradually freed from exclusively body-oriented preoccupations and the need to guard against predators and hostile environments, our brains have evolved to become less concerned with automatic survival responses (the ‘reptilian brain’) and related emotions (the ‘paleo-mammalian brain’) and more preoccupied with cognitive processes (the ‘neo-mammalian brain’)27. From


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instinct, through ingenuity, we have moved into cognitive activity for its own sake, much of it self-deceptive, and well illustrated in philosophers’ tortuous attempts to analyse and expose it! In parallel, we have created symbolic social regulatory systems (e.g. religious and political forms and processes), which include now fading, challenged or threatened systems of theocracy, monarchy, empire, socialism and global capitalism. Agrarian systems are superseded by industrial systems, and those by the technological. As time has passed we have learned to be more removed from direct sensual contact with the natural environment, with hands-on engagement, and our bodies, and have emphasized cognitive activity, including reading and spectating. Hence, we are now dominated by bureaucracy that is entwined with and facilitated by information and communications technology. Many of our lives are dominated by computer use, reliance on paperwork, reading and writing reports, monitoring financial performance and conducting symbolic transactions from the local to the global. How many millions of us sit in unnecessary and non-productive office meetings? How important are entire layers of bureaucracy when politicians can talk of axeing whole government departments for efficiency purposes? How sane is it that some can make fortunes by merely remotely shifting large sums of money from account to account and around the world? The problem with this general development is that it is difficult for many to discriminate between what is real, necessary, inevitable and useful, and what is misleading, delusional and dangerous. I am thinking not only of those who are personally computer-obsessional but those who can no longer see or conceive of alternatives to the wastefulness of bureaucracy, the absurdities of cognitively ritualized institutions like universities and the evils of religions whose symbols are taken literally so that violence in their name seems justified. Many of the professions rest on spurious foundations or are at best a means of channelling perplexed citizens through the maze of symbolic social systems, such as social and legal services. This is of course all linked closely with the problems of tradition and habit. Having lost touch with what is essential to our survival and with our natural feelings, we have based a great deal of our judgement and action, individually and socially, on a compulsive tendency to adhere to symbolic actions and to be addicted to and defensive of these. The extent of bureaucratic activity,28 and the absurdity of certain anachronistic religious beliefs and practices, are examples of a dulling of intelligence and reality-oriented emotion (indeed I would call for additions to our language of the terms ‘bureauphrenia’ and ‘religiophrenia’), resulting in lives wasted in offices, emasculated human

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beings and inefficient, idolatrous and divisive societies (Zerzan, 2002). Underlying the plea of ‘My kingdom for a horse’ voiced by Shakespeare’s Richard III is a longing for engagement in reality, however violent and potentially life-threatening, and for freedom from exalted but meaningless rituals. Likewise with Herman Hesse’s Joseph Knecht character in the novel The Glass Bead Game.

THE TABOO AGAINST OBVIOUSNESS AND SIMPLICITY Into this aspect of anthropathology come many things that I’ve already mentioned: lies, temporal delusions, irrationality, hysteria to survive, the restless mind, the beast in its own zoo, the demands of modern life. We have evolved and developed towards ever greater complexity. However, a great deal that confronts us daily is still obvious and simple, but denied. It is clear to me what and who I like and dislike, but I constantly compromise on what I do and say. I rarely, if ever, open my mouth without thinking, so that all my perceptions are mediated by thought and expressed by language that has strained off socially unacceptable elements (Miller, 2003). Spontaneity is rare, not because so few people possess the art of spontaneity but because we suppress it; and we’ve suppressed it for so long that it feels risky and unnatural to let it happen. ‘What is’, what we see with our own eyes, is the obvious and simple. Innocent infants can still see and speak in this way, but not for long. We know a bad smell when it’s present, we know we’re uncomfortable in a meeting based on convoluted and dishonest principles, we know when we’re bored, aroused, depressed or scared; and we have the simple words to express all this. We know that politicians fail us, that wars are horrendous and avoidable, that huge discrepancies between haves and have-nots are unjust and asking for trouble. We and our politicians espouse democratic values but nobody demands democratic decision making in referenda which could easily be facilitated by modern technology. It’s obvious that we’re all going to die and soon be forgotten as individuals, but let’s keep pretending it’s not so. But since we know that voicing the obvious and simple is so often taboo and/or futile or threatening, we do not, like the child in the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, express it straightforwardly; and this has become a long-standing habit, supported by dense traditions of subtle speech and writing. We suppress our so-called intuitions and instincts and worry about how to articulate things more sophisticatedly. Academia excels in this promotion of the complex, delayed, analytical, inhibited expression; indeed, you may not say anything without


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first searching for and showing ‘evidence’ in the form of research findings and/or the published thoughts of other, greater-than-thou, often long-dead, academics. Foucault famously spoke of parrhesia – a term used by Euripides and meaning free speech, bold truth-telling – but Foucault is also a prime example of academic obfuscation. We may reserve a small place for bluntness and plain speaking but the acceptable norm is direct feelings converted into the bland, complex or polite. Our perception of what is obvious and simple has been so thoroughly censored that we mystify everyday life and live a lie interpersonally, politically and in most domains. Where would it lead you if you tried to spend even a day simply noticing, voicing and acting on the obvious about what you felt, thought, and saw around you? How many books are based on saying the obvious in a highly convoluted way, selling our own perceptions back to us in a formulaic, gimmicky, jargon-ridden manner? Many professions thrive on just this over-complication, obfuscation, of the obvious.

ENMESHMENT IN ANTHROPATHOLOGICAL LOOPS Too great a catalogue of negativity may risk seeming unconvincing, but I must conclude with another item. This is a kind of meta-anthropathological concept: anthropathological loops. In reading the list of what I think constitutes anthropathology, you may agree with some items and not with others, or with the overall picture but not its details. Since, however, I do not personally know any individual or institution without some anthropathological traits, I infer that no-one has completely transcended them. The Buddha, Jesus Christ, Jiddu Krishnamurti, individuals like these may have done but we cannot verify it (and I seriously doubt it). The vast majority of us, whether average decent citizens, noble truth seekers, or conscious deceivers, criminals or psychopaths, perhaps do the best we idiosyncratically can to get through our lives but have our obvious limitations. Some will readily admit to this, some will protest that they are wholly happy, decent, fulfilled and so on. But just read a biography of any modern hero to discover their unexpected faults; none is anything like a saint. Unfortunately, we do not possess accurate details of long-dead heroes, so we remain free to imagine anything about them and to idealize them. Consider the strength of the fantasy of the sinless, self-sacrificing, miracle-working, death-defeating Christ. I guess that most of us at least try to lead decent lives informed by noble ideals and good intentions. Most of us are taught to be ‘well behaved’, to ‘do unto others as we would have them do unto us’, to be

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kind, considerate, honest, industrious, cheerful, patient. The sheer number and weight of such moral injunctions is perhaps part of our common human burden, and many clients in counselling testify to the negative effects of such parentally transmitted moral expectations. This is one loop, then: that in trying to pass on what we perceive as wise or necessary, we often pass on anxiety, guilt and low selfesteem. Anthropathological loops are characterized by (i) a degree of insight into a personal, moral or social problem, (ii) efforts to solve or conquer it, (iii) frustration that it is so difficult and the aim never quite accomplished, (iv) determination to carry on, (v) a tendency to expect the same of others, (vi) a tendency towards over-correctiveness, or producing a solution that is as bad as or worse than the original malady. This is true of individuals, societies and religions. We should add to such a loop (vii) the self-conviction (self-deception) that we have accomplished our goal, and we can seek to persuade others that we have; but we have seen how slyly hypocrisy operates. Perhaps I can’t easily deceive myself that I’ve lost weight when the scales clearly say otherwise, but any wicked priest or corrupt politician can convince himself and others that he’s a good fellow. Or look at the problem of loneliness. Lonely, I look for a companion, fall in love, get married, encounter marital conflicts, deny them but finally get divorced, get lonely again, look for a companion, and so on. Films often end with the ‘happy ever after’ but do not show us the ensuing tedium or conflict. In the real world of physical necessity and adversity, consider the problem of perishable foods. In the 1930s Thomas Midgley, after popularizing the use of dangerous tetraethyl lead, went on to discover a kind of gas for refrigerators that initially appeared safe: chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). As we now know, CFCs are responsible for devastating effects on the ozone layer. Bryson (2004) suggests that CFCs ‘may ultimately prove to be just about the worst invention of the twentieth century’ (p. 196). But efficient refrigeration was ‘necessary’, CFCs initially seemed safer than predecessors, and with such widespread applications, how could we know the consequences until years later? Not all inventions wreak havoc, but many do. Short-term solutions can have unforeseen long-term negative repercussions. Cars get us around quickly but they create terrible pollution and directly kill about 40 000 people annually in the United States alone and probably 1 million people worldwide: this was not foreseen. Agriculture must have originally seemed like a good bet, perhaps inevitable, but it had its downside (Jensen, 2006; Shepard, 1982; Taylor, 2005; Zerzan, 2005). Now we face agonizing decisions between cleaner (but dangerous) nuclear fuel and alternative (but inadequate) energy sources. Now


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a politician is criticized for a policy of house building that both stretches water resources and, in entailing the concreting over of large expanses of land, impedes natural irrigation. Consider the government policy of reducing waiting times for hospital admission. In order to achieve this worthy aim, nurses and doctors are pressurized and patients are often turfed out of beds prematurely and sometimes in pain.29 In order to raise educational standards, children are set more tests and teachers are forced to administer more bureaucratic oversight and to endure more inspections; even when standards are thereby ostensibly raised, nobody monitors attendant raised stress levels, decline in enjoyment of learning and so on. Somehow, eventually, we are probably damned whichever course of short-term improvement we take. Well-intentioned saviours, teachers, environmentalists, animal rights protesters, academics, therapists, writers, social reformers generally, many of whom do effect some moderately worthwhile changes, are also eaten up with unresolved psychological problems of their own, with fragments of hypocrisy, irrationality, lies, survival hysteria, tribalism, unconfessed fear of being wrong, time-blinkeredness and other ills. This is not easy to prove in any rigorous way but I suspect it wouldn’t take much probing to ascertain its truth. Psychoanalysts believe that most other therapies, certainly those that deal only with the presenting symptom, ultimately fail because they do not address the deep, underlying unconscious conflict that drives the problematic behaviour and its symptoms. Psychoanalysts believe that they have largely plucked out their own self-deceptions in their own psychoanalysis, and they hold the key to others’ deep-seated self-deceptions, and/or that other, non-psychoanalytic sources of distress are relatively insignificant or subsumed under neurotic conflicts or put into perspective by analytic ‘working through’. It wouldn’t take much probing of the psychoanalytic tradition, of current training and clinical practices, of the lives and lifestyles of psychoanalysts themselves, to see anthropathological loops in operation. The psychoanalysts are correct when they say that if you don’t deal with a problem comprehensively it will probably return in another form (and a New Testament writer made the same point, and the concept of karma is based on this too), but they are wrong to imagine that that is what they themselves do (deal with it comprehensively), since they are, like us all, infused with unrecognized anthropathology. These loops imply that all our change efforts are piecemeal and illusory, and perhaps that all change efforts are ultimately futile. This in itself feels unbearably negative, hopeless, cynical. Therefore, we deny it, we look for holes in the argument, or exceptions to the cases put forward in argument, or we ignore it. The easiest way for a critic of the

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thesis I’m presenting here to dismiss it is to say that it is unoriginal and badly written, that it is utterly one-sided (failing to look at the positive side of human experience), that it has logical flaws, that it’s full of unproven generalizations, unsubstantiated examples and, even if it were true, is so negative and permitting of no solution that it’s not worth considering. All of this may be true; and it’s absolutely true that I am riddled with anthropathological traits myself. The study of anthropathology is necessarily a 360° discipline, bringing the entire world and ourselves into its searchlight, including our most precious beliefs, vulnerabilities and fears. The observer and the observed are one, as Jiddu Krishnamurti said repeatedly. Academic analysis is itself fundamentally flawed, for all the seriousness with which it takes itself, since it is always fettered by narrow disciplinary tradition, by egotistic competition, by institutional constraints, conservatism and depersonalization. It is no accident that so many radical thinkers and writers have spurned, avoided or felt ambivalent about universities: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, Freud, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Krishnamurti, Beckett and many others. Or that artists and novelists of great creativity exist outside all such institutions. Or that Socrates, Jesus and others were such radical critics of their institutions that they had to die for their critiques. Churches, universities, parliaments may be the least creative and most punishing and unforgiving of institutions, ironically dedicated as they are (purportedly) to truth seeking and justice seeking.

ANTHROPATHOLOGY: BIASED MISCELLANY OR A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH? The question, ‘What’s wrong with us?’ may be answered in the form, ‘There are many discrete things wrong with us, just as there are many things right with us.’ In other words, the original question may be scathingly relativized, undermined, regarded as flawed, poorly phrased and illegitimate. It’s fair to say, for example, that my list above may be a highly selective ragbag of complaints projected by a particular (i.e. pessimistic, depressive, cynical or nihilistic) mindset. Or you could see it as partially legitimate and partially accurate. You might object that it is a view emanating from a white, Western, male, psychologically inclined, politically naive and atheistically arrogant, privileged academic, and therefore invalid or limited. However you do receive it, I hope you are interested enough to mull over which aspects of it you deem significant or otherwise, and why.


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I want to argue that this collection of sketches adds up to a unified phenomenon or force and that it is not simply my idiosyncratic fantasy. And whereas proponents of different religions or political and other belief systems may regard their own analyses of and terms for ‘what’s wrong with us’ as belonging only to them and quite separate from mine, I believe we can put all of them into the same anthropathological melting pot (see Table 1.1). So, it’s not original of me to point out these phenomena, but it may be slightly unusual to insist that they are one and the same thing and/or have the same source. For me, sin (the Christian concept of a state of being wicked, sundered from God, lacking, or ‘off the mark’), dukkha (the Buddhist concept of suffering, dissatisfaction, disharmony), jahiliyya (the Islamic concept of ignorance or paganism) are all essentially the same. Likewise terms from other forms of discourse point to the same ‘thing’: alienation, misère du monde, universal neurosis and so on. Most cultures, societies, religions and academic disciplines have some such concepts. One of our problems is that we have grown accustomed to (or mindlessly accepted) all such divisions, and even elevated them to positions of sacredness. There may be different shades of meaning but they all refer to an underlying anthropathology. There is, I suspect, something rotten at the core of human beings, or that easily turns rotten. It is a fundamental wrongheadedness rather than being wrongheaded about certain issues. Another problem is that adherents of each group often believe they have a monopoly on truth (and everything else) and so tribalism colours dialogue so that dialogue is distorted and in many cases is simply impossible. While John Gray (2002, 2004) promotes an incisive pessimism about humanity, Wheen (2004) promotes certain values of the Enlightenment (mainly, reason) against ‘mumbo-jumbo’. Each of these men attacks the other – a common enough phenomenon in this vale of adversarial truth seekers – without seeing any common ground. The born-again fundamentalist Christianity of George W. Bush (and his ‘axis of evil’ convictions) and the fundamentalist positions of many Muslims (and their conviction of the evil of the United States and the pagan West) are obviously not up for dialogue. I regard them (and obviously not only them) as equally irrational and anthropathologyperpetuating. Take another less dramatic example. The division of knowledge into discrete fields goes back to Aristotle and remains with us, most visibly in universities. Hence, we have departments, centres or subject foci for psychiatry, peace studies, conflict resolution, medical ethics, social development, Holocaust studies and so on, all claiming to research and seek solutions for our problems but all losing themselves

Table 1.1 Terms partly or wholly synonymous with anthropathology. Terms Fall, fallenness, sin, evil, curse, Satan, devil, vale of tears, bondage Thlipsis (suffering, affliction, tribulation) Original sin; massa perditionis (condemned multitude) Paap (sin), Shiva (God of destruction) Jahiliyya (ignorance, paganism); Dhanb (sin) Dukkha, ignorance, suffering, samsara, illusion, Maya Koyaanisqatsi (disintegration, turmoil, craziness of life) Fragmentation, sorrow Plato’s cave Strife (neikos) Tolma, tolmatic (dissipation) Human condition Immiseration Faillibility, pathétique of misery Crooked timber of humanity Entropy Selfish gene Irrationality The demonic Alienation, estrangement Systemic fault Misère du monde Friction of adversity Homo rapiens Universal neurosis; Thanatos (death drive) Structural malignancy of the human animal Human destructiveness, pathology of normalcy The daimonic Béance (lack); méconnaissance (misperception) Homo paciens Neurosis, Pain Hell, inferno, paradise lost, purgatory Man’s inhumanity to man Fucked up Omnidolence Humanitis Social suffering Social problems Lucifer Principle Social psychosis Pathology of civilization Mad world

Originators or associated movements and figures Abrahamic religion, Old testament New Testament Greek Augustine Hinduism Islam Buddhism Hopi language J. Krishnamurti Plato Empedocles Plotinus Montaigne, Arendt, Griffith Marx Ricoeur Kant, Berlin Clausius Dawkins Sutherland Sagan Existentialism Bohm Bourdieu/Tristan Tallis Gray Freud Reich Fromm May Lacan Frankl Janov Dante, Milton Burns Larkin Beckett Bellow Kleinman Ritzer Bloom Brennan Zerzan Popular song (Tears for Fears, Gary Jules)


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in the minutiae of scholarly differences, academic ambition and pedantry; not to mention their own anxiety to survive by having to chase funds, attract students and manufacture scholarly products.30 There is no unified, urgent, moral focus on the underlying anthropathology. And academics might well defend their position as necessary and healthy pluralism and freedom of thought. Christian denominations have spent decades talking about ecumenism. Similarly, psychotherapists have now spent decades talking about integrationism in their discipline. This is not the good thing it is promoted as, or inevitable or neutral – it is a result of anthropathology, of our sleepy inability to focus honestly on the cancer of anthropathology that is common to us all.

Notes 1. I say I can only fantasize about others’ views of anthropathology. But in October 2006 I noticed some graffiti on a local pillar box – ‘We are all wrong’ – and that evening went to see the film Children of Men, an adaptation of P.D. James’s novel, an account of a dystopia in which infertility has become the norm and refugee internment and violence are commonplace. The ‘a (unique) child is born’ theme echoes the slim biblical hope that humankind might be saved from its own grim perdition. 2. According to one poll, 45% of Americans fully believe in the biblical theory of human origins, or ‘creationism’ or ‘intelligent design’ (‘US editor ignites row at Smithsonian’ by David Usborne, Independent, 20 August 2005, p. 26). 3. Human language is distinct enough to separate us from 4000 species of mammals who have no such sophisticated means of information storage and communication (Dunbar, 2004). 4. ‘Humankind is vain, inescapably vain, comical and foolish, though nonetheless, both in spite of and because of these traits, capable of extraordinary achievements’ (Miller, 2003, p. 237) is one such balanced testimony. 5. It has been reckoned that Russians have been at war for 46 out of every 100 years since 901 CE, and the English for 56 out of 100 since 1066 (Blainey, 1973). On war as occurring in cycles of about 25 years, see de Mause (2002). Ferguson (2006) estimates up to 188 million deaths due to war in the twentieth century. Nuclear proliferation is a horribly good example of anthropathological escalation in our time. In 2006 it seemed that North Korea and Iran were probably both fast developing nuclear capabilities. The outraged elite of ‘legitimate’ holders of nuclear bombs condemned these developments and considered their response but were naturally met with the argument that since they have them, why shouldn’t others? Now that nuclear technology exists we cannot pretend that it doesn’t, and such is human (or male) brinkmanship that it seems unthinkable that all will agree to scrap their own weapons. 6. According to the work cited by Pinker, ‘more than 80% of women and 90% of men fantasize about killing people they don’t like’ (2003, p. 316). Buss

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7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.


(2005) has taken this further, arguing from principles of evolutionary psychology that we all have propensities towards jealousy and murder. Jensen (2006) argues that ‘our way of living – industrial civilization – is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence’ (p. ix). Top-down violence or the implicit threat of violence is usually defended as just and necessary, whereas bottom-up violence is regarded as crime and terrorism. It is tempting to hypothesize too that it is not men who propagate violence but violence is a natural phenomenon that seized on men as a vehicle. Patriarchy has dominated us for millennia (men control women, children and animals) and patriarchy is underpinned by the threat of violence; men will probably always be physically stronger than women and no verbal declaration of the right not to be raped or murdered has any power against brute force. Rape and murder, like earthquakes, are expressions of sheer physical force. The only effective forms of opposition to this are greater violence, deterrent social policy, shame, rewards, love and understanding – and all these are only temporarily and partially effective. Ultimately, only egoless transcendence of fear (Jesus, Gandhi) can trump violence; and even that seems to change nothing in the long run. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment calculates that 60% of the earth’s natural products and life-supporting processes are now seriously compromised. This includes deforestation, loss of or damage to water supplies, and loss of biodiversity (Graham-Rowe & Holmes, 2005). Desai (2006) examines some of the complexities of economics, including views on the neutrality and evil of money and usury, and Ezra Pound’s dangerously racist associations between moneylending and Judaism. Desai also reminds us that St Augustine declared property an acceptable human creation in the light of ‘the degraded condition of all things human after the Fall’ (p. 59). Not so acceptable to Proudhon and other anarchists. Specifically, human problems of love gone awry and failure or social shame leading to such distress that suicide is the only available ‘remedy’ are outlined in Minois (1999). Miller (2003) demonstrates the painfully infinite layers of the moral onion we engage with in trying to look and feel good to ourselves and others. Scriptures, too, have a confusing complexity to them that can both support hypocrisy and lead to neurotically heroic efforts to meet all moral calls: ‘virtually every proverb coexists with another proverb that depends on an opposite view of what the default position of so-called human nature is’ (p. 245). Flynt (2004, p. 83) says of religious fundamentalism, ‘after all, to “weave bizarre, incredible tales and stick by them with fierce determination” sounds like a pretty good definition of evangelical religion’. He is quoting from Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald Reagan, who also accused her parents of ‘state of the art lies’ (Flynt, 2004). Although women are not free or incapable of violence (see below), arguably it is a mainly male-generated and -sustained problem. Since I have alluded to nuances of violence generally, it seems only fair to include here the belief among some feminists that it is male power that drives female fashion, cosmetic surgery and ideals of female beauty. Jeffreys (2005) attacks everything from routine use of make-up (seriously damaging chemicals


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have been implicated in its manufacture) to heterosexual sex and all pornography as manifestations of male violence in which most women collude. 14. Not much explored here is the topic of gynopathology, or ‘what’s wrong with women specifically?’ A superficial list might include bitching, gossiping, manipulativeness, nagging, scheming, treacherousness, statusconsciousness, hormonal mood swings, and so on. And ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ (Congreve). More seriously, we might speculate that women have been guilty of acquiescence in anthropathology, perhaps historically seeking protection and favour from stronger and wealthier men, having a predilection for possessions and territory and cornering men into reluctant procreation and domesticity by capitalizing on their own sexual charms. King (2006) notes the high incidence of women’s deception in relation to contraception and cuckoldry. Although perhaps not often downright violent to each other (Pearson, 1998; Renzetti, 1992), women can be subtly vicious or neurotic: ‘Feminists also had in their midst the usual assortment of scoundrels, sadists, bullies, grifters, con artists, impostors, poseurs, careerists, liberals, rage-aholics, loners, eccentrics, champion hair-splitters, spoilers, sore-losers, drug addicts, alcoholics, the dim-witted, the incompetent, the incomparably lazy’ (Chesler, 2003, p. 440). ‘Most men routinely compete with, steal from, shoot, and kill each other. Most women are aggressive, not in this way but in indirect ways, mainly against other women. Young girls, teenagers, and adult women insult, taunt, shame, gossip about, slander, bully, and ostracize each other,’ says Chesler (2003, p. 441). Allowing for overgeneralization, we might simply say that such behaviour is common enough, and one view exists that as physically weaker primates women have developed and honed such non-physical means of self-protection and attack. These testimonials also omit women who (unprovoked) are violent towards their partners and children and those who support, or participate in, war. And, unfortunately, the rare modern example of Margaret Thatcher has not commended female political leadership. Buss (2005) suggests that women are only slightly less violent than men and Pearson (1998) argues that only sentimentality, amnesia and denial prevent us from abandoning the ‘most abiding myth of our time’ and realizing that women are as violent as men. Levy (2005a) exposes the social trend for women – the so-called modern, empowered woman – to embrace pornography, cosmetic surgery, alcohol and so on, in a way that apes rather than challenges men. Perhaps this suggests that given the opportunity women will act as badly as men. Similarly, we now see many women desperate to become priests and soldiers, as if this is a sign of axiomatic egalitarian progress rather than envy and imitation of the absurd. Depending on your view of civilization, Camille Paglia’s famously misogynistic statement – that we would all still be living in grass huts if women had run things – contains a richness of paradoxes. 15. Charleton (2006) offers an account of the complex of lies, hatred and crime that spans much of our history, in particular showing how we spin depersonalizing and rationalizing myths about hated others. As a barrister he has seen a great deal of this in court. Yet, he nowhere sees fit to factor in the parasitic nature of the legal profession (we need it because we cannot trust each other to tell the truth and to deal honestly with each other, yet it probably makes us distrust each other all the more) and reliance of the

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16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.


legal profession on self-servingly impenetrable jargon and obfuscation, courtroom theatrics, class privilege and inflated salaries. As John Lennon sang in ‘I don’t wanna be a soldier’, ‘… I don’t wanna be a lawyer, mamma, I don’t wanna lie’. In October 2006 it was estimated that 650 000 Iraqis had died in the conflict since the invasion of March 2003, the equivalent of 1 in 40 of the population. Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical gerontologist, believes in the imminent possibility of extending the lifespan to 1000 or more. He is not alone – other scientists similarly regard death as the major scientific challenge and as essentially merely an engineering problem waiting to be solved (Klerkx, 2005). A recent bestselling book, Warren’s (2003) The Purpose-Driven Life, reasserts the circular Christian message that God intended each one of us to be born and to fulfil His purpose in some unique way. Exactly why God has needed each one of billions of human beings through history and into the future – when His only purpose is to glorify His own name (or possibly to build some intangible, heavenly futuristic pyramid or über-Eden) – is never made clear. In the same week that a 16-year-old American male, Jeffrey Weise, shot nine children and adults and himself in his school in Red Lake, Michigan, estimates were released that approximately 10.6 million children under 5 die each year from pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles, HIV/AIDS, injuries and birth problems, mainly in Africa and South-east Asia, and mainly as a result of poverty (Guardian, 25 March 2005). This figure is running at 10 times the rate of deaths estimated for war casualties in the twentieth century. Weise was known to be a troubled youngster. The World Health Organization and others believe the means to avert infant deaths are already available. While we generally take it for granted that technological progress is steady, if not exponential, some recent studies cast doubt on this. Adler (2005) gathers the views of those who calculate a slow-down in technological innovation since 1873, with a peak in 1915. According to such views, most advances are now relatively minor details in knowledge completion and overall we may be heading for a new dark age. See Jacobs (2005) for examples of how the civic fabric crumbles simultaneously with the apparent advance of technology. It should be noted that Tallis shares with Hobsbawm a belief and hope in Enlightenment values (which ‘stand between us and an accelerated descent into darkness’: Hobsbawm (1998, p. 336). Contrary to my own argument, some (e.g. Singer, 2004b, p. 109) demonstrate that in ancient and contemporary tribal societies, more were or are killed on a percentage basis than are killed by mass wars today. It may be that both our news systems and our sensitization to violent deaths lead us to perceive war as more prevalent and/or lethal, relatively speaking, than it was or is. According to Ferguson (2006) twentieth-century warfare was more intense, concentrated in certain areas and decades and distinctive in its backdrop of relative affluence. Bayley (2004, p. 99): ‘Fox television said that while the words “tits” and “knockers” are not allowed, no exception would be made to the use of boobs, bazongas, jugs, hooters and snack trays’. Not only are we neurotic about


23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

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nudity and the terms used for sexual body parts and functions, we are also irrational about preferences for certain terms. Exactly how long our discomfort about our animal selves goes back can’t be known but consider this anecdote from 1581 in England: ‘This Earl of Oxford, making on his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to travel, 7 years. On his return the Queen welcomed him home, and said, My Lord, I had forgot the fart.’ (Lewis, 2001, p. 181) The neuroscience writer McCrone (2002) celebrates humans’ superior ability to think ahead and laments animals being trapped in the present. While it is true that we can think about the past, future and present, and hence plan and invent, McCrone and others fail to note that we are commonly trapped in and dehumanized by our thought systems and seldom live genuinely in the moment, which is a grave error according to the physicist/philosopher Bohm (1994) and Krishnamurti and Bohm (1985). The death in 2005 of Pope John Paul II and his succession by Benedict XVI prompted much debate on the contrast between espoused Christian love and the Catholic church’s refusal to allow condom use in an age of HIV/AIDS. At the same time, the scandal of paedophile priests came to a head with figures coming to light of up to 10 667 alleged victims in the USA in the last 50 years. Accusations were made that Benedict (formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) had deliberately forbidden or suppressed disclosure of these matters – on pain of excommunication – in the interests of public relations (Observer, 24 April, pp. 10–11). His early membership of the Hitler Youth also came into question. Lest I place too much emphasis on individual hypocrisy, here is a generalized example. Corruption among many African states and their political leaders is well known. Yet, John Christensen, director of Tax Justice Network, argues that Britain is as corrupt as the worst African states. Use of offshore tax havens is common in wealthy nations like Britain, Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, the United States and Ireland. The super-rich of these nations stealthily conceal their money, cheat on their moral-economic obligations and place themselves above citizenship. This may be done in a more ‘sophisticated’ way than by those in developing countries but is, ultimately, hypocritical corruption that allows Africans to have corruption projected upon them as characteristic (Guardian, 4 September 2006). In 2006 the multimillionaire singer Bono of U2, a prominent advocate of tax relief for the developing world, was criticized for hypocrisy when his band moved their tax affairs from Ireland to Holland, where taxes are lower, in order to effect greater ‘tax efficiency’. Edgar Mitchell, one of the astronauts who walked on the moon in 1972, said in 2005, ‘We’ve got to solve the problems on this planet, then we’re more ready to go. We can take something good with us instead of our brand of insanity. When I go to Mars and look back at this tiny little dot, it’s utterly stupid to say, “I came from the United States. Or France. Or the Republic of China.” (Mitchell’s belief in UFOs and faith healing might cast doubt on such opinions.) The Men Who Fell to Earth, Guardian Weekend, 26 March 2005, p. 35. This well-known tripartite model of the evolution of the human brain is Paul MacLean’s, which is supported by some (e.g. Stevens and Price, 2000; but challenged by others (e.g. Clark, 2002). Clark, however, reads it as

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necessarily supporting the view that emotion is inferior to cognition, whereas some (e.g. Janov and Holden, 1975) regard the latest, dominant neocortical, cognitive and symbolic functions as largely responsible for our having lost our way. 28. Neuberger (2005) gives the example of an elderly couple who died in their home of cold-related conditions in the United Kingdom in 2003. Their gas supply had been cut off due to non-payment and British Gas’s claim that they could not alert Social Services due to the Data Protection Act. In fact the couple had more than enough money to pay their bill but could not cope with paperwork. Neuberger describes this in terms of a lack of caring and I am emphasizing its absurd and dehumanizing aspects: we have constructed a society where symbolism (in this case bureaucracy) often counts more than reality. 29. Carolyn Raffensperger puts starkly the loops involved in medical advance and environmental damage: ‘What are we going to do with the irony that industrial health care is one of the most toxic industries on earth? We produce PVC medical devices to treat someone’s cancer, then put them in the hospital incinerator to send back out and give someone else cancer. Or we use mercury in our thermometers in the hospital, and then send that up the incinerator to be deposited in fish and to eventually give more children – human and nonhuman – brain damage’ (Jensen, 2006, pp. 123–124). 30. An essay by Cushman (2001) presents, to my mind, a good example of this academic ‘missing the point’, in his essay on evil in the context of postmodernism, which includes pointers on how to establish a sociology of evil – yet another unnecessary and impotent subdiscipline.

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Origins and Development of Anthropathology How deep must we go, how far back to reveal the ‘reason’ for damaged life? (Zerzan, 1999, p. 45)

Let us assume that we can speak meaningfully of a somewhat unified force of anthropathology. Where, though, can we place its origins? This is the subject of anthropathogenesis: where did man first (and subsequently) ‘go wrong’? Of course, there may be a degree of nonsense in the term ‘first’, as if we could scientifically pinpoint the moment or even era in which this definitively took place (although see DeMeo, 2006; Taylor, 2005). And the putative ‘wrong turn’ was presumably not in any sense a consciously chosen or avoidable one but is, rather, a retrospective hypothesis. But we do have ample myths and clues and it is open to us to speculate. How far back must we go? Some historical analysts limit such time travel to the industrial revolution, the Dark Ages or the Biblical era. There is some logic in limiting ourselves to the time of ‘man’ during evolution. But it is tempting to ask whether we have any signs of ‘things being awry’ even before humans evolved. Indeed, theologians have had to wrestle with such questions for many centuries (Vardy, 1992). Similarly, ethologists and psychologists studying cross-species psychopathology ask to what extent there are commonalities between problematic human and non-human behaviour, and why (Maestripieri, 2005). Technically, however, this raises the objection that anthropathology might then cease to be the correct term. Are we searching for clues to prehuman or parallel zoopathology, ontopathology or cosmopathology? Or even a pathology of God (if we were to concede that ‘he’ might exist)? Isn’t all this a very long and unhelpful way from our contemporary predicament? Although much of it is highly speculative, it is a necessary enquiry insofar as it may help to establish whether we are a uniquely destructive and suffering species,

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and wholly or partly responsible, or not: perhaps ours is a ‘mad’ world, even a mad cosmos. We must take on this uncertainty if we are to ask about ‘the many roots of our suffering’ (Trivers, 1978).

SOME CLUES FROM SCIENCE Let us first spell out the axiomatic: that if nothing had ever existed, we would not be here now, either suffering or experiencing pleasure. The philosopher E.M. Cioran refers to a ‘cosmogonic discomfort’ arising from the very fact of being at all (Cioran, 1998b). Cosmic origins are therefore ‘blameworthy’ in the same way as our own origins in our own individual births. Cioran, like Schopenhauer, like Samuel Beckett, thinks in terms of it being better if we had never existed, in this worst of all possible worlds. Dawkins is well known for inferring from scientific observations that life has no purpose: Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous – indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. (Dawkins, 1995, p. 112)

Nature does not care but somehow we – a part of nature – do, even if we are deluded in this. Nature is ultimately indifferent to Dawkins’ and others’ science but science goes on. Presumably nature in its totality doesn’t care if we understand it or not but it is part of our problem-solving human nature to try to understand and to ameliorate suffering. So is there any reason to think that our cosmos – and our own quotidian anthropathological contents that we know so well today – had to turn out the way it has? Are there meaningful connections to be made between the human historical and lifespan characteristics of susceptibility to fatigue, illness, destructiveness, ageing, deterioration and inevitable death, and the very nature of our universe? Yes. Boulter, a palaeobiologist specializing in understanding past extinctions and who speculates on those to come, puts it this way: Our planet isn’t the only part of the (solar) system that is following the sequence of origin, expansion, maximum diversity, then finally contraction. Species and groups of species do the same thing. I suspect that man-made institutions like governments and empires, businesses and fashion also follow the same patterns. (Boulter, 2002, p. 15)


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The philosopher Ansell Pearson, drawing on the work of the philosopher of history Blackburn (1990), puts this slant on it: It is Entropy and the destructive forces of nature, such as microparasitism, which serve to corrode the human species and its artificial environ ment. . . . Our entire civilization has evolved . . . in accordance with thermodynamic instability, transforming stable systems into unstable ones in order to release free energy. The cunning of unreason – reason’s vampire – exists in symbiotic relationship with the human animal. (Ansell Pearson, 1997, p. 166)

Sensing, and being part of, the rhythm of expansion and contraction, the drama of being from Big Bang to big crunch (or big freeze), we are somehow driven ‘to devise increasingly superior means’ to survive all threats, including the distant but unavoidable threat of solar death. We are locked into ontogeny reproducing phylogeny, and we are also eschatology-bound, whether we try to rationalize our way out of this or not. Proceeding for now on the assumption that a Big Bang did in all probability start the cosmos (there are some scientific as well as religious objections to this theory1), we cannot avoid the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy. This means that although the cosmos started with a high degree of order, disorder increases with time. The universe has been expanding in time, in the same direction as ‘time’s thermodynamic arrow’ (Hawking, 1988). As expansion proceeds, so disorder inevitably increases. Since we are part of all this, not separate, we ourselves must necessarily experience a combination of order and disorder. Indeed, Hawking acknowledges that we as intelligent life could not exist in the coming contracting phase of the universe and that we exist now as a ‘small corner of order’. Let us put it this way: things start with energetic singularity and are converted into entropic multiplicity, and islands of order and stability, before heading for extinction. Empedocles and Plotinus had much earlier discussed the emergence of the many from the ‘One’, something like a dissipative ‘downward flow’ or tolma. One of the peculiarities of humans is that we have evolved a form of consciousness whereby we can ‘see’ distally in time. We can foresee our own demise, both individually and as a species, as well as ruminating on our individual pasts and archaeologically on our collective past. Broadly speaking, however, most of us prefer to ignore or even deny all this or to convert the painful psychological impact of it into consoling religious beliefs about one form or another of resurrection and heaven. The Big Bang is still disputed, and even some physicists claim that entropy may be halted or reversed under certain conditions involving

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nanotechnological interventions; the concept of negentropy or negative entropy has been proposed to account for a God-like solicitous and purpose-giving force. In other words, the ‘human spirit’ – by which we mean an unconquerable survivalist force – tends to fight against any hint of necessary demise or deterioration. Many, perhaps most, dismiss predicted threats to our survival (whether by meteorites, catastrophic (regional and global) environmental events, solar death and big crunch (see Chapman, 1999; Keys, 1999; Levy, 2005b; McGuire, 2005; Moran, 2003; Rees, 2003)) as mere speculation, a challenge for technology, or too distant in time to warrant our concern. But in the interim, we have an interesting face-off between those believing in the indomitability of the human spirit and those, often accused of fatalism, who believe in our being shot through with entropic features. This echoes the nature – nurture and determinism – indeterminism debates. Perhaps it is fair to say that commonly we experience ourselves as both (or alternately) determined and free, an experience dubbed compatibilism by certain philosophers. A primary feature of all life forms is the need for adaptation in changing circumstances and in the context of predation and competition for resources. Successful adaptations are encoded and genetically transmitted. Natural selection via the ‘selfish gene’ (Dawkins, 1978) argues for a blind, meaningless perpetuation of tested forms. But DNA transmission cannot afford to be quite perfectly self-perpetuating. Mutations are almost inevitable and can be accounted for statistically (Leroi, 2003) and sexual selection is used as an argument for the evolution of diversity and cultural sophistication (Miller, 2000). Complex or higher life forms are not directly self-perpetuating but must consume energy and reproduce via sex. Put crudely, higher life forms must hunt food sources and partners; they must exploit opportunities and protect themselves against being consumed. They must protect their young or produce so many young that some loss can be absorbed. It is this deterministic ‘dog-eat-dog’ scenario that offends so many religious adherents and liberal commentators. There are, indeed, easily identified flaws in theories of genetic determinism, including the fuzziness of the boundary between physical and cultural evolution and forms and behaviours that have no obvious evolutionary advantage, such as homosexuality. But we cannot dismiss the view that life seems to have begun in dark, competitive and deterministic ways. Let’s remember too that early life forms and vestiges of these in ourselves are characterized by relatively fixed behaviours, or limited behavioural repertoires. Dawkins (1995) describes the behaviour of certain wasps that have been shown in experiments to dysfunctionally repeat actions over and over again when deceived by the experimenter,


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because of the wasp being genetically programmed to recognize only certain cues. The term ‘sphexish’ has been used to describe such behaviour. But inflexible instincts fill the animal world and we have our fill of these too, whether we refer to them as such or as drives, habits, addictions or traditions. Perhaps we learned to recognize a vast range of options when our species evolved its peculiar consciousness, but we remain torn between this and our more sphexish tendencies. Clinical obsessive-compulsive behaviour fits here, as do many religious ritual behaviours; but so do many patterns of violence and bureaucracy. Indeed, we might postulate a development in ourselves from sphexish to conscious, thence to conflicted anthropathology, with a new development needed but still barely recognized. Our species’ onward momentum has many sphexish features, preventing us from recognizing our folly and learning anew. Much of what’s wrong with us can be traced back to our physical evolution. Many of our biological and adversity-overcoming successes can be seen as leading to their own flip-side. We rely on our hearts to pump but all eventually fail; hence, we must die. (Those who argue for ‘intelligent design’ or creationism must reconcile such design flaws with a theology that insists that Adam’s sin created death.) Indeed our bodies are subject to constant wear and tear and vulnerability to poisons, predators and other threats. We must constantly maintain ourselves but even then are subject to illness, accident and certain senescence and death. Our bipedality is linked with narrow pelvises, which in turn leads to a strictly limited period of pregnancy and human infants being born unable to fend for themselves, requiring a relatively long period of dependency, during which much can go wrong. Williams (1997) speaks of the two-sided ‘wisdom and stupidity of the body’. However marvellous the human body, scientists can point to its design flaws or question its limitations. Williams suggests that three or more eyes would have been more advantageous than our limited two, for example. The design of our partly combined respiratory and eating and drinking apparatus means that we can choke to death. ‘We are in fact plagued with dysfunctional design features from head to toe’, as Williams puts it (p. 187). Dawkins too makes similar comment on aspects of our poor design: the recurrent laryngeal nerve, for one, which betrays its evolutionary history in a massive and wasteful detour on its way to its destination. Many of our human ailments, from lower back pain to hernias, prolapsed uteruses and our susceptibility to sinus infections, result directly from the fact that we now walk upright with a body that was shaped over hundreds of millions of years to walk on all fours. (Dawkins, 2006, p. 134)

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Many bodily failures are traced to evolutionary accidents (or at least features with mixed blessings) with which we are stuck. As is often pointed out, we are designed for primitive conditions and we are not equipped for the complexities, speed and restraints of modern life; it can be extremely difficult to adapt, even by strenuous conscious effort. Biological pathways, once established, continue with all their liabilities as well as advantages. Gluckman and Hanson (2006) spell out the many ways in which our current lifestyles are mismatched with our biological inheritance, a mismatch that includes problems of birth, puberty and menarche, menopause and old age and embraces problems of diet, disease and mutations. Our renowned plasticity helps us considerably with adaptation but it is nevertheless limited. Charlton (2000) makes similar points about the mismatch between our original environment and contemporary civilization’s challenge to our mental health. Nesse and Williams (1996) outline many of the ambiguities of our ancient genetic make up and their implications for compromised health in contemporary conditions. We might also speculate that we are hard-wired mainly for perceiving and addressing proximal and urgent threats and for making small-group alliances. The mismatch is highly problematic between original small-group loyalties (tribe, culture, religion, nation) and the contemporary reality of our global interdependency and the need to prioritize convergence of planetary interests. It is only with the findings of the Human Genome Project that we begin to see the predictable sets of biological time bombs we each inherit. We must guess at how much medical improvement we can make, and what further problems our own interventions may lead to in currently unforeseeable anthropathological loop fashion. We may yet discover hard-wired resistance to loving our perceived enemies.

HUMAN EVOLUTION AND PREHISTORY Archaeologists, anthropologists and evolutionary scientists are still thrashing out the most feasible reconstructions of our evolutionary origins based on relatively slender evidence. There is wide agreement that we originated in Africa and that over millennia we spread across most continents. Early human migrations would have been driven by changing climatic conditions, geological events, availability of food and other resources, intertribal conflict, adventurousness, accidental isolation of groups, nomadic trends, the development of trading routes and so on. But the field is contentious, especially on sensitive issues like human violence. Leakey and Lewin speculate that:


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Warfare is rooted in the need for territorial possession once populations became agricultural and necessarily sedentary. Violence then became almost an obsession, once populations started to grow and to develop the ability to organize large military forces. I do not believe that violence is an innate characteristic of humankind, merely an unfortunate adaptation to certain circumstances. (Leakey and Lewin, 1993, p. 234)

To put this into perspective, Homo sapiens as a hunter-gatherer existed from around 200 000 years ago. From 20 000 to 10 000 years ago, we became more organized, less mobile and increasingly oriented to food resources, and probably had possessions. From about 10 000 years ago we were steeped in food production and were fast developing villages, towns, cities, nations, cultures and civilizations. Griffith (2003) argues that the ‘human condition’ arose in our ancestors about 2 million years ago as a result of the development of reflective consciousness from instinct. Our departure from the animal state was marked by an awareness of cause and effect, which in turn produced heightened sensitivity to the benefits of child nurture, cooperation and altruism as sensible lifestyles. However, the animal aspect of our nature, subject to natural selection, meant that negative pressure was constantly exerted on ‘selfless’ individuals and altruistic behaviour. A tension thus arose between these two aspects and the momentum for survival silenced or minimized the nobler, truer part of our consciousness. This led to the horrors of the human condition we experience today, based on deep denial of what we have done to ourselves. Griffith, however, despises the position of evolutionary psychologists; our deeply negative traits are not hard-wired, in his view. Gianetti (2000) reminds us that the natural world is steeped in deception but at a prelinguistic level. It may be that the evolution of humans presented an opportunity for a thoughtful, cooperative and loving lifestyle, as Griffith (2003) argues, but that the advent of language led both to widespread intraspecies deception and selfdeception. Language gives us communication and literature but also lies, delusions and divisiveness. ‘The gift of language’, as Gianetti puts it, ‘represented a veritable “Big Bang” in the expansion of the universe of deception. . . . When we turn to the intraspecies relationships of the human animal, including of course, the reflections and conversations of the individual with himself, it would be difficult to overestimate the vastness of the field of possibilities for deception and self-deception that the use of language affords’ (p. 23). This tendency of internalized language to deceive us fits with views like Bohm’s (1994) and Smith’s (2004a). It is this internalization of stories that Dawkins (2006) sees as one of the best explanations for the persistence of the ‘God delusion’.

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The habit of language use, especially its use when it is not actually necessary, perhaps became a sort of linguistic virus that was installed in us, that we unwittingly took (and still take) to faithfully represent reality. Writers like DeMeo (2006), Jensen (2006), Taylor (2005) and Zerzan (2002) attribute the pathology of civilization to adaptations to harsh climate about 6000 years ago. Indeed, so many writers, including some feminists, regard this time period as pivotal in a move away from egalitarian societies, from nomadic existence and a cooperative huntergathering lifestyle, that I suspect we must mark this as an aetiological frontrunner. No doubt certain traits were in play well before, perhaps from 2 million years ago. I am unsure whether we will ever know, or if it ultimately matters. Griffith (2003) points to a shift 2 million years ago, Horrobin (2001) to a ‘shift to rapid change’ 150 000 years ago and still others wish to nominate 35 000, 10 000 and 6000 years ago as the most pivotal times. Sykes (2003) discusses changes from about 8000 to 10 000 years ago, citing evidence from the Middle East of female slavery and agriculture. Before that, a peaceful, egalitarian hunter-gatherer lifestyle predominated, in which pregnancies would probably have been delayed until children could walk. A settled existence meant pregnancies every one or two years, thus emphasizing differences between men and women and giving much greater power to men. Since ownership, social hierarchy, and violence gradually came to accompany agriculture, women’s status declined and they would have sought protection from more powerful men, thus ironically selecting the genes of the large, strong, powerful, wealthy and violent and helping to perpetuate this more brutalized form of human being. The use of pottery for drinking may also have played a part in weaning infants, thus breaking the mother – child bond earlier and increasing alienation from the organic and the power of negative socialization. Some feminist historians have suggested a significant break from matricentral times with the advent of agriculture, particularly the plough and the valuing of (male) muscle power that went with it, and a corresponding devaluing of the female (French, 2002a). Sykes sees a clear chain of causation from these times, in terms of the greed, domination, wars, slavery, empire, and ultimately planetary destruction, all in the service of the Y chromosome. Also ironic, however, is that declining male fertility points to the possible disappearance of Y chromosomes until none is left by about 125 000 years in the future, spelling our demise as a species.2 Horrobin’s (2001) arresting thesis, making inferences from the epidemiology of schizophrenia, is that changes in fat biochemistry significantly altered our brains, breasts and buttocks; between 50 000 and


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200 000 years ago fat-rich connections between the nerve cells enabled us to see and think in novel ways and to separate us forever from other apes. Indeed, Horrobin believes that our very creativity is intimately linked with schizophrenia, as with art, religion and technical cleverness: a certain proportion of us have inherited more than our share of visionary genes (see also Stevens and Price, 2000 on this point). But generally, we can say that consciousness of cause and effect, of threat and death, and concomitant creativity in tool making, language, cultural artefacts, home making, animal domestication, agriculture and territoriality, all led towards a kind of human who no longer lived exclusively in the present but who imagined, planned and schemed; who shifted towards patriarchal dominance and violence. We went from small-group existence (probably typically less than 100) to large settled groups. Probably our genesis comprised significant changes in diet and habitat; our outward migrations matched our inward changes in cognitive capacity and opportunity and experimentation no doubt also played a huge part. Another partial hypothesis is put forward by the anthropologist Campbell (1975), who emphasizes a turn from natural feelings to the symbolization of feelings in language. Campbell takes emotion as a social bond among monkeys, apes and humans, as necessary to signal pain, pleasure and need. Emotion is particularly important between infant and mother but also regulates group behaviour among mammals generally. As Campbell notes, ‘non-human primates usually act out their feelings immediately, even if they are displaced’ (p. 371). Pecking orders impinge in such a way that displacement is often necessary. Feelings have sensory, physiological, subjective and expressive components. What may have happened among humans is that language use came to supplement and substitute for emotion, emotion became repressed and stereotypical, and lying became common, resulting in a dangerous state of affairs. Campbell speculates that migration to a colder northern hemisphere and pressure to build homes and villages led to hitherto unknown crowding. Living in dense groups made free emotional expression untenable (e.g. many babies crying). Hence, Campbell interprets ‘the evolution of repression as a socially adaptive neurologic response’ (p. 374, italics in original) to such circumstances, the long-term effects of which are counter-productive. Cortical inhibition of emotion might also have been necessary for the deployment of cognition for increasingly technical tasks. Human history in this account has been characterized by suppression of emotion and/or its conversion into religious sentiment, cultural symbolization and, in its rageful aspects, into violent crime and war. Increasingly and recently, the body and feelings have been drastically suppressed in favour of

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‘higher’ cognitive functions (Berman, 1998). ‘The rigors of human adaptations to confined spaces, cold climates, demanding technology, have put a premium on dissociation as an adaptive trend. But the trend has now gone too far’ (p. 380). Just one example of this is technologized birth practices, where the patriarchal medical agenda tramples on the objections of women and ignores the effects on babies and infants (Kitzinger, 2006; Odent, 2004). For Campbell, the loss of natural emotion – and we have not only suppressed it but forgotten and denied that we have done so – means that ‘mankind is uniquely vulnerable to failure in child-rearing’ (p. 376), with long-term destructive consequences. We know that a great deal is wrong with our civilization but we dissociate, the imperceptibility factor operates. We watch television images of bombed and mutilated fellow humans impotently and mutedly; we tolerate inhuman (monotonous, demanding, emotion-suppressing) jobs; and so on. And psychologists and sociologists can blithely ask whether we need emotions and if we are living in a ‘postemotional’ world. Most analysts of the above kind of analysis would have to agree that no exact time or circumstances can be identified for anthropathogenesis. Bloom (1995, p. 330) is content to put it this way: ‘Superorganisms, ideas, and the pecking order – the triad of human evil – are not recent inventions “programmed” into us by Western society, consumerism, capitalism, television violence, blood-and-guts films, or rock and roll. They are built into our physiology. They have been with us since the dawn of the human race.’ Nevertheless, controversies do exist regarding timing, causality and responsibility. Did we knowingly turn from a life of cooperation and ecological harmony towards an evil, alienated and rapacious lifestyle, were we forced by harsh circumstances into a new, anthropathological mode of being, or were we just doing our best to survive? Or did we become too clever for our own good? Probably the reality was complex, with some groups of humans (and some individuals3) changing much more than others, and we can generally state that some civilizations became more advanced and more violent than others. But overall, across millennia, the change towards larger groups, cognitive cunning, territoriality and patriarchy became irreversible. Now, whatever the original causes of this shift, I think we can rule out a conscious, deliberate act of sin or evil. I suspect that we became victims of our own success. Tradition and habit and sheer momentum have brought us to this point. Our fellow human beings, in the challenge of social regulation and competition, became to some extent our new enemies, or at least ambiguous allies. The creation and refinement of language led to the possibilities of lying and selfdeception as well as advantageous and faithful communication. We are


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equipped, almost saddled, with the ambiguities of parallel good and bad behaviours (Talbot, 2005). One thing necessarily leads to another. The question here is – from where shall we trace our departure from a supposed harmonious existence? Whether we nominate 6000 years or 2 million years, why were the circumstances of evolution and history such that this anthropathological development took place, and had to take place? In other words, can we really separate an anthropogenetic from an ontogenetic cause of things going very wrong? All animals have to feed and defend themselves in a world of limited resources, predators and sometimes fickle climate and environment. Humans had to adjust constantly to their surroundings, and even if the evolution of dramatically different twenty-first century humanity appears outstanding in natural terms, it stemmed from the same pressures of an organism striving to survive as all other organisms face in this kind of natural world. Humans, like all animals, faced and face their own needs, vulnerability and death; all beings must deal with their own entropic features. We seem to be different in being conscious of this and in fighting it. Our hysteria to survive now includes technological birth practices, hugely expensive health services, research into longevity and immortality, cryogenic technology, decimation of other species and depletion of the earth’s resources. Our wealthiest and most powerful nations and leaders are bent on their own survival almost regardless of others. But we are, in a sense, merely a conscious aspect of nature doing what comes naturally – defending and expanding our existence. Being is susceptible to nonbeing, vitality is forever susceptible to deterioration. What appears to be life-promoting can turn out to be deathly, reason’s vampire, ‘iatrogenic’. Although we have been aware of problems in our civilization for thousands of years, we are now becoming aware of large-scale selfdeception and deadly hubris. We do not know, for example, if the environmental damage we have caused is reversible, or if we have time to reverse or repair it. We have lacked the necessary proprioception – awareness of the effects of our actions – that would alert us to the perils of our own causing, and have been duped by our own, dense cognitive networks (Bohm, 1994). We have created a special imperceptibility factor, a blindness towards the environmental results of our traditions, a ‘perceptual sleep’ in Taylor’s (2005) terms, a lack of ‘negative feedback control’ according to Sykes (2003) or ‘deaf effect’ in Griffith’s (2003) terminology. Those liberals calling for social change, including many of my colleagues in the world of counselling, often display an unfortunate impatience with arguments embracing evolution and history, as if these necessarily smack of remoteness,

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irrelevance and determinism. This impatience itself, I sometimes think, is a form of perceptual and analytical limitation, although one has to agree, as discussed in Chapter 1, that too much information and explanation can feel tedious and overwhelming in the face of urgent practical challenges.

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY I include here brief mention of a few suggestive items from classical mythology, most of which are attributed to Homer or Hesiod. The purpose is to draw attention to them as early instances of an awareness of things awry among humans. Also, they provide an early theodicy, or account of how the gods came to allow or create evil. Homer is thought to have written in about the ninth century BCE and his works were probably brought together in the sixth century BCE. The Greek pantheon, created by and not creating the universe, had all the mixed characteristics of human beings: both gods and humans appear to suffer from pride, anger, jealousy and machinations, for example. Ate, sometimes personified as the daughter of Zeus, is also known as an embodiment of ‘mental aberration, infatuation causing irrational behaviour which leads to disaster’ (Price and Kearns, 2003, p. 67). Zeus is said to have expelled Ate from Olympus to inflict divine punishment on human beings. She is also known as the daughter of Eris (Strife) and sister of Dysnomia (Lawlessness). Ate as a force made evil appear good and explained human error. Eris is the ‘daughter of Night and mother of Toil, Pain, Battles, Bloodshed, Lies, Ruin, and the like’ (Price and Kearns, 2003, p. 199). Discordia is Eris’s Latin name. She was also later said to have thrown an ‘apple of discord’ into a wedding party out of anger at not being invited. Pandora was said to have been created by Zeus to punish Prometheus and simultaneously all human beings for stealing fire from the gods. Carrying the well-known large jar – Pandora’s box – she unleashed from it a multitude of evils before closing it with Hope still inside. Here, as in the Sirens as evil temptresses of Odysseus (and elsewhere, of course, Eve in a similar role) destructive forces are not merely personified but in female form.4 Do we not see clearly here, as well as a suspicion that we became too dangerously clever (stealing fire), early misogynistic scapegoating of women? Eros, however, as the god of love, is male, and in his original form responsible for physical (and even violent) desire. He is ‘cunning, unmanageable, cruel; in Anacreon he smites the lovestruck one with an axe or a whip. He comes suddenly like a wind and shakes his


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victims (Sappho, Ibycus). Eros is playful, but plays with frenzies and confusion’ (Price and Kearns, 2003, p. 200). Here we see a longstanding recognition of the ambiguity of erotic love. In Dionysus we have the son of Zeus and Semele, an androgynous and ageless figure, also known by the Romans as Bacchus. Dionysus is mostly known as the god of wine and intoxication but is also associated with ritual madness, mania, illusion, the realm of the dead, revelry, tragedy, and even sometimes murder and cannibalism. Ares (equivalent of the Roman Mars) was the god of war. He is described as brazen, ferocious, insatiable, destructive, and attended by Deomos (Fear) and Phobos (Panic). Interestingly, this era has no terms quite equivalent to sin. The closest perhaps include hamartia (failure, fault or error), scelus (evil deed), and peccatum (fault, error); and the furies, fates and follies are relevant here too. Perhaps the early Greek conception of evil as delusion or infatuation, that humans fall under the spell of, is closer to Buddhist concepts than to Judaic and Christian concepts of moral agency and responsibility. The Greek concept of hubris (acts of violent pride, dishonouring the gods), however, merges easily with later Judaeo-Christian beliefs: human offences against other humans or gods will incur divine wrath. Illnesses, even disastrous epidemics, were often perceived as divine retribution, in the ‘archaic pessimism’ of the early Greeks. This genealogy of tragic themes from the Greeks, through Judeo-Christian tradition and to ourselves is made much of by Ricoeur (1967) among others.

RELIGION AND THEOLOGY Myth and religion offer mainly pre-scientific explanations for the world we live in. Much of their content is now redundant. Many of their tenets are simply incorrect. But the creation of religion is distinctively human. The awakening of consciousness, the movement from animal instinct alone, must have coincided with a frightening consciousness of the power of nature, weather, accident and death. Explanations became important. Goddesses were regarded as responsible for reproduction, until men realized the inseminating part they played in the process and created patriarchal explanations and religion. Violent geological events and dramatic weather had to be explained and propitiated in some way. Gods, and then the One God, came to be the authors of everything. Theories of animism, pantheism and polytheism, sympathetic to a belief in the power of nature itself in all its

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facets, gradually gave way to monotheism, or worship of one all-powerful God. God explained everything, while duly remaining a mystery, but causal explanations also need to be found for misfortune, as we have seen in classical mythology. God must have been displeased with us for us to suffer from asteroids, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, lightning, ice, famine, disease and so on. If things went badly for your tribe or nation, it could not mean your enemies were simply stronger or more vicious than you or their God was more powerful; it meant that you had displeased (your) God. The unease that perhaps accompanied the features of material progress of civilization was felt as guilt, a sense of estrangement and responsibility, which was commonly attributed to human offences against God’s wishes. This was an accurate view, insofar as humans had departed from a harmonious and innocent existence, and must have been aware of their growing violence, greed and insatiable character. But the explanatory forms taken by religion are remote from facts that are now beginning to be seen. For thousands of years religion has been overwhelmingly patriarchal and has coexisted with and incited violence, while usually also espousing ideals of love, cooperation, non-violence (Ellerbe, 1995; NelsonPallmeyer, 2003). Although many of us would agree it has been eclipsed by logical philosophical analysis and scientific discovery (not to mention materialistic pleasure and security in this world), its emotional appeal is deeply lodged in the human psyche and in particular in certain societies. The tragedy is not that religions are entirely untrue or irrelevant but that their explanations are erroneous and anachronistic on a scale that now threatens the planet. The Abrahamic religions emanating from the Middle East are patriarchal, have global ambitions and are inseparable from environmental degradation and inter-group violence. Buddhism Gautama, as the story goes, had a privileged and protected lifestyle, personally experienced no hardship and therefore sought deliberately to find out how ordinary people lived and suffered. Witnessing disease, loss, death and all associated suffering, he set out to understand this and its origins. Experimenting with the extant methods of his day, he finally gave up and looked within himself, which led to the experience of enlightenment under the bodhi tree. Buddhism famously asserts that ‘all life is suffering’ and that this suffering stems from our weddedness to living in samsara, a tendency to go round in circles of illusion. We are somehow deluded into thinking of ourselves as (insisting we are) a separate ego and we are driven by desire and attachment.


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We compulsively seek to avoid pain and maximize pleasure and in the process generate enormous delusion (Batchelor, 2004). Buddhism talks about there being ‘eighty-four thousand negative emotions’, argues that ‘all worldings are deranged’ and posits the notion of kleshas or mental afflictions (Goleman, 2004). While different schools of Buddhism emphasize or otherwise the principle of karma to explain suffering, all agree that a way ‘out of woe’ exists and can be found via meditation or mindfulness. Buddhism is sometimes said not to be a religion because it has no God (although it has a devil figure, Mara). Buddhism clearly has a view resembling the anthropathological, yet insists it can be overcome. The nihilism attributed to Buddhism has attracted many Western intellectuals such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Beckett for its analysis of the human condition (Morrison, 1997). It is significant, however, that few people of Buddha-like status or conviction have appeared (similar to the rarity of Jesus and others), that Buddha himself was patriarchally resistant to accepting female monks and was perhaps somewhat disillusioned in old age, and that Buddhists are not above folly (Zweig and Abrams, 1991). Christianity Old Testament writers and editors put together, from a number of sources, a reasonably coherent mythology of sin and evil. All accounts point to the creator God constructing a good creation containing all that was necessary for subsistence and happiness from Eden onwards. In Genesis God also created man, a creature with free will, who in his omniscience God must have known would opt to ‘abuse’ his freedom. Following Adam’s disobedience, egged on by Eve, mankind was forever after subject to sin, suffering and death. Man has been the agent of his own downfall. But of course God had foreseen all this and consequently (New Testament) sent his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us via his own extreme suffering and death. In this we are blessed, indeed we may derive joy from the very experience of perdition necessitating forgiveness (Alison, 1998), which is a permutation of the theme of needing pain to appreciate pleasure. On the one hand such stories can be viewed as pre-scientific narratives of paradise lost, exodus and promised land, as symbolic accounts of being psychologically or spiritually lost and found; or on the other as wholly inane and anachronistic world views. Theodicy, the theologians’ attempt to explain how a God of love could permit so much evil, tragedy and suffering, is a good example of endlessly inventive, irrational rationales for the unjustifiable (Vardy, 1992). Usually, the wickedness of man (and woman) is a large part of the suggested answer; sometimes a subtler

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explanation involving the tragically ambiguous nature of existence and the inevitability of estrangement is given (Tillich, 1957). Prophet (2000) offers an explanation for the birth of evil based on the Book of Enoch, suppressed by rabbis and church fathers for many centuries. According to this, fallen angels, the Nepholim and ‘Watchers’, lusted after and literally, physically impregnated human females. The Nephilim were ‘cast down’ while the Watchers instigated their own fall. There could be some pre-scientific, oral-historical truth embedded in this story – different species encountering each other and one (the Nephilim were also called ‘giants’) won out at least partially in terms of sexual selection, thus transmitting evil genes. At any rate, these fallen angels are considered in this tradition to have taught men how to build weaponry. While some believe in the literal nature of fallen angels and their progeny, others will interpret such stories and their acceptance as evidence of the gullibility, irrationality and perhaps psychotically delusional nature of believers. How can we (and should we?) discriminate between enthusiasts of science fiction, science fantasy and miscellaneous paranormal phenomena (Carroll, 2003; McKay, 1841/1995; Sagan, 1996)? While the Old Testament, and indeed much of Judaism and Islam, rest on strict ethical and legal principles for correct behaviour in society and as preparation for a promised afterlife, the New Testament, the ‘good news’, tells us that there is a path beyond strict moral codes. Jesus came as a sign of the end of suffering human history, pointing to a new, loving way of living in this life and a fearless attitude towards death. Interpretations vary from literalistic (God became incarnate to declare forgiveness for sins and to show us new life) to a restatement of Old Testament principles (we must do as Jesus said and live with purity or face hellfire), to a liberal view of Jesus as simply a wise and insightful spiritual guide to a post-anthropathological existence. But all in all, Christianity has been subject to serious anthropathological distortion during its 2000 years. Probably originally a vital, inspired individual and small-scale collective experience and countercultural example of the possibility of living free of suffering, deceit, envy, greed and so on, it became too successful with Romans and others, leading to bastardized versions of itself, reified creeds and churches, ecclesiastical censorship and exploitation, persecutory practices, guilt propagation, zealous delusions and bland niceness (Ellerbe, 1995; Kahl, 1971). Christianity shows us that pre- or post-anthropathological states can ‘break through’ chronic anthropathology; but also that even such powerful movements are subject to entropic, aggressive and deceitful forces. Indeed, the cross itself is a symbol of this very ambiguity, tragedy and reconciliation.


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Islam Mohammed was born about 570 CE in Mecca into a religious climate of mixed paganism and traditional Abrahamic monotheism. From the age of 40 he began to have revelations or visions which he subsequently shared with others, often attracting scorn. Early Islam is characterized by the spread of his teaching, the creation of the Koran and intergroup conflicts. Islamic theology stressed from the outset the singularity or unicity of God, or Allah, an ‘uncompromising monotheism’. God stands in opposition to human perversity. Although Islam has a strong thread of compassion and allegiance with peace (and its ban on usury is surely commendable), it also has some well-known harsh laws, including corporal and capital punishments. The Islamic tendency towards purity of identity and its strong attachment to its prophet and the time and customs of its origins mean that it is more insistent on certain religious regulations than some other religions; it is also, mirroring Mohammed’s lifestyle, friendly to polygamy and other male privileges. The Koran is God’s word and is taken to be infallible, although scholars and lawyers sometimes pore over its 6000 verses with some difficulty in agreeing. Islam is also the newest of the major religions and in terms of energy may still be in upward growth cycle in comparison with others (I suspect that religions, like all natural phenomena, are subject to entropy, even though religious burn-out takes many centuries). Islam, like most religions, has its scheme of insider believers and outsider infidels (kaffirs) who live in jahiliyaa (ignorance). It is clearly a major part of the patriarchal monotheistic tradition, with its own hierarchy of representatives, its own heaven and hell, and so on. Some of its adherents regard it as intrinsically ambitious about establishing worldwide Islamic rule; this is not unique to Islam, however. Currently, and in particular following 9/11, Islam is constantly in the news, is both internally riven and externally misunderstood, largely in connection with the extremes of terrorism and the challenge of veil-wearing and other signs of non-integration into host countries. Many non-Muslims feel threatened by Islam (recall the headline cases of Salman Rushdie, Pym Fortuyn, Bernard-Henri Levy and others), which shows itself to be currently more violently intolerant than most religions. Manji (2004) argues that Islam has been in effect hijacked by assertive and uncritical factions. One critique of Islam must be (see Chapter 6) that it resists analysis of its origins in historical, cultural and psychological terms. Visionaries have experiences of fragmentary wholeness and partial insights; their transmission loses something in time and across populations, the message is reified and distorted by

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those hungry for certitude. The subtly embodied experience of oneness that is perhaps known to a few (Adamson, 2004) is converted by others into a mistaken ideology of the oneness of a wholly removed idea of the one true God. Pieces of sensible morality become inseparable from swathes of dogmatic and dangerous theology. What was probably a revelation of possible non-anthropathology becomes, anthropathological loop-style, its opposite. Love often becomes hate.

HISTORY Too vast a subject for me to summarize or even wisely select from, history yet tells us much about our struggle across time. Blackburn (1990) puts forward the concept of ‘the vampire of reason’ or underbelly of constructive human activity in history. History has been written by conquerors, by men, and has been seriously biased. There is far more to our past than kings and emperors and their battles but even this tells us much about our aggression, our apparently inevitable thrust towards territoriality, genocide and enslavement (Gigantes, 2003; Glover, 2001). Historians are not agreed about the causes of war, but greed and the pursuit of power feature prominently. Resource scarcity, climatic infelicity and ethnic conflict have all contributed, as have cumulative post-traumatic drives, revenge and male aggression. The histories of distant ordinary lives are unknown but oral histories and an increasing emphasis on disease (Cartwright and Biddiss, 2004), minority and oppressed groups (Dudink, Hagemann and Tosh, 2004; French, 2002a, 2002b, 2003), the environment (McNeill, 2000) and so on, help to compose a much more comprehensive form of history. History will always be reshaping itself. Alongside the view that ‘history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken’ (James Joyce) or ‘just one damn thing after another’ (attributed to Winston Churchill) is the more positive record of medical progress, better hygiene and better health and longevity, the abolishment of slavery, emancipation of women and other signs of the inventiveness, increasing cooperation and rationality of humanity. Optimists underline these positive achievements and challenge us to believe that the past was in any sense a golden age – would we live in the distant past if we could choose (perhaps with variable food supplies, rotting teeth, vulnerability to marauding enemies, predators and generally shortened lives)? I know of no measurement for such things but suspect that the past had its ugliness and benefits just as the present has its comforts and disadvantages. Wright (2005) is persuaded that a ‘progress trap’ operates in history (not unlike anthropathological loops) whereby the very rapaciousness of our success is turning against us;


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the pace and scale of technological progress culminating in weapons of mass destruction and global environmental damage leaves us with nowhere to go. Archaeology is highly significant in helping us fill out the details of where we have come from, helping us to overcome our collective equivalent of childhood amnesia. History is important in reminding us of the most negative aspects of the past, in the hope that we will avoid unnecessary repetition of the bad. The Holocaust is a prime example. But it cannot prevent repetition and we do not seem to see problematic cumulative trends and their effects creeping up on us, as in current environmental hazards and international conflicts, until it is too late. What history tells us is that we have a past from which it is difficult to distance or extricate ourselves. Reason often tells us which course of action, which tradition, is not going well, but force of habit, sheer impetus, usually seems stronger than reason. The very composition of the past makes significant large changes almost impossible. The world could be reshaped geopolitically tomorrow if we all agreed it as wise (say, abolish nation states, speak a common language, redistribute wealth, limit population growth) but it isn’t going to happen because (i) we are highly unlikely ever to agree, (ii) even if we could rationally agree, we couldn’t operationalize it against powerful unconscious, emotional and cultural forces and (iii) the ensuing totalitarianism would probably be worse than the current destructive plurality (a severe anthropathological loop). Somehow we are tied to our origins and all their flaws and some changes can apparently only come about with evolutionary gradualness; and in our current critical context waiting for sufficient sanity to evolve is not a realistic option.

POLITICS Politics, the so-called art of the possible, has always involved necessary choices and their implementation. Every society has been under pressure to regulate itself internally and to respond to other societies and to environmental threats and opportunities. The mass societies of today have government that is remote from most of its citizens and many governments’ actions have potentially global effects, in contrast with earlier, smaller communities. But a thread of pressure and inevitable negativity runs throughout. In the post 9/11 scenario, Ignatieff puts it this way: Life’s toughest choices are not between good and bad, but between bad and worse. We call these choices between lesser evils. We know that whatever we do, something important will be sacrificed. Whatever we

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do, someone will get hurt. Worst of all, we have to choose. We can’t wait for better information or advice or some new set of circumstances. We have to decide now, and we can be sure that there will be a price to pay. If we don’t pay it ourselves, someone else will. (Ignatieff, 2005, p. xiii)

Ignatieff is discussing the evils of brute, unaccountable reaction to contemporary terrorism versus the accountable responses of liberal democracies, and of course commending the latter. Historically, such reactions have often involved overkill, or anthropathological escalation. Ignatieff argues for measured response and continuing persuasion; perhaps we are learning such moderation, and perhaps not. But what interests me here is the pervasiveness of having to choose, and choose urgently. This is not only in the context of terrorism; our governments always have to decide now which direction they will take on major issues. They may make wise or strategically beneficial decisions, or otherwise. They may decide on the basis of the best interests of all (their official brief) or, out of corruption or self-interest, for a minority and short-term gain. And what is of further interest is that individuals are in the same boat, having to choose on the basis of prevailing circumstances, with incomplete knowledge, swayed by emotion and personal interests; and often our choices have long-term repercussions that we cannot foresee but must live with. Circumstances and awareness change over time and new possibilities in large scale politics and personal politics become available. But enmeshment in all this cannot be avoided. Political philosophers have of course turned over all possible permutations of what it is best for the state to aim for and how; concepts of leadership, democracy, individual freedom, group conflict resolution and forward planning have all been well rehearsed. The nature of the masses – whether capable of self-government or not – and the need for state control, these are perennial topics. Hobbes (1651/1968) showed a realism about the need for firm control, which some regard as a cynical view of humans. And anarchists have argued for a variety of ways in which humans can and should regulate themselves (Marshall, 1993). But it is a shifting subject we are talking about, with sheer population size and density, and corresponding resource problems and inter-group conflicts taking centre stage. Tribalism, nationalism, intransigent religious adherence and group ambitions are all problematic and anachronistic ingredients of today’s political nightmare. Gandhi and others have made the point, seemingly naively, that the earth can feed everyone if we use our technology wisely, but no amount of rational appeal can dissolve ancient enmities, superstitions and sphexish behaviour.


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Free market capitalism is the creed of the West and increasingly of most other nations, but we surely know viscerally that such beliefs have dire limits. This world view is partly driven by a fear of Communism, even while Communism and its failures are derided. While some national leaders defend the right to greater resources for their own people, and some religious leaders endorse a ban on contraception and encourage large (religious) families, global instability will continue. Mistrust rules the world, largely mistrust in the hands of men who are ever-ready with deceptive and aggressive responses. World population increase, ethnic and nationalistic tensions, resource depletion, availability of weapons of mass destruction – these almost certainly presage perpetually intermittent warfare. Rationality and a commitment to one-world welfare (Singer, 2004b) would lead us to a sane future but this necessarily new, non-defensive, cooperative mindset looks highly unlikely to prevail.

TRANSGENERATIONAL ANTHROPATHOLOGY Many would have us represented as a blank slate at birth, as innocents (literally, unhurt), but there are ample counter-arguments. Biblically, the message of ‘the sins of the fathers’ is that they may incur transgenerational consequences. The Hindu concept of karma does not focus on transfamilial consequences but on the outcomes of our actions relayed from one incarnation to another. Poetically, Larkin asserted that ‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf’. Historically, it is clear that one generation often tends to take on the traumatic echoes of its warring or suffering predecessors, as well, often, as its tribal beliefs, resentments, sphexish repertoires and psychological scars. Hoffman (2005) and Jackson (2003) remind us of the familiar view that Holocaust survivors, for example, pass on their suffering, partly by numbing themselves to it. ‘People on the front lines of suffering become conductors of pain,’ as Jackson puts it (p. 240). Sceptical about the separation of psychological and physical pain, Jackson argues somewhat like Brennan (2004) that pain and suffering inevitably transmit themselves to others: Chronic pain is like a toxic spill, with damage that eventually spreads far beyond the original site. Neglect one local disaster – a back injury, a twisted knee – and it can metastasize into more pain. More pain poisons the joy and the vitality of one individual, whose suffering then seeps into the lives of family members. Pain can destroy a wide radius of lives. (Jackson, 2003, p. 356)

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Psychotherapists typically portray neurosis or toxic psychological injunctions as passing from parents to children. But a writer and clinician like Ancelin Schutzenberger (1998) argues that transgenerational transmission of the psychological aspects of family abuses, accidents, tragedies and demands is common. It is quite evident that post-traumatic stress disorder can have transgenerational effects. It is also commonly mooted that anxiety states, shyness, alcoholism and other distressing traits or propensities can pass through families. Social workers have noted the cycles of physical abuse and neglect in certain families and, although it does not follow that all abused children necessarily grow up to abuse their own children, there is some evidence of a degree of such transmission.

INDIVIDUAL ANTHROPATHOLOGY There are the transgenerational messages that seep into us in our early lives and the as yet uncharted aspects of negative psychological inheritance paralleling physical deformities. We are at least willing to entertain the idea that some individuals are ‘born gay’, but we are much more hesitant about any hypothesis claiming that paedophiles may be born paedophilic. Debates about inherited intelligence (or its limits), inherited criminality or psychopathy, and so on, have attracted acrimony for many decades. Indeed, a pendulum mechanism seems to exist, whereby changes occur by the decade in the acceptability of theories of determinism and free will. Take shyness, for example. Evolutionary theorists have postulated that it is linked with self-protection and that blushing occurs more in pale-skinned, light-haired northerners; psychologists categorize it according to inherited traits and environmental influences and psychotherapists are likely to see it in terms of attachment and parental deficits. But shyness is not usually considered seriously socially problematic. Briefly, consider sex. It is built into us (except for the alleged 1% who have no sexual interest at all). Biologically, we must have sex to procreate (or arrange for artificial insemination). But nature makes us crave sex, its pleasurable aspects frequently outweighing any caution and calculation. The high of sexual excitement, carnal embrace and orgasm often overcomes rationality, most clearly in relation to unwanted pregnancy, disease and commitment. Men may be more culpable than women in regarding sex as separate from love and commitment, as an opportunistic moment of sheer hedonism, but both men and women can and do suffer from the consequences of sex, including its addic-


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tive, even obsessive characteristics. The operation of sexual selection means that we discriminate, calculate and deceive, and each of us has some sense of our attractiveness in a pecking order of personal aesthetics. Additionally, early life, relationship history and contextual factors combine to make us discriminate (or not) and sometimes to make poor long-term choices. And as much as we may argue that sex is under our rational control and we are responsible for all we do, it often doesn’t feel that way. Sex is the original heaven-and-hell drug. We can feel low after it and addicted to it for a lifetime. It frequently leads to children who are unwanted and ill-cared for, who themselves seek love via sex; and it leads globally to overpopulation. Small wonder it has been said that ‘life is a sexually transmitted disease’. Each of us carries our sexual peculiarities with us and most of us find it difficult to speak openly about these; often enough, we cannot even admit them to ourselves. Why are our feelings – which are, remember, only feelings – so often so very painful to us? Human beings’ feelings can drive them to murderous anger, to the wretched depths of depression and to suicide. Anything from small interpersonal slights to outright rejections can wound us deeply, even though such events are far from life-threatening. Clearly, this may be due to current negative feelings triggering past painful feelings when, possibly, emotional rebuffs and rejections might just have been experienced as life-threatening. (If Mummy doesn’t love me, I’ll die.) Clearly, some of us are more sensitive, highly strung, less emotionally resilient, than others. Evans (2001) asks after Darwin whether we ‘still need emotion today’. It is not obvious that many extremes of emotion are necessary or helpful, and Evans concludes that a moderate amount of emotion is indeed necessary and helpful to alert us to threats to our well-being. But is it not staggering that we can now ask such a question? Of course, the perceived redundancy or troublesomeness of emotion goes hand in hand with a technical–rational culture that embraces computerized cognitive behavioural therapy. We do not commonly experience ourselves as completely rigid or fluid, as either wholly determined or free, but as operating from a wellformed entity with some degree of choice. Longitudinal studies like those conducted by Kagan and Snidman (2004), however, appear to show very clearly and scientifically the stubbornness of bold, outgoing and cautious, introverted temperaments from the earliest years across decades; they speak of an ‘inherited physiology’ and ‘the long shadow of temperament’. Rutter (2006) weighs up the evidence for genetically determined traits (e.g. for susceptibility to mental disorders)

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and acknowledges that all interested parties seem to take sides and often skew the evidence that exists. Inherited traits or tendencies are influenced by environment and vice versa but we do not know precisely how, either generally or in individual cases. We now have many accounts of things going wrong in the womb, during birth and immediately after (Kitzinger, 2006; Odent, 2004); and a whole theory of critical periods. Again, what knowledge we have is contested. Intrauterine and birth trauma are promoted as real and highly significant by some radical obstetricians and humanistic psychologists, for example, and as nonsense by other psychologists (see Feltham, 1999). The social epidemiologist Wilkinson (2005) gives some stark pointers to the long-term negative effects of stressful early life including low birth weight, prenatal maternal stress, family conflict and social class as contributing to later illness, shortened life expectancy, low self-esteem, depression and anxiety. Such testimonials are particularly important coming from sources other than the easily dismissed clinical observations of counsellors and therapists. Schopenhauer describes the typical human lifespan in this way: We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness, we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses. And the road from the one to the other goes, in regard to our well-being and enjoyment of life, steadily downhill: happily dreaming childhood, exultant youth, toil-filled years of manhood, infirm and often wretched old age, the torment of the last illness and finally the throes of death. (Schopenhauer, 1851/1970, p. 54)

It is tempting to ascribe such attitudes to the gloominess of ‘old Europe’.5 The contemporary novelist Houellebecq puts it even more starkly and miserably: Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, . . . were the salt of the earth. . . . Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities whilst ceaselessly bearing witness – powerless and shamefilled – to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies. . . . They would have to look after children, . . . feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, . . . they would remain the slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no good for anything. . . . It


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was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favour of the one that replaced it. (Houellebecq, 2006, p. 280)

Most accounts of individual development, certainly those spawned by psychologists, have accentuated innate characteristics, poor parenting and coping abilities as significant. Genes, birth, life events, chance have also featured in some accounts. But Harris (1998) for example, describes how difficult she found it to oppose the poor parenting tradition and to commend her findings that young people’s peer groups and their educational experiences often impacted much more strongly on them. Most views of development, certainly those used by therapists, privilege a ‘vertical’ narrative: that is, things happen along the life course, in a biographically linear way. Few have taken seriously the idea that we suffer from ‘horizontal’ influences. These may include the hospital environment we are born into, the food we ingest, the cultural expectations placed upon us, compulsory schooling, socially restricted movement and behaviour, gender, ethnic, career and consumer expectations, any economic and military vicissitudes in one’s society and the general milieu of civilization today. Each of us is a cog in a 6-billion-plus human machine, having to figure out our own path of survival according to personal assets, deficits and chance factors. ‘Society’ cannot say ‘We have got it wrong, things are all going anthropathologically wrong,’ so somehow individuals must make assumptions that they themselves are in the wrong, whether sinfully, criminally, neurotically or whatever. We grow up with the firm sense of ourselves as relatively isolated individuals (more community-oriented cultures notwithstanding) and in some degree of tension between what we need and want, what we are permitted to feel, think and do and what we feel able to do and achieve. Most of us seem subject to the Pauline struggle between base inclinations and noble objectives: we know what we want and need to do but cannot ever quite do it. Each of us is enmeshed in this human condition and struggles, usually very privately, to make sense of it. Yet, this is rarely if ever spoken of. It is not on the school curriculum and not welcome at the family dinner table.

LITERATURE Human suffering and tragedy have been recorded by poets, dramatists and novelists for centuries. Indeed, much literature is a transmutation of suffering, a cathartic way of expressing it in order to lessen its

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personal impact, and much comfort and insight has been derived from it by readers. There probably are more dark and tortured themes in literature than themes of lightness and optimism; these have been welcomed by many but complained about as a distorted ‘pathography’ by some. As a rather arbitrary example, Cole (1962) gives interesting insights into the playwright Christopher Marlowe’s themes of suffering and evil. Arguing that the medieval mystery plays provide an explanatory background to Marlowe’s work, Cole demonstrates the association between evil and comedy, the tendency to highlight the ‘natural lout’ in man and man’s constant folly. But there is also a theologically good outcome: The catastrophic and primeval fall of man becomes the felix culpa; even the harsh cruelties of the Passion of Christ are made bearable by the universal conviction that the via dolorosa is the way to the world’s redemption. In short, the medieval audience of the mystery cycles was assured, as was St Augustine, that all things work together unto good – suffering, evil, even sin. (Cole, 1962, p. 16)

The suffering and evil depicted by Marlowe is often seen primarily in great, heroic and mythical figures, but is equally applicable to ordinary mortals. The themes of loss, ‘irony of human aspiration’ and human responsibility for suffering and evil are paramount. We would expect such of a writer of his time and place, with his theological training. By contrast, the unmitigated, pointless suffering and lack of meaning found in a great deal of modern existentialist or similarly bleak or tragicomic literature (Kafka, Eliot, Camus, Sartre, Plath, Beckett, Larkin, Bellow and others) demonstrate clearly the post-theistic shift; even those who retain belief in God, like T.S. Eliot, regard modern life as a wasteland. D.H. Lawrence’s novels show the contrast between raw and civilized humans, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies depicts humans as innately savage. Philip Roth’s Everyman movingly and succinctly charts the course of inevitable illness and death. Faulks (2005) portrays a youthful idealism, the quest for explanations for and solutions to the problems of insanity, converting into the empty successes of midlife, finally running down entropically and chaotically into adultery, dementia, disappointment and death, in his novel Human Traces. We have lived through ages both of eventful tragedy (including two world wars) and anguished eventlessness. Perhaps we are now in a time of so-called postmodernity in which nobody knows quite what to say and historical romances jostle with slick and cynical novels and stories about passing social fashions.


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The science fiction writer Philip K. Dick describes exactly the kind of parallel micro- and macro-anthropathology I wish to get at in this book: Horselover Fat continued his insidious, long decline into misery and illness, the sort of chaos that astrophysicists say is the fate in store for the whole universe. Fat was ahead of his time, ahead of the universe. Eventually he forgot what event had started off his decline into entropy. (Dick, 1992, p. 11)

Although poetry, drama and novels are celebrated as among our finest achievements (even Carey (2006) wants to exempt these from his critique of the arts), my own view is that they mesmerize us unhelpfully. Of course, part of the story of humankind is told through literature, sometimes with great poignancy, but this is no longer necessary or helpful. We have increasingly accurate descriptions of and feasible explanations for the human condition, along with clear and urgent implications for action. Literature, like religion, was a necessary encoding of our struggle, but we now neither need it nor are served well by it. Life is entertaining and tragic enough in itself, in its quotidian and chronic anthropathological aspects and in the unspoilt sensuousness and wonder of the natural world. Yet, I think we prefer stories about it rather than experiencing it fully or engaging in serious and necessary changes. This does not mean we should abolish literature, as in some totalitarian political or religious nightmare; rather it is a cry for us to wake up to our real tragedy and to ‘re-write’ it transformatively.

CONCLUSION Here are many clues in religion, science, the humanities and arts about something having gone deeply wrong in human time. It seems highly probable to me that certain epochs can be nominated as richly anthropathogenic, and archaeologists, anthropologists and historians may further enlighten us. It seems we adaptively took a certain course, either out of necessity or opportunistically, that is no longer tenable and that we are slowly, perhaps too slowly, coming to recognize. This is not merely about a history of external events but of deeply internalized psychological traits; so deeply internalized indeed that we continue to fail to recognize them and commonly deny them.

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Anthropathology is embedded in us and surrounds us. Of course, had not something non-anthropathological survived, we could not at all detect the problem now. But the claim that ‘they know not what they do’ from over 2000 years ago, still holds true. We complain and want things to be better but we do not see the roots of what is wrong in ourselves or within our power to change significantly. Notes 1. The majority scientific view is that a ‘Big Bang’ or singularity initiated our universe about 14 billion years ago, but dissenters exist. Recently, the theory has been advanced that a number of cyclical Big Bangs may go back a trillion years. As well as making our own appearance even more ‘insignificant’, it reminds us that current science is provisional and our hubris in insisting we know with certainty about a 14-billion-year-old Big Bang has an anthropathological aspect – we do not like to be proved wrong. 2. On the decline and predicted total loss of the Y chromosome, a recent development in the cloning of mice sperm in stem-cell experiments suggests that one day before 125 000 years in the future science may well be able to avert this crisis. 3. Tracing the origins of the ‘alpha male’ may be problematic but we can hardly deny the historical emergence of powerful males, as well as visionaries, schizophrenics and other distinctive, sometimes extremist individual types (Broomhall, 2003; Wrangham and Peterson, 1996). 4. On the identification of the female as responsible for the human fall, see Songe-Moller (2002), who traces the origins of philosophy in a way that shows woman as ‘death-bringer’ and chaos bearer. 5. On individual anthropathology and its entropic parallels in other phenomena, linked with old European attitudes, the German writer Sebald captures the mood: ‘On every new thing lies already the shadow of annihilation. For the history of every individual, of every social order, indeed of the whole world, does not describe an ever-widening, more and more wonderful arc, but rather follows a course which, once the meridian is reached, leads without fail down into the dark’ (Sebald, 1998, p. 24). Sebald is a master observer of transience and decay; see his account of how capitalist fickleness and perennial entropy affects a town like Lowestoft (p. 42) and how it triggers the sentiment that there is ‘no sign of an end to the encroaching misery’.

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Support and Evidence for the Anthropathology Thesis This chapter takes the form of several reviews of texts presenting arguments that resemble the anthropathology argument put forward here, or aspects of it. In each case, I attempt to very briefly summarize the book in question, to show likenesses and limitations of likeness in argument, and to offer critique where it seems due. I have also used these reviews to get at some nuances of anthropathology.

EVIL IN MODERN THOUGHT: AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY BY SUSAN NEIMAN (2002) The editor opens this book by discussing 9/11 and going on to ask how one can compare major events and key place names with associations of atrocity (such as Auschwitz, Hiroshima, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake) and their relation to evil. She also necessarily refers to Hannah Arendt’s concept of the ‘banality of evil’. Neiman’s book is important in using philosophy to examine real-world phenomena (she acknowledges the abstract nature of much philosophy) and in particular the identity and problem of evil. Sentiments like ‘this ought not to have happened’ and objections about pointless suffering are examined. One of the intriguing aspects of this book is that it rightly draws attention to evil and suffering and the neglect or misunderstanding of such vital subjects in philosophy, but at the same time it suffers itself from the problems of philosophy. In other words, the author finds it necessary to engage in constant reference to the works of classical philosophers, to their micro-analytic concepts and the fine distinctions between them, in such a way that the urgency and poignancy of the topic is lost. In declaring that ‘one could spend a lifetime studying the problem of evil and be no better for it’ (p. 10), she perhaps fails to see the irony

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that this wastefulness of effort is just what happens. It is in the nature of philosophy to do this, as Marx famously and exasperatedly said. The theodicy of Leibniz, Rousseau’s distinction between natural and moral evil and his view of evil as historical, the Kantian focus on the is–ought gap and human hubris, Hegel’s ‘disinterested sorrow’, Marxian overthrow of God and identification of misery as historical, Bayle’s onslaught on theodicies, Voltaire’s scathing scepticism, these and more are all examined in some detail. Hume, De Sade, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Camus, Arendt, these are also the big names in Neiman’s analysis. It’s an exciting intellectual ride with many nuggets of arresting thought. That ‘Kant offered a metaphysic of permanent rupture’ (p. 80), presumably in some way presaging existentialism, gives pause for thought. But what if we asked for Darwin to be inserted here, and recent writers such as Taylor (2005) and DeMeo (2006), with their notions of historical rupture? Philosophers spend far too much time regurgitating, almost worshipping and obsessing about the thoughts of past philosophers. And what if academics, never mind the general public, had time to read books like Neiman’s conscientiously? Is it not part of the evil of our commercialized era that our busyness with production displaces our need for reflection? Quite often Neiman is discussing theodicy, as if one must take seriously the place of God in common and philosophical thought. But she nevertheless makes some interesting points. ‘What if the world were created by a being whose sole purpose was to cause us torment and illusion? God knows it sometimes looks that way’ (p. 10). It does look that way. But what if the very notion of a personal creator God is, as I argue, an illusion, a childish and dangerous illusion at that? (There are other, better explanations for our being and for our misery.) And what if philosophy were unconsciously designed to cause us to believe, illusorily, that we are getting somewhere in understanding and changing things (when we are patently not) and hence is part of the problem of evil itself (mistaking language for reality and difficult solemn thought for worthwhile insight)? Neiman does consider many definitional nuances of evil but not the one that suggests that philosophy may be an example of the kind of imperceptible evil that fiddles while Rome burns, that chases its own tail. Let’s not be too unfair to philosophy – other academic disciplines are similarly guilty. Certainly theology, psychology, sociology and others take themselves very seriously, appear to be tackling social and human problems but commonly travel in ineffectual conceptual circles and intellectual fashions. Neiman’s book is seductively elegant in its prose; one does not doubt her sincerity, but it is hard to shake off the feeling that here again is mere sophistry. To be subtly clever about evil is perhaps to demonstrate that cleverness is simply one of evil’s subtle planks. Missing


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from such necessarily cogitation-centred work is emotion, action and transcendence. Sin and evil are anachronistic concepts, although they have much in common with the anthropathology I present here. Rorty’s (2001) historical collection of evil topics looks fascinatingly at war, shamelessness, guilt, misery, suffering, corruption, malice, vice, vanity and other varieties. In some ways this is livelier than Neiman’s more closely argued account. Psychologies of evil have recently begun to mushroom (Baumeister, 1997; Miller, 2004; Staub, 2003) but these too, while interesting, while categorizing forms of evil and exhorting us to understand evil better, come to little that is really new or compelling, amounting to just more psychology. Likewise with treatments of evil related to postmodernism (Baudrillard, 2005; Geddes, 2001), religion and natural disasters (Batchelor, 2004; Drees, 2003; Vardy, 1992), politics (Ignatieff, 2005; Singer, 2004a) and sociology (Jenks, 2003). The thing we cannot seem to get at is the very pervasiveness, deceptiveness and banality of evil (or anthropathology). Like madness, it is always in others that we see it at work. Jenks puts it well: People (sometimes ‘monsters’ but more often people like ourselves) who feel trapped, threatened or violently constrained by external forces beyond their control seek excessive and transgressive experiences which, in some cases, are even more threatening to their survival and, tragically in many cases, threatening to the survival of innocents also. (Jenks, 2003, p. 186)

Evil of the kind so often written about (the dramatic actions and characters of psychopaths and major violent events) serves to project unconsciously our own, universal, aggregate pettinesses, vanities and hatreds on to others. You may not be an extremist, Islamist terrorist, a suicidal agent of mass murder as in 9/11, but your lifestyle and mine in its active and passive negative ingredients, in all its illusions, imperceptibly makes for an absurd and destructive world. And there is a tendency when examining evil to focus dualistically on obvious outer events and voluntary personal actions, a schema which omits consideration of unconscious, genetic, evolutionary and other factors outside our control, probably even outside our current knowledge. Finally, evil is probably no longer a useful concept at all.

YOUR GENES UNZIPPED BY TIM SPECTOR (2003) I take this book both in its own right and as an example of a topical genre – the popular science texts written by academics seeking sales

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significant enough to boost their modest salaries. I do not mean this flippantly. The cover of the paperback shows a woman suggestively and punningly unzipping her jeans, as if the publishers must know that nothing short of a little soft pornography is likely to help shift copies. Hard-pressed academics and sales-chasing publishers unite within the capitalist subconditions of anthropathology. In particular, this is one book among many published in the 1990s and 2000s offering to explain how genes can dictate behaviour (or at least heavily influence it) and how such knowledge might give the reader some practical advantage. Between the opening chapter on human genetic identity and the last on belief, God and conclusions, the intervening chapters follow the human lifespan, giving interesting accounts of our physical and psychological characteristics, maladies and quirks. It is not Spector’s remit to demonstrate how awful life is but many of his section headings bear relevant negatives: He has the milkman’s eyes, Cot death, The bed-wetter, Milk and food allergies, Why is life so unfair?, Lazy genes, Fatal attraction, Male infidelity, Female flings, Jealousy and competitiveness, Drunk in charge of your genes, Greed and happiness, Junk-food junkies, Sleepless nights, PMT genes, Ageing and longevity, Losing your mind, Criminal behaviour. Many of his accounts do indeed convey the message, concertedly abhorred by liberal intellectuals from at least the 1970s (and an ‘anti-gene’ industry is also now apparent), that much of our intelligence and success or otherwise is determined genetically. The aetiology of sex differences is of course highly contentious, but Spector makes this claim among others: ‘A gene on the X chromosome passed on from the father determines that the girl will have the extra emotional, social and communication skills and female behaviour that her brother would lack’ (p. 49). Very soon after birth boys show a preference for looking at objects, while girls prefer faces. There are many such examples. This does not mean that matters are not modifiable later but that much is weighted genetically from the beginning, and is not a result of early parental, sexist bias. This powerful weighting has been endorsed by Baron-Cohen (2003) and his argument for autism as an extreme form of male (object-preferring, systematizing, nonempathizing) behaviour. Later in his book, Spector refers to male infidelity as a ‘genetic trait’: ‘for modern man and his ancestors, having the make-up and impulses to encourage them to be unfaithful, albeit to different degrees, was a genetic advantage’ (p. 114). That something arguably was an advantage is not an identical proposition to it remaining an advantage or a reasonable behaviour now. That a behaviour pattern can be demonstrated to exist from soon after birth does not


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mean that it cannot or should not be changed. Nonetheless, such examples do give pause for thought. Why do we quite readily accept evidence of genetic causes for medical illnesses and disabilities but resist similar evidence for behavioural problems? Determinism is uncomfortable territory because it challenges our sense of self as responsible agent and, moreover, of others as culpable, and it seriously challenges unfettered optimism. We may allow that someone has a genetic predisposition towards overeating or excessive alcohol consumption (although even this concession has been slow to register), yet we would probably resist the idea that a paedophile’s sexual appetite might be genetically driven. There is some appeal in the prospect of identifying all possible faulty genes (or, rather, all genetic proclivities for behavioural problems) and subsequently delivering genetic engineering remedies. After all, as well as having a beautiful, attractive and healthy body, who wouldn’t opt for themselves or their offspring being able to boost intelligence and reduce psychological disadvantages too? And yet we are conditioned perhaps to expect to earn such things by merit, by moral struggle. Worst of all for some is the suggestion, touched on by Spector, that a genetically determined tendency to believe in God, and/or to conform with religious edicts, may exist. Upbeat, practical conclusions being the order of the day, Spector ends his book thus: ‘Fulfil the genetic potential of “good” genes and try to cope with the less favourable ones the best you can. To ignore your genes is like playing poker without looking at your hand’ (p. 267). The image of us today consciously riding and overriding our genes is a hopeful, if also faintly ludicrous one, yet the Human Genome Project has in fact begun this irreversible process and we can only wonder what impact future genetic knowledge will have on us as a society and as individuals. The implications of genetic research findings must surely challenge our personal naivety and political biases. Psychotherapists must ask themselves to what extent they are wastefully and unethically applying talking therapy to conditions that cannot be talked or emoted away, or that can be treated much more effectively by pharmacological means. We know this is true of manic-depressive illness or bipolar disorder (Barondes, 1998) and it could be true for milder problems too (Charlton, 2000; Ratey and Johnson, 1997). Social policy-makers must ask uncomfortable questions about the extent of free will, as well as effective educational inputs on, containers of and punishments for antisocial behaviour (Somit and Peterson, 2003). In the context of a study of anthropathology, we cannot ignore the ‘selfish gene’ argument. We are complex survival machines as well as unique individuals who experience ourselves as somewhat free to

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choose our behaviour. We do not choose our parents and our somatic peculiarities. We do not, on the whole, choose to be gay, shy, tall, browneyed, female, schizophrenic. What we are as individuals, with all our strengths and limitations, is a complex and ever-adjusting compromise. La Cerra and Bingham (2002) use the concept of a life history regulatory system to explain the ‘where have we come from and how can we best manage it?’ conundrum. We strive to ‘maintain our viability’ in the face of each new challenge. But we do not know what true range of flexibility there is between totally hard-wired traits on the one hand and great freedoms on the other. Can the enormous, if unconscious, genetic, evolutionary, historical and circumstantial pressure that drives us be radically changed? If it is ludicrous to think of us consciously overriding our genes, what credibility or explanation can we give regarding those like Krishnamurti, 1974 (also see Chapter 6), who call for total awareness of our conditioning so that we may be wholly freed from anthropathology? How do we unzip this mother of all problems?

THE FALL BY STEVE TAYLOR (2005) I feel initially both moved and threatened by this book. The Fall is an account of what went wrong with human beings, when, and with what consequences. It relates ‘the evidence for a Golden Age, 6000 years of insanity, and the dawning of a new era’. It is very close to my anthropathological account, hence the feeling of threat, of childish authorial anxiety – someone has beaten me to it. But along with this personal example of microanthropathology (characterized by male competitiveness) went a sense of vindication. Taylor has spelled out very well many of the prehistorical contexts and causes of ‘collective psychosis’; he sees what I see and what perhaps more and more of us may be glimpsing through our ‘perceptual sleep’ – the madness of the kind of civilization we have built ourselves across millennia. But Taylor also turns out to be much more optimistic about change than I am. Patriarchy, war, social inequality, psychological suffering and possessiveness are the main symptoms in Taylor’s analysis of what he refers to as the ‘Ego Explosion’. Once there was a pre-fall era of small groups of hunter-gatherers who were peaceful, non-hierarchical, nonpossessive, kind to children, sexually uninhibited and so on. Severe climatic changes around 4000 BCE drove people to migrate and to become much more aggressive and male-dominated. A thriving, sizeable agricultural people living in the Saharasian belt1 had to adapt when the climate became harshly inhospitable, and their sheer numbers


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would not allow them to adapt benignly. Similar desiccation events forced groups of humans elsewhere to make aggressive adaptations that unfortunately stuck. Taylor rejects any assertion that we are selfish gene machines or otherwise essentially pathological or evil. Much is drawn from DeMeo’s (2006) Saharasia about changing climate, drought and harsh human adaptations. DeMeo’s is a hugely ambitious text that looks at geographical trends across centuries, at cultural examples of child abuse, religious sex-repression and violence. In spite of having much sympathy with DeMeo’s views, many like myself will be put off by his uncritical admiration of the views of Wilhelm Reich and the use of Reichian terminology. ‘Patrist armoring’ is the term DeMeo uses for a great deal of patriarchal insensitivity to feelings, for example. A critical issue here is whether someone who writes enthusiastically about orgone energy and orgone boxes (see Carroll, 2003, for a sceptical view of Reich), and who also espouses some negative views of homosexuality and Islam, can also write accurately about the historical sweep of events leading to our current human condition. Taylor is more cautious. His ‘psychology of the Fall’ (‘a new spirit of suffering and turmoil’) includes the concepts of an ‘ego explosion’ following a harmonious existence, in which an elevated individuality emerges, a hardened ego, technological prowess, ‘aloneness’, ‘ego chattering’, ‘perceptual sleep’, fear of death, and pervasive, underlying unhappiness. These psychological facets underpin the roots of materialism, desire for status, war, crime, male dominance, inequality and child oppression, oppression by religion, the mind–body split, sexual shame, enslavement in time and alienation from nature. Taylor concedes that ‘unfallen peoples’ suffer from superstition and that we, the fallen, have a better grasp of causal mechanisms and hence make better technical progress and fall foul of natural adversities less. One has to be suspicious of the romanticization of past epochs, golden ages and ‘the man of perfect virtue’. Broadly speaking, he is probably correct to portray a point at which things went wrong for us, or rather that we took a wrong turn; or, more accurately, that we took a turn that was unavoidable in the short term but disastrous in the longer term. There are reasons to doubt his dating to 4000 BCE, with signs of human restlessness, patriarchy and animal domestication going back at least 10 000 years and of mass violence to some 9000 years ago. Schizophrenia may date to 80 000 years ago (Horrobin, 2001). In spite of his refutation of significant aggression among animals, there are also reasons to believe that evolution itself led to at least some degree of aggression (Wrangham and Peterson, 1996) and of course that climatic harshness, environmental adversity and scarcity have frequently driven desperate adaptations.

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But Taylor sees signs of greater equality, awareness of international tensions and the like as indicative of the beginnings of a positive turn back towards pre-Fall values and lifestyles; and all this apparently without bloody revolution or anarchist overthrow. He is rather too fond of taking phenomena like meditation and ‘spiritual paths’ at face value, and valorizing Wilberesque schemas concerning positive human future evolution. Half-tempted to acknowledge that any such major change may take centuries, and acknowledging the current environmental imperative, Taylor opts instead for the view that spirituality, personal changes in ego consciousness, will transform us. ‘A new spirit of harmony will fill the world’ (p. 308). That is, when we all see what we’ve failed to see for the last 6000 years, all shall be well. Compare this with Gray (2002, 2004), say, and the prospect that history will inevitably move in circles of international conflict towards human extinction. There is certainly something emotionally powerful in the hope that our eyes and ears will open in time to save ourselves, that we will all put aside our separatist beliefs, nationalities, religions and economic privileges. Taylor has put together a bold account, one that academic archaeologists, historians and anthropologists will probably regard as full of illegitimate inferences and simplistic conclusions. I think he is broadly correct to identify a ‘fall’ that permeates our consciousness and continues; but wrong to see its origins in the last 6000 years only and as hopefully coming to an end quite soon.

STRAW DOGS BY JOHN GRAY (2002) In this aphoristic, nihilism-flavoured book, John Gray sets out to show that we are not central to life on this planet and yet we do not see, or we deny, our contingency. Phrases like ‘the progress of mankind’ are an abstraction. We are the result of ‘blind evolutionary drift’, ‘disseminated primatemaia’ (a plague of people, from James Lovelock), probably destined to decimate our numbers in the coming decades. We cannot control the genetic, nanotechnological and robotic forms of mass destruction now available, nor genetically modified foods, since the knowledge is out of the bag and subject to abuse and accident. ‘ “Humanity” does not exist. There are only humans, driven by conflicting needs and illusions, and subject to every kind of infirmity of will and judgement’ (p. 12). Science and liberal humanism, as well as ‘green humanism’ are all deluded. ‘Humans cannot live without illusion’ (p. 29). One of these is that we are conscious and therefore qualitatively different from and superior to other animals. Also, our very sense of


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being ‘enduring selves’ is an illusion, and ‘illusion is our natural condition’ (in all areas of our lives). Religion is obviously illusive but so is atheism, which is merely a reaction to religion. Few can sustain pessimism and nihilism as Gray does. Or does all rigorous analysis necessarily reach such a position? Of course, there are no answers in Gray’s thought, although he does commend acceptance of pluralism and insolubility. Whichever ideology you look at, if you look hard and honestly, you will see its shortcomings, its follies and futility. Pit Gray against some of the radical anarchists who want to take us back to hunter-gatherer times, like Zerzan and Jensen, mentioned elsewhere in this book, and it is hard not to agree with Gray’s mocking of impossible aspirations. ‘There never was a Golden Age of harmony with the Earth’, says Gray. Rather, ‘most hunter-gatherers were fully as rapacious as later humans. But they were few, and they lived better than most who came after them’ (p. 156). But equally, Gray mocks those who place hope in a future time of leisure. We are already partly on our way there, yet what would we do if we had to do nothing? Gray’s use of J.G. Ballard’s image of ‘a billion balconies facing the sun’ conjures up just such pointlessness. What do British émigrés to Spain actually do and feel when they install themselves in their cheap dream home in the sun and then have nothing to complain about? Yet simultaneously and paradoxically, we have locked ourselves into long-hours work routines and turned ourselves into slaves. Gray’s assault on belief in progress is continued in Heresies (Gray, 2004), which retains the theme of the illusion of progress, and cycles of illusion, but is more focused on modern politics, just as his earlier work argued against the fantasies of progress via global capitalism. For Gray, ideologies of progress, particularly humanist ideologies, are merely ‘the Prozac of the thinking classes’. One naturally asks, even if not ‘out loud’, if something in his personality drives Gray to such consistently quarrelsome and dark writing. Are his books merely the egomorphic products of an unhappy man? Many, most psychotherapists would, I think, draw this conclusion. Is there a character type, like Schopenhauer, Cioran, Beckett and Gray, who can see no real purpose or good in life, and yet who chooses to live on and write loudly? Or are they courageous seers ruthlessly presenting to us what we do not want to hear but perhaps suspect, deep down, is true? Many reviewers slated Gray for being a ‘crankish, unbalanced, . . . fullbloodied apocalyptic nihilist’, guilty of ‘virulent misanthropy’, ‘extravagant pessimism’ and offering ‘no useful underlying message’. Of course, those holding hopeful, religious, meaningful or self-serving philosophies or positions must logically disagree with Gray.

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While I personally share a great deal of Gray’s pessimism and darkness (and, to be honest, contempt for timid, Pollyannaish and/or status quo thinkers), I think something can and should be done with such stark visions. It is arguably only by facing the worst, then distinguishing between egomorphic despair and morbid anthropathology, on the one hand, and an evaluative study of anthropathology on the other, that we might make any progress in human understanding and social policy – if, of course, ‘progress’ has any real meaning or future! And yet, of course, it is extremely unlikely that anything more than a handful of people will ever want to face the worst. The mass psychology of illusion, sustained by advertisers, politicians and entertainers, demands that the hysteria to survive, historical momentum and fear of being wrong always trample on serious objections.

WHY WE LIE: THE EVOLUTIONARY ROOTS OF DECEPTION AND THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND BY DAVID LIVINGSTONE SMITH (2004a) We have a sizeable literature on lying, spanning various disciplines. The relatively new discipline of evolutionary psychology now has its own take on deception and self-deception. Smith has a background in psychoanalytic thought, and psychoanalysis, of course, is based on a theory of self-deception that has attracted less than consensual conviction among other therapists, let alone the general public. Theories of deception and self-deception are important within anthropathology since lying is postulated as a common feature of it. Superficially, it is quite easy to see why we would lie to and deceive each other in so many ways – it is frequently advantageous. In Smith’s view, we have an evolved unconscious tendency to deceive that shares some features with the rest of the animal world. Deception is performed subtly and has to be monitored from moment to moment, so we unconsciously perceive the impact of our deceptive tactics, as well as reading the deceptive strategies of others. But in addition, we are better liars if we lie to ourselves, unconsciously convincing ourselves that what we say is true. We have a ‘Machiavellian module’ for deception. As ‘compulsive narrators’ we have mastered a whole range of euphemisms, puns, double entendres, entertainment media, gossip – these are all aspects of communication that codify interpersonal and natural experience. Smith says we are ‘natural born liars’ and that deceit is ubiquitous. Lying is not an occasional activity, but an everyday occurrence. And it is of course not only unconscious but conscious,


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not only verbal but non-verbal. We are raised on fairy stories and religious tales, we are taught to interact acceptably and to know when to suppress and how to rephrase our observations. Yet throughout all this, we maintain that truth-telling is one of the highest values and is the norm. Consider that we are enmeshed in deception at various levels from morning to night. A very wide definition of deception might start with the alarm clock telling us it’s time to get up (it is and it isn’t – time is artificial). Our ablutions and make-up regime are designed to improve on our naturally unwashed and pre-cosmeticized state. Our style of dress presents a particular impression about us, some wearing designer clothes that deceive us into thinking ourselves special, some even wearing fake designer clothes; and many of us wearing the same as others to signal our team membership, solidarity or submissiveness. Our breakfast food may be labelled deceptively, encouraging us to pay more than we need to and to eat what is not good for us, and often too much of it. We may spend the day telling others we are fine (when we are not) when they ask how we are. Our children spend their days in schools where teachers deceive them into believing that all their studies are vital, and the teachers may try to deceive themselves and their peers that they love their job. The children may pretend to be paying attention when they are not, to understand when they do not. Depending on the kind of job we do, we may implicitly or explicitly lie to and cheat customers, pretend to be busy, say what we do not mean in meetings, suppress our feelings about colleagues and so on. In the evening we may watch television, which presents flickering pictures that look like reality, that tell stories that are not strictly true; even the news gives us edited, selective views of what is happening in the world. Or we drink in order to feel better than we really do, and this includes tea and coffee as well as alcohol. Or we tell ourselves that our leisure pursuits – for example, theatre, reading, cardiovascular sports – are more virtuous than those of others; and tell ourselves that we are not judgemental or snobbish. In our interactions with intimates we engage in frequent white lies and sometimes in gross lies. We may be so deeply trapped in our own lies, in general social lies and in the lie that we are truthful, that we suffer from anxiety and dread. And we may even deceive ourselves globally, in the sense that we pretend to be happy and not to suspect that something vital is missing. The sum of all this is an unnatural existence in which we may sometimes not know what is true any longer and yet we sense that unchecked honesty would be terribly dangerous. We can object, with Smith, that deception permeates the natural world and therefore is natural. Deception is an evolved phenomenon. It is also learned and

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constantly reinforced. Some have argued that we are taught to deceive ourselves from infancy when, for example, we begin to take on and internalize language – to privilege thought – that alters the core of our experience. Our very name, the habit of thinking of ourselves as ‘I’, the egoic identity we all learn, is a collective human practice that distances us from immediate experience of oneness; we think of ourselves as significantly separate. Smith’s conclusions are sober ones. ‘Self-deception has done us proud’, he writes. ‘Self-deception has been a wonderful gift, but it is now destroying us’ (p. 196). Smith acknowledges that collective selfdeceptions like patriotism, moral crusades and religion endanger us. The imperceptibility factor is at work; we have not realized that selfdeception now runs us and endangers us. However, he is rather pessimistic about the possibility of unlearning the habit. ‘The switch is jammed and we cannot turn it off.’ If we could turn it off, it would anyway lead to unhappiness, and who, after all, could do it? Smith rightly chides psychologists, for example, for their limited understanding. The most he can offer is that ‘we can get rid of some of our surplus self-deception’ (p. 197). To do this we can provide real education about human nature instead of religious fictions. Smith was once closely identified with a form of psychoanalytic psychotherapy but now, while acknowledging Freud’s achievements, he appears to have withdrawn somewhat from such hopes. His final appeal is to wiser self-knowledge. Unfortunately (or otherwise, depending on your view), he seems to hope that explanation leads to reform. Probably because it is outside his sphere, Smith does not consider the claims of mystics and meditators to be able to enter a pre-deceptive state of mind. Goleman (1998), for example, agrees that we necessarily run on a large dose of selfdeception but believes this can be changed. Finally, Schopenhauer and his ilk (as Gray above) challenge us to consider our own likely doom – that we are incorrigible, we will remain deceiving and self-deceived, perhaps flattering ourselves that we are closer to answers than our predecessors. Yet, the acknowledgement of defeat may also be a form of deceit, as we tacitly and humbly suggest we have been more honest than others, and have seen through our own self-deceit, in facing despair and impasse.

RUNNING ON EMPTINESS: THE PATHOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION BY JOHN ZERZAN (2002) Zerzan is an American anarcho-primitivist, a sort of radical green anarchist whose radicalism extends to advocating the total disman-


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tling of civilization, if necessary by violence. Like Jensen (2006) and others, Zerzan regards modern life as completely untenable and identifies the solution to all our ills as a return to a pre-agricultural, hunter-gatherer time. For those with no familiarity with such thinking, this probably sounds utterly ridiculous, mad and inconceivable. Perhaps it is, but Zerzan is serious as an activist and scholarly in his arguments. Running on Emptiness contains essays on ‘the failure of symbolic thought’ and the problems of time, technology, art, environmental degradation and every other damaging and questionable feature of the present age. Our civilization has been a ‘long dark night’ that is coming to an end. It is no longer viable and we sense this, we are indeed grieving for its imminent loss. Zerzan is a key figure in environmental radicalism. The ‘movement’, if there is one, is based on the certainty that our civilization is bankrupt and unreformable. We cannot go ahead with our high-tech agenda – as is clear from constant news about the negative environmental impact of our actions – and there is also no hope in fantasies of sustainable technology. We took a wrong turn about 10 000 years ago and we now need to acknowledge that and return to natural living. According to Zerzan, 99% of our time as humans has been spent as huntergatherers who had ample leisure, low violence, naturally long life and gender equality. Now we have estrangement, occupational servitude, widespread immiseration, vast inequalities, mass organized violence and imminent collapse of the whole system. This book echoes Zerzan’s earlier work. In Zerzan (1999) for example, he analysed the origins of time, language, number, art and agriculture, as well as critiquing domestication of crops, animals and ourselves, industrialism, Marxism, technology and the media. Zerzan observes trends such as the antiwork movement and the growth of worldwide depression. He writes damningly about both Marx and Chomsky, for their (as he sees it) hypocrisy, false analysis and failure to act radically in their own lives. In Zerzan (2005) he presents an impressive collection of anticivilization views which show that such radicalism has a long history and a fair amount of support. It is not hard to critique Zerzan. Many question the pre-agrarian ‘Golden Age’ hypothesis on which much of this kind of thought rests. Zerzan’s confidence that things are now so bad that the dismantling of civilization is inevitable is questionable. Most will recoil at his advocacy of violence (e.g. his support for the Unabomber) and many, myself included, will doubt whether universal, or even significant, violent radical action will ever be supported. All developing countries – with the exception of some sections of militant Islam – are currently aping the American model of rampant capitalism, not fighting it. Few have

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an appetite, I imagine, for a return to a pre-scientific age of austerity and uncertainty. Like many radical anarchists, Zerzan lives in an area of North America that is virtually on top of the ‘supervolcano’ that is due, we are told, to erupt devastatingly at any time. We could not know such things, nor take any steps to avoid them, in primitive conditions. Nor are they due to the actions of mankind. Most anarchists have a faith in human beings’ essential goodness or tendency to cooperate peaceably which is difficult to endorse. Zerzan was late to acknowledge in his writings the role of patriarchal mechanisms in civilization and its problems. Are there no opinionated, pushy and dangerous alpha males in the anarchist world? Marshall’s (1993) excellent history of anarchism shows us that in spite of many good intentions, in fact it was and is full of such men. Anarchist thought of this kind is promulgated via the publishing industry and other media that rely entirely on a capitalist structure and technology. How could we ever forget the positives in what we had and accept high infant mortality rates, for example? Nonetheless, I find Zerzan disturbingly honest and appealing in his analysis of contemporary woes. The pathology of civilization that Zerzan sees is almost identical in many respects with the anthropathology presented here. Like Jensen’s (2006) scorn for ‘the pollyanna routine’ of common upbeat progressivism, Zerzan sees penetratingly to the heart of the matter: things cannot go on like this. We cannot simply make little adjustments here and there. This is serious. Zerzan’s sense of urgency is admirable, echoing that of people like Krishnamurti. Zerzan’s analysis of the problems of time and language also echo those of many mystics. Humanity is at a very grave crisis point and the endless analyses of academics and lies and procrastinations of politicians and businessmen are becoming redundant, almost embarrassing. However, the flip side of urgency is impatience and the probability of entering a huge anthropathological loop. A return to pre-civilized, pre-agrarian times is almost certainly an over-corrective move that ignores the rot in the soul of man that is not caused by the conditions of civilization. Start all over again, but what’s to stop us, or some of us, then developing all over again in this same unviable direction? And in this we surely sense some whiff of futility.

THOUGHT AS A SYSTEM BY DAVID BOHM (1994) Bohm was a physicist who became interested in ‘wholeness’ and, through an association with Krishnamurti, in the ways in which the


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mind deceives itself and creates havoc in the world (e.g. Krishnamurti and Bohm, 1985). In this book, which is a record of a weekend’s dialogue with fellow enquirers, Bohm discusses the nature of fragmentation, for example, into nation states and their conflicts as well as the problems of religious groups. What drives and sustains this dangerous state of affairs is the habit of thought at individual and collective levels (there is really no difference) that maintains hardened views. Bohm distinguishes between thought and thinking, the latter being a live, dialogical and tentative activity of enquiry. Thought is a constant activity with which we are all familiar and which we take for granted as a fixture, that deceives us into believing that it is neutrally, objectively evaluating the world and creating knowledge about it. Thought is accumulated and takes itself very seriously. But it is unable to be genuinely self-critical and necessarily adaptive. It has failed to have a proprioceptive mechanism for self-correction. Hence, thought is systemically flawed. But the same goes for feelings, which are converted into ‘felts’ or hardened feelings that drive inflexible attitudes and lead to conflict at every level of existence. Although Bohm’s books are often categorized as philosophy, they are more like thinking out loud and much more concerned with real-world events and private turmoil than most analytic, academic philosophical texts. They are also transdisciplinary. There is also a subtlety in Bohm’s thinking that escapes the flight into fuzziness that many New Age physicists fall prey to. What he tries to get at is the very movement of thought in each of us and the ways in which this movement shapes the world. Its movement is often devious. For example, we may feel and believe that we are thinking earnestly through some important topic and coming to fresh and helpful views, when in fact thought is simply, cleverly converting fresh perceptions into its own rigid system, its own way of looking at the world. Thought is a kind of sickness or pollution which, as Rinehart says in The Search for the Dice Man, permeates everything we do. This seems hard for most of us to accept. Our subjectivity feels like an ever-present guide that we could not be without; it is our best instrument for dealing with whatever confronts us. But we cannot see when it is getting in the way or producing obstacles through tradition, through insistence that it is right. We all know personally and by watching world events how entrenched we humans are in our views and actions, leading to stubborn ‘isms’ and wars. Bohm refers to an incoherence in thought, and another level of thought is incoherent about evidence that contradicts it. We might say that thought itself is afraid of being wrong. Thought is the negatively restless mind, perhaps a predominantly ‘male mind’ interested in, addicted to movement, conquest, competition.

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The question, ‘Is there something, some aspect of the mind, that can see through itself and function without its own limitations?’ then arises. In other words, is there some possibility of immediate, clear and unbiased perception? After all, ‘mystical’ thinkers like Krishnmaurti (and Buddha and others) have asserted that there is. Interestingly, Bohm does not, as some mystics and meditators do, point towards the body and its wisdom, to a silence beyond words, for answers, but to dialogue. In this he was following the example of De Maré (1991), a group analyst whom he himself saw for his own problems of depression. Bohm was, of course, a scientist whose method was cognitive discovery, a seeker of connections and new ideas. He was pushing at received ideas and at some of the boundaries of science. Perhaps he could only ‘hint’ at what he intuited and perhaps he only partly experienced a new consciousness himself. But I think he was seriously getting at the redundancy of thought, or a certain tendency of thought. Thinking can be creative and is necessary in some situations. But we seem to have inherited thought as a kind of blunt instrument and often we see no alternative. Those who espouse emotional or spiritual alternatives are usually imagining these as alternatives, but they are not true alternatives. If we seize on the term ‘anthropathology’ and come to believe that we have grasped some important new concept and that we are genuinely immersed in an effort to understand and rectify its effects, we are like born again-religionists. Momentarily we see something afresh (it could be anything – a landscape, a person, a situation, an idea) and are illuminated by it. But rapidly and without noticing it, thought converts it into memory and belief, that is, it becomes second-hand and mischievous. I think I am fighting a valiant battle against anthropathology and all its agents, but I am merely, unconsciously, masturbating cognitively to emotionally toned ideas. Tolle (2006) writes and talks very well about all these mental tricks of the ego, as well as ‘bundles of thoughts’. For all its ambition and claim to be the science of the mind, psychology is extremely poor at even addressing such subtle but somehow obvious matters. But psychologists do not, on the whole, want to enquire and dialogue: they want to build personal reputations and publish papers establishing one ostensible microcertainty or another. And they do not regard thought as a system strangling the earth, or themselves as unconscious culprits! Likewise, cognitive therapists want to adjust our negative thinking to a more positive, so-called reality-testing style, but they don’t want to be particularly radical about it. It seems that Bohm and Krishnamurti drifted apart after some years of friendship and dialogue. Bohm was susceptible to various


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paranormal ideas and claims, including those of Uri Geller. Some have criticized Bohm for remaining too abstrusely intellectual and not really paying attention to the body. According to Peat (1997) Bohm’s periodic depression returned in late life. Ultimately, the problem with messages like those of Krishnamurti is that they are elusive. Bohm probably did not have Krishnamurti’s level of consciousness, and it seems doubtful if participants in Bohm’s dialogue groups, or readers of his books, actually experienced the kind of transformation he was discussing.

THE ANATOMY OF HUMAN DESTRUCTIVENESS BY ERICH FROMM (1973) I cannot fairly summarize a 516-page book here, but Fromm’s work is important because he continually strove to demonstrate connections between individual psychology and social trends and in particular agreed that our society was unhealthy and destructive. Fromm’s book is also of interest because it shows some of the preoccupations he and similar thinkers had 30 years ago. He looks at Freud’s and Lorenz’s views on aggression, at Skinner’s behavioural explanations, at some neurophysiological evidence and at various anthropological arguments about aggression and human nature. He also provides analytic observations on Stalin, Himmler and Hitler. Fromm acknowledged the limitations of psychoanalysis in accounting for human destructiveness, and the difficulties faced by anyone attempting to synthesize knowledge from different academic fields. Interestingly, he quotes J.C. Smuts thus: ‘When I look at history, I am a pessimist . . . but when I look at prehistory, I am an optimist’ (Fromm, 1973, p. xvii), a sentiment that echoes Taylor and Zerzan above. In struggling to define human nature and its origins, Fromm argues that ‘man can be defined as the primate that emerged at the point of evolution where instinctive determination had reached a minimum and the development of the brain had reached a maximum’ (p. 224). Influenced by existentialist thought, Fromm describes humanity as estranged from nature. ‘His capacity for material production grows, but in the process he becomes greedy and egotistical, a slave of the things he has created’ (p. 226). Fromm is one of few to discuss a ‘pathology of normalcy’, in other words what is wrong with ordinary human beings. In considering boredom, he writes: There are several probable reasons that chronic, compensated boredom is generally not considered pathological. Perhaps the main reason is that in contemporary industrial society most people are bored, and shared

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pathology – the ‘pathology of normalcy’ – is not experienced as pathology. Furthermore, ‘normal’ boredom is usually not conscious. Most people succeed in compensating for it by participating in a great number of ‘activities’ that prevent them from consciously feeling bored. Eight hours of the day they are busy making a living; when the boredom would threaten to become conscious, after business hours, they avoid this danger by the numerous means that prevent manifest boredom: drinking, watching television, taking a ride, going to parties, engaging in sexual activities. (Fromm, 1973, p. 244)

Although boredom has been put forward as a possible cause of war and subject for philosophical study (Svendsen, 2005), Fromm made significant links between individual, work-related boredom, including ‘unconscious boredom’ (drawing from his clinical work as a psychoanalyst) and the kind of collective restlessness of modern society that may fuel aggression. Fashions change in the distractions we seek. Television remains high on the list (and consider the rise of voyeuristic ‘reality’ programmes like Big Brother), but in Western society food – eating out, being an amateur food connoisseur, reading about food, food features in magazines, escalating eating disorders, etc. – currently ranks very highly too, mirroring the decadence of some defunct civilizations. Coincidentally or not, war and terrorism are constantly in the news. Of course terms like ‘unconscious boredom’ are contentious and a common reaction is to object that psychoanalysts see unconscious phenomena where none exists. But Fromm also refers to ‘unconscious depression’ and the wish to ‘feel something’ sometimes leading to violence. We do not necessarily diagnose our problems of youthful violence as unconscious depression and we would not know what to do if we did so. The pathology of normalcy is a recurring theme for Fromm and fits well with my views on anthropathology. Drawing from Spinoza, Fromm discusses greed and ambition, for example, as forms of insanity: The ‘pathology of normalcy’ rarely deteriorates to graver forms of mental illness because society produces the antidote against such deterioration. When pathological processes become socially patterned, they lose their individual character. On the contrary, the sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. . . . In fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society. (Fromm, 1973, p. 356)

I am not sure any such fully sane person exists but I completely agree with Fromm’s views on the insane society. Greed and ambition,


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for example, are exalted as virtues today even more than in Fromm’s day. Occasional lip service is paid by politicians to the idea that there is more to life than work, money and possessions. But our media and education systems are oriented around the very aim of making more money and becoming important and successful. Entrepreneurship is fashionable, and uncritically so. Most universities today have taken on such values and marginalized traditional scholarly work and free thinking. Fromm notes that in parallel with such depressing materialistic trends, significant opposition to these existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But global capitalism appears to have put paid to such open revolt and parade of alternative views for the time being. Fromm is a significant non-partisan big thinker who has been curiously overlooked, or rather underestimated. I suspect that it is his very breadth of focus that means he has not become better honoured among either psychotherapists or analysts of the human condition. Writers like Alice Miller have had their views on the reasons for Hitler’s megalomania far better publicized and although there remains some considerable interest in the phenomenon of Nazism (if we could understand what underpinned the Holocaust, we might understand and remedy other social ills, runs the logic, I believe), there is also a sense of time passing. Fromm is not fashionable. Studies of Hitler wane in interest. Significant advances have been made in evolutionary understanding in just the last decade or so. Knowledge dates. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, a book of such magnitude, is amazingly sidelined, as if we are weary of the questions raised. One can understand that the general non-reading public, or those addicted mainly to distracting novels, would not engage with Fromm, but it is an indictment of contemporary academic life that he now rarely appears even in psychology and psychotherapy courses. Learning has become an instrument of capitalism, and big thinkers have become largely unread or impatiently read items in Wikepedia.

DEMONIC MALES: APES AND THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN VIOLENCE BY RICHARD WRANGHAM AND DALE PETERSON (1996) Here is a subject that touches on human violence, on men as specifically violent, and on the grave problems of ape and human nature and determinism. Wrangham and Peterson’s concern is to explore ‘the deep origins of human violence, back to the time before our species diverged from rainforest apes, 5 to 6 million years ago’ (p. 1). Their story begins with fieldwork, observing chimpanzees in West Africa. Their initial

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impressions were of an idyllic existence in which chimpanzees wandered freely and fearlessly, engaged freely in innocent sex and hardly squabbled over food: a paradise lost. They then became aware of a dark side. Tensions were apparent between the males in different subgroups. Territoriality and defence of ‘ethnic purity’ became very apparent to the observers. Behaviour that could be described as ‘raids’ was witnessed. Vicious attacks on lone males from other subgroups, and the consequences of these attacks, were seen. An old male victim ‘was held and beaten and kicked and lifted and dropped and bitten and jumped on’ (p. 17). Several such attacks occurred. Some older females were also attacked. The authors comment that they were stunned by the viciousness but more so by the fact these violent males had known their victims well. They concluded from evidence that such behaviour is part of a species-wide pattern across Africa, not an isolated event. (Alongside their ethological observations, Wrangham and Peterson comment on contemporary human atrocities.) For interspecies comparison, the authors look at the 20 000 Yanomano people of southern Venezuela and northern Brazil. They live in separate villages, are well-fed subsistence farmers who have no written language or numeracy, and are known for intense warfare. Groups are about 90 in number and males remain in situ while females often migrate to neighbouring villages. They sometimes pretend to offer hospitality as a deceptive precursor to violent attack. At other times they engage in raids with the intention to kill, following which they sometimes abduct a female and all rape her. To have killed is a point of honour. I cannot help thinking of a television programme I saw, the evening before writing this, about the alleged murderers of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence in Eltham, south London in 1993; he was kicked, punched and knifed to death in a raid-like way. With clear violent histories or attitudes, these young men are known to believe in the value of killing, and boast about it. ‘The appetite for engagement, the excited assembly of a war party, the stealthy raid, the discovery of an enemy and the quick estimation of odds, the gang-kill, and the escape are the common elements’ (p. 71). Raiding seems sometimes to confer reproductive advantages too. Examining violence in close relationships, the authors look at evidence of rape by orang-utan males. Females prefer large males for sex (an average of 90 kg to the females’ 40 kg). These large orang-utan males do not tolerate each other and violence is common. But there are small males too, and these differ from the larger kind in many ways, behaviourally and physically. They also rape female orang-utans. Such behaviour is inferred as rape from signs like female fear and flight, screams and resistance. The small males are seen to grab, bite


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and slap. The authors speculate that small males cannot easily attract females, are afraid of large males and rely on rape or ‘forced copulation’ as their main means of reproducing. Rape among chimpanzees has also been observed. The inferences for human males are hard to avoid. As Wrangham and Peterson put it: The problem is that males are demonic at unconscious and irrational levels. The motivation of a male chimpanzee who challenges another’s rank is not that he foresees more matings or better food or a longer life. . . . The immediate reason he vies for status is simpler, deeper, and less subject to the vagaries of context. It is simply to dominate his peers. . . . The temperamental goal is to intimidate the opposition, to beat them to a pulp, to erode their ability to challenge. Winning has become an end in itself. . . . It looks the same with men. (Wrangham and Peterson, 1996, p. 199)

Indeed it looks the same. And the authors want to be hopeful about the possibility of change. But they caution that: For us, the biggest danger is not that demonic males are the rule in our species. After all, other demonic male species are not endangered at their own hands. The real danger is that our species combines demonic males with a burning intelligence – and therefore a capacity for creation and destruction without precedent. That great human brain is nature’s most frightening product. (Wrangham and Peterson, 1996, p. 258)

Obviously Wrangham and Peterson have their critics. How can their observations be generalized, not only across occasions and places but across species? How can they suggest that current aggressive male behaviour might be predetermined, as if men cannot help their own violence and rape because it is somehow inherited? They are quite relentless themselves in counter-critique. For example, they challenge the optimistic view of peaceful hunter-gatherers by citing statistics claiming that 64% of such societies have engaged in war every two years and only 10% warred rarely or never. Taking on feminist critiques, they concede that evidence exists for female aggression and violence but note crime statistics that demonstrate the overwhelmingly higher incidence of male crime. They emphasize that violence cannot be justified and is not inevitable, but it is a powerful tendency that is sometimes difficult to control or predict and probably impossible to eliminate. Buss (2005) has been even more pessimistic about human violence and its evolutionary underpinnings, and Sykes (2003) is similarly gloomy. Territory and ethnic separatism feature large in explanations but, as Wrangham and Peterson argue, our technologies

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for mass destruction now hugely magnify our demonic tendencies. There is currently no sign of either criminally violent behaviour or international warfare abating. Quite the opposite. This is reflected in politically desperate policies. And harsh Hobbesian control often – dismayingly – appears to hold more promise than progressive liberal approaches. One approach attempting to take evolutionary theory and cross-species comparisons seriously is that of Somit and Peterson (2003). Here, where criminal behaviour and international conflict are discussed, evolutionary neuroandrogenic theory postulates a significant role for testosterone and evolutionary theories for xenophobia. Liberal thinkers, those who stress the role of social learning, parenting and education, are clearly at odds with the former group of thinkers.

THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD: SOCIAL SUFFERING IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY BY PIERRE BOURDIEU ET AL. (1999) Here we have a large piece of sociological research into certain aspects of everyday French life (with one section on American ghetto life). Bourdieu and his team interviewed many people living in council estates, many of them immigrants (Algerian and Moroccan) and also some working in schools. Likening one of their housing developments to a desert, Bourdieu describes displaced families hit by unemployment. The fickleness of capitalism means that large subpopulations are often abruptly impoverished, discarded and adrift; and individuals and families are left to cope at bare subsistence levels, to eat poorly, ward off inevitable, nagging debt and sustain their own fragile morale. Originally published in French as La Misère du Monde, the ‘misery’ combines poverty with lack of hope, with long-term disorientation and suffering, and echoes earlier works by Hugo, Marx and Proudhon. La grande misère or actual poverty is reflected in la petite misère or ordinary, everyday psychological suffering. This is not charming Dickensian material but contemporary reality for millions of people. Bourdieu’s book, mostly faithfully reported interviews, brings us into the houses of people experiencing learning difficulties, frustrated educational aspirations, social failures, inhuman housing conditions, noise, dirt, constant crime, racism, alienation, illness. Phrases recur – ‘we don’t count for anything’, ‘we lived through hell’, ‘it gets on your nerves’, ‘it’s always the same people who get accused’, ‘nobody wanted to live here’, ‘my only success is our children’s studies’, ‘they have no future’, ‘the drugs is like a epidemic’. One man says, ‘I felt so down and out for being in a fucking shelter. And I would look around at all


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these motherfuckers having jewelry; having cars; and things like that. And me, like a motherfucker; broke; with no money; and knowing that I see these people with all these things that I wanted so bad that I would kill for’ (p. 173). People know they are regarded as worthless, unimportant. They see others’ children going to better schools, other citizens in smart houses and driving smart cars. This isn’t envy but a knowledge of being very, very low in the pecking order. Similar writings have been published showing the effects of low pay, unemployment, poverty, poor housing and low social value in Britain, Italy, the United States, South America and elsewhere. (It is a huge elsewhere, Africa being for millions a daily and ongoing reality of poverty and struggle.) One also thinks of many of the citizens of East Berlin who, contrary to hopes engendered by the fall of the Wall in 1989, experience high unemployment and despair. Wilkinson (2005) has demonstrated many of the negative long-term effects on health and well-being. As well as grinding poverty, debt, racism and hopelessness, people in these circumstances must endure the knowledge that they are at the bottom of the social pile, they are undervalued or patronized at best. ‘Scrap heap’ and ‘underclass’ are just two of the epithets often applied. And to add insult to injury, they may be told to stop complaining, become more entrepreneurial and remind themselves that their poverty is merely relative – they are not starving. It is an invidious comparison, but well known, that those employees who have little control over their workload are more likely to become depressed. Traditionally this was understood to refer to factory workers and other low-paid workers, but increasingly it can refer to any of us. The omnipresence of the desktop computer and corresponding disappearance of supporting secretarial and clerical staff means that many of us are subject to increased electronic bureaucracy. The atmosphere of global competition and ever-threatened redundancy means that many cling to depressingly unfulfilling jobs. Accounts appear frequently of overqualified graduates in menial jobs. This is no comfort whatsoever to the unqualified, unemployed and chronically unhappy so-called underclass but it does show that everyday life is demoralizing for millions and whole lives are wasted as a result of top-down economic decisions by remote governments. But can our common sense of being de trop (Sartre) or engaged in futile, repetitive work (Camus) ever be lastingly rectified by new social policies? An ever-growing world population suggests that disparities in wealth will always exist and some will always find themselves more redundant, displaced, desperate and dispensable than others. Try to engineer total equality by communistic means and you then visit another kind of stateorganized meaninglessness on many. Sheer numbers can only increase

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the chances of misery. I’m sure it’s politically incorrect to say this and political activists will call angrily and optimistically for major structural changes. What should we make of the fact that Bourdieu’s book topped the best-seller lists in France, a highly politically sensitized country? Hard to imagine similar reactions elsewhere. And the religious will object that God cares for every soul, however regarded in a worldly sense. Meanwhile, again invidiously, many are even worse off than les miserables here, struggling with violence, war-induced posttraumatic stress, AIDS, tuberculosis, torture, the terrible aftermath of disasters, and other extremes of suffering, as Kleinman, Das and Lock (1997) and Ritzer (2004a) show in their reviews of social problems and suffering. It may be apparent that even across a handful of reviews we have conflicting stances on what’s wrong with us, why, and what to do about it. We also have simply too many theories, leading via the explanationbeguiled and information-overloaded self, to the paralysis of analysis. And we have our egomorphic and culturally-specific reactions. Some believe that this variety is healthy and inevitable, others that this very plurality is a central part of our problem. Notes 1. Saharasia is defined as ‘the great belt of arid lands encompassing North Africa, the Near (‘Middle’) East, and Central Asia’ (DeMeo, 2006, p. 93).

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Anthropathology Today Anthony Trollope’s blockbuster novel The Way We Live Now was published in 1875. It’s a tale of a few interconnected characters, most of whom are aristocrats or aspiring to high society status, who are involved in unsavoury efforts to make money or disguise impecuniousness, establish reputations, secure profitable marriages, exact revenge, utilize cronyism, manipulate weaknesses, survive lives of reckless gambling and drink. As Frank Kermode says in his introduction (Trollope, 1875/1994), it is questionable to what extent the ‘we’ in the title applies to more than a few privileged nineteenth-century characters living in London and the home counties (and Trollope himself was one such). On the other hand, the themes of dishonesty, of ‘imperial Roman corruption’, sordid conniving in finance and politics, absurd pretensions, decadence and ‘the metropolitan disease’ may be considered perennial, stretching across millennia. That the history of the world can be regarded as synonymous with the pursuit of power and with greed has been well argued (Gigantes, 2003), and politicians’ machinations and oddities (Cook, 2004; Paxman, 2002) and financial scandals (Bakan, 2004; Partnoy, 2003) are all too well known to us today. This corruption now also pervades science generally as an epidemic according to Judson (2004) and clinical medicine (Kassirer, 2004) among other sectors. In a book entitled What’s Wrong With Us? readers should ask who the ‘us’ really is. Although I aim to talk about the vast majority of human beings, I am a 1950-born, London-born, South Yorkshire resident, middle class, professional, male, white, heterosexual, with a certain personality and history (Feltham, 2004a). This book like all books has its egomorphic undercurrents. In a chapter seeking to explore the way we live now, you have a right to ask where my information comes from. Mainly, it comes from English-language broadsheet newspapers, television, books and periodicals. Partly, it comes from direct observation, discussion, deduction, prejudice and opinion. I have travelled relatively little outside Europe and hence can base

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very few of my observations on first-hand knowledge of other cultures. I include myself here subjectively as an example and as an invitation to compare your own everyday experiences of anthropathology or otherwise. Having declared this, I proceed to describe and comment on the world I live in and read about.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH US TODAY? We may well disagree on what we mean by ‘wrong’, ‘us’ and ‘today’. Today can mean this year, recent times, this century. It can mean anything from the eighteenth-century-born Enlightenment to so-called postmodernity. I shall start here with a literal today (19 August 2004 as I write this) in my own experience and with that derived from a newspaper, the Guardian. I am officially on leave from my full-time academic job but as busy as ever with writing, editing, marking and other commitments. An academic colleague confirms that academic life has not had its traditional leisure times for the past 15 years; he has had no holiday this year, I have had five days. Madeleine Bunting’s (2004) book Willing Slaves topically laments our overwork culture. I am tired and my back and eyes are aching, a testimony to a sedentary, computer-oriented working lifestyle. It is sunny right now but weatherwise it has been a very mixed, often autumnal August, with ‘freak’ storms and flash floods in Britain. Thinking about my circle of friends and acquaintances, I can immediately identify the following. One man’s teenage daughter is going through an intermittent yet interminable, harrowing, drug-induced psychotic experience; another man is coming to terms with his alcoholism; a colleague who has had intermittent sickness appears again stricken with some non-specific, depression-like problem; a woman withdrawing from antidepressants is again finding it difficult to sleep and is prone to mood swings; a single mother’s teenage daughter has had to have her second abortion; a man is having an affair and experiencing terrible guilt and almost suicidal turmoil; a woman hates her job and lonely existence and swings from holiday to holiday, from hobby to hobby and from proud independence to desperate partner seeking; the woman across the road has just died; another woman is facing the probable death of her daughter from cancer. I can also think of people who are enjoying foreign holidays, who own two or more houses in different countries, whose lives are successful by material standards and enviable by the standards of those in poverty. I even know teenagers who are not currently experiencing any obvious dif-


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ficulties! The miserable have their upbeat moments and the successful and happy their secret doubts. Few are wholly miserable or ecstatic.

CURRENT EVENTS Here, I recount a selection of events garnered from news sources between 2004 and 2006. Turning to my newspaper, the Guardian, a piece entitled ‘Extreme weather’ tells the story of a flash flood in Cornwall from which 120 people had to be airlifted to safety. One says, ‘I moved away from Battersea in [south-west] London to come for the stress-free life down here and now look what’s happened.’ One thing after another, between the devil and the deep blue sea. Some have been made unemployed and have lost their houses. In Scotland, landslides caused by a storm have caused havoc. In Florida, a hurricane has devastated a widespread area. It is speculated that these weather extremes are related to global warming, which is at least partly anthropogenic The film The Day After Tomorrow warns us that even more extreme weather, a mini-ice age, could be imminent. This is borne out by Moran’s (2003) study of world-ending scenarios. We are told that ‘CO2 is at its highest for at least 420 000 years – possibly even 20 million years – and stands 34% above its level before the industrial revolution’ (Guardian, 19 August 2004). There are fears that the UK education system is being dumbed down. Killings continue in Iraq. Terrorist suspects are being detained. There is concern about Islamophobia. There is also concern about the Islamic Turkish government’s desire to make divorce illegal. Various UK murders are reported. Unease continues in the Israel–Palestine area. Many tensions exist across the world. The trustworthiness of Tony Blair, British Prime Minister, continues to be questioned. Fairly frequent stories of anticipated terrorist acts are found since the destruction of the twin towers and murder of 2749 people in New York in 2001. Indeed, that event in its singular horror, also demonstrating the vulnerability of the world’s only current ‘superpower’, seems to hover darkly in human consciousness. Recurring crisis points around the world are well known, and it seems likely that the public are, subconsciously, permanently braced for sudden violent acts. In other countries the bracing has given way to living with actual violence and murder. One has to consider oneself relatively fortunate to live for the time being in a relatively peaceful, reasonably wealthy Western democracy, whatever its political or economic flaws or daily experiences of occupational stress.

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In September 2004 a school containing approximately 1000 children, teachers and parents in the southern Russian town of Beslan is taken hostage by Chechen terrorists using explosives and guns. In the ensuing negotiations, confusion and panic, it is estimated that well over 300 are killed, including over 150 children. There is speculation that Arab and African mercenaries are involved, that Islamic fundamentalism is behind it, and finally that al-Qaeda is to blame. Russian special forces are criticized by ex-SAS pundits for their lack of organization and inferior technology. The Russian president Vladimir Putin is under the spotlight, under pressure to appear tough and decisive. Everyone, ‘naturally’, is looking to blame everyone else. The bodies of dead children are seen on television, as well as bloodstained children fleeing for their lives. Women are seen weeping and howling in raw grief. A television presenter insensitively describes pictures of the interior of the school as ‘fascinating’. Within days the poet Yevtushenko has written and translated a poem about it, including an alliterative reference to ‘charred children’. There is immediate talk of bringing in specialized post-traumatic stress counsellors. Who is to blame in all this? Is Russian dominance and heavyhandedness the culprit, or Chechen freedom-fighters (the conflict has roots as far back as the early 1800s), or the general ethos of terrorism, or the Russian military or even the press? Is it men’s territorial madness that is to blame? Have the hostage takers themselves experienced extreme violence – perhaps seen their own loved children killed by Russians – and feel compelled to exact like-for-like revenge? It turns out that Chechen leaders of this action refer to 42 000 Chechen children who have been killed by Russians, and the Bible is cited as explicit justification for revenge. Writers to newspapers point out that Iraqi children are still being killed in an illegal war and that across recent decades innumerable children have been killed at Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki by British and American military individuals against whom no comparable recriminations have been made. And what, if anything, can be done to ‘prevent this kind of thing happening again’ (the invariable post-atrocity cry)? We seem to want to understand and to end such madness, such pointless and painful brutality, yet all analyses are superficial, situational and impotent. Anyone can understand anthropathological escalation of this kind but no one can end it. On 26 December 2004 an earthquake in the Indian Ocean, off the west coast of Sumatra, caused the tsunami that rapidly led to the deaths of at least 226 500 people and the destruction of countless homes in several countries. The earthquake itself was caused by shifting tectonic plates, a rare but wholly unavoidable geological event. Commentators spoke of the ‘awesome power of nature’ – dev-


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astation to the power of several Hiroshimas – and millions worldwide immediately recognized the enormity of the suffering involved. This disaster could in no way be attributed to human evil. When asked by journalists, theologians from various faiths helplessly repeated their usual inverted logic about God’s mysterious ways. The Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755 excited both similar distressed theodicizing and enlightened rebuttals (Neiman, 2002). But today we should know better. We live on a planet that is often stable but sometimes lethally unstable. To some extent we are desensitized to it and, to some extent, we can predict such events and avoid the full brunt of them. In 2004 the United States, for example, experienced 1700 tornadoes which resulted in only 35 deaths. Better early warning systems are promised for the Indian Ocean. But the various geological hotspots cannot simply be evacuated. It is a feature of living on this planet, a feature of our ever-present vulnerability and mortality. It is now July 2005. On 7 July four bombs were set off, three on the London underground and one on a bus, by suicide bombers, the first such in Britain. It takes quite some time to ascertain the numbers killed, now just a few, now 30 or so, now in excess of 50. Many more are critically injured. The attacks are likened to those on a train in Madrid in March 2004. Teams of investigating police, rescue and medical workers have to endure intense heat in deep dark tunnels, hampered by body parts and rats; this is rightly described as hellish. Within a week the identity of four suicide bombers is discovered, all young British Muslim men, two or three of whom spent time in Pakistan and who appear to have been tutored by other masterminds. From the perfectly normal and likeable people their families and friends knew them as, these young men seem to have been mysteriously transformed into fanatical killers with no regard for (infidel) human life. Political and journalistic platitudes ooze from newspapers and television. ‘These terrorists will not change our way of life,’ goes one refrain. The Prime Minister Tony Blair decries the bombings as ‘murderous carnage’ and vows that the planners as well as the bombers will be identified and punished. While many are pointing out that these attacks largely stem from the perceived atrocities against Afghanistan and Iraq by American and British troops and bombs (the estimate for dead Iraqis then standing at 100 000 or well over), Blair – in effect one of the planners of murderous carnage in Iraq – altogether denies any responsibility for the cycle of violence. The fact remains that bombings and violence (as well as poverty and hunger) elsewhere always evoke initial concern followed by forgetting (Cohen, 2001). But hundreds, possibly thousands, of Londoners are now directly affected by this event.1 Cases of post-traumatic stress

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multiply, along with the ripple effects on families and next generations. High anxiety among the public is rife. Although London is the prime target, most British people now feel rather less safe from attack. The stoicism of Britons is praised and their endurance of previous IRA and Second World War bombings is noted as part of a tradition of such alleged stoicism. The case for increased security measures, including tougher laws and compulsory personal identity cards, grows. Debates about the nature of Islam and religion generally are aired. It is protested that Islam is peace-loving like other religions. Muslim leaders are asked to reinforce this and to help expose those who preach hatred and violence. But the debate remains superficial and few voices are heard criticizing religion itself as an engine of division and violence. Irshad Manji (2004) is one of these exceptions. Radical questioning of the wisdom and traditions of religion is still deemed taboo, however implicated they perennially are in such atrocities. May we really not question vigorously any ideology claiming, or even hinting, that killing the infidel and martyring oneself will result in a place in paradise? It may be rightly pointed out that no religion was required to stoke the genocides committed or sponsored by Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and others. But theirs were also rigid, religion-like ideologies. So, no visionary leaders are spawned during this time of crisis and the real and deep causes of terrorism – a degree of natural violence, the specifically male tendency towards violence, and the role of patriarchal religion – are entirely neglected. As always, the details are sieved minutely but the obvious big picture of anthropathology is not seen. Meanwhile, in Iraq and elsewhere there are daily killings. Two weeks after the London bombings another failed plot becomes evident, leading to yet heightened anxiety. In the summer of 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit the southern coast of the United States, leading to the city of New Orleans being devastated and innumerable lives lost. As well as unimaginable devastation, it raises the question of why there was such a tardy response to the disaster and the accusation that a majority of those affected are poor and black, hence regarded as less significant. Later that year, an earthquake hit Pakistan, killing approximately 30 000, including many children and young people. Natural disasters will be more or less ongoing; increasingly, blame is apportioned to those not doing something to avert disasters, such as better environmental management, and for not rescuing more of those afflicted. Intertwined with all this are stories of escalating concern over Iran’s nuclear programme, Russia using its large gas supply to reassert its authority and China becoming ever stronger economically. In Britain in 2006 the decision is made – against all voices concerned with terrible dangers – to increase the building of nuclear power stations.


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PERSONAL NOTES We are all subject to essential anthropathology (we must all age and die), to chronic anthropathology (patriarchy, capitalism) and acute anthropathology (severe weather conditions, tsunamis, bombings, personal crises). But we are all, also, most obviously to ourselves, subject to chronic, acute and other forms of personal anthropathology. Our fortunes wax and wane. Social science literature ignores or downplays this, or its authors write as if it doesn’t happen to them personally (Cohen and Taylor (1992) being partly exceptional, although even these authors do not write in the first person). We are all examples of a cocktail of anthropathological forces and none of us is truly exceptional. It is often very difficult to discern which of our adversities are outside our control and which we ourselves create and might rectify. But social norms and stigma tend to prevent us from declaring all this, from airing our misfortunes without shame. I recently turned 55 and felt vaguely depressed by it. The next month a sudden pain in my big toe signalled possible gout, which in retrospect was just waiting to happen, a little genetic time-bomb. My movement is limited for a while and more medication is on the cards. Possibly the diuretics I take for high blood pressure have contributed to the gout. Then my GP detects a heart murmur and I await the results of an ECG and echocardiogram. I am conscious of bad days when I have difficulty finding the words I want to explain something; this can surely only get worse with the years. My hearing seems a little less acute than it was. The current bank account is overdrawn and the credit card bill mounting. The mortgage is large, there are two young men to put through university (each of whom will then start their working life – and probably continue into their thirties – with the debts of student loans), and there is no early retirement on the horizon. The ageing car is making worrying noises. Although it is summer, various work deadlines constantly hover gnawingly in my consciousness and a general career dysphoria is ever present. Similarly, there are various interpersonal conflicts around for me, not quite acute but semi-chronic. Even as I write I have a slight headache, perhaps a result of hot weather or too much time spent in front of computer screens. One of my teenage sons has been threatened again by a local gang, apparently for being a white, middle-class young male who dares to walk the wrong streets after dark. There is nothing really acute, terribly unfair or unusual here, perhaps, but plenty of evidence of the individual under siege from biological, capitalistic, environmental, and social micro-assaults (Cohen and Taylor, 1992; Dunant and Porter, 1996; Kegan, 1994; Sloan, 1996). We can cleverly deconstruct all this – who is the so-called individual,

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doesn’t all this depend on how you respond to it, isn’t it relative (people are starving in Africa and elsewhere), and isn’t this painting a glass half empty scenario? – but none of us altogether escapes such chronic and daily demands and assaults. And then when we sincerely attempt to understand and rectify them, we become immersed in the complexity of pluralistic solutions (Feltham, 2004a). Should I have some more therapy, become an anarchist activist, go on a vegan diet, take a holiday, stop reading the newspapers, take each day as it comes, have more fun? Presumably, all or most of us often think ‘What can I do to improve my own life?’ and ‘What is to be done socially?’ For me, part of the compromise solution is to read widely, think, and write this book. For anarchist activists, with whom I have some theoretical sympathy, it is hypocrisy and complicity to remain passively in oppressive systems and merely complain about them. For the four 2005 London suicide bombers, their part in the solution was to strike out at perceived infidel oppression. Our personal solutions today (perhaps as always) hinge on subjective needs and judgements, limited intelligence, circumstances, resentments and salvationist fantasies. Many of us feel helpless, some trust in God, others take action. Few can be said to know the whole picture or to act objectively and comprehensively for their own good and the good of others. This is part of the modern human trap: we can’t simply make choices for our strictly personal and local community needs – despite reassuring mantras like ‘think globally, act locally’ – since we know we are constantly impinged upon by and affect global trends. It is 24 July 2005, a bleakly grey Sunday where I live. I listlessly read bits of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Witness to My Life, his letters to Simone de Beauvoir. They are a mixture of diary, tender love exchanges and utter trivia, and I experience a certain disappointment (again) on realizing that so-called great people are often, perhaps always, deep down merely human, vain, doomed to rapidly diminishing remembrance by posterity. What did I think I was looking at when I visited the Sartre– Beauvoir monument in the Montparnasse cemetery? What does it now matter what Sartre was thinking and doing, who he was sleeping with, on a particular day in 1928? It was a childish pilgrimage. Meanwhile, I am writing, poring over my precious thoughts, deliberating over the use of a mot juste and a comma here or a semi-colon there. How can this activity be simultaneously so important to me and yet so obviously redundant? Newspapers carry many stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors (the bombs were dropped 60 years ago) and moral analyses of the atrocity. To this day, the pilot of the Enola Gay plane – that dropped the first atom bomb and killed up to 130 000 Japanese in Hiroshima


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– has no regrets. Recently over 80 people were killed by bombs in an Egyptian holiday resort by (non-specified) ‘Islamic fundamentalists’. Famine in Niger is killing many, and the television shows pictures of very young children horribly deformed by malnutrition, and most of them dying. This is just after the G8 nations have agreed to embark on increased aid programmes and debt relief in Africa. I am in e-mail communication with an American professor who believes in harmonizing God with evolution and who argues that God, while omnipotent, could not have created a world that was any other than this, just as he could not have created a rock too big for him to lift. I get into a diplomatic disagreement about this until I realize that this exchange of sophistries, our intellectual male jousting, is but another instance of the pervasive ‘I am right and you are wrong’ phenomenon; and so morally and practically redundant in the face of the immense suffering around us. Academics get their teeth into some conceptual nuance and make a career out of gnawing away at it, mistaking it for reality. Three days later I am writing a book I don’t wholeheartedly believe in (not this one) and struggling to carry on with it to meet my obligation. What you once agreed to and how you now feel often don’t tally. An article of mine has just been published and I am pleased with myself but wonder why. As part of the research for this book I buy from Amazon a copy of John Zerzan’s Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections and as I thumb through it I feel disturbed by just how much I agree with its contents but am dismayed at what I, indeed everyone, would have to renounce if its logic were followed through, and I know that I am not going to do this, so I then feel hypocritical and somewhat disgusted with myself. The greyness of the summer day blurs into my mood of uneasiness. The motives and actions of today’s Islamist bombers and their misguided apocalyptic fantasies and dedication to ushering in a new anti-Western age resonate sickeningly with those of the anti-civilization American Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who terrorized and killed between 1978 and 1995, and Zerzan has long been a supporter of Kaczynski. My uneasiness comes from dimly realizing how such extremism also has some seeds in my own psyche; and from the suspicion that we are so enmeshed in our anthropathological situation that the solutions fashioned by our minds are almost always sick or deluded themselves. And from realizing again that most of this activity, from theorizing and jousting to bombing, is spawned by men. Not long after this I go to speak at a counselling conference in Kenya, my first trip to Africa. Poverty is visible almost everywhere I go, HIV/AIDS is running at 7% of the population, average life expectancy is in the 40s, desperation leads to high crime levels (‘don’t ever

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leave the hotel compound on your own, lock the doors of your taxi at all times’) and, on the other side, there are examples of wealth and the necessary paranoia that must safeguard that wealth. I visit a slum of 50 000 people – the small tin shacks (some of them owned by those who’ve escaped and rented them back to others), no running water, mud, litter, cockroaches, rats, unemployment, disease – and feel like a foolish, helpless economic tourist. (And why, years ago, did I visit Dachau? How do we account for our voyeurism of les misérables, the wretched and slaughtered?) I am aware of the ever-present desperation, opportunistic crime, corruption, begging and prostitution; individuals simply trying to survive and to look after their families turning their imaginations and hands to any immediate industry or artfulness. I hear stories and jokes about polygamy, both official multiple marriages and simple promiscuity. Kenya is an artificially constructed, postcolonial, multitribal, scarred, patriarchal society with more than its share of domestic violence and child abuse, I hear. Aside from some traditional religion, Islam and Hinduism, Christianity is the dominant religion. Many look to God, and some dream of emigration to more affluent lands. Those who can study hard, supported by their families’ economic sacrifices, become qualified and hope for an escape or some surplus money with which to support their families. And on a different scale, and not personal to me, I watch on television the story of two young parents living on an English council estate with the woman’s mother, both (indeed all three) working long hours, in debt, trying to bring up their small son well. They live in what’s called ‘postcode poverty’, that is, in an area of poor housing, schools with poor achievement records, few and poor jobs, high crime, rampant drug addiction, poor health and poor prospects generally. In this area, 40% of households are run by single mothers. The man has overcome drug addiction and is battling with his boring, long-hours job until he can no longer tolerate its stupidity, monotony and the fact that it keeps him away from his son for so long, so he quits. On looking for a new job, all he can find are more soul-destroying, low-paid jobs. An unemotional government commentator says they provide opportunities for people like him to gain further qualifications and skills. But even if he, and others like him, could do this, what good would it do to have more and more qualified people competing with each other for lowly jobs that require no particular qualification or skill? It is nonsensical government ‘logic’. As I turn off the television, I reflect that my professional academic salary is more than the three adults shown on the programme have been earning together (and that of the boss, the Vice Chancellor, of my own university, is at least three times mine). And I wonder whether, if some philanthropist were to pay off this family’s


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debts of £18 000, what enduring difference it would make to them. A poverty trap is just that; a few may escape but most will not, things may get marginally better for some at times but not in the long run. Out of curiosity, I meet an acquaintance who has telephoned me requesting an urgent meeting to discuss his burning theory about why the world is in such a mess. He has certain economic and geopolitical theories to share with me. He has no training as such in these matters but reads very widely and assures me he understands enough about the world situation to pronounce on it. I wonder if he is some sort of cannabis-fuelled grandiose thinker, a stray, paranoid, apocalyptic thinker, or if he does in fact have some acute and original insight into it all. I am highly sceptical on the one hand and naive, or open, on the other. It turns out that as a computer programmer he sees global problems as easily placed in categories and solutions as leading logically and irresistibly from these. I am very wary of his sense of his own originality, urgency and optimism. In our meeting, irresistible conviction encounters unmovable scepticism, yet I leave wondering why we so easily dismiss those who have no name, title or reputation behind them with which to command a serious audience. (One book reviewer coined the arresting term ‘taxi driver bollocks’ for unqualified opinion.) It has also troubled me that his girlfriend, joining us and occasionally attempting to interject, is somewhat sidelined, tacitly dismissed as less serious than the men. Does everyone have equally valid insight into the problems of the world or are some more insightful than others? Why do men, whether as pontificating taxi drivers, pub philosophers or politicians or actual philosophers, generate so much theory, ostensible insight and conviction that changes nothing? Later, May 2006, I am sitting in an expensive apartment, to which I have temporarily moved following quite abrupt separation from my second wife. Dazed and lonely, though with no one to blame but myself, I listlessly visit shops on a bank holiday and buy some DVDs, CDs and books to distract myself. That evening I watch American Psycho. The themes of decadence, debauchery, vanity, greed, trivia, the exaggerated aesthetics of affluent lifestyles and meaningless drug-induced hyperviolence resound. The UK Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, is in the headlines for his sexual affairs, as if there is anything at all surprising about power being linked with sexuality. Hypocritical journalists are lapping it up. Yet, I sit in my apartment, straining to concoct straight academic entertainment for my forthcoming class; sometimes I can hardly keep it up, this pretence that the niceties of academia have any relevance at all today. Sometimes I sit in meditation posture here; looking out of the window at the clouds, rain and trees, and tears spring to my eyes, wretched as I am for hurting my wife, sad as I am

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for being confronted with my own repetitive neurosis, loneliness and absurdity. And even in the depths of this state, I know that I am also merely a symptom of my society. Some slog on valiantly, some go under in one form or another and I am merely suffering mildly in my overpriced apartment, someone’s clever business venture to accommodate transiently displaced middle-class individuals like me. Along the way, I experience some of the worst of ordinary human nature as the people buying my house time their knock-down negotiations over price to manipulate the situation to their maximum advantage and the person selling her house to me unaccountably withdraws from the sale, costing me nearly £1000 that I cannot recoup. She then puts it back on the market after two months. This eats away at me; but I mention these examples here as illustrations of simple human selfishness and greed. Coincidentally, a popular current television programme, The Apprentice, valorizes the millionaire British businessman Alan Sugar and promotes the cleverness of getting the best deal by ruthlessly knocking people down on price. Other programmes encourage everyone to make house purchases and improvements shrewdly as business propositions; your home is not your castle but part of your investment portfolio. This fiercely capitalistic ethos underlines Margaret Thatcher’s ‘no such thing as society’ and legal-but-immoral practices that undermine any sense of community, conviviality and trust. It also undermines any hopes that the meek shall inherit the earth and promotes a survival-of-the-most-competitive ethos. And it creates an increase in the very inequality that Wilkinson (2005) identifies as fuelling society-wide sickness that manifests in shortened life expectancy, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem; and that James (2007) dubs affluenza. It isn’t only individuals who have climbed on this bandwagon. Governments and corporations are now routinely mired in the dishonesties of stealth taxes, pensions scandals, faulty goods, selling of unnecessary endowment mortgages and insurance policies, weaselly small print evasions and so on.

AND BACK TO THE ‘IMPERSONAL’ Back on the international front, May 2006, severe troubles remain in Iraq and elsewhere. The director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies speaks of ‘brutal combat’ and ‘the dangerous triptych of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran’. A Guardian summary of international tensions refers to Iranian nuclear aspirations; severe instability in Iraq; continuing instability in Afghanistan; military as well as commercial expansion in China’s plans including an estimated figure of


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2.7% of 2003 GDP (£40 billion) on military build-up; and an estimate for the US military of $560 billion in 2006. We are so desensitized to such matters that we do not meaningfully protest that such expenditure is obscene (just think what positive alternatives might be funded by such amounts of money), nor that such national posturing and endangering of international peace should be regarded as deeply shameful, nor that the men driving these developments must be psychotically delusional and completely lacking in compassion and imagination. Why do billions of us acquiesce in all this? Our passivity, our money and lack of imagination and intellectually robust challenge also fuel such military madness. We go along with an allegedly realistic need for expensive defence programmes instead of constructing sane alternatives. Summer 2006 sees World Cup football matches played in Berlin and televised worldwide. More interesting than the football, I think, is the heightened sense of national identity experienced by so many citizens. In the case of England, there is probably a heightened sense of pathos among men who yearn for such a triumph after decades of losing; this post-colonial power is perceived by many as decaying, as effete, as having no real raison d’être – a lapdog of the United States – itself slowly crumbling – an idiosyncratic offshore part of Europe, a confused and vulnerable multicultural society. One can hear the all-too-audible reactions to each England football match among the lager-loaded local youth. News filters through to professional peers and myself that Petruska Clarkson, a much published and well-known psychotherapist, killed herself in late May, in a hotel in Amsterdam. Relatively rare events of this kind shake the profession, since if those who have had a lot of therapy themselves and trained others for many years cannot manage and overcome their own unhappiness, what does this say about therapy? Sporting vicissitudes and therapist suicides have no necessary connection, except that both sport and therapy represent hope, and hope is often dashed but renews itself. Morale rises and falls. The summer of 2006 turns uncharacteristically and unbearably hot. Daily routines are affected, for many sleep becomes disturbed and various somatic changes like headaches result. One has an uneasy glimpse of what the future may hold. The British long for warm, dry weather, yet when it comes we are ill-equipped. Newspapers tell us to expect increasingly hot summers; foreign holidays sell less; crops fail and grass turns brown; fires break out; it’s hard to know whether to enjoy it or worry guiltily about it, this climatic dystopia that is surely at least somewhat of our own making. According to one account, ‘the climate models are unequivocal in their pessimism for the future’

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(Guardian, 26 July 2006). The 2003 heatwave killed more than 30 000 people, most of them elderly; the 2040s are predicted to have 2003 temperatures as the norm. Incidentally, as the heat increases and people leave their doors and windows open, opportunistic thefts and burglaries increase in some places. Meanwhile, we have continuing bloodshed in the Middle East (Lebanon), large-scale immigration of eastern Europeans to Britain, and general geopolitical anxiety. Of course, it is the job of newspapers to convey information on significant current affairs, and it is quite rare that positive stories appear, although occasional truces, peace treaties and instances of heart-warming common sense momentarily prevail. News reporting is clearly selective, with major national and international political stories often taking front stage and vying with humanitarian disasters, wars, environmental threats, celebrity sexual and financial scandals, science reports and social surveys, editorial opinion, sports, arts, features and gossip. Complaints are sometimes heard that only, or mainly, bad news is reported (and that inaccurately) and that its preponderance contributes to low national mood and a biased view of the world as more negative (more anthropathological) than it really is (Lomborg, 2001). An occasional balance is attempted with stories of heroic human endeavours, triumphs or kindnesses. But how can we know or even estimate the true state of the world? A pessimist is likely to be confirmed in his or her pessimism by consumption of negative reporting and an optimist by positive stories. The observation that today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping resonates with the idea that today’s hot news – even of humanitarian disasters – is cold and boring by tomorrow, as we become desensitized by constant news coverage (Cohen, 2001; Gray, 2004; Kleinman, Das and Lock, 1997). Journalists must churn out the ostensible novelty that we demand on a daily basis. Yesterday’s massive famine in Africa or ethnic cleansing story is far away geographically and temporally. We ourselves tend to be naturally ‘journomorphic’, seeing things in the context of the daily, governed by the recency effect and short-termism; and also by ‘mediomorphism’, relying on someone else or some other source to define our reality (de Zengotita, 2005).

ROOTS OF CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPATHOLOGY About 150 years ago the American Henry David Thoreau made his famous statement that ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’. At the same time the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1851/1970, p. 49) described ‘this world as a place of atonement, a sort


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of penal colony’. In spite of the optimism generated by the Enlightenment, there has been no shortage of pessimistic and sceptical voices during this period. Nietzsche among others helped to question religion philosophically and gave us the courage to question. Darwin laid down the principles of evolution that would become the cornerstone for modern biology; but Darwinism was also destined to present perhaps the biggest challenge to religion (Dawkins, 2006). Although largely unfashionable now, Marx seriously challenged capitalism and enabled significant experiments in social government to take place; in spite of devastating critique as a practical solution, the world knows from Marxism that ruthless market competition and hierarchies of wealth are not wholly inevitable. Einstein punctured existing scientific assumptions and helped to open vast new territories of cosmology and physics, as well as new technologies good and bad. Freud for all the failings of psychoanalysis brought on to the agenda the common human tendency towards deception of self and others, the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Overwhelmingly, knowledge has eroded religious tradition. But it has been mainly male-driven knowledge, feminists having to fight their way to justice slowly in the last century. And it has been mainly Western-driven, Eurocentric knowledge, frequently appropriated by and converted into American technology and interests. Notably, while the twentieth century boasts plenty of villains, there have been few outstanding moral pioneers during this time. Gandhi stands out. Interestingly, a recent poll of young Indians found that 30% admired Gandhi as a role model; but 37% admired Bill Gates.2 In the past 500 years we have seen European exploration, colonization of many countries, slavery and exploitation. The last 200 or 300 years have perhaps been characterized by rationality and industry, punctuated by wars and social injustices; and we have caused unprecedented pollution levels (McNeill, 2000). Reason and science have ascended (though by no means wholly taken precedence over religion) and complex structures for manufactured goods and services and technologically dominated workplaces have become, or are becoming, the norm. Let’s put this in its frankly negative form. We have learned to use and live by our feelings and our own resources less and to rely on, even be controlled by, industrial and technological machines and routines (Brennan, 2003). We (or many of us) have learned to use our bodies far less and to spend our days in mind-work, often in purely symbolic work. Essentially, this trend goes back to the movement from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural lifestyle but it has intensified enormously in recent centuries. Many of us spend entire days and years sitting in front of computers and we seem to see nothing wrong about this. We have also moved, or been moved,

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from small-group existence to mass societies, with all their impersonal bureaucracies. Self-sufficiency and craft-based lifestyles have largely given way to mass production and consumption. Universal education and full employment are the aspirations of many societies. House ownership, the right to travel and to pursue personal happiness, these are becoming commonplace in many countries. Medicalization of the human lifespan is becoming the norm and along with it better health, longevity and unforeseen iatrogenic risks. If we can meaningfully characterize centuries and decades at all (as historians and journalists do), we may say that the twentieth century was a time of great scientific and technological discovery and progress with material living standards and health care. It also saw a degree of turning away from patriarchy and child abuse. But its later decades saw a rise in selfish materialism and disparities in wealth, as well as hedonism (itself also overshadowed by health concerns and environmental awareness). The progress, selfishness and hedonism engendered by capitalism was bought at the cost of failed experiments in Communism and the ensuing, disillusioned acceptance that freemarket capitalism was the only way forward. And the entire century was overshadowed by the most terrible wars, the Nazi Holocaust and Hiroshima and Nagasaki being outstanding examples of massive human cruelty and ingenuity in the service of that cruelty. It was not only cruelty but a staggering inability to resolve problems otherwise. Perhaps it is this very juxtaposition of human progress with human madness that best, and most tragically, characterizes the twentieth century – unless, that is, we come to see the steady abuse of the environment, lies and procrastination about that abuse (Davis, 2002; Kennedy, 2005; J.M. Smith, 2004b) and its deadly impact as the longterm legacy of the twentieth century (McNeill, 2000). Samuel Beckett, probed for his reasons for being so pessimistic and writing copiously about distress, aware that many saw him as perversely miserable, denied he had had an unhappy childhood. After one such interview in 1961, he got into a taxi and saw in it ‘three signs: one asked for help for the blind, another help for orphans, and the third for relief for war refugees’ (Foster, 1989, p. 111). This ubiquity of suffering is reminiscent of the Buddha’s famous observations. Life’s hellish aspects are picked up more by Beckett and his ilk than others and we can certainly argue with the former, and try to link their observations with some defect in their character. But there will always be organic illnesses, abandoned or bereaved children and victims of war, and these are simply the most visible signs of an imperfect world and of anthropathology. Acute macro-anthropathology, as in wars, has alternated increasingly with periods of ennui and frantic


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hedonism. Artistic and literary movements in the twentieth century, such as abstract painting that included the bleakness of Rothko or the figurative bleakness of Munch, the gloom in T.S. Eliot, existentialist literature and philosophy, the theatre of the absurd, all pointed to a loss of hope and meaning. Baudrillard (2005) declared a ‘second Fall of Man’ characterized by banality. War and recovery from war, relative affluence with increasing luxury goods and services – these did not deliver the expected happiness (Lane, 2000). It’s hard if not impossible to characterize anthropathology today, or even humanity today, without some level of agreement with anthropologists, pluralistic or postmodernist observers. In other words, the ‘crooked timber of humanity’ (Berlin, 2003) consists of necessarily imperfect groups in unavoidable conflict with each other – nations, alliances, cultures, religions – and interest groups, traditions, institutions, individuals, each with particular combinations of geographical origins, ideological leanings, limitations, blind spots, aims, ambitions, tastes. We have a growth of secularism accompanied by a growth of religious fundamentalism, a convergence of geopolitical interests paralleled by a divergence. We do not know if Europe is in terminal decline or ready for rebranding and rebirth. We seem fairly sure today that China is ready to assume prominence, that India’s economic fortune and influence are growing, that the Middle East is extremely troublesome and possibly a cauldron of worldwide war, with further trouble spots in evidence; and that militant Islam is on the rise. And that the United States and its allies remain sure that they know best, that everyone in the ‘civilized world’ wants liberal democracy, along with global capitalism. Gray (2004) mocks the idea that such world views can ever coincide, asserting that humanity pretty much is a maelstrom of conflicting ideologies. It should be very clear that analysts of the human condition differ, sometimes violently, over the state of the world, aetiologies and remedies. And today’s geopolitical ruminations become both realities and forgotten worries. Probably for most of us, evaluation of the quality of daily life is based on an experience-near position. We know what affects us daily and that is our main concern. For some, that means a moment-tomoment subsistence existence, around or just above the poverty level. For some, life is more or less wretched or at best envy-based. Individuals’ experiences of course vary widely according to wealth, health, personality and opportunity. As I suggest in the next chapter, for most of us daily life is concerned with education, work, family, relationships, and negotiating the rules, constraints and customs of our society, as well as our own biological needs and deficits. But a great deal of our time also goes into leisure, listlessness, idleness, recreation, fantasy,

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Internet surfing, shopping, various mental states, and sleep. And even this list betrays my own sphere of experience. While a lot of my time is spent on reading, writing and thinking, very little is devoted to ‘street’ activity – hanging out, chilling, gossiping, flirting, drinking, drugs, petty crime, violence; nor to the activities of impoverished old age – visiting doctors, hospitals and post offices, engaging in manageable, brain-sustaining hobbies, eking out an existence. Within our subgroups and our age groups we carry on our separate existences. I suspect that most of us worry about the world, especially about wars and terrorism, changing demographics, unreliable weather, increasing utility bills, the crossover between politics and family and personal life. Life feels less personal and human than it used to. Local corner shops, familiar GPs who made home visits, local libraries, familiar bank managers – these have disappeared or been drastically reduced. Now we make frustrated phone calls to wholly impersonal, ageographical information services that keep us on hold, play us bad music, misdirect us. You try to organize a new telephone service and you’re given a dozen choices of ‘package’ which mean nothing to you; some research has said that people want choice. And we may spend hours at our personal computers searching for best deals and services (which utility company is making fractionally less profit out of me?) We sit in traffic jams and hunt for scarce parking spaces. Or some – righteously, healthily, riskily, aggressively – cycle. We experience road rage and desk rage and try not to, reading the latest news about anger management, or seeing the counsellor. We constantly try to adjust the controls in our heads and bodies, doing the deep breathing, yogic postures, relaxation techniques, self-affirmation exercises, jogging, nutritional and medication balance checks, and so on. Is it true that we’ve ‘never had it so good’ and ‘things can only get better’ (past political party electioneering slogans)? If so, it’s simultaneously true that life is busier, more stressful and less in our control. We’re materially better off and yet hauntingly less human, with less time for each other. I am constantly amazed at the deadpan expressions of many shopworkers, for example, who seem to have no sense of humour, social skills or ‘humanity’. But the same is even true for some colleagues – agendaminded, task-focused and completely lacking in interpersonal warmth and understanding. I am conscious that I may be exaggerating the negative aspects of everyday life. Consider these examples. A young man casually tosses his empty crisp packet into the road from a moving car; a mother smacks her small child for crying in public and getting on her nerves; middle-class parents determinedly buy their way into the catchment


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areas for the best schools for their children; those in one political or religious group or another shake their heads with a sense of intellectual or moral superiority at the stupidity of the less enlightened; profit-desperate businesses entice consumers with unnecessary shiny goods and lies; bad eating, overeating, smoking and drinking are routine general habits; an adolescent girl commits suicide after being bullied for not getting good enough exam results. Many of these are commonplace events, some not commonplace, but the social traditions underpinning them remain unquestioned. Yet, I am just pulling out the negatives here, aren’t I? I’m ignoring or minimizing the many everyday kindnesses, pleasures and achievements that mix with the bad experiences. Yes. But I’m also asking what the proportion of ‘good’ to ‘bad’ is. And whether we create some good at the unacknowledged or unnoticed cost of some bad, or goods for ourselves at cost to others. And whether our news media exaggerate the bad. And whether ‘goodness’ is an uphill struggle. And to what extent we deceive ourselves either about the good or bad, and whether we can ever undeceive ourselves personally and collectively. And perhaps progress is, as some say, an extremely slow but sure process. Is everyday life lived better, enjoyed more, by not questioning too much (the happy pig rather than the miserable Socrates)? A friend put to me the following challenge. We are sitting one evening in an attractive waterside bar, enjoying good food and drink, good music, heightened environmental aesthetics, free time, affection-rich companionship. What’s anthropathological about any of this? (The implication is that I’m not happy unless I’m complaining, that I’m insisting on seeing bad where none exists.) OK. A place like this is based on careful capitalist calculations. Initial and ongoing financial outlay, including low staff costs, underpins the enterprise and anticipates returns that will enrich the owners. High energy costs (fancy lighting and heating for such a building, as well in the environs) are involved. The (unnecessary and wasteful) food and drink packaging exaggerates the specialness of the products, many of which are transported internationally with damaging side effects of pollution and food growers in the developing world being exploited. The poor cannot enjoy such experiences at all – and may suffer from feelings of inadequacy and envy (Wilkinson, 2005) – and we can enjoy them only as respites before returning to stressful and boring jobs the next day. These are exceptional moments of escape, feel-good illusions that have become necessary in our civilization and also profitable for the few who provide and consume them. Superficially, this is indeed a feel-good experience. But only a little thought reveals its dark side. Now, the problem is that this analysis leaves us with only gloomy guilt: it is wrong to enjoy

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ourselves when we the privileged can and others cannot. We cannot enjoy ourselves until we have fought to help provide everyone with such experiences. Meanwhile, we must wear hair shirts. Hedonism is suspect, if not downright wrong, as in Calvinist and other ascetic thought systems. Even the Buddha could not ‘enjoy’ his enlightenment until he had worked towards freeing all others from their suffering and illusion. I think we recognize that heroic asceticism, refusal of all comforts and luxuries, has something wrong-headedly excessive in it, in the same way that extreme and unreflective privilege and wealth does. Yet, we cannot avoid entertaining these thoughts, since we are trapped in a civilization and in thought systems that are dualistic. Similarly, while we may enjoy our relative affluence by looking to our collective impoverished past, we know that we cannot rest on our human laurels, as it were. There is no resting place. All our gains have entropic features. We must maintain our gains through constant effort and we must anticipate future problems, at the individual level by some degree of probably anxious planning, for instance safeguarding our career and providing for a pension; and at the species level by weighing up threats to our survival (Bostrom, 2001).

AND BACK TO THE PERSONAL My book Problems Are Us: or Is It Just Me? (Feltham, 2004a) was criticized by some for being ‘too personal’ and for assuming that others suffer from the same problems and foibles as I do. Indeed, I confess it must have given that impression. Yet, what I was clumsily trying to do was to ‘come out’ as a sufferer, with examples from my own life designed to encourage others to admit their own struggles and to dismantle the illusions and lower the defences we all have. And for all the folk wisdom and academic analysis conveyed in popular culture and clever texts, our lives are lived subjectively, we are often lonely decision makers. Difficult personal events for me in 2006 have included a second divorce and two associated house moves, as well as medical problems. Work is at times very stressful, both in its acute challenges (e.g. deadlines for conference papers, eleventh-hour preparations and marking) and in its monotony (drip-drip bureaucracy, tedious tasks and meetings) but gives an outward impression of success. British academics took industrial action in 2006 in a bid to raise their salaries, the outcome of which was fairly dismal. Nevertheless, academics like other


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professionals are among the better off. But second divorce and its consequences has shoehorned me into a small terrace house needing work, still with a large mortgage at 56, and with university fees and costs to meet for my sons for years to come. So, while I am undoubtedly much better off than many, I am less well off than others’ fantasies of my lifestyle would suggest. To some extent I feel guilty and stupid in relation to divorce; I should ‘know better’ in my position (Sternberg, 2002). But we are all in my position: all of us are better and worse off than some; most of us are bombarded by occupational, financial, relational, psychological and medical challenges, each with our limited resources. We must maintain ourselves physically in a competitive society; and maintain our morale in a world that is often depressing. In the course of the last two years I have been mildly physically abused by one group of youths, sworn at by a teenage girl in the street for brushing past her and threatened by young men in two separate road rage incidents, as well as getting into a threatening fracas with a young man in a pub, being threatened by an older man with a mental health problem and by a woman with a grievance. Most of these have been random, unprovoked street incidents involving complete strangers and one or two have had elements of mutual rancour. One wonders, along with certain New Age mystics (Tolle, 2006), if one is unconsciously attracting trouble for some unknown karmic purpose. In one case, I can see that the accumulation of small violences done to me may have overflowed into disproportionate aggravation towards another. In other words, I had kicked the cat before I realized what I was doing and why. But stories from some friends confirm a general sense of rising anger and violence socially. Simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, driving a car, being a man, getting old and being resented, these can be enough to put you at risk. People who decide to ‘have a go’ at culprits in street incidents are sometimes simply killed. Many people (mainly men) have been kicked or unloved sufficiently to lash out randomly. Some tourists have recently been robbed and killed for being in the wrong place, being resented, or symbolizing ‘the West’. Some young black men are killed for being black, and gay men for being gay. And many, particularly urban dwellers, have grown used to living uneasily with domestic security systems and car alarms; they have become almost desensitized to the siege conditions in which they live. Britons have grown used to a lack of rubbish bins in railways stations (potential hiding places for bombs). What goes wrong for individuals is not, as I have said, only vertical in kind, built from childhood misfortune by inadequate parents, but transmitted via daily events and chronic social malaise, breathed in, as it were, from our toxic society itself: anthropathological enmeshment.

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If I am right, most of us get through the day, through our responsibilities, as well as we can, with some of us temporarily breaking down or needing props like alcohol and medication. Most of us are aware of international, cultural and religious tensions which sometimes come to a head in bombings or threats of bombing. Most of us are aware of environmental dis-ease and many of us feel uncertain about its severity or powerless to do much that is obviously meaningful about it. Uncharacteristically sunny weather in the United Kingdom in November brings both pleasure and anxiety (is this sinister global warming, and merely an indication of impending overheating or ice age (Levy, 2005b)?) Recently a man has been fined for inadvertently putting an incorrect article of rubbish in his paper recycling bin. I suspect that more important and damaging than any Freudian unconscious conflict is our chronic peripheral awareness of the fragile state of the world. And while each of us knows, and refuses to know, that we are going to die within decades, we are also bombarded by vague hopes of extended life by breakthroughs in genetic and medical knowledge and technical expertise. One day my newspaper tells me of impending environmental catastrophe, the next of concentrated solar power technology that can be built in deserts and generate all the energy we need to save the planet. We do not know whether to believe in hopeful promises or doomsday scenarios. Notes 1. The death toll in the bombings of 7 July 2005 was 52 killed and 700 injured. A survey within two weeks of the bombings (another abortive attempt was made on 21 July 2005), based on 1000 Londoners, found that 31% of the capital’s people were probably experiencing substantial levels of stress in relation to the bombings (Metro, 26 August 2005). 2. Time magazine, 25 September 2006, p. 20. (The same edition incidentally cites 92% of Americans as believing in God and 75% as believing their family will get into heaven.)

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Mainstream Arenas of Anthropathology Transmission Many examples have been given of historical and contemporary anthropathology and in Chapters 6 and 7 in-depth analyses of anthropathology in religion and in the psychological therapies are given. The purpose of this chapter is to consider a small range of major themes that are often taken for granted – education, work, enduring relationships and mass regulation – that define our everyday existence and to show in what ways these are anthropathological. It is arguably in these arenas that a majority of us receive our unwitting training and reinforcement in anthropathology and do battle with our conscious or subconscious awareness of non-anthropathological aspects of ourselves. Within the psychological hedges of family, neighbourhood, culture, society and civilization, there is always a partly embattled ‘I’ trying to make sense of its existence and to negotiate a path of optimal pleasure and minimal pain.

EDUCATION Formal education for children has been with us in Britain since only the early nineteenth century, and compulsory universal education only from 1880. Since then the length of the school day and age range have increased, and fashions in educational policy and subject priorities have of course changed. What began as a historically specific philanthropic movement against abusive child labour and in favour of improvements in children’s lives turned into the mass compulsory system of socialization, control and preparation for employment that we have today. No serious discussion about any need for radical changes is entertained. Instead, government policy is all towards continuously raising performance standards, meeting targets and reducing prob-

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lematic behaviour. Alongside this has existed a small but significant tradition of alternative schools and educational methods founded by those critical of mainstream, mass schooling. The notorious American documentary film maker and social critic Michael Moore (2002) declares himself a college drop-out who was ‘bored beyond belief at school’ (p. 95). He describes American high school as ‘some sort of sick, sadistic punishment of kids by adults seeking vengeance’ (p. 97). His political analysis of schools amounts to the following: The political leaders – and the people who vote for them – have decided it’s a bigger priority to build another bomber than to educate our children. They would rather hold hearings about the depravity of a television show called Jackass than about their own depravity in neglecting our schools and children. (Moore, 2002, pp. 90–91)

But for all his brash iconoclasm, Moore has a point. We do prioritize many inessential and downright dangerous political causes ahead of education. Many young people experience their school years as boring, frustrating and sometimes violent. Many teachers experience school as little more than crowd control. Terry Deary, ex-teacher and author of the extremely popular series of Horrible Histories books, told a Guardian (12 August 2003) newspaper interviewer that ‘everything I learned [at school] after 11 was a waste of time’. It was boring, badly taught and not related to the real world. Schools are nothing but ‘a Victorian idea to get kids off the street’. ‘Who decided that putting 30 kids with only their age in common in a classroom with one teacher was the best way of educating?’ he asked. The celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna declares (Guardian, 2 November 2004) that his schooling was pointless: ‘When am I ever going to need to know about cloud formations? I never got taught anything I thought would be useful, like how to cook a meal, or fill in a tax return form.’ The cultural historian Berman (1998) described his (US high school) history lessons, indeed all formal lessons, as ‘crushingly boring’ (p. 107). Krishnamurti (1974) condemned competitive education as destructive, absurd, unwisely ambition-fuelling, and in effect (without using this word) as a cause of anthropathology. Criticisms such as these are not taken seriously. The British education system has changed relatively little across decades, apart from becoming more standardized and sometimes using more group activities in lieu of didactic teaching. British children must attend school compulsorily from age 5 to 16 and many attend both before and after


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those ages. State schools are subject to a standardized national curriculum, stringent attainment targets and regular inspection. Classes of 25–30 are the norm. Official government statistics report continuous overall gains in achievement. There are no official statistics reporting on children’s satisfaction or otherwise – restriction of movement, boredom, bullying, abuse, competitiveness, privileging of cognitive development, and unaddressed personal problems. Young people are more likely to be diagnosed as school phobic or antisocial than their teachers as boring and oppressive. There is copious anecdotal evidence that many young people suffer from their education and, in later life, recall relatively little of what they had supposedly learnt. Insistence on compulsory mass education, large classes and little subject choice obviously creates boredom and frustration for many that is either unvoiced or expressed indirectly in so-called bad behaviour, which is then punished. Attempts to address the particular learning needs or talents, and the unique personal qualities of each child, are necessarily minimal within the constraints of class size, targets for subject coverage and limits of teacher energy, competence and interest in child psychology. School buildings, like hospitals, are often in poor repair. While school has been compulsory for some considerable time, it is only quite recently that draconian measures have been introduced to enforce this. Reacting to rising absenteeism, the UK government in the 2000s began to utilize fines and imprisonment for certain offenders, or rather their parents. This was reinforced by requiring schools themselves to provide figures and meet targets for reduced absenteeism. Anarchists will clearly be incensed by compulsory schooling but even radical liberals take seriously the notion of consistent education, even if this is provided at home. However, the government decided that Britain must compare well with the educational performance of other countries, especially as this is thought to relate to success in the global commercial market. So policy logic runs like this. Children do better by simply being present at school and must be obedient, therefore attendance must be enforced. Close monitoring and reporting will be instituted, and the parents of absent students will be contacted and interrogated. Every day of schooling is preciously linked with coursework or examination success, therefore even brief parentally endorsed absences must stop. No thought whatsoever is given to individual circumstances such as parents’ finances or children’s stress or boredom. A single mother, divorced for three years, has the chance of a cheap foreign holiday, the only chance, in fact, during this period; unfortunately it is during term time. On informing the school, she is told that her children will miss out on vital work and that she should change her plans. The teacher responsible for such castigation is under

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pressure for the school to meet attendance targets; single parents are often perceived as feckless contributors to declining morals. The parent in question is embarrassed and distraught. Travel firms price holidays so that they often become exorbitantly expensive out of school term times. Politicians mouth righteous rhetoric about how invaluable every scrap of education is; teachers under pressure repeat the mantra; holiday operators complain about their profit margins. If people get divorced, experience financial hardship and exhaustion, and their children suffer along with them, too bad: the structure of education does not allow for human lapses or freedoms. In what leans towards a totalitarian educational system based on anxieties about international economic competition, rigid policies, mistaken educational philosophies and complete overriding of the psychological needs of children and parents, those who struggle or who are opposed to juggernautstyle education will suffer more. Politicians who have themselves succeeded within a driven educational culture are deaf to pleas from those with different circumstances and beliefs. Anthropathological escalation operates here, in the ratcheting up of expectations and refusal to consider and respond to fundamental human needs. Conflict, stress, resentment and ‘presenteeism’ (attending without fully participating) will increase, contributing merely to more alienated citizens. Almost all I have described here applies to Western mainstream education of young people. Of course, education can vary enormously. On the one hand, experimental ‘free’ schools continue, in the tradition of A.S. Neill’s Summerhill, and variants of home schooling also persist as minority options. A growth in religious schools has occurred, for example Catholic schools offering traditional academic schooling alongside Christian moral and theological themes. More extreme educational providers include American creationists bent on excluding or marginalizing evolutionary themes. With the rise of Islam we also see bids for an emphasis on Muslim teachings, especially Koranic themes, alongside adherence to traditional Islamic dress. Dalrymple (2005) describes the growth in madrasas (Islamic schools accentuating Koranic teachings) worldwide, but especially in Pakistan where schooling has been seriously neglected or underfunded. Mixed views on madrasas exist but sometimes worries are fuelled by a lack of focus on traditional subjects and an apparent overemphasis on religious and political themes. Whatever our own views, there is no escaping the problem of exactly how, or whether, to educate the young, nor the problems ensuing from those decisions and the biases that inform them. Declining standards of literacy are lamented, for example, and perhaps rightly so. Yet, we need to ask bigger questions about the kind of world we want and


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what our priorities need to be. Given the present extreme concern for the environment, it would seem more important that young people are taught about personal green ethics and appropriate action for energy conservation than being made anxious about their spelling or grammar. Tradition and habit means that we remain locked on to the usual agenda when a quite different focus may be needed. But the paucity and problems of education extend to what we call ‘higher education’, mainly in the university sector. Moore (2002) provides many examples of failures of the university system in the United States, including the much lamented and lampooned example of George W. Bush, a president of questionable intelligence who graduated from both Yale and Harvard. The UK government in the early 2000s made much of a politically expedient statistic claiming that university graduates earned significantly more than non-graduates and could therefore afford to, indeed were morally obliged to, pay new fees by taking out large loans. Yet, it is well known that many of the most entrepreneurial and wealthy people have either no university education or qualification (take Bill Gates and Richard Branson as supreme examples); many moderately high earners would probably be such with or without a degree; some in positions of great responsibility in government have no degree (John Major was British Prime Minister for eight years and had qualifications no higher than ‘O’-levels (GCSE level, taken at age 16); and many university graduates are in low-paid and low-status jobs that bear no relation to their qualification. Such logical inconsistencies among others are pointed out by Sutherland (1992). Many eminent intellectuals have carved careers outside universities to avoid the mediocrity, anti-intellectual and anti-creative pressures of university routines and politics: Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Darwin, among others. And others have been deeply ambivalent about them: Freud, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Beckett, for example, and probably a majority of artists and writers. Timothy Leary, best known as an LSD-promoting figurehead of 1960s and 1970s hippy culture, was a respected professor of psychology at Harvard University before ‘dropping out’, being sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment for possession of a small amount of marijuana, and going on to become a countercultural writer and teacher. Leary (1968) argued that ‘our educational process is an especially dangerous narcotic because it probably does direct physiological damage to your nervous system’ (p. 245). Recognizing the narrow cognitivist hegemony of education, Leary argued that ‘education . . . puts a series of filters over your awareness so that, year by year, step by step, you experience less and less’ (p. 246). Education promises rewards – greater learnedness, better skills, higher

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self-esteem and more money from better careers – but these are not necessarily forthcoming, or may be but at the cost of losing something else – one’s ‘soul’. Leary suggested as a better education, not necessarily that all should ingest LSD but, for example, working or being incarcerated in prison instead of studying criminology. Needless to say, today’s educators dismiss Leary as at best an eccentric. Drugs are portrayed as self-evidently dangerous and addictive and education as unquestionably good. But what if we questioned whether education might be a kind of drug, or a socially acceptable tranquillizing process, with educators as state-licensed pushers? With roots in ancient Greek thought, in the original academy of Plato, British universities go back to the thirteenth century. Some regard the medieval Al-Azhar University in Cairo as the origin of the modern university. Universities have clearly served an important purpose in stimulating and producing scholarly research and dissemination in the arts, humanities and sciences. One of their most important contributions has arguably been to provide the means for reflection on and dialogue about all aspects of life (‘learning for its own sake’), something that could be achieved only by freeing academics from other tasks. Today, universities are increasingly regarded as mere training institutions processing vast numbers of young adult students for the workplace and mature students for re-employment or promotion. Under the continuing public relations rhetoric of excellence (itself a detached and empty cliché, according to Readings (1996)), universities are disingenuously, tacitly ‘dumbing down’ in order to meet government demands for greater throughput, better outcomes and ostensible efficiency. Punitive and bureaucracy-generating government targets and inspections, erosion of basic administrative support, along with inane criteria for research funding have produced a multitasking, cowed, stressed and often mediocre academic workforce (Evans, 2004). Modern universities manage to combine arcane systems of competitiveness (including the anachronistic rituals of assignments with penalties for non-punctuality, spurious marking discriminations, questionable examination procedures, awards and grades) and arcane staff hierarchies, with a pretence of commercialization and predominant orientation to graduate employability. They are run by administrators, accountants and managers and feebly mimic commercial corporations. Mistrusted by governments, universities (indeed all statutorily funded institutions) are awash in time-wasting and soul-destroying ‘documentary diarrhoea’. Academics’ pay has fallen well below that of other professions – medicine, law, accountancy, management, etc. – that it used to be on a par with, reflecting the double standards of government: the demand for excellence and efficiency with higher student numbers and


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smaller rewards. This has taken a heavy toll. Small wonder that contemporary universities have been referred to as ‘dead places’ (Griffith, 2003), as failing in their duty to promote critical thinking (Barnett, 1997), as ‘in ruins’ and ‘petty and vicious’ (Readings, 1996), as ‘highly irrational places’ producing a ‘dehumanizing experience’ (Ritzer, 2000), with academics forced to ‘administer more and think less’ (Brennan, 2003), or as made into ‘circus monkeys’ (Evans, 2004); and as giving many genuine intellectuals no option but to contemplate an alternative career or the life of an independent scholar (Berman, 2001; Illich, 1993). Most bitingly, Zerzan (2002, p. 153) refers to ‘the cowardice and dishonesty of professors and journalists’ who remain merely clever but disengaged observers of the problems of the world. David Graeber (2004), an academic in anthropology at Yale University, was fired in 2005 for writing and acting too openly in favour of anarchism. The university, he says, is ‘perhaps the only Western institution other than the Catholic church and British monarchy that has survived in much the same form from the Middle Ages, [now] doing intellectual battle at conferences in expensive hotels’ (2004, p. 7). Graeber wants to see an anarchist anthropology (and sociology, economics, literary theory, etc.) and asks repeatedly ‘why there are so few anarchists in the academy’ when so many are enamoured of radical Marxist or Foucauldian theory, for example. His conclusions are broadly that universities serve capitalism and academics prostitute themselves, espousing theory that is seldom wedded to corresponding action. Critical thought, impressive scholarship and important scientific research often happen despite the handicaps imposed by government. One of the handicaps in Britain is the Research Awards Exercise (RAE), which forces academics ignominiously to rush to publish a certain number of articles in peer-reviewed journals. In some universities bullying and humiliation drive this process. This often leads to even more trivial and little-read publications, wasted time and unhelpful disparities between competing universities. But beneath such carping over contemporary practices, more fundamental problems remain concerning the very identity, function and place of universities today. Are they businesses that must grow up and pay for themselves? Are they pragmatic, hypocritical institutions forced for the sake of their survival to talk up quality while really being preoccupied with ‘bums on seats’ and getting government off their backs? Are they embarrassed and embarrassing anachronisms, as churches more obviously are? Should universities be a frankly two-tier or even three-tier system (research elites, standard educational providers and technical training camps)? Should institutions for research, development and teaching in science and technology be separated from those focusing on arts and

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humanities? Who should pay for university education? Are universities really about economic growth at all (Wolf, 2002)? These are recurring debates, many of them ignored or dismissed by government. To a large segment of the public, for whom universities seem irrelevant or elitist, perhaps none of this matters. In my view the precise shape and name of such institutions is not the critical issue. Rather, the question is, if universities are not the places where critical thinking and dialogue takes place, is fostered and valued, where is? If universities continue to be heavily monitored, bureaucratized, mediocre places of easily processed pseudo-learning or ‘knowledge transfer’, with no alternative forum for live thought, dialogue and debate (let’s forget the moribund churches and political parties), does this matter? So what, if it doesn’t go without saying, is anthropathological in the state of higher education? Its very survival is riddled with unanswered questions. ‘So that we can compete internationally’ is some sort of answer but far from satisfactory. To a large extent it continues simply because it has existed for hundreds of years. Certainly it helps to reduce unemployment figures, and all the more so if government targets for increased enrolments persist. But above all, like most of our optional social institutions, universities provide a semblance of social meaning and of standards for assessing the contents of what has supposedly been learned. Of course, people must be trained to be doctors, architects and so on. But we don’t necessarily require generic universities for these purposes. Nor is it clear that we need universities in which young people study, in hothouse fashion, social sciences, arts and humanities for three or more years. The nature of the link between intensive, specialized study and employment is usually taken for granted. But with the likelihood of extended working lives and greater longevity, the assumption that one takes a degree at 21 or so and then applies it to the same lifelong career is untenable.1 Also currently untenable for most is the proposition that a significant chunk of time and income can be taken out of adult working and family life (say, in midlife) to study concertedly again. The fundamental purpose of universities and the logistics of how radical changes can be made prove too obdurate a challenge to be taken on, so tradition continues as usual. Self-interest, irrationality, fear of being wrong, and facing fundamental absurdities all stand in the way of transformation. Most tellingly of all, academics have failed to apply radical critical thinking to themselves and their institutions. Neither is this surprising, since academics are hardly above anthropathology themselves. The petty and vicious atmosphere that Readings (1996) mentioned manifests itself not only, as in every workforce, in interpersonal and employer–employee conflicts, but throughout


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the very system. Arcane assessment systems, awards and grades, staff hierarchies, narcissistically driven and often obscure, jargonridden publications, and substance-thin but ego-boosting and careerenhancing conferences2 all attest to the pedantry, vanity and ambition of those concerned. As in all institutions, there are exceptions. It is imprecise to speak of academics as a unified force; some are mostly immersed in their subject, some are true and selfless (if often naive) believers in higher education. But universities are made up of flawed human beings with all sorts of neurotic agendas and self-serving attachments to arcane traditions. Much of what happens in academic institutions is, in anthropathological terms, silly and immature when set against the enormity and urgency of the human situation.

WORK There is an easily discernible movement from the grazing and hunting engaged in by animals, including early humans, to hunter-gatherer societies, to agricultural routines, trading of goods, division of labour, slavery, classes of worker, industrial routines and the mixed, global economy of our own times. The necessary and cooperative work of early hunter-gatherers is now the biologically unnecessary (symbolic) and competitive work that most of us are engaged in. The small-scale has become a global market. Hands-on subsistence jobs have become intermediate roles for a wage that pays for biological essentials and inessentials, ‘social essentials’ and luxuries. Work has become the principal plank in our way of life, an intrinsic and lengthy part of the average lifespan of an individual. This is well attested to by the classical works of Weber (1905/2001) and others. Religious routine and an ethic of duty and productivity prompted activity for its own sake. The postcard joke – ‘Jesus is coming: quick, look busy!’ – nicely illustrates this conflation of work and virtue. Religious asceticism, fuelled by a Calvinistic theology that opposed sensuousness and championed suffering in this world as morally good, led to worldly asceticism, driving and justifying routinized, arduous work, combined with a sense of perverse gratitude and the belief that even if work felt unsatisfactory or downright painful, there would be rewards waiting in heaven. But this rationalization has obviously also served the interests of wealthy owners of land, property and businesses. Today, employment propaganda combines features of defensive global economic competition, religious virtue and personal satisfaction. Education is subservient to work, as is parenting. Where, just a few decades ago, ‘mother and housewife’ was regarded as a necessary

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and respectable category, it is widely regarded now as an unnecessary (or part-time and outsourceable) and inferior role. Perversely, those who toil in farming and building jobs – the most essential to biological survival and basic comfort – are often among the worst-paid and lowest-status workers. There was a noted rise in suicide among British farmers in the 1990s as they struggled to survive economically, and ‘rural stress’ became an acute problem. Perversely too, we have managed to convert human existence into living for work’s sake, rather than keeping work in proportion. Across the spread of those who enjoy work, those who succumb to unhealthy workaholism and those who regard work as a necessary evil, it is possible to speak of a widespread enmeshment in ‘willing slavery’ (Bunting, 2004). Hard or disgusting physical labour characterizes many ‘jobs’ in our history, many of these performed by slaves. Robinson and Willcock (2004) discuss everything from puke collectors (slaves who cleared up the copious vomit of Roman aristocrats); gold miners working in intolerable conditions in Roman Britain; ploughmen working arduously in cold, muddy conditions; charcoal burners subject to extremely long hours and poor conditions; guillemot egg collectors working on perilous cliff edges; arming squires who dressed, undressed and waited on knights in battle and who had to clean mud and faeces off armour; leech collectors who had to use their own bodies to collect; plague buriers who risked their own lives; workhouse workers, tanners and so on. Clearly most of us (but hardly all) have escaped such travail today. Many of these jobs were associated with slavery but many too with scarcity and necessity. Urbanization, population density, food scarcity and disease would have made many such jobs unavoidable for most people. Among the most undesirable of contemporary jobs described in Kieran (2004) are kitchen porter, DIY store stocktaker, kebab shop assistant, holiday camp waiter, kennel worker, fruit machine engineer, sperm tester, coach driver, call centre operator, cold-store assistant, junk mail copy-writer, weed sprayer, cold-caller, geriatric nurse, stigmoidoscope cleaner and North Sea ferry cabin cleaner. Criteria for contemporary worst jobs include low pay, low status, low autonomy, futility, degrading working conditions, bullying, and having to lie to customers. Why is work, or labour, described in the Book of Genesis as a rather unpleasant, sweaty, lifelong punishment? Why did Terkel open his seminal book about work with these words? This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence – to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents,


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about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us. (Terkel, 1972, p. xi)

We must find a way of surviving within or alongside the (usually) capitalist system. For a majority this means a job, although alternatives of course include living on an inheritance or windfall; living off others’ labour; voluntary poverty (whether dignified monasticism or desperate homelessness); choiceless (in some countries) handto-mouth existence; the ‘black’/informal economy; communal selfsubsistence projects; state benefits; nomadic lifestyles; self-employment; crime; and other arrangements. Some will be involved in more than one of these, simultaneously or serially. Baumeister (1991) suggests a distinction between job, career and vocation, but for most these are mere academic niceties. Jobs are commonly constructed on a payment-for-time-served basis, with payments varying considerably but frequently being just sufficient to cover costs of housing, food, bills and some leisure activity. In the United Kingdom, education is heavily linked to careers and career choice is linked to prior and subsequent social status. Typically, one may have a career in one or a handful of professions or trades. Career path dilemmas are faced by most young people in complex societies and ‘not knowing what you want to do in life’ can be considered a cause for serious concern, as if we might have some innate vocation or desire to ‘be’ a factory worker, police officer, nurse, scientist, video games designer, sailor or whatever. But as one ages, options are severely limited, not only by one’s track record itself but by concomitant circumstances such as locale, housing and family commitments. At a certain age one might have to calculate, for example, whether to endure years more in a hated job in order to eke out one’s pension (gambling that one will live long enough in retirement to warrant years in a miserable job) or ‘live now, suffer later’, that is, change jobs, go part-time, take risks, and risk future years on a bare state pension plus minimum occupational pension. Note that in 2003 in the United Kingdom, a relatively wealthy country making such payments to the old, 18 000 elderly people died of cold-related illnesses associated with poverty, that is, not being able to afford to heat their homes adequately. At the time of writing the UK government calculates that since we are living longer, we will have to work longer, probably to at least 68. But on top of this, since the demographic is shifting towards a generally older population with insufficient replacement births and productive

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workers, immigration will have to be encouraged in order to make good the economic shortfall. In other words, younger immigrants will be working partly to support older, retired people. Some are already predicting severe tensions and problems ahead between age groups, as well as different ethnic and cultural groups, in a scenario that uncomfortably echoes past colonial inequities. Most jobs are structured so that a boss or layers of bosses must be accounted to. The term ‘manager’ is often fashionably substituted these days with the term ‘leader’ and leadership courses are big business. They promote ideas about personal qualities, charisma, responsibility, vision, wisdom and so on. But beneath all this effort to make things look different, more thought-out, lies the same fundamental structure of capitalism, a top-down system in which the powerful earn much more, dictate to others and hold the power to hire and fire. No doubt many bosses are decent human beings who try to value their staff, but they are not on the whole deep thinkers about economic and political philosophy. Common experience also attests to the tendency of many bosses to wield their power for personal gain and to inflict suffering on others via bullying, harassment and unfair treatment. Board and Fritzon (2005) compared a number of criminals and managers and tested for the presence of signs of personality disorder. They found that managers had more of these even than criminals and speculate that a large proportion of us are similarly afflicted and perhaps none is entirely free from mental illness. On the topic of bosses and our feelings towards them, the author Lauren Weisberger (2005) says in a throwaway comment ‘I’ve entertained murderous thoughts towards everyone I’ve ever worked for. Absolutely. Anyone who tells you they haven’t is lying.’ In the 1970s an imminent age of leisure was envisaged and announced, but altogether failed to materialize. By the 1990s Britain was immersed in the kind of overwork culture that the Japanese had not so long ago been pitiably enslaved by (Bunting, 2004). During 2004, many Germans were forced for economic reasons to move from a 35-hour week to a 40- or 42-hour week, a previously unimaginable reversal of employee rights. The concept of stress now has international currency. It is le stress in French (‘le stress et la fatigue, la maladie de notre temps’) and so-called stress consultants and stress management counsellors fully exploit this situation. Rifkin (2000) documents evidence of increasing workplace violence, increasing unemployment and the associated problems of an underclass. While anarchist writers like Zerzan (1999) see in the phenomenon of the stress epidemic signs of mass disaffection that might lead to the toppling of capitalist regimes and increasing dropping out from employment routines, working hours


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and work stress have simply increased. While some individuals have downshifted their lifestyles by exchanging well-paid but high-pressure city jobs for rural austerity, even here there are frequent reports of the stressfulness and lack of satisfaction in such bids for freedom. Low-paid work, unemployment and poverty is the unacknowledged underbelly of the American dream, yet even within the ranks of the affluent corporate sector, insecurity grows and well educated, middle-class businesspeople and professionals are susceptible to abrupt unemployment and the limbo of job searching, with all the hype and exploitation of the management gurus and personal coaches who feed off it (Ehrenreich, 2006). Consider the notion that we need work. Thomas (1999, p. xix) argues that ‘work can be a physical and emotional necessity for human beings, no less than an economic one’. He suggests that this recognition stems from the later seventeenth century. We might ask what changed around that time to make people think of work as necessary in these ways. A certain amount of physical activity is no doubt necessary, but a great deal of work entails little physical activity, for example the movements of the eyes, fingers and forearms in using computers. As for emotional necessity, this claim should be broken down into at least two groups of human beings. Perhaps there are those who cannot generate their own interests, things to keep them occupied, and who crave the routines of work imposed by others and the collegiality provided by others in the same boat. But many surely regard work as merely a necessary economic evil and would have their own ample supply of alternative physical activities and emotional supports without it. The success of the UK National Lottery attests to a widespread longing to shed debts and occupational imprisonment. We are well aware of the injustices and absurdities of income differentials. In the United Kingdom, towards one end of the scale, professional footballers like David Beckham have been earning an estimated £10–17 million a year including salary and sponsorships, while towards the lower end the official minimum wage hovers around £5 an hour, with many earning less. People exist on paltry state benefits and on state retirement benefits of around £80 a week. We may joke about the absurdity but easily forget the truth that Beckham and other footballers are being paid exorbitantly for kicking a piece of leather about on a field. However good they are at this, and however entertaining it is for football fans, they are surely not worth that much more than ordinary footballers or, for that matter, ordinary employees in low profile, non-entertainment jobs.3 Also at the higher end, in the United States lawyers (and there are around one million of them, about twice as many as there are doctors and more than in the

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rest of the world in total) are on average the highest paid of workers (Lewis, 1997). However, no amount of reflection on the absurdity of such unproductive workers being the highest paid is going to change the situation. The British Queen, indeed the whole royal family, are immensely wealthy and also enjoy large state subsidies, simply for being a historical remnant, fantasy figure and tourist attraction. Many chief executive officers of large corporations are paid obscenely large salaries as well as bonuses, even when their companies fail (Ormerod, 2005). Internationally, comparisons become astounding. In sport, the American golfer Tiger Woods was reported to be earning $78 million a year, or $148 a second for hitting a small ball around a large field and into small holes. Woods was paid $55 000 a day to wear Nike caps, while Thai workers were being paid $4 a day to make these caps (Williams, 2004). The Microsoft entrepreneur Bill Gates, usually cited as the world’s richest man, has an estimated fortune of around $30 billion (fluctuating) while ‘one in five of the world’s people lives on less than $1 a day’ (Williams, 2004, p. 58). The actors in the long-running American television comedy Friends were reported to be earning $1million each for every half-hour episode. Can any actor be worth that much, never mind the run of the mill (and funny, but not that funny) crew of six in Friends? The point here is that these differences – even allowing for journalistic exaggerations and the guilty, tax-dodging, philanthropic contributions of the wealthy – are wholly unjustifiable, they are absurd, obscene and ultimately asking for trouble between haves and have-nots. Also, they disguise an interesting alternative – why don’t we just make each other laugh for nothing instead of indirectly making some actors so disproportionately rich, and prepare good food for ourselves for relatively little instead of paying fast-food restaurants to pay their employees derisively little an hour to serve us food of dubious nutritional worth? (Or, for that matter, why have we made food into a high art form and many restaurants so expensive and pretentious?) Beneath this are two uncomfortable facts: we are the consumers who ultimately make the fabulously rich what they are and, given the chance and the ignoble norms of human nature, most of us who feebly aspire to it would just as greedily hug such fortunes to ourselves if they came our way. Work is the voluntarily borne or unimaginatively tolerated condition of imprisonment of our time. Following on from an imprisoning education that allegedly equips us to work (although an education in not thinking would arguably serve most of us better), we put up with decades of monotony, humiliation and stress. Most work is a low-level, horizontal instance of chronic anthropathology (Bolchover,


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2005; Maier, 2005). Of course, views differ on this and many portray work as necessary, dignifying and even pleasurable. But let me leave the last word on the dehumanizing spirit of modern office work to C.S. Lewis: I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of ‘Admin.’ The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern. (Cited in Prophet, 2000, p. 385)

ENDURING RELATIONSHIPS We encounter problems of modern usage and political correctness when we ask, ‘What is marriage?’ We can regard it in the following ways: marriage as sacred union designed to generate children; marriage as romantic mystery joining two souls who were meant to be together; marriage as socio-economic expediency; marriage as the current expression of evolutionary and social drives; marriage as a mixture of love, pleasure, hard work and compromise; marriage as the best of various arrangements to raise and protect children; marriage as a patriarchal institution that serves men and oppresses women; marriage as extended disillusionment, entrapment, battleground, based on the myth of enduring monogamous love; marriage as controlling against anarchy, rape, jealousy, insecurity, loneliness; marriage as a gamble, the best current arrangement, for whatever time it lasts. I use the term ‘enduring relationship’ mainly to refer to committed relationships that have some romantic or sexual origin – marriage and its like. But it can also apply to families and friendship groups. A majority of us, whether heterosexual or homosexual, probably (at least for some time) enter and remain in such relationships. We are all surely primed to expect to be in these relationships, from our own years in our families of origin and by social norms generally. Sometimes this is because we’re genuinely happiest in such contexts, sometimes it is due to a sense of moral obligation or inertia, sometimes due to the pressures of cultural and familial expectations, money, children and other emotional/psychological factors.

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Coupling is widely regarded as the natural stage beyond adolescence. People are either driven to couple, even if briefly and intermittently, by their sexual instincts, or they feel compelled by their parents, culture and religion to form into couples. A resolutely single life is possible and defended by some, and polygamous arrangements are possible in certain religious cultures, but these are the exceptions to the majority ‘rule’. Polyandrous arrangements are not unheard of, but much rarer. The coupling process entails an inseparable cluster of sexual, romantic and attachment instincts. Whether they are truly instincts or social constructs, I will not discuss much here. More often than not, the first step is known as ‘falling in love’, which is a highly emotionally charged phenomenon. In the throes of love, people make lifelong decisions, take vows and commit themselves to sexual monogamy, bringing children into the world and joining their finances and fortunes. There is no way of knowing for how many this arrangement works as it is envisaged to work – the ideal ‘happy marriage’ or the virtuously ‘worked at’ marriage of ups and downs – compared with how many pretend that it works or believe it works despite contrary evidence. What is clear is that conflict, separation and divorce is common and becoming more so. Apart from a biological drive to procreate and the intrinsic ‘fun’ of having sex at any time (unlike most other ovulation-oriented animals; see Diamond, 1998), we couple in order to feel secure, to possess and depend on each other and because we are obedient to tradition and habit. Whether we appear to fall in love and freely choose a partner or accede to the custom of an arranged or enforced marriage, we are usually following cultural norms. The belief that we have met the everlasting love of our lives, while feeling spontaneous, compelling and unique to us, is a construct supported by powerful emotion. Logically, there are millions of ‘fish in the sea’, many of whom we might be better suited to than the one we are with, but whom we will never meet or do not have the means to meet. Yet, we tend to believe that the man or woman we meet very locally is the ‘one for me’ and for all time. We agonize about loneliness and not being like our married or settled peers, particularly as time marches on and we remain ‘on the shelf’. We are anxious to fit into the statistically prevalent pattern. (I am of course using the presumptuously majority ‘we’ here.) The wish to have sex, and frequent sex, drives teenagers who are biologically capable of sex and pregnancy but who may not be emotionally ready for parenthood (see Gluckman and Hanson, 2006, on this point). Sex entails the risks of unwanted pregnancy and disease, as well as pushing many into ill-fitting committed relationships and


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marriages that are doomed to unhappiness or messy separation. The ideal of monogamy, reinforced by marital or other vows or expectations, unrealistically dismisses the probability that individuals will find others attractive, fantasize about and flirt with them, and on occasion, at least, have sex with them. Religious injunctions against premarital and adulterous sex are advanced as absolute solutions, based on what God demands, but they suppress rather than address the realities of sexual desire. When two people fall in love they are arguably in the grip of emotional forces that make them far too irrational to decide on lifelong commitments expressed in public vows, yet this is our common practice. And the intensity of the early erotic stage of love does propel many of us into the sincere belief that we want to be with this one person ‘for ever’ (or at least for several decades). The vow that follows (‘for better or for worse’, etc.) binds individuals to many strife-ridden, legally and financially complex scenarios that they cannot possibly foresee. The sensory pleasures of sex belong to the category of essential anthropathology, which is not to say that sex is wrong or sick but that its compulsive, possessive and exclusive features and complications are often highly problematic. Just as we do not ask to be born, we do not ask to experience troublesome sexual drives or possessiveness. Combined with the inherited problem of sex is that of the long maturational time required by young humans. In our vast societies, children need close supervision and protection, and much theoretical speculation has been expended on the problems for adults stemming from inadequate early parenting. Indeed, a large part of the psychotherapeutic enterprise is built on this premise. And it is probably true that within the kind of mass, anonymous civilization we have made for ourselves, nuclear families are essential for children’s psychological health. But the traditional nuclear family is breaking down and in some cultures never was the norm. Nevertheless, the helplessness (as well as the delightfulness) of babies and children does reinforce marital bonds, for some very fortunately. But many unhappy couples remain together ‘for the sake of the children’. The idea that marriage should be worked at, that the vow must be followed through no matter what (unhappiness, having nothing in common, domestic violence, mental illness, etc.) is understandable in the context of children. Some do turn ailing marriages around but many cannot. Children in unhappy marriages are almost bound to suffer to some extent, whether the partners remain together or separate. This is part of the tragic nature of coupling and of the family, that events and experiences frequently do not match our dreams and expectations, and our heroic efforts at repair are often insufficient.

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It may be that marriage as an institution – or as the primary social unit – is now in terminal crisis. The advent of contraception and smaller families, empowerment of women, acceptance of sexual minorities, longevity, and secularism, forces us to confront our traditional expectations. We do have the choice of reinforcing or returning to traditional marital expectations, as is evident in fundamentalist religions. For the foreseeable future, however, we are likely to see the typical postmodernist tapestry of close relationships, from the traditional to polygamy, serial monogamy and other arrangements. Recently, people referring to themselves as ‘polyamorous’, rejecting monogamy as unnatural, have ‘come out’ in the United States. Described as ‘postmodern families’, they typically consist of an individual with multiple explicit relationships, or love triangles and other permutations. The distinction is that they are open, not casual and promiscuous (not swingers) and, so they claim, not jealous but pleased with each other’s other loves (Harris, 2005). Apparently a new, liberated lifestyle, the polyamorous way has its virtues (interpersonal honesty, ‘polyfidelity’, ‘realism about the human condition’) but may also turn out to be another anthropathological loop. There is no one form that is right for all time or for all people. Unfortunately, we cannot simply rationally accept this and smoothly develop new practices. Intimate relationships have always, probably, been a primary source of anguish as well as pleasure (Feltham, 2004a) and we will always have to consider the needs of children. Kipnis (2003) describes eloquently the myriad compromises and constraints of marriage and enduring relationships. These include myriad petty constraints such as having to explain one’s whereabouts at all times, remaining in character at all times, sharing friends and interests, loading the dishwasher correctly, and so on. She questions whether marriage is simply ‘fetishized stability’, in contrast to the prevailing view of, among others, most counsellors and psychotherapists, that attachment is good and most conflicts can be explained in terms of attachment disorders (see e.g. de Zulueta, 1993). What goes wrong between mother and child in infancy repeats itself in adulthood but can be corrected in therapy, in a ‘corrective emotional experience’ with a skilled therapist. What goes wrong in marriage can in principle be rectified by analyses of early attachments gone awry and cures by transference, insight and hard work. What is missing from typical accounts of marriage is the possibility that it – at least for many – necessarily contains entropic and complex features. Like the universe itself, the institution of marriage (or belief in enduring love) begins in something like a Big Bang, exists in a closed system and must wane and eventually die. Along the way there will be highs and lows. In the universe of marriage, there are


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often mutual goals, children, and stages of greater and lesser closeness; but there is also the ever-present possibility of conflict and disappointment. An anthropathology of marriage recognizes that entropy and conflict are unavoidable features. We are surely moving past the stage of naive belief in everlasting romantic love or religiously required marriage, but we do not know how to address the problems of emotional compulsion and care of children. Marriage is problematic but alternatives are far from obvious or satisfactory. The study of positive psychology can arguably be extended to marriage in order to discover what the learnable ingredients of durable marriage are. Alternatively, we might accept a new, realistic norm of serial monogamy and seek to discover how to better manage it, how to address asymmetrical emotional hurts, how to deal fairly and constructively with problems of children, accommodation, finances and so on. Whichever course we take, however, other problems will emerge in time. This is the anthropathology of enduring relationships: we are biologically driven to couple; as young human beings we are susceptible to early emotional damage and inadequacy that both drive us into further enduring relationships and sabotage them. We are programmed to suffer from loneliness without enduring relationships. Relatively few human beings are lucky enough to fully thrive in them, and relatively few unattached human beings are lucky enough to be able to endure loneliness. This common anthropathological enmeshment (it appears not to be true for everyone) is highly problematic; even very few utopian writers have seen any solution to it.

MASS REGULATION Various terms exist to describe the social milieu in which we live. By ‘we’ I mean what I take to be most people. By ‘social milieu’ I mean that which the following terms point to: society; civilization; political structures; customs and laws. By mass regulation I mean the myriad ways in which – however you may want to phrase it – we control, police, reassure, regulate ourselves and each other. This can be perceived as something wholly oppressive (as it would be by anarchists), as containing negatives but otherwise as a necessary evil (Hobbes, 1651/1968), as a mainly benign arrangement, as in ‘social contract’, or as an ambiguity of blindly evolved group consciousness and changeable ‘mass mind’ or ‘global brain’ (Bloom, 1995, 2000). My aim in this section is not to closely define and analyse these but to examine some of the ways in which the effects of mass regulation impact on us anthropathologically.

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Patently, we are highly structured by the manner in which we are born into families, named, documented, put through years of compulsory schooling, and given little choice but to spend our energetic years in work. We are required to learn to walk, talk, clothe ourselves, ‘behave ourselves’, delay gratification of appetites and conform with numerous social norms both sensible and questionable. Consider for a moment what your fate might be if, like a feral child, you insisted on crawling or standing still, or running, skipping or hopping in adulthood, or remaining silent or appearing naked in public. These might all be interpreted as signs of developmental delay and probable psychopathology, or at least of immaturity or eccentricity. We are expected to meet certain developmental and educational milestones and to progress recognizably through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age and late life. Biosocial drives, needs and constructs push most of us into close, enduring relationships. Depending on our culture, we may be strongly expected to believe in God, the work ethic, heterosexuality, loyalty to those defined as kin, and hostility to enemies or infidels. Although most of us do have choices, the more we depart from these norms, the harder our lives are likely to be. While society tolerates a certain amount of difference, beyond a certain point you are deviant or eccentric and susceptible to poverty, involuntary incarceration and other imposed constraints. This raises the slippery concept of society. Margaret Thatcher’s famous pronouncement of 1987 that ‘there’s no such thing as society’ can be matched by the common claim that ‘there’s no such thing as an isolated individual’. Probably we experience ourselves as relatively free agents but also as protected by and having responsibilities to, and restrictions imposed on us by, ‘society’. We are encouraged to believe that, via democracy, we have a significant influence on who governs our country on our behalf, what policies are decided and implemented and what general ethos we live in. Schools now teach citizenship as if this is a wholly good, straightforward, non-contentious concept, and reality. A minority of us are actively involved in politics. For most of us politics is a distant force, possibly with no true relevance to our everyday lives. Hence, so-called voter apathy is common (changing across the decades by country, the level of any election’s significance and hot issues, from 96% turnout in Uruguay in the 1990s, through about 60–68% in the United Kingdom and as low as 48% in the United States in 2000). But however disillusioned with (or realistic about) formal politics, we feel the impact of government and politics directly via employment, unemployment, state benefits, taxes, retail prices, housing, schooling, health provision, transport, legislation, crime and policing, international and


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immigration policy and other matters. Within limits, you are free to decide what you will wear (or not so free in some jobs, schools, religions and other settings), what you eat (except in some religions), which mode of transport you use, how you use your leisure time and so on. The poorer and less resourceful you are, the less choice you have. While most of us live as individuals within family or similar groups, we are all aware, however vaguely, of our neighbourhood, town and nation. We are all aware of something and someone ‘out there’ who is protecting and policing us, much like parents (and, for those who so believe, like God). We need mass regulations to ensure that our mass societies of millions function as smoothly as possible, and we enjoy the benefits of protective regulation. But we also suffer: we may feel powerless, we compromise, we become passive and cynical, we adapt to the lowest common denominator. This does not accurately describe the lives of all of us, of course, some being more active, resourceful, lucky or romantic than others and some professing to value community above self. To be an individual in mass society is, often, to be constrained in choices of lifestyle, mobility and self-expression. This is not essentially different from the constraints experienced by most animals. But we surely experience the paradox of necessary belonging alongside an expectation of individuality, but a constrained individuality. Many of our problems arise from the tension between individual instincts and mass regulation, between ‘eros’ and civilization (Freud, 1930/2002; Marcuse, 1987). This is also a problem for society, in this sense: the group requires a high degree of conformity (and individuals may be content insofar as they find their personalities synchronous with group norms) but even mass society needs some differences among its members and, in some instances, marked differences in order to fulfil the functions of leadership and creativity. Society needs its foot soldiers, heroes and scapegoats. Although Broomhall’s (2003) categorization of bureautypes, alphatypes, neotypes and ultratypes is a crude, incomplete and idiosyncratic one, it is hard to deny the prevalence of bureautypes (obedient, cooperative human beings) and necessity for alphatypes (leaders), as well as creative (neotype) and even extremist (ultratype) characters. But even the socially best integrated need some periodic sense of their uniqueness and even the most marked outsiders sometimes crave company, harmony and ordinariness. The masses are dangerous because they can obey blindly and be swayed to prejudice and war, for example (Reich, 1970); the gifted minority are dangerous because they cannot always conform and may threaten group stability. The bureautype will periodically need to listen to his or her internalized

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(creative, critical) other, just as the alphatype, neotype and ultratype needs periodically to be aware of his or her internalized bureautype, or conformist. Societies operate on average expectations which lead to a denial or downplaying of significant differences. In education, we expect and reward obedient, hard-working, cerebral young people; in work, mainly compliant, hard-working employees; and in enduring relationships reproductive, monogamous heterosexuals best fit the template. In recent times ‘difference’ has acquired a fetishized, politically correct respectability, but what is still expected is conformity to subgroup norms. Too many differences-within-difference are not easily tolerated. As well as mass regulations we have small group regulatory expectations. Ayn Rand, the Russian émigré turned extreme right-wing American novelist and philosopher, argued for a radical individualism to counteract all such threats. But fairly clearly, hers was ultimately no solution either. Autonomous thinking and action is necessary but can also have a fanaticism about it. The remedy of the theologian Tillich (1962) was to call for both ‘the courage to be as oneself’ and ‘the courage to be as a part’. Sternberg (2002) cautions that outstanding individuals can act stupidly and Surowiecki (2004) challenges the common view that crowds are stupid. Literature is brimming with recipes for achieving some balance between contrary accounts. But what may be a new awareness is that each of us is simply one of over 6 billion people, each of us apart from our emotional attachments to immediate family and friends, and our illusions of a God who keeps an anxious and loving parental eye on us, is quite dispensable. We may feel very important, as self-help books, playing to our insecurities, tell us we really are, but we may know ourselves to be in the scale of things utterly unimportant.

CONCLUSIONS: COMMON PURPOSES What do formal education, work, relationships and mass regulations have in common? They are all ways of keeping us busy, orderly and connected, of keeping anarchy at bay. Fearful of anarchy, and even more so of the meaninglessness lurking behind any prospect of not perpetuating such institutions, we create, maintain and put up with them whatever their disadvantages. Our unshakable nihilistic undercurrent drives us on. Few aspects of these arenas are absolutely essential to physical survival. We could find alternative ways of learning and means of production if we really wanted to. Without some form of reproductive exchange, we would of course die out as a species. But


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marriage-like arrangements are not eternally necessary. While we have cars we must have rules for driving but even here advanced technology might lessen the need for complex motoring legislation. In any event, all these institutions will change form in time. Meanwhile, we cling to them and fail to generate alternatives because we know unconsciously that they stand between us and terrifying questions of what meaninglessness we would have to confront if we didn’t have to spend our time immersed in attention-demanding schools, jobs, relationships and anxieties about behaving in accordance with social norms and regulations. Terrified of our cosmic situation and of death, we have always invented and oppressed ourselves with religious and social strictures and activities. There being no God, there is no God-given prescription for how the world should be run. Historically, it has been driven by accident, expediency and ambition, by tribalism and nationalism, by religion and ideology, by ephemeral alliances and treaties. A major planned Communist state has failed. Empires have all risen and fallen. The British empire fell in the twentieth century with relatively little fuss or lament. The might of the former USSR dissipated, leaving the United States the only major superpower among almost 200 nation states. But current (and all) geopolitics is unstable, with predictions that the United States may become isolated, China will grow towards ascendancy, perhaps as well as militant Islam. At the same time, historic regions and countries assert their smaller ethnic and linguistic identities. It is difficult to imagine such tensions ever quite going away: on the one hand, bids for world domination, on the other for the small scale or even anarchic. There must eventually be some form of strong international policing for the sake of security, but with it comes the threat of totalitarianism. We evolved from small groups and we have not come to terms with our vast size; we do not know how to govern countries of millions of individuals and the world itself. We must know deep down that the nation is a myth, that it will not last as a concept, but we have great trouble growing out of the idea, as with religion. At our own everyday level, we know intimately the experiences of family, school, work, relationships and surviving in society. We know the ambiguities involved. Our parents may do their best but are only human, being under pressure themselves; their influence can carry us well though life or undermine us. Our teachers mean well but schooling hurts us, insidiously alienating us from ourselves and preventing us from asking seriously awkward questions, but some say their schooldays saved them from abusive or stultifying homes. Work too is a mixed blessing, offering structure, money and friendship alongside tedium, tiredness, bullying and absurdity. Our loved ones may seem

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like the centre of our lives, our very emotional raison d’être; but this is also where we sometimes suffer most acutely. And ‘society’ and its watchdogs ensures that we attend school, behave correctly, not harm each other too much, drive safely, medicate appropriately and generally live in a protected and ‘civilized’ fashion. But it also hedges us in, threatens us, makes us fill in forms, takes our money and hovers constantly, controllingly in our consciousness. These dualisms characterize existence for most of us. Even travellers, monks, anarchists and other atypical humans struggle with matters of subsistence, boredom, emotional need and independence. Very few are those who thrive completely in their families of origin, avoid schooling, shun conventional work and dependent relationships and live with minimal support or interference from mainstream society, though some feign or experiment with such freedoms. Most of us daydream about freedom from our constraints and a minority of the economically ruthless and single-minded achieve something like liberation – as émigrés, behind locked gates. And all of us are susceptible to biological flaws and bound for ageing and death. Unconsciously we know all this – including our acquiescence in the over-structuring and squandering of our lives – but we refuse to make it fully conscious or to act on it. Perhaps, were we able or willing to, we might construct an altogether different life for ourselves.

Notes 1. Fromm (1963) suggested that midlife might be a more appropriate (or additionally enriching) time than youth for academic immersion. The UK government’s advocacy of ‘lifelong learning’ merely has the semblance of understanding such issues. 2. Odent (2004, p. 1) voices a commonly heard view of academic conferences: ‘After participating in a conference, I usually just remember what I learnt in the corridors or in the restaurant’. Conferences appear to have both ritualistic and hedonistic purposes (academics ambitiously display their latest preoccupations and achievements, and add to their CVs, as well as enjoying national and international travel and hospitality) but their genuine contributions to increased human knowledge and welfare are often dubious and/or could be delivered at far lower cost. According to David Lodge’s satire, excitement and informal contact is sought, ‘not the programme of papers and lectures which has ostensibly brought the participants together, but which most of them find intolerably tedious’ (from Small World and reproduced in Lodge (2005, p. 37). Lodge, like Kingsley Amis (and Laurie Taylor in his satirical Times Higher Education Supplement column), presents the comic aspect of academic life, but if things are funny because they are true, such truths are also indictments of the trivial, irrational, anachronistic and wasteful aspects of higher education.


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3. On the high pay of professional footballers, perhaps we should remember the adage that ‘football is much more important than that [life]’. But pomp, ceremony and financial inflation are not only associated with gladiatorial sporting spectacles. Expensive art works reflect something absurd about our values (the artist Damien Hirst, famous for exhibiting preserved dead sheep and sharks) is reportedly worth some £100 million) and Jackson Pollock’s most famous abstract painting (‘No. 5, 1948’) was recently sold for a record £73.35 million. Mass religious rituals centring around, say, the death of a pope and investiture of a new one, surrounded by complex arrangements and the opulent-looking symbolic clothing of the pope and his entourage, demonstrate our irrationality and its relationship with wealth.

6

What’s Wrong with Religion? We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. Jonathan Swift

Since I have a highly opinionated and negative view of religion, I prefer in fairness to declare and explain this immediately. For my first degree I studied theology for four years and before and after that have had an abiding interest in certain aspects of the mystical (or embodied mystical, for want of a better term). Among the few genuinely visionary leaders the world has seen, I respect Jesus, Gautama, Gandhi and Jiddu Krishnamurti. I have no serious reservations about the historical reality of Jesus, nor about his own religious experiences and many of his teachings on morality and spirituality. The Bible offers a fascinating narrative purporting to explain the origins of the world, the waywardness of man and our route to salvation. Most religion has had its inevitable and useful place in history. One can easily admire contemporary Quakers who adhere to non-violent principles and ritual-lite meetings; and generally Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and others who attempt to live lives of practical kindness. One can appreciate religion as sanctuary from a brutal world and as a hedge of hope against darkness. But I do not believe in a Creator God, or any god or gods whatsoever. I do not believe in virgin birth, miracles, resurrection (or reincarnation), heaven and hell, prayer, liturgy, religious festivals, sacred places, priesthood, or any church. I consider absurdly anachronistic many of the pronouncements of the Christian church (and other churches) on abortion, sexuality, euthanasia and other personal matters. Religious aggression and inter-religious conflict have been and continue to be deeply problematic (Ellerbe, 1995; Kahl, 1971). Overall, I consider religion (and ‘spirituality’, for slightly different reasons) serious anthropathological obstacles to human understanding and progress. This chapter, which is not intended as a gratuitous critique but an essential part of anthropathological analysis, outlines the reasons for this view.


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I am here discussing the Abrahamic tradition – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and not the polytheism of Hinduism or ‘atheism’ of Buddhism. I briefly discuss aspects of the major world religions. Barrett, Kurian and Johnson (2001) claim that there are 19 major religions, 270 ‘large religious traditions’ and approximately 33 800 ‘separate faith groups’. The most fundamental question here is: why do human beings have religion? Why have most societies worshipped some sort of higher being or god? At its simplest, we have to decide either that this happened because God made it so, or that something in human evolution made it so. In other words, did God create us or did we create God? The pro-God argument leads to questions of human free will, sin and redemption. The anti-God argument creates questions about human insecurity and terror, the primitive need for belief, a pre-scientific understanding and an eventual awakening to cosmic loneliness. In the first scenario, in which humans are primarily wayward agents of God, the answers are already mapped out for us. In the second, in which humans have done the best they stumblingly could within their iterative evolution and history (trial-and-error existentialism), there are no prescribed answers and no maps. There are many fascinating theological speculations to be had here but I will try to concentrate on this view: that we created God, gods and religions out of the best response we could make to our fears and agitated ignorance millennia ago; these have served certain purposes as well as creating (via anthropathological loops) many problems; and it is now time to acknowledge the diminishing returns of religious belief, indeed the dangerous conflicts inherent in such belief, and to relinquish it. It has been and still is the norm for humans to be religious. Currently, in a world population of about 6.5 billion, there are estimated to be approximately 2 billion Christians, 1.3 billion Muslims, 900 million Hindus, 360 million Buddhists and so on; further down, the list also includes 600 000 Scientologists. The figure for secularists/non-religious/ agnostic/atheists is given as 850 million.1 Unfortunately such figures cannot tell us who believes passively and who participates actively in religion, but they do indicate significant theistic tendencies. Serious doubt and atheism probably appeared first in ancient Greece and much more widely during the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, with thinkers like Voltaire, Montesquieu and Hume. Marx, Nietzsche, Darwin and Freud drove further nails into God’s coffin. Horrendous events such as two world wars, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, also cast serious doubt on the reality of a God with any power or compassion, let alone omnipotence and divine love. A Jewish commentator on the actions of the German boxer, one-time world champion, Max

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Schnelling – hiding some Jewish children from the Nazis in the 1940s – said that Schnelling ‘did what God did not do’. However, the long prevalence of religion in human history is often cited as evidence for the reality of God and/or of our need for religion. The alternative view is that we have had a historical, pre-scientific, emotional need for religion but that time is past and that need is no longer applicable. The unhelpful falsity and danger of religion can no longer be denied as it has been. But even more depressingly, Gray (2004) asserts that liberal humanism itself is ‘the unthinking creed of thinking people’ (p. 41), merely another religious system of hopeful illusions: what appears post-religious is merely religion in another guise.

ROOTS AND DYNAMICS OF RELIGIONS Let’s imagine the plight of humans or proto-humans hundreds of thousands of years ago. What must it have felt like, with the relatively rapid rise of consciousness, to have to make sense of scarcity, hunger, disease, the threat of predation, inter-group conflicts, sometimes unpredictably violent weather, and death? Mithen (1996) puts the birth of religion within the Upper Palaeolithic (about 40 000 years ago),2 with the rise of certain forms of toolmaking, burial of (some of) the dead and belief in non-physical, supernatural beings. It would make sense to develop animistic beliefs (to believe in the awesome supernatural powers of nature) and to attribute omnipotence to what comes from the sky (to believe in a sky God – the origin of Yahweh, or Jehovah). And it would make sense to want to propitiate those gods, to forestall their anger and court favours. Dawkins (2006) suggests that an internalized paternal figure may account for much religion, in the sense that it was easier for children in dangerous times to be given powerful injunctions against risks, which gradually came to be unquestioned inter-generational myths, then religious tenets. The novelist Sebastian Faulks (2005) argues that language itself may have spread religion, as members of groups wandered and migrated and needed internalized instructions to help them navigate and feel comforted; such tendencies also having links with the voices of schizophrenics (see also Horrobin, 2001). It is easy to see how originally pictorial and mythical accounts of the gods probably arose and subsequently, with the development of language, became more sophisticated and complex, moving from oral to mythical to literary (and scripturally dogmatic) traditions. The ability to anticipate and dread death, and to mourn, naturally led to visions


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of and rationales for an afterlife. Indeed, Douglas (2004) shows how ‘terror management theory’ claims to explain our long-standing denial of death and its sublimation in religion. Primitive ideas of cause and effect might easily link deaths associated with eating certain plants with dietary commands from the gods; likewise with other taboos. The need for group-binding against both human and natural enemies, and against adversity generally, might easily lead to a belief in special protective gods or the belief in being the chosen people of the one true God. Each religious group seeks advantages for itself mimetically and sometimes it is the very power of the group’s ideas, however extreme or irrational, that holds sway (Lynch, 1996). The tendency for God to be conceived or portrayed differently in different places, cultures and times – and usually portrayed as male – suggests at least some element of anthropomorphic imagination at work. The fact that the major historical religions emanate from Asia and the Middle East is also significant (DeMeo, 2006; Taylor, 2005). The collective experience of religion is characterized as a need, belief and set of practices. Wilson (2002), writing from an evolutionary perspective, regards religion as arising, or being selected, primarily as a social utility. But of course religion is also characterized by charismatic individual leaders: the shamans, mystics, prophets, saviours, priests and gurus. Most of the major religions have at their source a male visionary (Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed) who, in the context of a pre-existing religion, seems to have had revelatory and transformational experiences beyond those of ordinary people. Such mystical experiences infuse the person with a sense of knowledge, charisma and mission; a gap always exists between their direct experiences and their attempts to convey these verbally, and their implications for changed morality and understanding, to ordinary people. Prophets are spoken of as ‘crying in the wilderness’, saviours lament the apparent inability of their listeners to really understand what they are saying, and they themselves seem exasperated at times at trying to convey the ineffability of their profound experiences in words. Sometimes one close disciple or a small group of acolytes seems to grasp the message and be transformed, but more usually the charismatic individual bequeaths poorly understood parables and moral prescriptions that are entropically converted in time into mere echoes of the original insight. And there is the stubborn question of just how liberated from anthropathology or otherwise any human figure ever can be. Religion is born where radical, personal mystical experience ends. Although many strive for genuine insight into the nature of existence, the more common pattern is for religious believers, followers, to imitate, elevate and worship the perceived founder of the religion and to anxiously

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practise religious rituals in the hope of avoiding imagined punishment and/or of being saved or taken to heaven or paradise. In my view, two big mistakes are clearly evident here: (i) an outstanding individual probably misunderstands to some extent what has happened to him in such mystical experiences (it is usually a male) and intentionally or unintentionally inflates his experiences and/or misrepresents them to others, and (ii) those who are receptive to claims to such experiences cannot themselves have the same depth of experience and misunderstand them or settle for a role as followers, based on the belief that the original individual is special (the expected or timely one – the Buddha, Son of Man, Christ, the Prophet). Put differently, there is no perfectly enlightened human being, and receivers or followers of religious messages always distort these messages. All religion is a chain of distortion, like Chinese whispers, from revelation to fantasy and oppression. The desperate hunger of a few or even the many not infrequently creates out of the waves around any unusual individual a new religious movement. In this sense religion tends to err towards the very idolatry that it usually condemns. Batchelor (2004, p. 159) refers to this as ‘a diabolic drift towards ideologically based institutions’. The principle that we have so few visionary leaders (with integrity) is of course not confined to the political sphere. Wills (2000), following Dante, describes medieval popes as guilty of greed, venality and desire for wealth. Wills analyses the institution of papacy itself in terms of deceit from intellectual betrayal through holocaust denial, sexual hypocrisy, child molestation, secrecy, belief in the inferiority of women and much else besides alleged infallibility. Hitchens (1995) famously deconstructed the saintly myths surrounding Mother Teresa, including her apparent indifference to alleviating suffering caused by AIDS, her religious dogmatism, personal ambition, political conservatism and financial irregularities. It seems churlish to engage in exercises designed to fault those who ostensibly dedicate their lives to selfless service of others, yet it reminds us how gullible we can be and how unholy our religious heroes can be. But the reach of religious and spiritual hypocrisy or deceit is extensive. Zweig and Abrams (1991) provide many accounts of distinguished priests, gurus and psychotherapists from West and East who display ‘shadow’ characteristics. One celebrated case is that of Vajra Regent Osel Tendzin, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher in an American community who succeeded the highly respected Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. It emerged in 1988 that he had infected several people with HIV, having used no protection and lying to them. Others had turned a blind eye and Tendzin deluded himself into believing he was divinely protected from harm. Other distinguished Buddhists ‘have misused money, become alcoholic or


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indulged in eccentric behaviour’ (Zweig and Abrams, 1991, p. 139). In short, there is probably no religious community in which instances of outright anthropathology cannot be found, quite apart from the sheer irrationality surrounding all religion itself. About 42 million out of nearly 60 million Britons claim to be Christians. It is claimed that 76 % of Britons have had some sort of marked spiritual or religious experience (Hay and Hunt, 2000), which might imply a huge fund of authentic insight and promising non-reliance on religious leaders or founders. This claim matches impressions of the growth of (not necessarily religiously affiliated) ‘spirituality’ in Western nations, and an implied maturity. But unfortunately, personal spirituality can be just as vacuous, superstitious, delusional and dogmatic as traditional religion. The persistence of an obvious emotional need for something of a religious or spiritual nature cannot be taken as evidence of its reality or authenticity. What are we to make of the finding that 96 % of Americans believe in God (Shermer, 2000)? The likelihood is that in a scientific and affluent era, in an overpopulated world, human beings crave meaning, purpose and ‘deep’ experiences because their individual lives feel insufficiently interesting, fulfilled and purposeful. The super-rich American celebrities Tom Cruise and John Travolta are probably the most famous Scientologists, Madonna has endorsed the Kabbalah and Mel Gibson espouses a deeply traditional, anachronistic form of Catholicism. While they and many others may have genuine spiritual experiences, I suspect wishful thinking and nihilism-avoiding flight into variants of religious and mystical pseudo-spirituality to be more convincing explanations for their choices. Experiences of ‘fragmentary wholeness’ or transient enlightenment (e.g. satori, kensho or peak experiences) are mistaken for something more.

RELIGIOUS ANTHROPATHOLOGY TODAY Consider which of the following, if any, is the most irrational, or anthropathological: (a) the Muslim insistence on females wearing the headscarf (hajib) in public; (b) the French government’s ruling against religious expression in education, including the wearing of the headscarf in schools; (c) threatened terrorist reprisals in 2004 against the French government’s ruling (two journalists were kidnapped).

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These traditions and events mark tensions between the religious and secular in the early 2000s. It might be easy to insist that applying the criteria of tolerance and respect would have prevented (b) and (c), yet the French government had its rationale, not necessarily Islamophobic or fascistic, for acting as it did, and that too might demand respect. It might seem axiomatic to some that terrorist actions are wholly disproportionate, yet presumably some Muslims believed that the French ban threatened their sacred tradition. And to some of us, the mandatory wearing of garments believed to signify modesty (a), underpinned by belief in God (or the Muslim God, Allah), is itself irrational, divisive and violent in its very insistence on displays of separate identity (Bowman, 2001) and implied deep mistrust of all males and/or rejection of secular Western values. At any rate, this is a complex issue resulting in ongoing, possibly escalating social tension and likely further violence. A 2005 BBC2 television programme The Headmaster and the Headscarves visited this very topic. It confirmed that this is a hysterical, multilayered, Swiftian conflict, implicating Islamist defiance, French racism, secular feminism, and perhaps psychiatry. One saw the headmaster, compromising on the wearing of bandannas, reduced to ridiculous sartorial inspections at the school gates and insisting neurotically that the ears and forehead be revealed. It is no easy matter to attribute definitive fault, unless it is to suggest that as humans we are all at fault for getting ourselves into such situations – where deaths could eventually result from quarrels over headscarves – and finding no ready way out.3 In Britain in 2006, the Cabinet Minister Jack Straw objected to Muslim women wearing veils when attending his surgery, Tony Blair supported him, and test cases soon arose. It is not always clear what cause is being presented – personal dress style, modesty or fundamental religious separatism. Meanwhile, in Pakistan and elsewhere, Islamic schools (madrasas) promote ‘the correct fulfilment of rituals, how to wash correctly before prayers, the proper length to grow a beard and how high above the ankles you should wear your salwar kameez. . . . Their focus . . . is not on opposing non-Muslims . . . so much as on fostering what they see as proper Islamic behaviour at home and attempting to return to – as they see it – the pristine purity of the time of the Prophet’ (Dalrymple, 2005, p. 17). As Harris (2005) points out, all such behaviours (and beliefs in immaculate conception, virgin birth, etc.) among individuals rather than large groups would likely attract psychiatric diagnoses of obsessive-compulsive disorder and psychotic delusions.4 Traditional religions are alive and well today. One man tells Terkel:


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My hope lies in what happens after this. It’s not even a hope, it’s an absolute knowledge that I’m going to be with Him after this is over. Because I’ve accepted him into my heart, I’m born again. I know I’ll be there, no matter what. Hell is what you choose if you don’t choose God. (Terkel, 2003, p. 196)

This is not a fanatical statement but a fairly mainstream expression of Christian belief. As the man says, this is belief beyond hope, it is certitude. We might say this view could be correct, or incorrect but harmless, or that we disagree with it but defend his right to hold it. Or we might say that it is incorrect and harmful. Nothing other than giving your life to Jesus is correct, this amounts to, and, furthermore, if you choose another religion or no religion, you’re going to hell. Such people have ‘absolute knowledge’; those without this are doomed. The same sentiment is found in the Islamic concept of the kaffir, the unbeliever or atheist who is ‘ungrateful’ to God and therefore condemned to hell (Newby, 2002). Rabbi Tony Bayfield refers to the ‘born again proponents of inerrancy who read the texts as licence to advance and impose their views by whatever means are necessary’ (Guardian, 11 September 2004). He also refers to ‘the embarrassingly dysfunctional Abrahamic family’ of faiths that have yet to learn the lesson of plurality. ‘They surely should have discovered by now their own provisionality, fragmentary nature and deep flaws,’ says Bayfield. But, of course, they haven’t. Those who preach and those who hunger for passionate intensity of belief feed each other emotionally, theologically, missiologically and eventually militarily, or para-militarily. They implicitly acknowledge the non-omnipotence of God, God’s glaring inability to intervene in history beyond the pre-scientific era. They do not possess the humility to acknowledge their own flawed, dysfunctional nature, wanting to impugn the rest of us but reserve their own place in heaven. There is no inerrancy, but we are, all of us, in Gray’s (2004) words, an ‘incorrigibly flawed species’. The problem of militant inerrancy among those claiming religious motives is weirdly prevalent in our own era. Jurgensmeyer (2001), in his study of ‘religious terrorism’, includes examples of American prolife Christians who have bombed abortion clinics and killed medical staff; Catholics and Protestants responsible for murder and mutilation in Northern Ireland; Muslims responsible for bombings and mass murder around the world; atrocities and assassinations perpetrated by Jews; the Sikh-inspired assassination of Indira Gandhi and others;

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and the Japanese Buddhists behind the nerve gas killings in Tokyo subways. There are many more examples besides. Jurgensmeyer cites the case of the Rev. Mike Bray, a minister of the Reformation Lutheran Church from Delaware, who was imprisoned for arson attacks on abortion clinics. He has also been associated with others responsible for killing medical staff. Bray espouses ‘dominion theology’, which seeks to establish God’s dominion over secular society; he wants to see a theocratic America (just as many Islamists want a world theocratic state). Bray and his associates are opposed not only to abortion but to ‘fornication, homosexuality, sexual entertainment, state usurpation of parental rights and God-given liberties, statist-collectivist theft from citizens through devaluation of their money and redistribution of their wealth, and evolutionism taught as a monopoly viewpoint in the public schools’ (Jurgensmeyer, 2001, p. 27). What such ‘terrorists’ have in common is a rigid belief in their rightness and in a theological justification for their actions. Bray, for example, believes that attacks on abortion clinics and their medical staff echo ethically the stance taken by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who from a Christian position took part in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. He also draws on the theologian Niebuhr’s ethical defence of just war: more or less, that it is better to engage in small acts of violence to prevent larger acts. In other words, if you believe that abortion is murder, you have the right, perhaps the duty, to prevent this by destroying property and murdering abortionists if necessary. To reason from the rightness of plotting to kill Hitler to killing medical staff whose actions you disapprove of is, in my view, quite mad enough. But we see here a complete obliviousness to the arguments for termination of some pregnancies (including the likely future psychological and economic suffering of the unwanted child and its mother), as well as an inhuman desensitization to suffering caused by one’s own actions. Righteousness, rigidity, inhumanity and an anachronistic world view combine to create homicidal characters who plead religious justification for their crimes. I regard ‘terrorism’ as an unhelpful euphemism for murder and ‘religious terrorism’ an oxymoron. Violence born of desperation and self-defence is understandable but it does not deserve, or need, to shelter under the cloak of religion. Mass bombing of civilians (of anyone) is sheer unjustifiable madness. Yet, of course, I believe here that I am right about all this. Perhaps I am being righteous and rigid and therefore hypocritical. Perhaps I am ignoring the pain and suffering behind the actions of perpetrators. The common response to ethical dilemmas of these kinds is to ask what else can be done in the circumstances. If someone physically attacks you or others, of course you need some means of defence. There are many


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situations around the world that are intolerable, and how are we to respond to them? The real, the only problem, is that we have allowed ourselves as a species to get into this agonized condition from which no escape seems possible. To some extent, as I have argued earlier, we have simply inherited the problem evolutionarily and historically. Now we are enmeshed in it: historical, religious, political and cultural memes (Bloom, 1995; Lynch, 1996) drive us to identification with group beliefs and conflict, and blind us to the ways in which our cultural psychosis masquerades as righteousness and paradoxically distances us from the very oneness of understanding and conviviality that religion exists to promote. Some, like Gray (2004) regard recurring crises as inevitable in a pluralistic humanity, with no ultimate solution possible. While I believe there is a slim possibility of resolution or escape, I recognize the sense of impotence that results in the splutteringly inarticulate use of terms like madness. Far deeper empathic understanding and dialogue is called for than I have been able to voice here. One of the ways in which religion is privileged is that we have come to assume that it has some right to intrude on our lives. For example, Jehova’s Witnesses may call at my house and lecture me on their beliefs. Imagine, if I knew where they lived and turned up on their doorsteps and treated them to a lecture on my beliefs in atheism, how this might be regarded. Or, imagine that I moved into a very religious country and erected an Institute for the Aggressive Propagation of Atheistic Beliefs and Practices – how long would I survive? These admittedly unlikely examples show, nonetheless, that we take these religious privileges for granted. Perhaps this is partly due to simple tradition and habit but surely much of it can be attributed to our hardto-shake-off superstition that the religious (and God behind them) just might be right and we might suffer seriously if we opposed them. Partly, too, we are desensitized by centuries of missionary activity; we have acquiesced in the practice of taking land from others and in a closely associated manner, taking their beliefs away and substituting our own. It is disturbingly common to hear stories of Catholic guilt, about how all the expectations drilled into young individuals about sin lead to a cowed, anxious, even obsessive adulthood; one is set up to fail. Unfortunately it is also all too common to hear stories of physical and sexual abuse by Catholic custodians of children. In an Islamic context, one man recalls, ‘I was going to a very strict Muslim school, where I would have to memorize ten to twenty pages of the Koran. If you screwed up a word or two, you would be beaten on your hand’ (Terkel, 2003, p. 267). Religion that is based on strict submission, imitation of figureheads and uncritical acceptance of texts and prac-

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tices, all drilled into followers via implicit violent (human or so-called divine) punishment must be exposed and analysed. Does it matter how long a tradition has survived, as if mere cultural longevity bestows sacred privilege? Protecting religious adherents from oppression is one thing, but protecting everyone from religious zealotry is of equal importance. A topical and instructive example as I write is that of the American sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This sect, said to have about 10 000 followers, split from the Mormons in 1890 when they renounced polygamy. It has been described as a ‘fanatical polygamous sect’ that requires members to adhere strictly to certain rules. These include the exclusion of television, newspapers and other external influences, the wearing of long underwear winter and summer and the wearing by females of long gingham dresses. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, has been regarded as divinely ordained and infallible by followers but was wanted by Utah police on suspicion of being an accomplice to rape, and arrested in August 2006. Reports also exist that he sexually abused many boys. He is said to have, or have had, 40 wives and to be the father of more than 50 children, and has regarded himself as above American law on these matters. This dangerous cocktail of male charisma, ostensible infallibility, uncritical following and rejection of wider society is seen by some as reminiscent of David Koresh and the Branch Dravidian cult whose members died in a shoot-out and fire in Waco, Texas, in 1993. But when we speak of cults we commonly assume that they are illegitimate and eccentric groups bearing little relation to major religions. Exactly how do we discriminate? Almost all such phenomena are male-created, based on novel interpretations of existing scriptures or new texts, and characterized by sartorial rules, rituals and rejection of many social norms. The leader claims exclusive divine access and the right to pass on insights, receive privileges and dictate policy and development. ‘If such an individual is a paranoid with a messianic delusion, possesses leadership abilities, and can identify himself with a vulnerable population, the ingredients are present for a charismatic apocalyptic cult’ (Robins and Post, 1997, p. 114). But even if such an individual is not paranoid, it is a dangerous situation when followers are uncritical and wider society is naive about religious privilege. And even if a religion is not a small, recent cult but a large and long-established phenomenon, it is probably naive and potentially dangerous to accord it special privileges beyond protection against oppression. Whether it is a handful, thousands or millions of people who join together to celebrate something irrational, and usually conspicuously patriarchal, that has ambitions to subvert society, careful investiga-


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tion is required. Mainstream Western civilization almost certainly is to be critiqued and stands in need of change, but to be an enemy of anthropathology does not mean that one is, or one’s group or religion is, thereby automatically authenticated as non-anthopathological. These considerations do, unfortunately, bring us to an epistemological dizziness and the whiff of futility. We must be aware that truth claims are all ultimately relative. Although I believe that logic and science are probably better guides in many matters than religious sentiment or subjective passions, I also recognize that science can be driven by unwise ambitions or be abused and that subjectively based opposition to certain technological aims, for example, is sometimes necessary. Television, for instance, is not necessarily a good thing and should be criticized, improved, avoided or abandoned as one sees fit, but not because a charismatic religious leader tells me so. Monogamy is not necessarily the only way to organize enduring relationships, but who decides that polygamy is better? Religion is not only about an outstanding figure and his idolatrous followers, and not only about systems of morality and meaning. It is also about a mission to convert or condemn others and about a push to the totalitarian and eschatological. Cohn (1970) gives many examples of revolutionary millenarianism in the Middle Ages. Apocalyptic fervour, poverty, asceticism, self-flagellation, social unrest, peasant revolts – inevitable tension between these and an affluent, decadent church was rife. Reminiscent of the time of Jesus, these are also somewhat similar to contemporary tensions between the West, particularly the United States, seen as affluent, decadent, and ungodly (even ‘satanic’), and Islam perceiving itself as champion of Allah, religious obedience and, if necessary, jihad (Ruthven, 2002). Lewis (2002, p. 178), while sympathetic to Islam, laments its current ‘downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression’ and ‘grievance and victimhood’, and commends renewed positive creativity to revive what was once a leading civilization. As Ruthven notes, the term ‘greater jihad’ is sometimes used of an internal struggle (as opposed to the ‘lesser jihad’ of physical struggle against one’s enemies), which is the wrestling ‘against one’s own evil tendencies’ (2002, p. xix) and this Jungian-like concept surely has something to commend it, even if in thoroughgoing anthropathological terms it can have only passing success. Civilizations do not remain stable, progress is not all steady and irreversible (Diamond, 2005; Jacobs, 2005; Quinn, 1999). Religious surges and apocalyptic ambitions, national and international convulsions, wars and mega-wars are related and chaotically inevitable in ways we have as yet to understand (Hillman, 2004). Knowledge

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derived from natural science, social science and the humanities grows and to some extent checks the zeal of religious fundamentalism but as Sagan (1996) has noted, commitment to rationality is still a minority phenomenon. Sagan’s list of irrational phenomena that are supported by millions of Americans, who take keen offence at criticism, includes UFOs, alien abduction, therapy, ‘portentous patterns’, Lourdes, psychic surgery, horoscopes, prayer, faith healing. Reduced mistrust of science and technology may be fostered by the better, global distribution of their resources, and better articulation of the irrational and negative excesses of religion may eventually help to reduce the evils of religion. The sanctity of religions that allow or justify war and silence opposition is hard to understand when we should surely insist on defining religions as oriented towards love, not war; invitation, not threat; what is human, not totalitarian.

THE AMBIGUOUS CASE OF THE TWO KRISHNAMURTIS Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) was originally chosen by Annie Besant, the theosophist, to be cultivated to become the ‘world teacher, theosophy’s messiah, a role he later rejected. His works are rarely cited in academic texts and it seems likely that the modern, Western mistrust of gurus, combined with a subtle racism, has spread so as to dismiss almost anyone (except the Dalai Lama) who sounds at all Asian, guru-like and moralistic. Yet, Krishnamurti gave talks worldwide for over 50 years and inspired George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Henry Miller and David Bohm among others. Many believe that if such a state as enlightenment exists, then Krishnamurti was one of those rare people who were indeed enlightened. I place him in this book and this chapter because he had a great deal to say about the human condition, including the follies and false remedies of religion, psychotherapy, political activism without personal awareness and, having spontaneously experienced something like a process of enlightenment himself, tried tirelessly to convey the essence of this liberation to others. Yet, there are also questions about Krishnamurti’s life and work that afford us insights into the anthropathological processes of idolatry, religion making, hypocrisy and fragmentary wholeness. I believe that a brief analysis of Krishnamurti helps to illustrate what is at work throughout all religious belief systems. I will then go on to look at the lesser-known person and writings of Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti (born 1918). I will refer to him by his familiar shortened name of U.G. to distinguish him from his namesake. The full purpose of this comparison should become clear but it is at least partly included


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here because these men have been our contemporaries and some of the claims are verifiable, unlike those of hallowed figures from centuries ago. (But see Dawkins (2006) on how short a time it can take for religious cults to arise and consolidate.) Krishnamurti began many of his speeches with sweeping condemnations of the state of the world, the corruption and rottenness of mankind and the need for radical change. Here are some examples: Why is it that our educational system does not turn out real human beings but mechanical entities trained to accept certain jobs and finally die?’ Education, science and religion have not solved our problems at all. (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 43) Looking at all this confusion, why does each one of us accept and conform, instead of shattering the whole process in ourselves? (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 43) Why do we live this monotonous, meaningless life, going to the office or working in a laboratory or a factory for forty years, breeding a few children, educating them in absurd ways, and then dying? (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 44) The wars, the absurd divisions which religions have brought about, the separation between the individual and the community, the family opposed to the rest of the world, each human being clinging to some peculiar ideal. (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 44)

He spoke to his listeners directly, urgently, without notes or preparation, insisting that ‘you are the world and the world is you’. He insisted that abstract discussion would lead nowhere and that all the follies and brutalities, all the suffering of mankind could be found within each one of us. Only by ‘choiceless awareness’ of this fact – that we each harbour all these ills, inherited from humanity’s past and projected dangerously into our environment – could we hope to make a sufficient change in our consciousness. Krishnamurti insisted that this change was not only possible and urgent, but accessible instantaneously. ‘Truth is a pathless land,’ is the key sentence of his famous 1929 speech in Holland in which he rejected his world teacher role, and his links with theosophy. He also rejected his Brahmin origins, his Indian nationality and indeed all religions, nationalities, cultures and ideologies, all of which he regarded as trivial, conditioned and dangerous. All religion, meditation, therapy, reading and so on, was putting off realization and introducing deception. No one should follow anyone else but all should

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make their own passionate enquiry into the meaning of life and the problems that beset us. He was particularly dismissive of gurus (such as Baghwan Sri Rajneesh) but also of mainstream religion, education and politics. A revolutionary new consciousness in each person had to precede any attempt to set up new systems. Perhaps it is the seriousness of Krishnamurti – a moral seriousness transcending all academic and casual analyses of our shared problems – that was one of his distinctions. Many were impressed by his demeanour, by his words which came not simply and sentimentally ‘from his heart’ but from a profound oneness with ‘nature’. Essentially his teachings resemble Vedanta and the ‘Buddhism’ of the Buddha. Time is an illusion. Desire is as destructive as fear. Meditative attention to each moment is necessary. Truth is beyond everything you know and can imagine. It seems that the pressure upon Krishnamurti to assume the role of world teacher, combined with painful personal events such as the death of his brother, and also the protection afforded him against everyday work routines, led to a spontaneous process of psychosomatic sensitivity, emotional ventilation and gradual freedom from accumulated illusions and comforts. While he continued to give public talks, they were not in support of theosophy or any system. Indeed, a constant in his ‘message’ across the years was the insistence that no method exists for finding truth or liberating oneself, all methods being illusory, based on the mistaken idea that there is a ‘something’ to be found outside of everyday experience or at the end of a process. Krishnamurti was particularly scathing about organized religion but also extremely cautious about using terms like spirituality, mysticism or meditation. Institutions and words are commonly traps. However, Krishnamurti established several schools for children and gave many public talks, attempting to awaken listeners to the kind of freedom he presumably experienced. But Krishnamurti, we have to say, was not a saint. Although he claimed that sex should not be made a problem and led an ostensibly celibate life and implied that enlightenment removed any need for sex, it emerged (Sloss, 1991) that he had a long-standing, clandestine relationship with Rosalind Rajagopal, who was married, and she had had two covert abortions within that time. Krishnamurti was fundamentally a shy person. He was also somewhat vain, resorting to a comb-over to disguise his partial baldness in later years. He was always looked after, some might say pampered. While despising or eschewing personal wealth, he drove an expensive Mercedes (with no instinctive awareness of its polluting effects), wore Savile Row suits, constantly travelled the world and was accommodated in very smart houses. He admitted to Rosalind Rajagopal that he sometimes lied


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when afraid of consequences. As Rosalind’s husband and long-term loyal supporter of Krishnamurti put it, ‘there were “two Krishnas”, the one who could speak with such insight about the human condition, and the other shadowy Krishna who could deceive and betray’ (Sloss, 1991, p. 221). While insisting that no one should quote him or make out of his teachings a religion, Krishnamurti allowed all his talks to be recorded and archived. While denying that he was special, he sometimes spoke ambiguously about himself and his divinity and rarity. Although he engaged in many profound, recorded dialogues with the physicist David Bohm, he agreed that some should be edited to reduce the space given to Bohm in relation to his own contribution (Peat, 1997). Some, including U.G., have criticized Krishnamurti’s rambling, obtuse analyses of existence as being philosophically naive and ultimately unhelpful (U.G. Krishnamurti, 2002). Krishnamurti believed that a radically different consciousness and ensuing lifestyle was potentially available to all, yet he seemed not be in touch with the day-to-day tribulations and desperate economic traps in which many live. He suggested that this new consciousness might be fostered within special schools such as those he helped to establish, and that a critical mass of enlightened individuals could make a significant impact on the world. There is no evidence of any obviously enlightened individuals graduating from his schools and even one of his closest collaborators, David Bohm, suffered from recurrent episodes of depression until his death. U.G. had some early contact with Krishnamurti and some degree of lifelong admiration. He himself spent some years in frustrated search for the same enlightenment as Krishnamurti. According to the story, at around the age of 49, U.G. began to experience a breakdown in his normal way of being that he later referred to as a ‘calamity’. He could no longer function normally; he left his wife and children, and work, and suffered what many would regard as a mental breakdown. He claims that he could no longer recognize normal things or the names for them. However, with care he survived and emerged into a new, heightened state of consciousness. From then on he travelled the world giving private talks. However, as well as denying the validity of Krishnamurti’s message, he came to be regarded as nihilistic, since he said that he had nothing to teach, had no idea what had happened to him or how others might experience or benefit from it. Like many Eastern mystics, he repeatedly asserted that all searching was futile, since only complete non-egoic acceptance of ‘what is’ has any point. The difference between those who can speak wisely, using well-worn mystical phrases, and those who may actually experience and live what they speak about, is vast. Both Krishnamurtis appear to have had this authentic quality

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(I have heard them both speak); stories surround them about their ability to live in the present, their freedom from fear and desire. Yet, U.G. never tired of criticizing Krishnamurti (and Krishnamurti himself occasionally criticized people like the Dalai Lama). My interest in these two men is relevant in the following way. Is there, as Buddha claimed, a ‘way out’ of suffering, has anyone found it, and how do others find it? Clearly, the claim is that some have found it. ‘It’ may have found them, as in cases of grace but the point remains that we may ask how. Most religion offers some form of salvation if one will believe in God and follow certain precepts and practices. But very few individuals indeed seem to gain genuinely higher states of consciousness in this way. Many, particularly in our own time, seek salvation or enlightenment (many overlapping terms are used) through their own idiosyncratic means, often a combination of meditation, therapy, physical discipline and so on. But again few seem to get beyond hope or imitation. Why is this so? Is genuine, embodied mysticism something given only to the very few? Does it resemble a genius for higher consciousness? Am I being unfair to the many who simply appear to lack this status? Is it a permanent state? Is it an illusion? How would we actually know that one person had it while another merely claimed, pretended to have it, or had a little of it but lost it? Is the ‘it’ an experience of what others call God? Or is it some inferior kind of ‘auto-erotic spirituality’ (as Pope Benedict XVI has referred to Buddhism)? My own belief is that it is probable that a few people do have such an experience, that if it exists it is superior to organized religion, spiritual aspiration and the therapy-believer’s ‘journey’, and that it may indicate a way out of anthropathology. In other words, there may be a personal solution to anthropathology. Against my belief is the clear possibility that enlightenment is simply another form of illusion and that even if something like it exists, it may have no real credibility as a way out of the human condition. Therapists who want to insist that everyone has to find a time-consuming, developmental path towards individual freedom, and political analysts and activists who insist on the paramount need for socio-economic change, will refute the idea that any individual’s personal change can be total and socially significant. Yet, it seems logical to suppose that the more individuals are able to cease projecting their neurotic needs on to the word, the less they would consume and overpopulate and the less mischief they would cause via greed, aggression and ambition, and the more the world might aim towards a sane level of homeostasis. It is tempting to think that anyone enlightened would mainly want to enjoy that state and would have no need of realizing worldly ambi-


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tion. The tendency of monks to withdraw from the world suggests as much. And the obvious criticism then is that such an attitude of indifference towards worldly needs means that social reforms would not happen, or at least would not be brought about by the enlightened. Krishnamurti repeatedly argued that thought itself was responsible for much, perhaps all of our evils. Yet, Krishnamurti seemed to believe that in the truly meditative state (of ‘enlightenment’) one form of dysfunctional thought would wither while another, ‘technical thought’ could operate sanely. Neurotically, or anthropathologically, driven thought processes would fall into silence, while the mind adopted its proper function of wise and efficient problem-solving. It is no easy matter to identify such an egoless mind. You might suggest, for example, that an earnest scientist who applies herself or himself to a scientific problem with the intention of finding a socially friendly solution and technical improvement, would resemble our paragon of non-dysfunctional ‘thinker’. But science is notoriously abused and exploited to evil ends, scientists are quite likely to embody ‘mad’ traits and vanity and ambition. Does it seem at all likely that an enlightened person or a wise scientist would create knowledge and social solutions free from anthropathological loops? Krishnamurti left many wise words and a few kindly schools that de-emphasize competition and ambition but he had no compunction about flying pollutingly all over the world. Few if any scientists have safeguarded their work against abuse and unwise exploitation.

THERE IS NO GOD Pause to consider that it perhaps seems more acceptable to say that ‘a fool says in his heart there is no God’ than its opposite. Of course, no religious believer is likely to be persuaded by my arguments, none of which, anyway, is new. But I hope to have shown that the problem of religion is critical to an understanding of anthropathology. Religion is an irrational refusal to embrace and address existential reality. At this stage, perhaps we are locked in a double bind, not wishing to promote an aggressively antireligious view of anthropathology but not feeling able to dissemble about religion. This is put well by Baggini: Atheists are necessarily anti-religious in one sense only: they believe that religions are false. But in this sense of the word ‘anti’ most Muslims are anti-Christian, most Christians anti-Jewish, most Protestants antiRoman Catholic, and so on. We would be wise, however, not to start

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calling all of these groups anti-whatever just because they disagree. To set any group up as ‘anti’ another suggests more than disagreement, it suggests hostility, and atheists are no more required to be hostile to the religious than Jews are required to be hostile to Hindus. (Baggini, 2003, p. 92)

None of us searching for a better way forward wishes to be culpable of the follies of furthering hostilities. And yet some sort of impasse exists. Baggini ends his account of atheism by a ‘return to the dark side’, by which he means an acknowledgement that as an atheist he does indeed see religious believers as involved in ‘childish illusions’. We cannot progress, says Baggini, ‘unless we cast off the innocence of supernatural world views’ (p. 111). There is a fine line between making the basis of one’s disagreement explicit and courting the hostility of those with whom one disagrees. Round after round of so-called Islamophobia and pro-Islamic statements and outcries in the early twentyfirst century shows the futility of this procedure. Put quite explicitly, my view would be this: belief in God and the religions that propagate this belief are irrational, anachronistic/prescientific, absurd and childish; they are group neuroses. Robust, liberal religious thinkers may be able to deal with this view in their own way. Indeed, liberal believers already distance themselves from the image of God as a patriarchal creator, morality monitor and obedience freak who likes to play guessing games with and make punishment threats towards humans. Those who label themselves spiritual may now see God as an energy field or universal presence or other metaphor (Adamson, 2004; Tolle, 2006). Aggressive religious fundamentalists, however, are likely to react with hostility to all such liberal interpretations. If someone attacks the very basis of what sustains your life collectively and emotionally, you may be sorely tempted to counter-attack at some non-verbal level. My intuition is that those with deep-seated religious convictions often feel threatened to the core by serious challenges, as if their very life depends on clinging to the belief. In order to avoid such confrontational scenarios it is common for atheists (and for those of one faith vis à vis another) to dilute their views and to include the concept of ‘respect’ in their statements. ‘I respect your right to believe in and engage in practices reflecting your beliefs about the virgin birth, resurrection of the body, reincarnation, ritual circumcision, dietary laws, mandatory beard growth, wearing the burka, Sharia law (which can include patriarchal privilege, stoning for adultery, amputation for theft), running separatist religious schools, and so on.’ One cannot simultaneously respect something and declare it to be absurd or dangerous! But, yes, there are fine lines between moderate


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and fundamentalist religious beliefs and between honesty and avoidance of anthropathological escalation. Religion is not anthropathological through and through. It served a purpose that was perhaps better than its alternative but no longer does. We’ve had Buddhism for over 2500 years, Christianity for 2000 years, Islam for 1400 years and the results are very mixed, to say the least. We may attempt to pluck the best and the common from all religions but even this strategy is problematic. All religion contains some insight into the pre-anthropathological nature of humanity but in its closeness to this insight, it distorts it and propagates a false message and bastardized morality. It is just about conceivable that some sort of posthumous existence exists (no living person can know either way for sure) but it is extremely unlikely and ‘faith’ in this proposition is not worth the illusions that come with it. What is clearly anthropathological about religion is its reliance on superstitious followership, irrationality, tradition, its implicit and explicit violence (Jurgensmeyer, 2001; Kimball, 2002; McTernan, 2003; Nelson-Pallmeyer, 2003) and refusal to fully embrace the modern era. Archaeology, evolutionary science and cosmology will come to illuminate the material origins of what religion has proclaimed as metaphysical. Rapidly accelerating knowledge of the cosmos – even taken at the level of, say, the first photographs of the Earth from outside the Earth – must demonstrate to us our own parochialism and the redundancy of our certitudes. Yet, it is not a matter of sinful pride that we recognize ourselves as probably (to the best of our current knowledge) ‘masters’ of the universe and responsible for what we decide to do next. It is a matter of growing up, grieving if necessary for the death of our long-held God myths, and perhaps taking our next inevitable, extraterrestrial and non-superstitious, migratory steps, as well as negotiating our immediate and mid-term collective future rationally. I cannot imagine we will see any more Abrahams, Jesuses or Muhammeds, because they belong firmly in a pre-scientific age. We are far better informed and for the most part incapable of being taken in by miracle claims and charismatic spells. Of course, minor and usually distorted versions of such figures still arise and can whip up support among small, gullible groups but they will never get far today. Reason has largely replaced or is replacing superstition.5 However, reason still has a long way to go to eliminate the misdirected passions of frustrated young men. Violent religious and political fervour, like violent crime, is associated mainly with young males. Inspired and prophetic young males may do relatively little harm themselves but they can and do ignite the troublesome passions and actions of other youngish males. I can only surmise that many adolescent male primates have evolved

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with surplus energy and a tendency to seek excessive excitement, trouble and sex. This tendency no doubt had an evolutionary purpose but it doesn’t sit well with our social structures now. Abraham, Jesus and Muhammed were hardly adolescent males but they were certainly alphatypes, even ultratypes (Broomhall, 2003), and much of their appeal was to restless young males. I realize that an inconsistency exists in my writing here. I want to decry religion for all its folly and madness but I do not want to fall into the trap of certitude and I do not want to be disliked or persecuted by religious fundamentalists (or religious liberals). I am fully in sympathy with the atheist views of Dawkins (2006), yet I note that even Dawkins refrains from taking on Islam frontally and remains curiously silent about Buddhism. Dawkins is right, I think, to refer to his beliefs as probabilistic. There is almost certainly no God. And religion perpetually commits atrocities and sustains illusion. But science has some odour of unexamined hope and illusion about it (Gray, 2002), and the world of capitalist brutality, university ambition and folly, promotion of the few and their comfort at the expense of the many, relative indifference to suffering – all these are matters about which many of us tend to remain conveniently unmoved. Religion may be a dangerous anachronism but academic life too has many anachronistic and myopic features. For all his admirably impassioned attack on religion, and in particular on religion as a form of child abuse, Dawkins (2006) does not stop to consider whether compulsory education itself might be a form of child abuse and academia a tradition riddled with childish irrationalities. Folly and irrationality, in short, is by no means confined to religion. Anything in which we invest emotional belief, and upon which we rely emotionally and economically, and which is ultimately built on illusion, can be considered religion. This can include marriage, education, occupation, art, sport, entertainment, politics, science. Jean-Paul Sartre (Words) admitted to books being his religion. And nihilism itself – the stubborn refusal to be religious in this broadest sense – is religious. My own anthropathological musings may be considered nihilistic and obsessional. Anything that functions rigidly as an obsessional neurosis is religion-like. Dawkins is brave enough to draw attention to surveys suggesting that a clear trend exists for atheists to be among the most highly educated in populations and religious believers among the least highly educated. But atheists are not necessarily kinder or wiser than others and the highly educated can be as morally stupid and self-interested as anyone else (Sternberg, 2002). I think we are all subject to unrecognized compulsions. If we do not ask how we can transcend the apparent need for all such compulsions, we might


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abolish current forms of religion but still create new ones by the stealth of our self-deceived minds. Of course there is no God. But even as ‘God’ goes through his/her/ its violent death throes within contemporary fundamentalism, other myths arise and consolidate themselves. It is part of the imperceptibility factor that we fail to see what illusions our restless minds create as they outwardly dedicate themselves to rational, sane progress or we declare ourselves committed to a God of love while murdering each other. It is a major part of the human condition that most of us seem terrified of living a life without the psychological protection of an illusory God and all the delusions this generates. It is in my view a probability that some form of rare embodied mysticism or enlightenment exists but is unfortunately misunderstood and perverted by religion, whose priests perennially construct a demanding entity called God to substitute for it; misunderstanding of the mischief of the ego leads to self-hatred, hatred of others and terrorism. Instead of a moral struggle with self, the greater jihad, we create misleading symbols and embrace fanatical self-destructive acts. Early man could not know any better and was susceptible to superstition (even Taylor, 2005, concedes this). But our problem today is that we know a great deal (perhaps too much) but our civilization is vast, complex and interdependent and our minds are corrupted with historical layers of greed, aggression, irrationality and deception. Religion is part of this problem, not a solution. We can perhaps see ‘religion’ in at least three ways: (i) woolly spirituality, embracing many emotional, vague aspirations to getting ‘something more’ out of life; (ii) chronic, hardened religion, institutionalized and spanning liberal and fundamentalist kinds; (iii) embodied mysticism, a rare, elusive but real state of renewed, enlightened mind (that may also be an illusion). Watts (1959) writes about Zen Buddhism in similar terms and neither are these wholly dissimilar from political factions of left and right. Anthropathological drift ensures that almost every good thing loses its purity in liberal and conservative distortions. Unfortunately, there is no one to deliver us from the evils of chronic and acute anthropathology but ourselves and much that we take to be good, like religion, is in my view unrecognized ‘evil’. And much that constitutes ‘ourselves’, our ego, is illusory and damaging. Rare individuals may have transcended all this but the overwhelming majority of us do not. Notes 1. These figures are taken from http://www.adherents.com/Religion_by_ Adherents.html, accessed in 2004. It has also been said that Scientology

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2. 3. 4. 5.


claims to have 10 million members worldwide (Guardian, 28 October 2006, p. 19), a claim that is refuted by critics of scientology. Scientology artfully hedges its bets by calling itself an applied religion and referring to one of its procedures as auditing, which some consider ‘a form of counselling’. But who is to decide, by what criteria, what is true religion or psychotherapy, and what is not? Horrobin (2001), however, speculatively puts the date of the origins of religion at about 80 000–140 000 years ago. In May 2006 a Turkish judge was shot dead by a Muslim lawyer protesting against the judge’s decision not to promote a headscarf-wearing teacher. Turkey has been riven by the headscarf issue. Manji (2004) describes herself as a ‘madressa casualty’ in her incisive, semiautobiographical critique of Islam. On the other hand, superstition and other diehard beliefs die hard! The Guardian (27 November 2006) reports that there is actually a current rise in creationist teaching in schools in the UK. ‘Intelligent design’ is being put forward as an equal alternative theory to Darwinism.

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What’s Wrong with the Psychological Therapies? Religion is in part a long-standing attempt to understand how to live well and how to overcome suffering, with a correspondingly long history of mischief. Religious and philosophical analyses of and remedies for suffering have been proffered for many centuries and are in some ways forerunners of today’s psychiatric and psychotherapeutic industry. Burton’s (2001) massive compendium of melancholic features, written around 1620, is but one historical, pre-scientific attempt to explain the array of forms of suffering. In the last century, predominantly in the West, psychotherapy and counselling have presented a new attempt, which partly displaces religion and partly duplicates its hopes and forms (Halmos, 1965). This chapter largely addresses the problems of the psychological therapies but this is not to say that they have no merits. I know of no better, more concise summary matching my own critique of the psychological therapies than the following: The psychotherapies which emphasize growth are being unethical. The profession has been hugely oversold in a world-wide evangelism of human potential, which has taken flight from any notion of the brute real. What can be done to alleviate suffering is small. This much should be done. To pretend more is to completely misunderstand the nature of suffering. (Weatherill, 1998, p. 143)

This statement, not coming from an ill-informed and savage critic but from a psychotherapist, makes it clear that there is a place for counselling and psychotherapy but that we tend to exaggerate its importance. There is surely no strong argument against the view that many, perhaps most of us, struggle to some extent to cope with daily life and that any help we can get is welcome. We carry within us certain genetically loaded disadvantages, as well as our psycho-

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logical baggage from birth onwards; we are in some contexts hardly treated as individuals but as social and economic units who must accommodate ourselves to years of mass education followed by a near lifetime in sometimes ill-fitting occupations. Along the way we must deal with accidents, traumas, interpersonal emotional hurts, financial worry, gradually fading health and vitality and the prospect of death (Feltham, 2004a). Some of us have far more than our share of adversity. Therapy does offer some help and even more hope. But its remedy is far from contentious. Therapy is, as Zerzan puts it, one of ‘our many compromises and accommodations with a grisly world . . . in the prosaic course of our common nightmare’ (1999, p. 133). While its proponents may protest otherwise, therapy does ‘take the dominant culture’s utilitarian worldview as a given’ (Jensen, 2006, p. 364).

THE ORDINARY SUFFERING INDIVIDUAL We might first search for the ‘ordinary person’ who struggles with daily life and who might need some therapy, who then becomes a ‘client’. (Client is the term preferred over the medical term ‘patient’ by most counsellors, since it is thought to acknowledge that the person isn’t ill and is an active agent in their own reflection and change process. But many clients are nevertheless distressed and do not know what they want.) When I scan my former middle-class neighbourhood, I find middle-aged to older people who appear from the outside to have fairly affluent, charmed lives: the early retired pharmaceuticals executive, the early retired accountant, the construction manager, the management consultant. All are well off, have new cars, ample foreign holidays. Most tend to their health, have some sort of religious affiliation and give to charity. They are where they are economically because they have served their time respectively selling drugs around the world, charging obscenely high amounts for bookkeeping, benefiting from the property boom and peddling clichés to rich corporations. Whether they view their careers in these terms I do not know, but I doubt it. Whether they feel guilty, relieved or fortunate, I cannot know. What their inner lives, their marriages, their balance of suffering and pleasure is like, I will never know. But living in a quiet, secure, affluent neighbourhood has advantages; a new car, a sunny holiday, a good pension with a paid-up mortgage, these are compensations that may offset some suffering and the need for therapy. In my own professional network of counsellors and counselling academics, I know of surprising levels of affluence too. While employment for counsellors is scarce and often paid only moderately well, never-


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theless acquaintances in this world easily come to mind who earn well, have good pension schemes, foreign holidays, second homes and property investments. It is not unusual for a counsellor to be a late middle-aged woman whose husband has a highly paid career and who lives in a fine home. These are sensitive people with liberal politics, who see no conflict between their espoused care for the suffering and their own comfort, indeed who often see no direct connection between adverse social conditions and individual suffering. We might say that counselling and psychotherapy are modest forms of philanthropy. In the role of client, I have certainly been in some of these homes. I have envied them, wondered what must be wrong with me not to own one myself, and made the fantasy assumption that all must be well in the therapist’s world for her to live in such surroundings; and if I played my cards right (so went my fantasy) I might just end up in one of these bourgeois mini-palaces. But what is life like in the ‘real world’? Only a couple of stones’ throws away is a slightly run-down neighbourhood, with relatively high unemployment, where drug-oriented, sometimes armed teenagers roam the streets, where unwanted pregnancies and single-mother households abound and the future looks desperate. But some of these, if they play their cards right, may find their way into at least semiaffluent lifestyles later, or the fantasy that they might do so could draw them into further education, straight, boring jobs, hypnotic consumer patterns, and behaviour-taming mortgages. Most of them are unlikely to seek counselling, more likely to receive probation-type treatments or to be compelled to attend an agency for help with pregnancy, drug or alcohol use. And there are millions who fall into neither of these categories but who simply make the most of their assets and negotiate obstacles as well as they can. It is impossible to characterize such large numbers of people and there is a temptation to romanticize them as (decent) ‘ordinary folk’ or look down on them as ‘the (stupid) masses’. Impressionistically, crudely, perhaps we can say we are a mixture of good and bad, strong and weak, with a general global tendency for all to aspire to better living standards and to be highly sensitive to our position in society (James, 2007; Lane, 2000; Wilkinson, 2005). Apart from the different socio-economic extremes, are there experiences we all go through that cause us to suffer and to need counselling or therapy? Let me repeat the following passage from Schopenhauer: We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness, we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses. And the road from the one to the other too goes, in

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regard to our well-being and enjoyment of life, steadily downhill: happily dreaming childhood, exultant youth, toil-filled years of manhood, infirm and often wretched old age, the torment of the last illness and finally the throes of death. (Schopenhauer, 1851/1970, p. 54)

Schopenhauer today could have added the trauma of birth, varieties of childhood abuse, educational failure, teenage angst, family problems, mid-life crisis, divorce, redundancy, bereavement and other tribulations, all of which are addressed within modern psychotherapeutic literature and practice. Counselling has always addressed itself to such ‘developmental crises’. If some had their way, we would all be subject to psychological developmental check-ups at school, college or university, in the workplace, the health-care setting, retirement home and hospice, to ensure our optimal care and the unleashing of our putative personal resourcefulness at every stage. One implicitly utopian agenda found among therapists is just this – the expansion of projects addressing our developmental susceptibilities and the fulfilment of our presumed potential. While there are specialist academic literatures addressing individual differences, personality types, self-efficacy, career paths and so on, there is not and cannot be a literature (never mind a clear form of guidance or assistance) addressing the sheer volume of demands on the individual and ideas on how to cope effectively with them. While most of us are protected by parents and shaped by schooling (as well as, all too often, being damaged by parents and schooling), each of us must learn how to adapt our unique constellation of strengths, weaknesses and liabilities to ever-changing circumstances (La Cerra and Bingham, 2002). It is not a level playing field. Some of us are quite obviously more attractive, intelligent, resourceful, healthy and strong than others; some of us have advantages of inheritance and family and cultural context that others do not and never will have. The politically correct rhetoric of respect and equal opportunity masks these realities. The existence of a proportion of robust self-made millionaires who have crawled from gutter to high life proves nothing about those who simply cannot do this (nor, indeed, about the merits of ambition). Communist societies, while aiming for ostensible equality, have not been able to achieve equality for all. In spite of the rhetoric of family-oriented cultures about the downplaying of the individual, ultimately it all comes back to the individual to balance personal aspirations against familial modifying factors. In other words, every one of us to some extent is constantly and probably anxiously gauging our progress in terms of relationships, peer hierarchies, housing, finances, health and


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safety; we manage our social homeostasis. And we are all susceptible to degrees of breakdown. Enter, and prosper, the talking therapies.

WHAT’S RIGHT WITH THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPIES On at least two levels therapy is welcome and probably often effective. These are (i) providing focused help with acute personal distress or confusion and (ii) providing intensive listening, sanctuary and occasional fortuitous transcendence in an often brutal and inhospitable world. I do not agree with my colleagues who champion therapy as a radically or reliably personality-transforming endeavour or as a path to enlightenment, having witnessed at best only mixed and somewhat disappointing results in these domains. Counselling and psychotherapy of various kinds have helped many people to deal with transient problems ranging from the pain of separation and divorce, bereavement and other taxing life events, to moderately incapacitating conditions of depression, anxiety, obsessional behaviour, post-traumatic stress disorder and so on. Research seems to confirm that about 80 % of clients are helped by therapy. Results cannot be guaranteed and are uneven but this is no good reason to withhold such help. For all its faults, today’s therapy and counselling are the best we can offer to individuals struggling with their own problems within a complex and somewhat crazy world. Apart from this ‘practical’ help, I believe therapy works – when it works well – at a counter-cultural level (albeit, again, unevenly). In providing sanctuary (privacy, confidentiality, disciplined attention, non-judgementalism), something that is rare in our age of dehumanized routines and relating is conveyed. Philosophers like Fiumara (1990) and Levin (1989) have placed listening at the heart of understanding the human condition. What we might term radical listening – and Levin often refers to as hearkening – is qualitatively different from casual, preoccupied or interpretative listening. It is the attempt to listen deeply to and understand the entirety of another’s meanings, feelings and expressions, whether or not these seem socially ‘normal’. It is one of very few forums for the unique individual to be heard and respected, and not to feel deviant for not matching the fantasy of the averagely contented and normally aspiring person. It is, as Fiumara says, ‘the other side of language’, that which is not assertive, verbal and conscious but can be faltering, silent, or hard to articulate. It is meditative in nature and probably contains more ‘feminine’ outreach than masculine, which is why Fiumara refers to a likeness to midwifery and why Storr (1997) refers to psychotherapy as a ‘maternal

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enclave’. Unfortunately it is too easy to romanticize this or alternatively to mechanize it, as may occur in some counselling training where listening and responding skills are intensively and artificially rehearsed. Beneath the tiresome brouhaha of therapy jargon, theories and professionalizing manoeuvres, it is in the person-to-person intensity of listening, attending and sincere responding that humanly profound contact is made. Another large area in which therapy has made some useful inroads, or at least in which the theorizing of some therapists has been significant, is the psychosocial. Freud (1930/2002) allowed himself to analyse culture and civilization in psychoanalytic terms. Jung speculated on ‘modern man’, on the question of Job’s suffering (Jung, 1954/2002) and other topics. Indeed, Jungians have been among the most prolific in linking inner psychic life with social and environmental problems (Beebe, 2003; Hillman, 2004; Stevens, 2004). Reich (1970) was critical of the shortcomings of psychoanalysis and Communism and remains influential (DeMeo, 2006). Fromm (1963) was an exceptional critic of the dehumanizing trends in capitalist culture. Gilbert (1989) was among the earliest of therapists (a clinical psychologist) to make speculative links between evolutionary themes and depression and suffering. Smail (1993) has consistently attacked the pretentiousness and false analyses of the therapy business and demonstrated the socioeconomic roots of unhappiness. Some therapists are trying to introduce ‘ecopsychological’ concepts into therapy to help heighten awareness of environmental factors. Broadly speaking, such writers have either extended psychotherapeutic theory to the wider domains of politics, often showing how our individual problems are projected on to the social stage, or they have argued for the limitations of traditional individual-centred therapy and appealed for an interdisciplinary curriculum in training therapists. Questions about whether change begins at the individual or social level, or indeed how these are brought meaningfully together, continue to challenge therapists. In some ways the social world is a projection of billions of individual psychologies (as well as much habit and tradition) and in other ways the individual suffers tremendously from the weight of an ill-fitting world. Therapy then becomes a necessary oasis and it is this characteristic that has a double-edged impact: When psychotherapy heals, as it sometimes does, it may be because the psychotherapist has provided a secure haven, a maternal enclave, in which the patient is for a time removed from the troubles of the world, and, like a happy child, can feel totally accepted, confident, and free to grow. (Storr, 1997, p. 231)


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In other words, temporary removal from the world may be necessary but by the same token therapy can be seen as an unreal and infantile retreat from the site of the real troubles. (Religion has often incurred exactly the same critique.) The client may be free to grow in the consulting room and this growth may extend somewhat beyond it but the demands of the world, its anthropathological mechanisms, are sooner or later highly likely to outweigh the benefits bestowed by therapy’s maternal enclave. One of the few attempts to make therapy something that is actively, outwardly oriented is the social therapy of Newman (1991), but even this form of urban engagement faces enormous uphill challenges. We need to get over the illusion that all therapy is good and all its critics are bad. Therapy is mixed and so are its critics. Therapy is a phenomenon of our time and place, heavily Americanized in its theoretical origins, pragmatism and optimism (Cushman, 1995), perhaps filling the void created by the crumbling of traditional religious and political forms (Halmos, 1965), and often trying (and failing) to imitate scientific endeavours. It is imperfect and susceptible to inflation. If I am right about anthropathology, then therapy is relatively weak in the face of it. Nevertheless, it still has some pragmatic value, however tentative and temporary. We seem to find it hard to value something without overvaluing it.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPIES The ‘No Baseline’ Problem It is thought that no more than about 5–20 % of the UK population resorts to counselling, even though figures for mental health problems indicate that vast numbers, perhaps almost all, of us suffer. Indeed, therapists are likely to unintentionally welcome statistics supporting their case. There are more suicides annually than people dying in wars (Williams, 2004). Worldwide, there are over 400 million people with mental disorders (Patel, 2004). Depression is well known to be a huge and growing problem worldwide. Counselling is a somewhat fuzzy, intuitive and organic response to this. The British counselling and psychotherapy profession has made no attempt to (i) define and sketch an epidemiology of personal problems or concerns that may be related to what counselling offers; (ii) define what may be considered significantly problematic against a background of presumed normality; or (iii) articulate exactly which problems or personal matters therapy can and cannot reasonably

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address, and with what success. The state-regulated professions of psychiatry and clinical psychology are rather more explicit about this, concentrating their energy and diagnoses on the severe end of personally problematic behaviour. Implicit in counselling norms is the assumption that everyone can benefit in some way from counselling, as everyone can (and must) benefit from education. Most counsellors do not like to say that everyone has psychological or neurotic problems but most will subscribe to the truism that everyone has areas of improvable functioning. Some theorists have focused on what may be considered normal (Offer and Sabshin, 1991) and some on the superior to normal (e.g. Maslow, 1976). Yet, others (e.g. Charlton, 2000; Ratey and Johnson, 1997) argue that relatively disabling but treatable or manageable neurotic problems are probably universal. And others still have argued that serious psychobiological neurosis is universal and treatable only by their own rigorous methods (e.g. Janov and Holden, 1975). Terms such as the ‘psychopathology of the average’ and ‘insanity of normality’ are also proffered. Many writers on therapy simply ignore the baseline issue altogether or downplay it. It is not surprising, then, that the field sometimes seems so unfocused and promiscuous, with therapists displaying in the eyes of some a blatant and unhelpful commercial opportunism (Furedi, 2004a). The Problem of Effectiveness Psychoanalysts pretty much avoided the question of evidence until Hans Eysenck issued his famous challenge in the 1950s, which spawned generations of psychotherapy outcome research. Eysenck had argued that people with psychological difficulties got better only to the same extent as others would merely with the passage of time (about two thirds of people); he also suggested that placebo effects could account for any alleged success. It is now thought that about 80 % of clients improve, but precision in such research remains in doubt. Outcomes are notoriously difficult to measure because diagnoses are so variable, as are the performances and personalities of different therapists practising different methods of therapy, the personalities and motivational strength of clients, the temporal endurance of apparently successful outcomes, intervening temporal and circumstantial variables, and so on. Kline (1992) lists 19 such problems and I consider it highly unlikely that any research could ever convincingly overcome such obstacles. Many therapists object to the very idea of outcome measures on the grounds that the therapeutic process is too subtle and complex to yield meaningful research results (except for individual case studies or small-scale qualitative findings). Yet, economic and professional pres-


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sures have obliged the professional bodies to move further in this direction. This has led to the curious phenomenon of evidence-based therapy, curious because not so long ago counsellors were advised not to promise anything like a cure for clients’ ailments (this could invite law suits in the likely event that cures were not forthcoming), and many counsellors spurn the very idea of meaningful diagnosis and predictable outcomes. Talking therapy does not work like drugs, with a more or less predictable, physical impact on the brain and nervous system, although here too some therapists want to argue that their work does just that – alter clients’ neurological patterns. Therapy is a sprawling field containing myriad clinical epistemologies and it is frankly hard to see how consensus about aims (and therefore baselines for effectiveness measurements) can be achieved. The Problem of Proliferation There are thought to be in excess of 400 different models of therapy. That is, there are hundreds of differently named therapies, each with different theories about human nature, pathology, techniques and so on. Most of these claim to have wide, if not universal application to all the familiar – if ‘subclinical’ or less than severe – mental health problems and to psychological states and aspirations that are not problematic. Not everyone regards this state of affairs as problematic but it is a problem for anyone seeking therapy and being naturally confused, as well as for trainees deciding on courses and funders needing to know which approaches are most effective. We can say that such proliferation is not unusual in human affairs. Religion is similarly pluralistic, politics has its many splinter groups and tribalism is still rife across the world. Objectors argue that richness is all to the good – multiculturalism, postmodernism and choice characterize the best in human civilization. But we do have a significant problem here. Freud did not conjure psychoanalysis out of thin air but examined what was available in his time and rejected and added. The story of schisms and fall-outs within Freud’s early circle is well enough known, Jung and Adler standing out in this respect. But the field has many similar examples of collaborators falling out, sometimes sincerely and sometimes bitterly. Today competing schools of psychoanalytic therapy exist and conflicts are apparent about who has and has not the right to train psychoanalysts. Proprietorial factors are clearly at work. Personal ambition and reputations are at stake, money features, professional pride and arrogance are part of the picture. Almost all ‘brand name’ therapies are created by white males, usually (after the European Jewish diaspora therapists) Americans. Dozens of humanistic models

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have come from California. Behaviour therapy had some sense of cautious scientific development but it too has had its charismatic stars, and cognitive behaviour therapy has been created largely by individuals abandoning one training tradition and creating another. There is fame, glory and money to be made out of such new creations. I do not believe that the pursuit of wealth has been the main driving factor here. Rather, I suspect that the personalities of those involved (the big name founders of therapies) have driven proliferation. An insistent subjectivity underpins the therapeutic enterprise, leading to quite different clinical philosophies. Broadly speaking, the psychoanalytic schools take human nature to be determined by unconscious conflict and early life relationships and events, cognitive behaviour therapists take thought to be responsible for our moods and behaviour and humanistic therapists resist any over-deterministic aetiologies, placing their emphasis on human potential, resourcefulness and other positives. And new models arrive all the time, placing emphasis on systems, narrative, multiculturalism, spirituality. It seems fair enough, probably inevitable, that large differences exist in estimates of human nature and potential, in accounts of psychopathology and remedies.1 Nevertheless, these theoretical differences are unhelpful. In ways that resemble the Christian church’s putative attempts to unify ecumenically, ‘psychotherapy integration’ has now been lumbering on for years as movement towards unity. Learned societies, specialist journals, international conferences are dedicated to this, recognizing the problem of proliferation. Some therapists express their impatience towards the problem and prefer not be drawn into the battle of names, but professional bodies tend to insist that training courses name their model and follow particular precepts. I think this is wrong, that a generic training in pragmatic and modest therapy would be more honest and helpful. And still we cannot agree on the real differences, if any, between counselling and psychotherapy. We cannot agree on the overlaps and identities of counselling, counselling psychology, clinical psychology, psychotherapy and psychiatry as allegedly distinct professions. I suspect that the field is permanently fragmented. Probably, at the level of everyday practice, ‘good work’ is done that is characterized by compassionate improvisation but higher up the chain, where egos and institutions jostle for power and market share, the true focus is lost. Therapist Abuse and the Character of the Therapist Masson (1991) has championed the cause of those who have complained of being hurt, abused or simply not helped by their therapists.


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Until quite recently the assumption prevailed that at worst some therapy perhaps did little to help some clients’ lives improve. The examples (and jokes) of celebrities like Woody Allen stimulated in the mind of much of the public the view that (particularly long-term psychoanalytic) therapy was at best an amusingly harmless, if pointless indulgence. But alongside the growing popularity of therapy and counselling a number of articulate clients have published accounts of spending a great deal of money and not being helped, of being demeaned and abused in a variety of ways by their therapists (Bates, 2005). Masson himself underwent a classical psychoanalytic training analysis in which he found his analyst dogmatic and unhelpful. Masson nevertheless went on to become an analyst himself and an insider in the heart of the psychoanalytic establishment. In Against Therapy he exposed several well-known therapists for a range of blatant abuses, including having sex or flirting with clients, being violent to clients, demeaning and undermining them, and financial exploitation. The profession’s response to Masson has been a mixture of pious acceptance that there are some bad apples in the barrel and steps must be taken to exclude them, through to vicious condemnation of him as a presumably disappointed and dysfunctional person. Masson’s conclusion was that therapy is intrinsically harmful, since therapists are simply human beings with all their foibles and sufferings, thinly covered with their own therapy and training, they stand to gain financially from keeping clients in therapy, and therapy takes place in privacy, in an unequal relationship, with clients who are vulnerable. People are better off avoiding professionals and forming selfhelp groups, according to Masson. There are probably relatively few cases of outright abuse but an increasing number of clients have voiced their disquiet about therapists who impose their interpretations and cause clients to doubt themselves, their own common sense, so that low self-esteem grows and the client becomes ever more dependent on the therapist (Bates, 2005). Therapy then resembles brainwashing, or a cult of two, and is clearly dangerous. Of course, the therapist may be right in sometimes challenging the client, pointing out things that are hard to hear but need to be said for the client’s sake. Stronger, more assertive clients may be able to stand up to incorrect or unhelpful therapist observations but such is the emotional need of many that a certain pressure can work towards keeping clients silent about their doubts. Since many people seem to improve in therapy, or enjoy therapy, regardless of the espoused model, it has become a truism that ‘common factors’ like warmth, acceptance, understanding and encouragement are the active ingredients; in short, that it is the quality of the ‘thera-

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peutic relationship’ that determines successful therapy. But it is not axiomatic that all therapists have the personal qualities needed to establish such a relationship or that training does the job. Training in counselling and psychotherapy became very popular during the last two decades of the twentieth century and while the official stance is that applicants should be rigorously interviewed and selected with great care, universities’ growing hold on training has meant that targets must be reached, in other words (high) number intakes must prevail. While I doubt that high numbers of wholly unsuitable applicants become therapists and counsellors, it seems likely that mediocre therapists can pass through the system. But since we have no research investigating this and a climate of political correctness that militates against investigating it, we are unlikely to find out. And who, anyway, is sane, mature and intelligent enough to be the judge of who should and shouldn’t enter the profession? Therapists are likely to be introverted, they are highly likely to have had considerable personal problems themselves (many trainees are drawn into this world after having had therapy themselves) and it is not unlikely that they enjoy intimacy and are fascinated by the details of others’ struggles and misfortunes. They are not necessarily the best parents (Maeder, 1989). I suspect that most are kindly, warm and well intentioned but some are over-intellectual, overemotional, . . . and who I am to so pontificate? The question of who makes the best kind of therapist leads to a minefield of opinion and prejudice. The flip side of dubious therapist character is the tendency to idolize certain founders of schools and heroes of practice. Winnicott is one such hero: Winnicott is commonly described as playful, spontaneous, sparkling and deeply empathic; perhaps a bit of a puer, a Peter Pan, even a ‘cryptoprima donna’. Some people saw him as a loner, for all his apparent sociability. His work is strangely silent, in content and tone, on the devastating effects of the two world wars through which he lived. Perhaps his pessimism was to some extent split off from his optimism; this would make his hopeful side particularly attractive, while his more cynical side would recede from view. (Gomez, 1997, p. 85)

We like our heroes to be warm, kind, insightful and deep and we accord them a special status. Freud’s neuroses can be overlooked because he conducted his own heroic and selfless self-analysis. Jung’s racism and psychic claims can be downplayed. Rogers’ naivety can be excused. Interesting deconstructions of the mythologizing of such heroes can be found in Storr (1997) and Zweig and Abrams (1991). One


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common factor here is that all therapists must be tempted for the sake of their own reputation, its survival and elevation, to de-emphasize their own doubts and to allow followers to think them almost infallible. Winnicott found it profitable to come across as optimistic, sociable and warm, concealing his reclusive and pessimistic side. Few have had the integrity to publicize their doubts; and few, I think, have personally achieved the kind of freedom from neurosis or anthropathology that one would hope for.

THE PROBLEMS OF THE DIFFERENT THERAPIES Psychoanalysis The reputation of psychoanalysis rests rather perilously on the concept of transference. I believe this concept to be at best platitudinous. A certain form of ‘transference’ may appear to occur intensively in the consulting room. But the essence of transference – distorted perceptions of others – is something that occurs all the time in all situations. All of us negotiate everyday life on the basis of desires and avoidances derived from both long-standing and recent stimuli. All of us have some level of preoccupation. It is a commonplace that many of us do not listen carefully to others, our minds being busy with other matters, with formulating opinions and preparing easy responses, and so on. But we also tend to see what we expect to see. Our minds are constructed, it seems, to seek and lock on to what is pleasurable, advantageous or automatic, or threatening. Mostly, our minds are not contemplatively open to fresh experience. We can argue over the terms unconscious and automatic but probably to no avail. The central point here is that our minds constantly project and filter in all situations and in doing so create an image of the world that leads to anthropathological consequences. We do not truly meet each other as individuals, we cannot easily sustain long-term relationships without distortions, we fill ourselves with opinions, prejudices, bigotry, irrationality (Fine, 2006), creating and reinforcing a nexus of individual, social and cultural ‘transferences’ that lead to racism, violence, nationalism, capitalism, war. Allegiance to, and reinforcement of identification with, certain beliefs is the norm for most of us. Hence, psychoanalysts like everyone else ‘see’ confirmatory evidence for their psychoanalytic beliefs in their patients and in everyday life. For most of us the tendency seems to be to seek comforting beliefs and confirmation of these beliefs rather than question.

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Freud, as is well known, did not hold out dramatic promises for psychoanalysis but expected only that common unhappiness would replace hysterical misery. In this sense he showed practical modesty and anticipated the view held by Weatherill (1998). We can aim at a small increase in happiness, based on insight and self-knowledge, but we cannot abolish death or our awareness of death and inevitable human suffering. The tendency of uncovering therapists like psychoanalysts to ‘disbelieve’ surface behaviour and conscious reports is unintentionally borne out by the work of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman. He ‘asked subjects if they presented a smiling face to the world but were privately unhappy. He stopped asking this question because it caused many people to burst into tears’ (Easterbrook, 2003, p. 168). Although this example is anecdotal, it supports what many therapists believe, namely that perhaps we live by self-protecting defence mechanisms. What we say is not necessarily what we inwardly feel. This is hardly remarkable, however, and does not lead to the conclusion that psychoanalysis is required to uncover private unhappiness. I believe that psychoanalytic therapies have largely had their day, their novelty value has waned and their power to make significant changes is minimal. Humanistic Therapies It is traditional to group together a number of therapeutic models that do not fall under the psychoanalytic or cognitive-behavioural umbrellas as humanistic. These are not humanistic in the sense of being atheistic but as somewhat science-shunning and anti-deterministic. Human potential is the key. They include the person-centred approach (Rogers), Gestalt (Perls), psychodrama (Moreno), transactional analysis (Berne), primal therapy (Janov) and many others. Feminist therapy, co-counselling, transpersonal therapies and others belong here too. I will discuss person-centred and primal therapies as examples. The person-centred approach (PCA) initiated by Carl Rogers from the 1940s is one of the most popular with British counselling trainees, as well as retaining an international following. At the risk of unfairly abbreviating the theoretical foundations and caricaturing the PCA, let me suggest that its popularity stems from its optimistic view of human nature and ‘simple’ theoretical grounding. Rogers argued that we have an actualizing tendency, that we naturally grow towards selffulfilment and that when we are frustrated or held back by adverse life events and our own self-doubts, we do our best to correct these. What is provided by the therapist is the opportunity to experience


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another human being who fully accepts us and strives to understand us accurately while manifesting their own genuineness in the encounter. Just as the therapist accepts herself, so we realize that we can too. Non-judgemental, non-directive accompaniment is the therapist’s job. Person-centred therapy eschews diagnosis, techniques and anxiety about clinical outcomes because its focus is the person’s own momentto-moment experience and values. It is not about converting him or her to prevalent social values or even to doing well or making changes but it is about deep acceptance and knowledge of oneself. Therapy is a success if the client becomes more fluid in their personal experience, better able to accept and express themselves in all aspects. Rogers spoke of a ‘full functioning person’ and ‘the person of tomorrow’ but had no prescriptive idea of this person. Nevertheless, he and those adopting the PCA seem to believe in the revolutionary potential of such therapy and its principles as a ‘way of being’. Some regard it as a path towards spiritual fulfilment and others as a political agenda (Proctor et al., 2006). Indeed, Rogers’ own work with large groups and his attempts to help broker peace in situations of international conflict earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. The less admiring view of those outside the PCA is as follows. It is an extremely naive theory built on flimsy and arbitrary precepts. While Rogers claimed to identify his core conditions for therapeutic change – mainly unconditional positive regard, empathy and congruence – on the basis of inferences from clinical practice and tape-recordings, it is likely that others could just as well have identified other qualities or given the qualities different names. Rogers’ original six conditions, boiled down to the famous three (above), act as a sort of faith-like mantra, and many counsellors love them because they seem so easy to concentrate on. Yet, how is one to accept the client but perhaps have reservations about certain aspects of the client’s behaviour? How can those who practise the PCA claim to be egalitarian (person-centred therapists hate having and abusing power) when their relationships with clients are obviously one-sided? (They may make occasional therapeutic self-disclosures but most of the talk is about the client and it’s the therapist who takes the money, not the other way round.) If, as is often said, the client is the expert on their own life, how come it’s often such a messed-up life? And if the actualizing tendency is driving us all, why do we need therapists? While claiming to practise non-directively, PCA practitioners tacitly encourage those behaviours they approve of and do not seem concerned that some of their clients may sometimes be better helped by more technically focused and less long-winded strategies. Lengthy conversation about nicotine addiction or fear of flying, for example, is probably far less helpful than certain medical,

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neurolinguistic programming or hypnotherapeutic techniques. And for all its concerns about the ‘real world’ outside the consulting room, the PCA like most therapies dwells on the inner world of the client, on feelings and perceptions. For all its warmth and goodness, the PCA is a hero-worshipping, dogmatic system whose classical adherents seek to avoid contamination by other approaches, quite religiously. I now discuss primal therapy because – although more deterministic than many models – it is an example of a humanistic therapy that aims to be truly radical and it is a therapy I experienced myself many years ago. Arthur Janov discovered that the strong expression of feelings, voicing feelings to the relevant person (an unloving mother, an abusive father, etc.) as if they were present, is far more powerful than merely talking about hurt feelings. In Janov’s view it is the accumulation of emotional and physical hurts from birth onwards that leaves us as adults thoroughly neurotic, to the point of not recognizing this (the imperceptibility factor). We suffer from intrusive, technologically mediated obstetrics, lengthy involuntary schooling, parental whims and abuse. This suffering is not merely transient and cognitive but ingrained psychosomatically, and it is responsible for much of our physical illness as well as psychological distress and confusion. Adults live their lives determined by events from birth and childhood, for example working all hours in an unconscious ambition to become important enough for mummy or daddy finally to love them. Primal therapy is much more deterministic than the PCA and some other humanistic therapies. (Those practising primal integration therapy claim that they fully embrace non-deterministic human potential.) For Janov, neurosis is an undeniable force that rules and ruins the lives of individuals and societies; we are ‘prisoners of pain’ (Janov, 1982) until released by rigorous primal therapy, itself an arduous, sometimes frightening and painful process. A great deal of primal therapy is characterized by the client, under the therapist’s direction, calling out for the love she did not receive as a child, or asking for the punishment to stop. Tears flow at the emotional recognition that even good parents, no doubt under pressure from their own primal pain and ongoing challenging socio-economic circumstances, treated us inappropriately. We were not quite ready to be born, we did not need to be slapped, we needed the breast, we needed kindness, time, patience, holding and understanding. We did not flourish being forced to sit for hours each day with other children, all subjected to the verbal droning on of schoolteachers, their sarcasm, threats, idiosyncrasies and exams. The deep, emotional, sensory and somatic recognition that this is what our life has been, that a rightful richness of experience has been sacrificed to unfeeling traditions, is


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unleashed. Painful memory after memory is released until the client returns to a state of natural, pre-neurotic/post-neurotic functioning. It was the attraction of primal therapy’s depth and the promise of entering ‘primal consciousness’ that drew me to it. I cried deeply for two years or so at the emotional deprivations of my family and sometimes felt very different. I met a lot of people doing likewise. But Janov’s promises did not pan out for me, nor for many others. Like psychoanalysis, it seemed that if you just kept going through all your doubts (Bates, 2005), hanging on in faith, eventually you would have that decisive memory and insight, you would be free. But it didn’t happen. Some things changed but perhaps more by effort than cathartic release; the therapists encouraged risk-taking and habit-changing and some of this worked. Even today, 30 years later, I probably am more sensitized to feelings than I would otherwise have been. But there is no escape route out of everyday work routines and relationships. There are many ways in which I am still quite obviously neurotic. A degree of lifelong shyness remains, and shyness is not a psychotraumatogenic condition. For Janov, everything negatively aetiological is trauma. Now, possibly there are links between the full expression of psychosomatic pain and embodied mysticism (see Chapter 6) but there are other challenges, what I call the horizontal challenges of everyday anthropathology, that seriously impinge on us, as well as certain genetic weightings. So Janov offers something important, but it is much more partial than he believes it to be. Three of his predictions were, for example, that primal therapy would take away the need for religious ideation, reduce the likelihood of cancer (on the premise that many cancers are psychosomatically triggered) and lengthen the lifespan of those undergoing it. Yet, one of Janov’s main collaborators, E.M. Holden, after many years of his own primal therapy, became a born-again, speaking-in-tongues Christian who died of cancer at the age of 61. If that isn’t embarrassingly disconfirmatory, I don’t know what is. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Psychologists hoped to establish a scientific behaviour therapy that would avoid the untestable, speculative theories of psychoanalysis, and did so. Behaviour therapy, based on blunt but measurable parameters, did appear to treat well certain conditions such as phobias and compulsions. But it wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s that therapists like Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis appeared, challenging the protracted nature of psychoanalysis and its ambivalent results and creating variants of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). Both Beck’s cognitive therapy and Ellis’ rational emotive behaviour therapy rest on the prin-

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ciple that typical conscious thoughts can be teased out, can be shown to be frequently irrational and unhelpful, and can be corrected by therapist input and client reconsideration and behaviour change. Events as such do not upset us but our expectations and inferences do. We generalize and catastrophize instead of evaluating everyday events objectively. As elsewhere in the therapy world, differences exist among CBT therapists but the core principle is that our thoughts dictate our mood and behaviour. If you ask the client to record key events in their typical day, alongside what they were thinking and feeling, and then get them to experiment with more adaptive and positive thoughts, you find that they experience reduced anxiety and depression. Such is the prediction of CBT and much of the research supports it. So successful has it been that it is now in the ascendancy, popular among psychologists, mental health nurses and NHS funders, if less so among many counsellors and psychotherapists. Although not a form of positive thinking as such, it is readily associated with that movement, itself increasingly popular, if under the guise of ‘the psychology of happiness’. CBT seems to work with people who are new to therapy and not necessarily psychologically minded (although there are a few celebrated cases of clients disaffected with other approaches finding help in CBT). It is practical and down to earth, giving clients something positive to do immediately (homework is one of its main tools) and engendering hope quickly. Indeed, some refer to it as common sense. It is brief and cost-effective, unlike most psychoanalytic methods. But doubts are surfacing. CBT in its successful form is one of the new therapies and it takes time for criticisms to come to the fore. Some clients report that they went along with it because that’s what the therapist insisted on. (Unlike other approaches, CBT is not particularly improvisational.) But it did not address their more subtle concerns or its positive effects did not last. Long waiting lists exist for CBT, thus creating expectancy as a placebo effect. CBT therapists can be very choosy about who they will see, occasionally declaring someone ‘too depressed’ to benefit. Some CBT therapists of my acquaintance tacitly admit that it isn’t necessarily helpful with bereavement and other fresh emotional experiences. Indeed, its very emphasis on cognition rather than emotion, its proponents’ belief in the power of thought to override inconvenient feelings, seems a suspiciously masculine and Western view. Recent developments in ‘mindfulness-based cognitive therapy’ attempt to harness meditation therapeutically, particularly with certain diagnostic groups such as those labelled borderline personality disordered. While officially successful, some CBT and dialectical behaviour therapists tell me their clients simply cannot learn to meditate or practise ‘emotional regulation’.


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Richard Layard (2005) proposed that since mental ill health is intrinsically painful and more painful than unemployment, and we have recorded evidence for the effectiveness of CBT in alleviating depression, anxiety and other problematic psychological states, it is the duty of the state to provide comprehensive CBT services. Along with this reasoning goes the argument that much costly unemployment can be addressed by CBT, the costs of which will be offset by higher employment and less ill health, therefore the long-term unemployed should be ‘offered’ CBT. Many newspaper articles have examined this promise of ‘happiness on the NHS’ and we must surely stop to consider its plausibility and threats. CBT does of course resonate well with the Zeitgeist of technical–rational culture, of efficiency and speed. It is no coincidence that computer CBT packages have been developed, the ‘client’ becoming a DIY expert on allegedly getting themselves rapidly out of depression and back to work. But critics suspect that CBT is at best a shaky quick-fix solution and at worst a form of reinforcement of the dehumanizing forces of modern capitalist society.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES ANTHROPATHOLOGY IMPACT ON THERAPY? In my introduction to this book, I flagged up my own fear and perhaps the perception of readers from the world of counselling and psychotherapy of anthropathology as too speculative, negative and remote from the day-to-day concerns of helping people in distress. I now aim to demonstrate explicitly in what ways anthropathology impacts on individuals (‘client’ and ‘counsellor’ alike) and how ignorance or denial of this compounds problems within counselling or therapy. Just what relevance do all the evolutionary, historical and other factors have here? 1. Those conscious of being damaged or unhappy as individuals tend to attribute causes to proximal factors (Smail, 1993) such as oppressive parental behaviour, adverse circumstances and selfsabotage. This view tends to be reinforced by many therapists. 2. Our individual complex of neuroses is made of up myriad factors (biological, social, psychological). This applies as much to therapists as to clients. In our current state of knowledge we are unable to analyse this complexity into its parts; everyone has blinds spots and no one is free.

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3. Anthropathology – an acquiescence in established social norms that harm human beings – is in fact instilled in us early, but unwittingly, by embattled parents and others, and any anti-anthropathological tendencies we may have are stamped out by cultural, educational and employment norms (Griffith, 2003). 4. Some diagnosticians of our dis-ease attribute some degree of causation to society and become politically active, but fail to appreciate the depth, pervasiveness and personal embeddedness of anthropathology. 5. Most of us live in close relationships with individuals who unwittingly police any serious tendencies to ‘rebel’, and who reinforce the status quo. I am not thinking of anything as extreme as the situation in George Orwell’s 1984 or Maoist China, but of our common reinforcement of norms of behaviour, as in ‘that’s not like you’. 6. Many of us work in organizations that lie, conceal and damage. We are dependent on these organizations for our economic survival; this is the milieu in which we live and that cannot help but rub off on us. 7. The concept of ‘transmission of affect’ (Brennan, 2004) explains that we live in a milieu of lies, damage and bioderegulation (indeed all the phenomena outlined in Chapter 1) and are deeply influenced by this all the time. We take in and give off anthropathological ‘affect’ (deceit, resignation, etc.). 8. Anthropathological saturation means that individuals cannot seriously conceive – with any cognitive clarity and conative power – of any real alternative, and resign themselves to it (‘that’s life’) or protest that we must live in the ‘real world’ rather than with idealistic fantasies. 9. To radically reject or attempt to reject anthropathological norms as an individual is to risk being socially imperilled and labelled mad, bad, unemployable and so on. 10. Groups of individuals attempting to discover freedom together invariably, unconsciously, perpetuate certain strains of anthropathology while rejecting or downplaying others. Therapists emphasize personal freedom and dignity and even though they make all the right noises about social factors, these are tacitly downplayed. 11. The average ‘nice guy’, ‘good woman’ or ‘decent citizen’ with sound moral values is nevertheless thoroughly, if imperceptibly, enmeshed


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in anthropathological structures (work, relationships, culture, etc.). Therapists emphasize the value of personal autonomy but rarely encourage radical action towards freedom from enmeshment, such as anarchist activism. 12. While most people are apparently not starving, exploiting others or involved in acute anthropathology, most are, even in affluent, stable societies, oppressed or distressed at some level. Suffering victims and perpetrators are not ultimately separable. 13. Increasing urbanization and population size imperceptibly increase pressures on individuals in the forms of crowding, competitiveness and breakdown of knowable community. Therapy is parasitic on these trends. All these points apply to both clients and therapists, and also to the professional bodies representing counselling and psychotherapy. The experience, skill, theory and improvisation brought to bear wellmeaningly by therapists focus on unique individuals and mainly on their psychological dysfunctional aspects. No matter how much training analysis or therapy the practitioner has had, it is woefully insufficient to meet the challenges of anthropathology. Even when therapists claim to be trained in systemic theory and practice and to take socio-economic factors into account, they fail to appreciate that they themselves are in the grip of anthropathology and all its corrosive subtleties. Put slightly differently, anthropathology does not impact on therapy: anthropathology surrounds, infects and is the therapy. As the novelist Rhinehart says, the sickness is inherent ‘in the very way we try to cure ourselves’. Somehow out of our curative attempts comes some good, however transient; something in the relationship between two earnest people delivers up some degree of respite, insight and hope. To that can be accounted the success of those forms of counselling and psychotherapy that can be and are measured. If therapy were half as profoundly effective as its adherents allow it to be thought to be, its ripples would be visibly transforming society, even at a 5% take-up rate. As Hillman and Ventura (1992) put it, ‘we’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world’s getting worse’.

ANTHROPATHOLOGICAL DRIFT IN THERAPY I believe therapy has come historically to operate in the following way. A person is in distress or need. In our own time and culture, individuals are increasingly struggling to feel good and normal in an alienating society. Another instinctively tries to help the person in need. Multiply

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this across many instances of one person helping another. In time, after reflecting on this helping process and beginning to benefit from it oneself and to be fascinated by it, and after proprietorial battles, this activity comes to be labelled as counselling or therapy. An interest group is formed that soon becomes the professional body overseeing therapy. Along the way, trainers, supervisors, researchers and consultants arise, adding their ‘indispensable’ expertise; a whole specialist publishing industry is spawned and insurance companies seize on a new stream of revenue in the form of professional indemnity cover. What began as a sincere person-to-person response eventually becomes thoroughly institutionalized. The fidelity of the original encounter is lost in this tolmatic manner. The same process can be witnessed in all professions and analysed in terms of hubris, capitalist structures and Pharisaic pathology. The individuals involved are not bad people, their intentions are basically good. But at some point the imperceptibility factor kicks in. What was good, human and obviously fallible is gradually converted into something that aspires to be an institution representing integrity, to be respected in society and well paid, and comes to be surrounded by bureaucracy and hierarchy. Almost without realizing it, many of its personnel have sold out. Some ‘good work’ continues under the professional banner (as well as some substandard work) but that was true of the original enterprise. A great deal of noise now surrounds what was (and still is, fundamentally) the act of one person listening intently to another and responding skilfully and constructively. Things have drifted from a heartfelt response to a centrally controlled profession that issues a large amount of documentation, convenes conferences and assumes the mantle of knowing what is best for all and/or how to regulate it. The professional body remains well meaning and reminds us that its members retain control via voting and other feedback opportunities. But this is like saying that if a majority of the British public is against a war in Iraq, they can immediately vote out its instigator. Of course, they cannot, they are stuck with four or five years of elected dictatorship at any one time and have little choice of meaningful alternatives to vote for. The juggernaut of the professionalization of therapy is almost impossible to stop. I hear colleagues complaining about their professional body all the time, for its infuriating bureaucratic structures, quirky and irrational accreditation procedures, expensive conferences, well-paid tiers of managers and administrators, and so on. I know of several very experienced, good therapists who come under great pressure to get accreditation, to jump through bureaucratic hoops to show what is already known. I hear complaints about growing paperwork demands


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in counselling services. Much of this echoes the complaints of NHS staff against similar phenomena – people come to matter less and bureaucracy more. Indeed, counselling is suffering from its own success in becoming sponsored by the NHS. But people are desperate for counselling and psychotherapy jobs (partly as an understandable flight from the dehumanizing misery of other jobs) and are afraid to complain. Hence, it becomes almost inevitable that the human activity of one of us helping another is converted into a questionable but seemingly irresistible, alienating profession. I know counsellors who are frustrated by their employers, saddled with high workloads, who experience intolerable stress and have to go off sick for months on end. I also know trainers whose best efforts are frustrated by the universities who have cashed in on the counselling boom; university regulations stifle the learning process and frustrate and stress both trainers and students (yet students typically desire the kudos of a universityaccredited award, and employers are similarly bamboozled). Hence, ironically, an original form of distress that is clearly recognized and generously addressed is eventually compounded society-wide by this anthropathological loop; that is, more distress is generated. When this kind of account is put to those involved, the invariable response is one of denial, hurt and anger. Among those who acknowledge ‘imperfections’, the response is generally a question like, ‘So what would you put in its place?’ Of course, there is no readily suggestible alternative to put in its place.2 The underlying problem, that of anthropathology, is far too big and pervasive to be explained in a nutshell or escaped via short-term solutions. In its anthropathological drift, therapy merely resembles religion. Things begin with a dimly perceived need or hunger, a receptive Zeitgeist, then come the dramatic insights and experiences of a few. Many others aspire to similar insights or experiences; sacred texts arise, churches, rituals and all the paraphernalia we are very familiar with. The original insight, impulse, gnosis, call it what you will, is diluted, bastardized, even turned into its opposite. In the therapy business there is now a lot at stake as people build livelihoods, reputations and training empires out of therapeutic belief systems and their institutionalization. They feel threatened by objections because they are threatened. This dynamic of ‘the one’ becoming diluted and pluralized and the ‘good’ becoming ‘bad’ can be seen behind the Islamic insistence that ‘there is no God but God’ and the Christian concept of phenomena departing from their true nature (privatio boni). Jung’s enantiodrama explains the phenomenon of something becoming its opposite. All religions, indeed all thought systems, are corrupt to some extent (Bohm, 1994) and everything must ultimately fail (Ormerod, 2005).

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But characteristically everything resists failure by attempting to reinvent itself, by denial, rebranding and quasi-improvement. Counselling and psychotherapy have been rather quickly institutionalized and will probably pass or be unrecognizably transformed relatively quickly, probably to be overtaken by new genetic engineering or pharmacology applications. Self (1998) mentions one of his (fictional) theories as ‘a piece of amusing wrongheadedness, a kind of socio-psychological version of Logical Positivism, or Marxism, or Freudianism’ (p. 29). It is interesting to speculate on how theosophy, anthroposophy, astrology, homeopathy, Scientology and other theories of borderline credibility (Carroll, 2003) stack up against each other and against psychotherapy and counselling, especially so when the history of professional development in psychotherapy was partly boosted by a favourable comparison with Scientology in the 1970s. The original impulse of therapy – ‘how can I help this fellow sufferer?’ – remains, I think, ‘good’. It is usually genuine, compassionate enquiry. But institutionalized therapy has jumped the gun, prematurely celebrating its success and resisting significant rational analysis. Arguably, the original interpersonal response to suffering or need can never be appropriated or refined by professional structures, in the same way that the professions cannot contain or improve spirituality or love. Just as some Zen Buddhists talk of the importance of ‘beginner’s mind’ and other mystics argue for ‘one-without-a-second’ (the apprehension of all life as non-dualistic – Adamson, 2004), so the most authentic therapeutic help is probably spontaneous and unrepeatable. Indeed, there have been suggestions that trainee counsellors may sometimes be as effective as, if not more effective than, experienced practitioners (Feltham, 1999). Little if any research examines the qualities of excellent and idiosyncratic therapists, concentrating instead on the differences between theoretical models and pivotal insession moments. Therapies and Psychopathology All therapies have implicit or explicit models of pathology (Davies and Bhugra, 2004). The best known are the psychoanalytic concepts of unconscious conflict and the defence mechanisms marshalled in response to anxieties about exposure of these conflicts. Broadly speaking, since we are unconscious of our deep conflictual and traumatic material, and threatened by its appearance, we automatically and distortedly project our fears on to other objects, people and relationships, indeed on to everything. The remote analysis of public figures such as Hitler often shows plausible links between childhood suffering


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and later dark and destructive ambitions, for instance, and de Mause (1982, 2002) claims to detect whole problematic national trends that can be linked with birth trauma and other kinds of childhood suffering. Jungians entranced with metaphor have a penchant for reading symptoms as symbols of purpose and meaning, so that loss, guilt, loneliness, depression and so on become opportunities for reframing one’s life (Hollis, 1996). Moore (2004) is but one of a fairly substantial group of ex-priests who have found a place and make a living from Jungian therapy, especially when links can be made between religious metaphors and therapeutic themes, in this case between the dark night of the soul described by the sixteenth-century Spanish priest St John of the Cross and the dilemmas of twenty-first-century humans who love metaphors about depth and journeys. In Transactional Analysis (TA) much is made of the ‘Critical Parent’, of games, rackets and scripts. TA practitioners astutely identify the client’s evasions and blame games, their refusal to accept adult responsibility and their retreat into defensive strategies like ‘Ain’t it awful’? The optimal state in TA is an ‘OKness’ that is seen as our birthright and as achievable in almost any circumstances. Interestingly, in cognitive therapy it is argued that one of the diagnostic features of depression is an individual’s negative view of the world and of the future. Similarly, solution-focused therapists speak of ‘problem-saturated talk’ as unhelpful and as something to be minimized. It doesn’t seem to seriously occur to cognitive therapy theorists that we might be right to get depressed at the state of the world, or that there is perhaps something ‘sick’ in getting people to adapt to business as normal in a sick world. Layard’s (2005) exhortations for therapy to be used to help depressed people back to work omits any serious consideration that work itself is often a source of misery. The psychoanalytic tradition is avowedly constructed around pathology and attempts to address it, as is the cognitive-behavioural tradition. But the humanistic tradition, on which much of the development of counselling rests,3 plays down the negatives – not necessarily in the sense of naive denial but as part of a philosophical commitment to positive human potential. The person-centred approach (PCA) of Carl Rogers constructs humans as each having an actualizing tendency, part of which is naturally prosocial. Although it isn’t said in so many words, the PCA propounds a view of people as doing their best and with enormous potential; all that holds them back is the ‘conditions of worth’ imposed on them by parents, teachers and others and then internalizing a limiting self-concept. The ‘press of life’ also burdens us. The PCA is largely anti-diagnostic (portraying all labelling, diagnosis and medicalization as anti-humanistic) and is clearly opposed to authoritarianism,

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which may itself therefore be seen as a major plank in the PCA’s construction of pathology. While the PCA is warmly rooted in a humanizing tradition, I believe it fails to take in and address the realities of genetic determinism, individual differences, socio-economic conditions and evil. Counter-arguments may be seen, however, in Joseph and Worsley (2005) and Proctor et al. (2006). Like all therapeutic models, the PCA, or its advocates, cannot see its severe limitations and its embeddedness in anthropathological structures. The enormity of the problem fades all the while the individual client, struggling hopefully towards a state of fragmentary wholeness, is in focus. Counselling rests on an ethos of noble pragmatism, being more interested in responding to present distress and confusion than probing, theoretically or otherwise, for any putative aetiology of global human pathology. Psychoanalysis, rather more hubristically, makes some claims to address and even resolve the latter. None of these comes near to touching the breadth, depth and interiority of anthropathology. This is where anthropathology’s home is, in the restlessly bargaining movement of the mind, of all minds, in Bohm’s (1994) ‘thought’ as ‘systemic fault’. Correcting this fault necessarily includes correcting the follies and pretensions of the counselling and psychotherapy enterprise itself. But no programme of improvement or reform can effect this. We need to say, perhaps, that the acute suffering of those with severe mental health problems has to be researched, medicated and talked through with the best but fallible means at our current disposal but we should not exaggerate our successes or glamorize the psy-professions. Equally, people in transiently intolerable states of distress obviously seek relief and some form of pragmatically helpful therapy, counselling or support is the humane response. I commend a compassionate nihilism that reaches out humanly without surrounding itself with all the nonsense of anthropathological drift. But the continuing circus of therapies and their public-relations rhetoric is not helpful; it is part of the problem. I would suggest that mental health be taken seriously in schools but schooling itself is such an unexamined arena of anthropathology that I shall desist from developing that suggestion here. Let me conclude this chapter by asserting that the search for the causes of our human distress is infinitely more important than the promotion of the prematurely reified counselling or psychotherapy professions and these causes are deeper and more pervasive than our theories teach. Notes 1. Different therapeutic models do indeed offer widely different views on psychopathology (Davies and Bhugra, 2004). CBT emphasizes faulty


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social learning, psychoanalytic therapy innate drives and early object relations problems. Yet, few seriously incorporate evolutionary and genetic factors, socio-economic determinants and the gamut of what I call anthropathology. 2. The practice of co-counselling (in one form – re-evaluation co-counselling (RC) – pioneered by Harvey Jackins after he himself noted the potential of one person to help another by sheer attention) rests on a non-professional, egalitarian process of taking turns to counsel each other. This demonstrates that an alternative exists. However, RC itself has a hierarchical and dogmatic base and stories circulate about Jackins’ abuse of clients. He also argued that RC would extend the lifespan indefinitely. He died in 1999. 3. I heard a colleague at a counselling conference quite confidently declare that ‘counselling is based on a non-deficit model of human beings’, as if unaware that no such consensus actually exists! What is true is that the human psychology tradition, following Maslow, pushes this view.

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What’s Wrong with ‘What’s Wrong?’? Denying and Refuting Anthropathology It’s easy to talk yourself into despair. . . . The more people try things, work at things, push the boundaries, experiment, the less we just angst about it, the better. Mike Gecan, in Terkel (2003, p. 232)

A character in Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday puts it this way: When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible, with nothing getting better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small, closer in – you know, a girl I’ve just met, or this song we’re going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto – think small. (McEwan, 2005, p. 34)

The quotations above suggest that we all know how bad things can be but positive action is better than negative words, and local, personal hedonism is better than global worry. Humankind cannot bear very much negativity. Just as one now expects massive denial of a concept as anachronistic and negative as original sin, even across much of the religious world, so it is natural that denial of the claims of anthropathology would be expected. Using the term ‘human condition’ to mean something very like anthropathology, Griffith (2003) regards nearuniversal denial as intrinsic to the problem of the human condition. The everyday experience of millions, perhaps even billions of people is probably not one they would describe as suffering, illusion or destructiveness. A majority of intellectuals would probably scorn the idea that we are in the deterministic grip of something called anthropathology.

Denying and Refuting Anthropathology

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Certainly this is the case for Tallis (1997), to be discussed further in this chapter. Many, if not most counsellors and psychotherapists, deny such concepts: see, for example, de Zulueta (1993), who, in an otherwise excellent text on human destructiveness, feels compelled to come out on the side of essential goodness and optimism. An ever greater degree of freedom, gradual progress and material, medical and technological improvement are probably more typical perceptions of our age than a prevalence of pessimism and doomsday scenarios. So perhaps it is a pessimistic minority like me, those who talk up what is depressing, who ‘just angst about it’, who feed it. And it must be conceded too that a view of human experience as neither essentially or globally good nor bad, but neutral, has some merit: what is, is, and judgements of good and bad are fallible, ethically biased constructs. The purpose of this chapter is antithetical self-criticism, to attempt to unpack and deny all I have said earlier, and to see the merits of the case for not perceiving ourselves as anthropathological. Perhaps once there was nothing, or relatively little, wrong with us. This in itself is of course a philosophically contentious statement. First, I am assuming we know what’s meant by ‘wrong’ here; and secondly, there is the problem of applying contemporary judgements to a human situation thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago, about which we imagine we know things that we can in fact only speculate about. And as I have already suggested in Chapter 2, there was probably always a pre-existing ecological push and entropic pull towards anthropathology. But many accounts argue that we lived well as hunter-gatherers for many thousands of years in hospitable conditions. Things were going ‘right’ for us at some point. We were relatively well adapted to our circumstances and relatively non-rapacious. As primitive humans, we just did whatever had to be done to survive on a daily basis. This would have included primitive ‘thought’ such as cunning and planning but probably not ruminative or conceptual thought. Operational thought would tend to repeat what was successful and avoid what wasn’t. Beyond the fray of hunting and contending with immediate adversity, however, thought came to grapple with more painful and perplexing questions. Early mythologies suggest that we attempted to create explanatory stories about creation, purpose, reassurance, death and destiny. Many such narratives were ‘realistic’ in their attention to life as a mixture of good and bad but wholly unrealistic in their attributions of cause to godly actions and animistic sources. With early Greek thought, analytically more precise attempts were made to understand the world, following myth-based explanations. The Old Testament writers had argued for a prelapsarian existence that was wholly good. Before the ‘Fall’, humans existed, or could

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have existed, in a paradise. Perhaps in some actual early state, we knew providence and were innocent. But we had to wait many centuries before archaeology and modern technologies of investigation allowed us far better insights into early human lifestyles and we are still reliant on speculation and hypothesis-testing (Sterelny, 2003) in many areas of thought. Pelagianism is an early heretical doctrine that argued that Adam’s sin did not condemn us all to sin, evil and death. Rather, it set a bad example. Humans retain the ability to live well and do good. Jesus set a good example but we are not dependent on his death for salvation. Mainstream Christianity sees us as sinful and in need of the salvation putatively brought by Jesus. Hence, we inevitably have two beliefs from which to choose: either we are bad and must accept God’s forgiveness as embodied in Jesus, or we are good and must exercise our will for goodness. (Or, more likely, and dismally, if you do not live in a state of grace, you must accept Jesus and still struggle.) Pelagianism, while a liberal doctrine, has to be heretical because it makes Jesus unnecessary, simply an optional guide. But all these accounts omit any convincing discussion of how we came to be in a such a state of confusion from which we must struggle to free ourselves. Adamic disobedience is not a compelling argument. Arguing that we spend our whole lives in moral struggle to make the right decisions, which are ours to freely make, is not satisfying, although this view can be found in humanistic therapies as much as in theology. As well as the views that things have gone wrong historically, that we contain some chronic, fatal flaw and that things will slowly get better given the chance, the view exists that the world is fine as it is. A good starting point for examining this latter view is Pope’s Essay on Man, published in 1734. Pope’s famous line – ‘whatever is, is right’ – has been exhaustively analysed and critiqued (see Neiman, 2002). There is no original sin, virtue is in our nature, the world is structured to suit its purposes, we should accept it and examine ourselves. The world works well, even if occasional accidents and tragedies must occur. Life is a gift and we should be grateful for it. Teilhard de Chardin, the Catholic priest and scientist, regarded the universe as structured for the emergence of ever-increasing order. Christian scientists believe that all is for the good. Julian of Norwich told us that ‘all shall be well’. While the iconoclastic mystic U.G. Krishnamurti sees us as living impoverished lives, he says he himself has no conflict with society as it is. Many physicists with religious affiliations attempt to show the compatibility of God and the physical universe, with order pervading all. Phillips (1999) provokes us to question whether there really should or could be less suffering in the world than there is and


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suggests that Darwin and Freud ‘want us . . . not to be unduly dismayed by our mortality’ (p. 135). These views do not necessarily mesh well with each other when one examines their detail and any prescriptions for living but they share a certain contentment and acceptance. Even without belief in God one can sometimes marvel at the beauty of nature and feel that all is well with the world, but this usually refers to the natural, unspoiled world rather than to human civilization. The popular version of acceptance of what is as right is along the lines of life being precious and obstacles having to be overcome with optimal grace and minimal fuss, which is somewhat formalized in the cognitive therapies and positive psychology. Many philosophical objections can be made to the concept of ‘wrongness’ as used here. It is of course used very broadly and some will justifiably ask for specific instances. The very term ‘what’s wrong?’ has a vague and colloquial flavour and is based on an assumption that something is unquestionably wrong. Wrong is based on a one-sided assumption that marginalizes right and perhaps leads to unbalanced conclusions. The term conflates moral wrong with psychological, emotional and other kinds of wrong. Also, as I have said, the terms ‘wrong’ and ‘anthropathology’ are chosen and elaborated here by me, with all my biases. My idea of wrong and yours may differ and criteria for judging wrongness will certainly differ across time and place. Often enough concepts of wrong will be in direct conflict, for example the view of religion as irrational and dangerous versus the religious view of atheists as sinful heathens and infidels. Even those agreeing that there is much wrong with human beings will not automatically subscribe to the notion of a disease-resembling concept of anthropathology. Although I hope to have identified clearly plenty of examples of concrete anthropathology in this book, I am sure I can be criticized for unwitting elisions of various negative topics, of mixing up categories and so on. I have almost certainly skimped on the otherwise well-worn analysis of what can be inferred from the good–bad dichotomy. Doris Lessing’s (1980) ‘sting of otherness’ and Tallis’s (1999) ‘friction of adversity’ suggest that we only know the good by reference to the bad. Misfortune helps us to appreciate good fortune; you can’t have one without the other. Some have even suggested that an era of ‘fallen’ humanity may have been necessary to enable us to learn, to prepare us for a major future evolutionary shift – a kind of collective ‘reculer pour mieux sauter’ strategy. This is all familiar stuff but ultimately a weak argument. To celebrate the good–bad dualism as necessary and as sufficient explanation for the abiding presence of the bad (the wrong) is to refuse a vital intuition. It is possible – and I think it is likely – that the evolution of anthropathology was coeval with the linguis-

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tic turn towards dualism and internalization. Although pleasure and pain would have been experienced by early humans, they would once have had no names. Sensory, physiological and behavioural inclinations would obviously have existed towards the preferred and away from the disliked. But life was perhaps once non-dualistically ‘good’ during both ‘bad’ and ‘good’ times, and its essential ‘goodness’ was not dependent on any linguistic judgements and arguments. I imagine that the putative enlightened person exists in just such a state prior to good and bad, where his or her experience is not susceptible to the vicissitudes of fortune. I know this will not satisfy philosophers or theologians. To some extent all such abbreviated analyses, philosophical shortcomings and errors can be laid at the door of my intellectual limitations and personality type. The wrong I address is not derived from patient and exhaustive studies of the state of the world across the domains of population, ecology, international relations and so on (see Ritzer (2004a) for such a breakdown). It is based on a lifelong intuition, on experience, personal observation and impression. It is based on a hit-or-miss search for evidence and allies. It has been formulating itself half-inarticulately for a considerable time. One of the major obstacles to such a formulation is the very plurality of explanations, and the procrastinatory style of analysis, that we traditionally accept. We implicitly insist that understanding the world’s ills is too complex a matter for any individual and too complex to be brought under one umbrella. One must spend years understanding traditional analyses of such matters before venturing a worthy opinion, we tell ourselves. None of us is inclined to pursue any intellectual analysis or come to any conclusions that threaten our own social standing or personal welfare. By this I mean that it is exceedingly rare for anyone to proclaim, ‘I have been completely wrong in my thinking all this time’, thus inviting scorn; and even rarer for us to voice conclusions that are seriously counter-cultural and that will offend our peers and perhaps result in ostracism, consignment to the category of eccentricity or our being condemned to crucifixion. Our typical style of thinking about and articulating such matters is therefore conventional, obedient to the norms of merely minor criticisms of existing thought patterns. Those of a fundamentalist religious persuasion, of whatever kind, will determine what’s wrong with us in terms of our overwhelming sinfulness. By refusing to unite ourselves with God and all his commandments we reinforce our tendencies towards selfish, immoral and destructive behaviour. Most religions, for example, commend truthfulness, not lies, peace rather than war, love not hate, generosity and contentment rather than meanness and greed. Much that is distilled


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in centuries of religious morality has been self-evidently sensible guidance for smooth social cooperation and for personal equanimity. Anyone who even roughly agrees with my analysis of what’s wrong with us will also agree with much that religious believers point to as wrong, unwise or evil. But a serious departure point becomes evident when we consider the roots of what went wrong, the details, the full range and the place of God. Human evolution and history, and the scientific effort to understand it accurately, is generally opposed to dogmatic religious mythologies of a destructive, Adamic turning point. In my account the failure to recognize the limits and irrationality of religions is a major ingredient of anthropathology (i.e. religions themselves become ‘evil’). The religious will regard me as proud and evil for rejecting God and his holy texts. The failure to surrender to God will be given as a major reason for our human ills. Many religions regard human existence as a purposeful vale of suffering preparing us for the heaven to come. Suggesting that the Abrahamic religions in particular are fatally problematic due to their patriarchal roots, assumptions and rituals will not be taken kindly by those wedded to the dogma of the (male) God. Even where I suspect that some form of self-surrender via a meditative attitude may ameliorate our anthropathological plight, many will reject my interpretation of surrender and of ‘God’. The jihad of meditation and self-criticism is a long way from the jihad of suicide bombing, although both are based on recognizing the unimportance and mischief of the ego. What’s wrong with my ‘what’s wrong’ is, according to many religious views, that I am a wilful individualist insisting on the primacy of my own observations and thinking rather than turning to God, his scriptures and his community of believers. Some of the material in this book is based on scientists’ and others’ knowledge – but what if this knowledge is itself incorrect?1 For example, the (singular) Big Bang is contested and recently the existence of black holes has been cast into doubt by new evidence. Of particular current interest, received wisdom about Easter Island as a site of human hubris and downfall (Diamond, 2005) has been challenged. It has been thought that inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) deforested the island in order to help erect huge monuments (moai) in competition with each other, leading to barrenness and starvation. But it is now suggested that this paradigm of doom may have come about in quite other, more complex ways (Young, 2006). Those of us eager to see signs of human foolishness and self-destruction may be easily deceived by the former account. Similarly, today many scientists are convinced that global warming and other doomsday scenarios are human creations and/or are unavoidable (Rees, 2003), yet contrary accounts exist. Egomorphic, morbid anthropathology can easily dis-

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place patient attempts to establish truth. Let’s not forget the corollary, however, that reflexive optimists and self-interested capitalists are quick to deny signs of doom. It is to one major contrary account that I now briefly turn. Lomborg (2001) in a detailed work of statistical analysis reviews evidence for claims of energy depletion, acid rain and deforestation, water supply problems, pollution, allergy escalation, chemical dangers, genetically modified foods, biodiversity reduction and global warming, and comes to the conclusion that the doomsayers have it very wrong. While not denying there are serious problems, he counter-claims that much bad science exists, that liberal politicians and environmental groups analyse the data erroneously and exaggerate its significance, and more generally that journalists are driven to produce bad rather than good news; a kind of bandwagon of negativities that Lomborg calls ‘the Litany’. Even where he agrees with evidence of environmental risks, his estimate is that we have much longer to rectify such problems than alarmists commonly argue, and in the meantime there are more urgent priorities. Lomborg subscribes to the belief (evidence, as he sees it) that things have got better and better. Worldwide, we have achieved vastly reduced infant mortality rates, increased longevity, better health, better nutrition, increased prosperity and many other gains – all these fly in the face of protests by both mainstream watchdogs and radical environmental activists. Lomborg argues that to ‘call such a civilization “dysfunctional” is quite simply immoral’ (p. 328). Indeed, he cites many instances in which, as he sees it, resources are being wasted on the implementation of incorrect environmental policies. Perhaps, he suggests, our worries are an ‘expression of our Calvinistic sense of guilt. We have done so well that some actually feel rather ashamed. We may really believe that we have deserved global warming’ (p. 330). We misinterpret present signs and we retrospectively misread the past, according to Lomborg. That there was a golden age previous to the last 6000 years, in which humans enjoyed long healthy lives (e.g. a view often put forward by the anarcho-primitivists) is flatly contradicted by Lomborg’s statistical inference that for the vast history of known human existence the average life expectancy has been between 20 and 30 years. This includes evidence from Stone Age North Africa of typical skeletons of about 21 years of age. Lomborg’s book bears as its epigraph a passage from the economist Julian Simon: The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two,


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all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today’s Western living standards. . . . I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse. (Lomborg, 2001, p. vii)

Let us look at how Lomborg himself summarizes matters: We are not running out of energy or natural resources. There will be more and more food per head of the world’s population. Fewer and fewer people are starving. In 1900 we lived for an average of 30 years; today we live for 67. According to the UN we have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years than we did in the preceding 500, and it has been reduced in practically every country. . . . Global warming, though its size and future projections are rather unrealistically pessimistic, is almost certainly taking place, but the typical cure of early and radical fossil fuel cutbacks is way worse than the original affliction, and moreover its total impact will not pose a devastating problem for our future. Nor will we lose 25–50 percent of all species in our lifetime – in fact we are losing probably 0.7 percent. Acid rain does not kill the forests, and the air and water around us are becoming less and less polluted. (Lomborg, 2001, p. 4).

Lomborg does not have much to say in this book about war, patriarchal dominance, social inequality, mental ill health, relationship difficulties, educational and occupational immiseration and so on, but I suspect that that were he to focus on these topics he would find similarly optimistic evidence and statistics to demonstrate improvements and hope in all these areas. I would applaud Lomborg’s efforts to get at an objective evaluation of data, if that is what in fact he has got. It would be irrational of me to insist on the anthropathology thesis if it is plainly wrong (and I am fairly sure Lomborg would consign much of my book to ‘the Litany’). Personal, morbid anthropathology vies with an aspirational evaluative anthropathology, the latter of course being optimal. But an equally cautious eye needs to be kept on the champions of ‘Pollyanthropology’, those who are temperamentally optimistic in the face of contrary evidence, and/or who are personally afraid to consider the worst and/or who stand to gain materially from playing down negatives. The golden mean of a truly evaluative anthropathology (or, more objectively in Lomborg’s term, measurement of the real state of the world) is, as I see it, our best medium-term bet. Whether Lomborg’s account – and personality – is in this range, I cannot say.2 Since Lomborg himself mentions the problem of academic grants (these are often fought over furiously and awarded on the basis of government priorities and other vested interests), we need to ask whether anyone is in a position to analyse and synthesize relevant information

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correctly and objectively: who has the necessary time, support and resources, qualifications and competency, courage, selfless motivation and freedom from political interference? While many of us have an emotional bias, a tendency to overvalue the subjective, we also know we cannot automatically assume that scientists are personally wise, ethically sensitive or above fraud (Broad and Wade, 1985). Indeed, Lomborg’s publication was attacked by Scientific American and others, with polarized views continuing indefinitely. Tallis (1997) deserves a special place in this chapter for his defence of Enlightenment thought and cogent attack on modern pessimism. ‘Since the eighteenth century, the reputation of nature (and consequently of the human animal as a part of nature) for beneficence has taken something of a nose-dive’ (p. 13), as Tallis summarizes a large thrust of this pessimism. Dawkins’ selfish gene is part of this movement, as is man’s brutality, warmongering and irrationality and ‘the miscarriages of progressive attempts to improve the lot of mankind’. For Tallis, humans are obviously not coterminous with animals but in a qualitatively different league. Humans are not ‘sick animals’, not beasts in their own zoo. We are not animals who have lost our way, lost contact with our true nature, and so on. Indeed, it is humanity’s erroneous critics themselves who have become ‘one of the chief of our social ills’. Misguided intellectuals ‘seem to believe that they serve a useful job by diagnosing society, and indulging in a kulturpessimismus that affords them such comfortable and well-remunerated despair’ (p. 89). Tallis laments the misuse, as he sees it, that has been made of a bastardized biology depicting humans as barely controlled savage beasts, as in Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Instead, we should remember our discontinuity from animals. Rather than being fascinated by our likenesses with chimpanzees, Tallis reminds us of our vast differences. Modern humans are also not to be likened closely to ‘primitive man’. Any solutions to our problems are not to be found in a return to a putative natural state but in owning our nature as the ‘explicit animal’ and ‘in dealing with and perfecting our knowledge’ (p. 105). As a medical scientist, Tallis emphasizes the advantages of progress in contrast with what he sees as the anti-science stance of many pessimistic critics of modernity. ‘The comparison between the relative civilities of present-day surgery and the brutalities of the past should nail once and for all the idea that high-tech equals nasty tech or, more generally, that there is something intrinsically inhuman about technology’ (p. 133), says Tallis (contrary to everything put forward by Zerzan (1999, 2002) and other anarchists). Quite scathingly, he avers: The grumblers have never, for example, addressed the question of whether hoeing a turnip field by arthritic hand hour after hour in a


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biting wind is more or less alienating than typing memoranda on a word processor in a warm office; or whether the rational (and hence, we are to understand, dehumanizing) approach to disease results in more or less alienation – whether a course of antibiotics is more dehumanizing than the unremitting savagery of untreated cystitis (Tallis, 1997, p. 405)

Tallis attacks Sartre and many other French intellectuals for ‘the bitter line of hostility to civilization’. ‘Pessimism has become something of a fashion, a kind of intellectual pose to demonstrate one’s moral seriousness’ (p. 180). Norman O. Brown, Marcuse, Barthes, Foucault, Rorty and Derrida are all on Tallis’s hit list of pretentious quasi-omniscient intellectuals. The diagnostician of society tends to be scornful, angry, sorrowful. He may be paid for being a journalist, but he is in truth a minor prophet, a pocket Jeremaiah. . . . Modern culture is deemed to be in crisis because its mental set is ‘shown’ to be fallacious; kulturkritik presupposes a kul turkrisis. . . . Post-structuralist theory should be prepared to accept that its One Big Thesis – the massive rottenness of our culture – is a creative fake (Tallis, 1997, p. 188)

But dubious diagnoses of man’s sickness stretch back too to Marx, Eliot, Wordsworth and Lawrence, all of them guilty of ‘hysterical humanism’. Their diagnoses and remedies are all based on woolly generalizations. An example given by Tallis to refute the view that our society is violent, and increasingly violent, is that of football hooliganism. He calculates that roughly 10 million attendances of matches take place annually in the United Kingdom and the amount of associated violence is minuscule but vastly exaggerated by newspaper journalists. This is all part of the ‘crisis-mongering of humanist intellectuals’ (p. 198). We ‘refuse to recognize gradations of suffering, injustice or exploitation’ (p. 208), feminists who suggest that modern women are as badly off as women at any other historical time being particularly derided by Tallis for falling prey to this failure of discrimination. He takes to task Adorno and Horkheimer: This discovery of a form of unhappiness worse than toothache, or the savagery of pre-modern surgery, or any of the immemorial woes of mankind such as hunger and thirst and brutal cruelty, has the advantage not only of helping to prove that this is the worst of times, but also deals with the potential guilt of those who seem to be having a fairly cushy time in this, the worst of times. It extends the franchise of suffering. Alienation, emptiness, and so on are available to everyone as the birthright of ‘the modern’ whose ‘predicament’ is endlessly described,

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alluded to, assumed. The Spiritual Void is a kind of common pasture where humanist intellectuals can lead their disciples and there graze with them on a rich grass of self-pity. Those of us who seem to be doing well are really having a terrible time. (Tallis, 1997, p. 207)

Alongside his scathing critique of those who would culpably misrepresent the awfulness of modern life, Tallis presents his case for gradualist progress. He concedes that the human condition contains an entropy-driven ‘irremediable transience’ which we find somewhat distressing, as well as ‘remediable woes that disfigure the (comparatively) brief stay on earth our transience affords us’ (p. 392) but argues that this is somewhat offset by the balance achieved via the advance of science and the application of reason. Tallis is by no means a Pollyanna-ish thinker but one who, as a practising gerontologist, has witnessed both suffering and palliative care. He believes that the scale of suffering has lessened and will continue to lessen century by century. He believes in rationality and he thinks rationally. He does not appear to be someone who is benefiting disproportionately from science or from minimizing what is bad in our society. Witness worldwide reductions in famine and child mortality, better pain management and an increase in democracy. Get things in proportion. Challenge the fallacy of hedonic asymmetry (Frijda, 1988). Hope engenders the effort to improve things. Things are indeed getting better decade by decade, if sometimes imperceptibly; we are more and more comfortable. Pessimists may cavil but what can they propose as alternatives to what they don’t like? The risk of advocating a unified anthropathology (for which concept Tallis would have no time whatsoever) is that we fail to discriminate between kinds and degrees of social problems; everything looks equally bad. Tallis sounds both humane and stoical, a little like the sociologist Furedi (2004a) and others who downplay modern fears and stresses. This is an important set of arguments and we should listen. But in this book Tallis says little about the deepening environmental crisis, except that science, not hand-wringing, is most likely to resolve it. Indeed, the weight of his case rests very heavily on the benefits of science, particularly medical science, and he neglects to answer the case for the devastating results of military technology and the pollution resulting from technologically advanced manufacturing and transport technologies. He has little to say about the ills of capitalism, rather more to decry in Marxism. He does not much discuss increasing worldwide depression and its causes, the gulf between rich and poor, increasing greed, obesity, population, pressure on children and


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young people, overwork and work stress, rising bureaucracy, religious conflict, terrorism, and international tension and war. He assumes, in contradiction to Gray (2004), that liberal progress, such as it is, will inevitably continue unopposed. But today we are surely not dominated by intellectual pessimism, as Tallis argues, but by political deception, inane entertainment, positive psychology and shallow hedonism. Bookstores sell vacuous, hope-peddling self-help titles and romantic novels in their millions, not negative texts on unpopular psychology by enemies of hope. Tallis de-emphasizes evolutionary and genetic factors, socioeconomic misery and its consequences, wanting to retain a balance between what cannot be changed and our rational agency. His aim is ‘one of reasserting the centrality of individual consciousness, of undeceived deliberateness, in the daily life of human beings’ (p. 228). Tallis must be, as Claxton (2006) puts it in his survey of the wayward mind, ‘one of a small minority, perhaps a lucky one, whose minds are transparent to them, and do what they say’ (p. vii). Isn’t there a certain positively toned egomorphism driving his optimism? As a doctor and gerontologist he has surely seen first hand the effects of ageing, disease and unpleasant death, yet he says little about these. I agree with Tallis that a sense of proportion is crucial, and an evaluative anthropathology should outweigh a morbid version. But one must question whether our main source of solace should be a comparison with how much worse things were in the primitive past. The next time I am feeling demoralized as I sit at the computer keyboard typing responses to inane and dehumanizing institutional demands, should I simply remind myself how much better off I am than if I were hoeing turnips in horrible conditions? Leadbeater (2002) too writes against ‘the appeal of chronic pessimism’ but with an accent on economic factors. Critical of the ‘retreat from the uncontrollable world into nostalgia, domesticity and spirituality’ (p. 6) and of a tendency to become violent in the face of perceived helplessness, Leadbeater leans towards the consolations of positive psychology and the promised rewards of globalization. Things are getting materially better for more and more people worldwide, runs this argument. Pollution will be beaten by technological innovation, so that ‘it should soon be possible for millions of people in large cities to use cars that create very little pollution’ (p. 11). This may or may not turn out to be true but it is his fluffily optimistic passing over of current problems that concerns me here. We will all have more control and choice, according to Leadbeater, which is both good for us and apparently what we want. Opponents of this view complain that they do not want constantly to have to choose between one utility company and another, between one hospital and another, and so on. Leadbeater can

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see how 9/11 and other events contribute to ‘the gathering gloom’ but it doesn’t dim his optimism about an otherwise assuredly better world. The Internet will transform our lives, each of us has more control over our life, international travel is largely safe and affords limitless opportunities, faith in the market and imagination and innovation are all we need. Of course, I am caricaturing his argument somewhat. But Leadbeater is a successful, affluent person, a business adviser who espouses ‘utopian individualism’ and has close links with New Labour; who, I suspect, is quite out of touch with the lives of ordinary, struggling, not outstandingly talented people. Again, this case shows us that if your personal circumstances are favourable and your attitude is (pathologically) optimistic, egomorphically you must see the world in these terms, in spite of all contrary evidence, as is also the case in reverse for morbid anthropathologists. Tony Blair, similarly, has shown a resolute determination in matters of policy in education, health and war and appears not to flinch at death statistics or the contrary personal views and experiences of dissidents and relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq, for example. Another charge that can be made against my anthropathological litany is that we have no consensus as to the badness of the alleged wrongs. For example, violence may be viewed as simply part of all nature, regrettable but natural and inevitable; a few even exult in it. Wars can be justified as helping to reduce the population growth about which we agonize. Capitalism, one of the manifestations of natural competition, is often defended as inevitable and a ‘best fit’ for humans affairs. Patriarchy too can be portrayed as inevitable, based on common animal realities, and even the indefinite perpetuation of patriarchy – as commended explicitly by many religions and implicitly by much business and politics – can be defended. A proportion of us suffering from mental ill health, poverty and starvation can also be considered the price we pay for a free and open, developing society. Rising crime and prison populations are a sign of individual greed and evil and can be solved by yet-harsher sentences and more prisons. Many people appear contented with the technical-rational, bureaucratic dominance of modern workplace realities, regardless of some of its stressful side effects. Many would refute my views on the irrationality of religion and cosmic absurdity. Few would openly defend child abuse but significant numbers would probably be happy to return to the traditions of children and young people (and women) being ‘put in their place’. And some would, in a postmodernist spirit, argue for the sheer diversity of values, traditions and events. In short, we might acknowledge that there is much wrong with the world but the ‘wrong’ is a small and acceptable part of life’s rich tapestry, not deserving


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the great concern surrounding it. Such an attitude covers everything from c’est la vie to the meditation-assisted psychological acceptance of life in all its challenges (Kabat-Zinn, 1990), the devious welcoming of suffering and evil for parasitic commercial opportunities and the interpretation of human darkness as merely a sign of imminent and even welcome apocalypse (Stone, 2000). Even if we could agree on areas for measurement, that is for the application of an evaluative anthropathology, we might well not agree on results. It is common for politicians today, for example, to try to identify by survey or focus group the public’s main concerns, to draw up targets for improvement in connection with them and to ensure those targets are met. In the British NHS, for example, targets for reduced waiting lists and for certain operations have become commonplace. However, the public often suspects the accuracy of the figures arrived at,3 reductions in waiting times are sometimes achieved with costs elsewhere (some patients turfed from their beds before they have really recovered) and along the way misery and stress is caused for staff struggling to meet the targets for political expedience. Human nature, perhaps pre-eminently in the political arena, is frequently deceptive. A very common celebratory refrain of government politicians – ‘we are spending more today on health care than at any other time in history’ – conceals the obvious fact that we are all spending more on everything, due to inflation, as well as raising the suspicion that the books can easily be cooked. In the matter of anthropathology, we would need to be reassured that goals were clearly agreed, reasonably measurable, and that measurements were not subject to distortion. But we would also face the problem of subjectivity, local knowledge and short-term feel-good factors. Statistics for reduced child abuse, violence against women and so on, can be gathered, but if my definition of child abuse includes incidental emotional upset of my child by a teacher, and I’m not having a good time generally, then positive figures will not convince me. Fine (2006) demonstrates the mind’s great capacity for self-deception and in particular mentions research showing that people have reported being happier when answering telephone surveys in sunny weather than in inhospitable weather. This works both ways, of course – pessimists and optimists are likely to believe what it suits their temperament to believe. Easterbrook (2003), whose work is linked with the positive psychology movement, attempts to explain some of the reasons why people may remain unconvinced by good evidence of progress. We can probably produce swathes of evidence for generally better health and increasing longevity, but if your beloved becomes very ill and dies sooner than the average expectation, statistics that sustain a general

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optimism mean nothing to you. In the matter of a sense of personal well-being, evaluation is perilously subjective and often immune to objective circumstances. Pinker (2003, p. 125) cites the argument put forward by Gould that for each instance of the violence and cruelty of our allegedly ‘evil and destructive species’, there are ‘10 000 acts of small and unrecorded kindnesses’. Pinker immediately dismisses Gould’s maths by mentioning that 3 or 4% of the male population are psychopaths. Of course, it’s possible that even psychopaths commit many small acts of unnoticed kindness. Then we would get into the arid absurdities of infinite philosophical analysis. Pinker prefers to discuss the extent of destructive human motives, which is also highly problematic. Essentially, this kind of argument is about belief that our species is massively inclined towards evil, destructiveness, deception and folly or that it is not. Each side will marshal its own self-serving evidence and, there being no ultimate arbiter, stalemate is predictably the perennial outcome. Clearly my own inclination is often to note the bad and minimize the good. Writers like Pinker work heroically to collect and present evidence designed to appear objective but to demolish opponents. Again, can there be any such science or enquiry as an objectively evaluative anthropathology? What kind of calculus might be used to measure and determine whether we are more or less evil, destructive, deceitful and folly-engendering? It seems an unlikely, probably doomed search. It is possible that scientific prediction in various fields is incorrect. Perhaps it will turn out that energy resources will not be depleted, that the environment will not be terminally damaged, that future world wars will be averted, that the Earth and the universe will never end. It may be that human ingenuity will always triumph over catastrophe. And it may be that significant moral progress will be made within hundreds of years. But even if these are possibilities, I believe that a continuing negative scenario holds probabilistic plausibility. We would be better off, I suggest, assuming the worst – or rather, not the worst but a tendency towards it – and living realistically and rationally to deter our worst tendencies. But there is an important place for doubt about extreme anthropathology. It is, of course, self-defeating to live miserably, whether or not the worst scenario actually occurs. If it doesn’t occur, we have wasted our worry and made ourselves unnecessarily unhappy. If it does (or must) occur, it doesn’t matter what we may feel about it in the meantime. Some middle ground position may be wise. Accept anthropathology, evaluate it, try to address it if anthropathological loops can be minimized, maintain humanity and do not succumb to naivety or misery in the meantime.


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Science looks irresistibly to us like the conquest of previous ignorance. But at the same time, looking back at past scientific (or even religious) certainties and forward to much fuller knowledge, we must recognize the hubris and tentativeness of science at any given time. Hence, while most money is on the Big Bang as explaining the origin of the universe, alternative propositions exist. We may inhabit an infinitesimally small part of a cumulatively eternal multiverse and perhaps one day we will travel to other universes (Kaku, 2005). Our universe may not come to an end. The doomsayers may be proved quite wrong. Prophets of environmental apocalypse may be wrong, just as religious prophets have been repeatedly proved wrong in their specific predictions for end of the world scenarios (Stone, 2000). Human beings may survive and transmute indefinitely and perhaps even transcend the prospect of ultimate futility. And anyway we are talking here about an inhumanly long time span; in the interim anything could happen. Anthropathological projections are based on current knowledge and critics can rightly object that a morbid anthropathology drives and skews my outlook and that of fellow doomsayers. The glass we have at present may well be regarded as half-full or, come some unforeseeable future, as about to be filled to overflowing. An actuarial evaluation of the human condition would, if possible, steer a course midway between morbid anthropathology and Pollyanthropology. I am not naive enough to believe that this book will make much difference to the world. Books come and go, much more quickly than intellectual fashions. One of the things wrong with this book, however, is the faint hope that it will either instigate some tiny change or will form part of a movement towards an anthropathology-addressing culture. Much more likely, in our densely populated postmodernist world, is that sentiments such as these are a mere fragment among many others. In other words, they will entirely disappear. Notes 1. Geneticists have very recently discovered that we are not, after all, 99 % genetically similar to chimpanzees but more like 96 %. Furthermore, we are not, it is now claimed, 99.9 % genetically similar to each other but there could be up to 12 % variation between us (Independent, 23 November 2006). This finding is likely to trigger huge changes in our understanding of human differences in disease formation but also in personalities and behaviours. The point is that scientific certainties often turn out to be incorrect or incomplete and/or fastened on to by various political causes. This obviously does not mean that the world could still be proved flat! 2. McGuire (2005) dismisses Lomborg as a ‘self-deluded Danish statistician’ who ‘uses highly selective references to scientific research’. The overwhelm-

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ing scientific consensus is in line with the argument for deeply problematic anthropogenic climate change. 3. ‘On the one hand the NHS remains a cherished institution that voters trust to give them the best possible treatment when they fall sick. On the other, voters think that the service has got worse, not better, during Labour’s decade in power and that much of the government’s huge extra investment in healthcare has been wasted’ (Julian Glover, Guardian, 25 October 2006, p. 1). Much of the waste is thought to be on restructuring and rebranding, management consultants and inefficient new computer systems.

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Those who deny that matters are as bad as I claim they are do not need to propose solutions. However, many have acknowledged that the human condition exists with something like the scale of negativity accorded to it here and, rather than responding with Schopenhauerian pessimism and nihilism, have proffered theoretical and practical solutions and even some whimsical or utopian responses. These are followers of the maxim ‘better to light a candle than curse the darkness’. In this chapter I consider a small range of candles and attempt to evaluate their merits as well as critiquing them. For some, this may be the key chapter in the book since, if you accept the enormity and severity of our anthropathological situation, it seems to go against the grain for most human beings not to immediately crave particular solutions in the service of nurturing hope. Even here, however, I must warn that there are not necessarily any solutions as such. Plenty of touted solutions, many hopes, are put forward but arguably few historically have had any resounding or enduring success and we must balance the understandable hope for genuine and robust salvation, betterment or enlightenment, against the possibility that these are simply hopeful illusions or failed experiments. Religion in its explanatory and remedial forms has of course been a long-standing attempted solution to life’s adversities, as has philosophy, or at least parts of it. Moral philosophers have ventured to understand and elucidate moral choices and constraints, causes of happiness and unhappiness, for example. Hobbes (1651/1968) – recognizing man to be characterized as living in ‘continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ – proposed that only a strong governmental ‘leviathan’ could

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control and civilize us. Political responses to the problems of human existence vary enormously, depending upon their view of the nature of human beings. Hence, prescriptions for anarchism, democracy, dictatorship, monarchism, theocracy, communism, or whatever, go with a certain view of mankind. Science and technology have made many inroads on our ignorance, improving things materially, as well as sometimes threatening our existence and our character as humans (Lyotard, 1991). Genetic and evolutionary science in particular seem to hold enormous promise but most of us would doubt whether any globally effective anti-anthropathology pill, genetic engineering or implant could possibly do the trick. God, analytical rationality, science, state, and trust in the people – none of these has delivered robust or actual solutions to the problem of how we might live our lives non-anthropathologically, although each of these traditions has helped to keep us going and, between them, they have arguably reduced the effects of even worse anthropathological possibilities. Now we are also faced with the sometimes grandiose claims of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and counselling which likewise seem to me not to hold anything like robust solutions. The focus in this chapter is on selected current or recent attempted solutions, some of them general trends and others circumscribed projects.

PERSONAL SOLUTIONS We are becoming familiar with the injunction that we can personally help towards environmental improvements by more energy-efficient household measures; that we must think globally but act locally; that the personal is the political. We have been subjected for centuries to the idea that we can make a personal response to God, who loves and listens to each of us. We have seen how totalitarian states threaten and penalize exhibitions of individuality. According to different world views, the individual can and cannot do much to effect modest change by will, great change by heroic action or the surrender of will. We are quite used to the principle that it matters how we treat our children (although there is no consensus on best childcare practices). World population increase must make us question just how much influence I, among 6.5 billion individuals, can have. But inevitably the individual searches for and considers possible solutions to the human condition as it presents itself to her or him. A whole range of options is available, including denial, stoicism, therapy, local politics, and simply hoping for the best.


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Humanizing By the inelegant term ‘humanizing’ I mean any efforts dedicated to preserving whatever is most preciously human about us – warmth, compassion, emotionality, individuality, humour, forgiveness, imperfection, wisdom, realism, non-judgementalism – and to reducing, defeating or undermining the ‘inhuman’. We could substitute terms like humanizing endeavours, humanness, humanness promotion, or even civilizing or civilization but all are somewhat problematic. Now, patently we will disagree about what we consider essentially human or otherwise. But many would agree that there is something dehumanizing about many aspects of our recent and current lifestyles: slavery, racism, oppression, torture, abuse; being regarded and treated as ‘human resources’; and being perceived as imperfect machines whose development awaits enhancement by technological prosthetics. Personally, I would want to add bureaucracy to this list, or a wider category of items generated by statutory and commercial drives that Brennan (2003) refers to as ‘bioderegulation’, or those norms and pressures, serving profit and political agendas above human needs, that erode our access to clean air, viscerally recognized optimal daily rhythms, meaningful work or activity (or inactivity), free association of individuals, and so on. The humanizing agenda is one of antidehumanizing. The movement from industrialization to globalization that produces impoverished standardization of goods and services (Ritzer, 2004b) also threatens to force human beings into standard moulds. Overpopulation, increasing urbanization and centralization must also feature as trends undermining our ability to maintain a sense of individual preciousness and meaningful neighbourly relations. Advances in technology, particularly biotechnology (genetic engineering, neuropharmacology, neuroprosthetics, etc.), threaten to convert our very humanity, our bodies and minds, so that we might become mere cyborgs, halfhuman and half-machine. As Fukuyama (2003, p. 218) puts it: ‘we do not have to regard ourselves as slaves to inevitable technological progress when that progress does not serve human ends’. Here, there is a fine line to tread between the irrationally Luddite and wisely humanizing or maintenance of human values. Humanizing is not enlightenment; it is still infected with anthropathology. But we might say that its heart is in the right place and it helps to keep us from the worst, the darkest aspects of chronic anthropathology. It is above all an anthropathology-mitigating force. One dark, dehumanizing trend is institutionalization, the force that pushes

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people to barricade themselves behind years of behaving correctly, staying on message, in script. Think of the institutionalized colleague who, in a meeting, cannot allow himself to speak to you out of role, with humanity, or the server in the franchise coffee shop who gives you the false smile and scripted patter. They are like Big Brother-terrorized characters from Orwell’s 1984. I don’t want to exaggerate here but they share this intimidated tendency, one that has been amply verified by social psychologists. Such routine dehumanized relating is chilling and Ritzer (2004b) goes as far as calling them ‘non-people’. By contrast, what is most human is most likely to be found in all genuinely I–Thou encounters (Buber, 1927), in the arts and humanities, in small experimental schools such as the Steiner schools or Summerhill, in birthing techniques like those recommended by Odent (2004), in unpretentious counselling and psychotherapy that puts individuals above theory and profession, in the small and local and the ‘something’ of local creation rather than the ‘nothing’ of globalized business (Ritzer, 2004b). ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ (Matthew 5:9) is an affirmation of the humanizing agenda, yet even here we must note that all peacemaking has had only transient success. Any overambitious humanizing project will fall prey to anthropathological loops. But any individual acting spontaneously might make a small humanizing impression on an otherwise soul-destroying world. Radical Honesty This concept is not new or esoteric but it is well presented by Blanton (1994). Arguably it is those fearless mystics, prophets, revolutionaries, whistleblowers, artists and writers throughout history who have voiced what they saw as the obviously wrong who have kept in our minds the principle of truth. I am not getting into philosophical niceties here about the meaning of truth but stressing the significance of integrity and of speaking out against lies and deceit. Blanton argues that each of us can choose to be honest instead of deceitful. Unfortunately we have been trained, as I said in Chapter 1, to conceal, downplay, exaggerate, dissemble and lie as if it is necessary. In a sense it is necessary in order to uphold the current structure of civilization; but this is not the only conceivable kind of civilization. Practising honesty feels very difficult because it is riskily counter-cultural. Who is willing at all times to speak truthfully to parents, children, partners, teachers, customers, bosses, interviewers, the police? If we were all honest and always acted with integrity, no complicated legal system would be needed. It requires little reflection to realize the extent of the expectation that we lie in order to get through life smoothly. But this tradition,


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far from being neutral, exacts great costs. Encounter groups and other large group arrangements like est, Landmark and Alcoholics Anonymous have embraced truth-telling, but life is not lived in encounter groups.

Promotion of Feelings We become more and more cognitively biased. By this I mean that we value regulated thinking, we condone safe thinking and the polite expression of a set of circumscribed views. We have come to prefer bland talk to loud emotion. Anger and crying in particular are now almost taboo in many cultures. Our children are expected to learn early to curb their strong feelings. It is not generally accepted that one would cry in school, or even show vulnerability and tenderness. This is even truer within further and higher education. Similarly in the workplace, adults are expected to work uncomplainingly to schedule and not to become sad, depressed, angry or too excited. Even at funerals, many of us know we are expected to behave with ‘dignity’, which means that we must stifle natural feelings. Men are generally less free to show tears and women to show anger. But there is a strong argument for not only allowing but encouraging children and adults to express feelings openly; feelings of hurt are natural and trustworthy and it is their chronic suppression that causes problems. Dammed-up feelings spill over inappropriately in the wrong places at the wrong times, the bullied child sometimes becoming the adult worm that turned disproportionately (e.g. the boy physically abused by his father who later murders someone in a rage). The belief that suppressing emotion makes us physically ill may or may not be true but our fear of feelings seems irrational and unwise (Janov and Holden, 1975).

Enlightenment Enlightenment here refers to a state of consciousness that graces certain individuals and lifts them out of the illusions that cause psychological suffering. Trasi (1999) summarizes thus: suffering is of two types, unavoidable and avoidable, the former associated with physical pain, for example, the latter with psychological, self-generated suffering. This latter kind of suffering comes from the illusion of a separate self, from unnecessary and distorted thinking (see also Bohm’s (1994) explanation for thought as, in my terms, anthropathogenic). The ‘average (unenlightened) person’ (Trasi, 1999, p. 32) lives his or her life in a state of alienation from moment-to-moment reality, sealed off

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by the defence mechanisms, irrational and ineffective coping strategies of repression, denial, regret, fantasy, lying, dissembling, rumination, anticipation and so on. Even those who are aware of these and committed to working to reduce them, typically spend their lives ‘working at’, rather than actually being free of them. The enlightened person has somehow got at the root of all psychological suffering in themselves, and uprooted it once and for all. Such a person is not experiencing occasional little breakthroughs, not having spiritual experiences or psychological insights, but is living wholly outside the typical human state of suffering, or anthropathology. Of course we must pose certain sceptical questions. Why does enlightenment seem so rare and elusive? Does it necessarily come via enormous personal distress and pain or can it be cultivated patiently and gently? Why does it appear to grace mainly men, not women, and why mainly Easterners, not Westerners? Why has so-called spirituality become so fashionable recently and aren’t its tenets dubious and self-deceptive? Is enlightenment our common, natural, original, preanthropathological state or is it something new that more and more of us are evolving towards? Why does enlightenment seem not to be amenable to scientific analysis or educational transmission? Does it come in one finalized form or in shades or degrees of liberation? Why do so many allegedly enlightened people disappoint us, with stories of their follies? Can it happen only to those who are privileged and protected? Does authentic enlightenment really exist at all? Is the hope for enlightenment not the most difficult obstacle to enlightenment? If it is nonsense, let us show that to be the case. But if there is such a genuine state, I think it must be at least part of the solution to our anthropathological condition. Humour Anthropathology is not funny. Lives wasted by soul-destroying jobs are not funny; neither are bombs, torture, pollution, soil erosion, global warming, government corruption, poverty, hunger, disease, everyday misery. Yet, humour is a characteristic of humanity that we would be far poorer without. Refusal of humour is associated with the most fascist and bureaucratic of politics and the most fanatical and Pharisaic of religions. In other words, people who take themselves and their cause too seriously, who link mirth with evil, are likely to be dangerously dehumanized. Life is messy and will always be so. Mistakes will happen, undignified falls will be evident. There is much about existence itself that is surely absurd. P.J. O’Rourke (1994) in his All the Trouble in the World: the Lighter Side of Famine, Pestilence, Destruc-


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tion and Death challenges the assumption that a po-faced demeanour is necessary in the face of undoubted tragedy. The truth can be told with humour, sometimes to better effect. ‘Anybody can say “I’ve got cancer” and get a rise out of a crowd. But how many of us can do five minutes of good stand-up comedy?’ asks O’Rourke (p. 9). In his book he points out many instances of long-faced hypocrisy perpetrated by those commissioned to address grave social problems. Not all our ills are human-generated but most are; but ‘we can fix it all and we’ll still be humans and causing trouble’ (p. 340). Wheen (2004) uses humour to mock intellectual claims he sees as nonsense and however cruel such humour can be we probably all need it to balance our dangerous certitudes. Marmysz (2003) argues that humour is frequently the appropriate response to the existential meaninglessness of our situation. Humour frequently rises above adversity and absurdity as a form of everyman’s ephemeral enlightenment. Then there is the joke about the man who becomes extremely agitated and almost passes out at a cosmology lecture when he hears that the solar system will eventually come to an end. Upon investigation, he says, ‘Oh, six billion years. Thank goodness. I thought you said six million years.’

GROUP AND EDUCATIONAL SOLUTIONS Values and remedies have always been transmitted communally, often familially, by example and expectation, by folklore, but also by religion and formal and informal education. The contemporary practice with which I have been most familiar is that small children are protected from everyday reality, indeed they are often fed fairytale views of life (Father Christmas, God, tooth fairy, nothing is wrong, everything is going to be all right, Mummy and Daddy love each other, no one is going to hurt you, etc.) for many years. Mass education may raise some issues critically but its scope is strictly limited and mainly cerebral. Experiments in peer counselling, emotional intelligence-raising and teaching problem-solving in schools may achieve something if they do not become institutionalized and impotent rituals that are overshadowed by the norms of compulsory schooling. Meaningful discussion of existential matters is usually considered to be somewhat in bad taste, a sign of morbidity or beyond the competence of parents and teachers to engage in. By default, it is left to religion to occupy this ground with its own prejudices and fairytales. The ‘why are we here?’ territory traditionally handed over to religion becomes the question of ‘how shall we organize ourselves?’ of bland politics (usually the two-party system

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of so-called democracy). I believe a majority of adults are uncomfortable with the big questions of existence. Griffith’s Project for Humanity’s Adulthood Jeremy Griffith is an Australian with a background in biology, who has devoted many years to analysing the human condition and proposing a solution to it. With others he established the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood. He discusses the ‘agony of the human condition’, the common denial that there is a problematic, universal human condition, non-denial of the human condition with resignation and without, the demystification of religion, and an imperative to establish a new order: a ‘new human condition-ameliorated world’. Griffith likens the dysfunctionality of the human condition to the elephant in the living room: it is all too obvious, everyone knows it but it is a taboo subject and denied if it is raised in conversation. In at least this sense, there is a high degree of concurrence with what I am saying about anthropathology. Griffith sees himself as a contemporary prophet or messiah who has not only confronted the human condition but gone beyond it. In some of his own words: The agony of being unable to answer this question of why humans are the way they are, divisively instead of cooperatively behaved, has been the particular burden of human life. It has been our species’ particular affliction or condition, the ‘Human condition’. In fact the fundamental issues of human life, the issue of humans’ divisive nature, has been so troubling and ultimately depressing that humans eventually learnt that the only practical way of coping was to stop thinking about it, block the whole issue from their minds. So depressing was the subject of the human condition that humans learnt to avoid even acknowledging its existence. (Griffith, 2003, p. 25).

I cannot but agree with this, since I asked questions of this kind from an early age and found others’ negative responses silencing. Even very recently, at a dinner with a group of counsellors, when I was asked what I was currently writing, I told them about this book, and a short silence was followed by a complete change of subject. Discomfort and denial are common reactions; anthropathology, or the human condition, is not regarded as a fun topic for the dinner table. Even among counsellors, who one might expect to be interested in it, the topic is unsettling because counselling is tacitly believed to be a large part of the liberal humanist solution to the problem of the human condition and to be making significant inroads into it. So, I agree with Griffith


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(and depart from Cohen’s (2001) take on partial states and particular perpetrators of denial) that denial is the normal response to the problem of chronic anthropathology when it is posed. Those who are touched by the question, and therefore not totally in denial, but who feel unable to fully grasp and transcend it, are considered by Griffith to succumb to resignation. The problem is too depressing and insoluble to have anything active to do with it. Griffith cites numerous novelists, poets, philosophers and theologians who have offered glimpses into the world of such uncomfortable truths. We now have sufficient history and science behind us to realize that Plato’s allegory of the cave describes our condition and that it is time for us to take the dignifying step of accepting profound freedom and responsibility. Griffith is not naive enough to think that many human beings will easily agree with him. He suggests there is a ‘deaf effect’ around such issues. People will deny what he is saying and find reasons to fault his logic. Let me express some of my own negative reactions to Griffith’s book, A Species in Denial. The book, which is over 500 pages long and selfpublished by the Foundation for Adulthood’s Humanity, does not use conventional academic references, so I am tempted to accuse him of not being ‘rigorous’. He describes himself as a biologist but seems to possess no more than a first degree in biology and has held no academic or scientific posts. He is hostile to evolutionary psychology, describes God as negative entropy and draws heavily from the Christian tradition. Curiously (perhaps), Islam gets only one passing mention. Men and women have different roles and homosexuality is an aberration. Political correctness is a kind of denial-bolstering sideshow. The book contains many deleted passages, explained by Griffith as attributed to a legal case that was ongoing at the time of publication. Many passages are printed in bold to accentuate their importance. A few primitively drawn cartoons are included, as if they add something significant and as if anything produced by Griffith must be helpful, if not sacred (in fact, they are both artistically embarrassing and unnecessary to his argument). Griffith was friendly with the Jungian savant, Sir Laurens van der Post (and continually refers to him in this irritating knighted form), and proclaims him to be a prophet1 (along with R.D. Laing, Arthur Koestler, Teilhard de Chardin, himself and others). He is the centre of a group of dedicated like-minded people, writes voluminously, proposes a ‘denial-free university’ and a television documentary series expounding his views. Griffith proclaims Australia the seat of a new human consciousness, due to its energy and innocence. He is fairly insistent that something happens at the age of 12 to shut people down to

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their own innocent consciousness and their appeal against the human condition.2 However, everyone has their idiosyncrasies, and lapses in literary expression like Griffith’s are forgivable. And as he himself points out (and as I have suggested in the first chapter of this book) one way of dismissing something uncomfortably challenging is exactly to seize on such idiosyncrasies and elevate style above substance in your criticisms. So, I largely support Griffith’s thesis, if having certain reservations. To my mind, he is legitimately and truthfully cutting across academic conventions and disciplinary niceties to get at the larger picture. Then, there remain two problems. One is about myself (and any sceptical reader like myself) and the other is about distinguishing between people like Griffith and moderately dangerous cult leaders (Storr, 1997). By Griffith’s reckoning, I would have to concede that although I am ‘denial-free’ about the human condition, I am often resigned to it being this way. In Griffith’s terms the resigned mind is dysfunctional. I was always sceptical about truth claims, allowing myself to believe or be fully open to only Krishnamurti’s teachings (see Chapter 6) and Janov’s primal therapy (see Chapter 7). Both of these, however, failed to meet my expectations. I consider myself, like Griffith (2003, p. 282), as thinking for myself, penetratingly. The upside of this is that one tests others’ claims rigorously against intuition, experience and a breadth of reading. Something has the ring of authentic truth about it; something else smells false or limited. The downside is that this process can also serve to bolster one’s unrecognized defences against uncomfortable truths that demand more than one is willing to give (e.g. ‘Go, sell all you have and follow me’: Matthew 19:21). In reading Griffith, I receive ambiguous signals. Suppose you hear about someone who appears to have a possible new way out of anthropathology; how do you calculate the odds of this being authentic as against being a con, cult or waste of time? Why do we respond negatively or positively on first hearing about Scientology, psychoanalysis, astrology, Catholicism, Shiite Islam, the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood or whatever other truth claim? There are many egomorphic and culturally biased but no objective criteria for this choice-making process. And then, tilting towards a choice, how far do you immerse yourself in it? Or is not giving it a chance a sign of your own fearfulness and a tacit condemnation of yourself? If I were 30 years younger, disaffected with my circumstances and living near enough to a charismatic fundamentalist group, might I not immerse myself dangerously in a movement that ‘knows’ it has the truth and is committed to fighting those who are in denial or resigned? I have come to believe that Griffith doesn’t possess


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the solution any more than he can accurately pinpoint the origin of the human condition (anthropathology), although he has been assiduous in naming the problem and getting it discussed.

Positive Psychology Positive psychology is a movement created by Martin Seligman and other psychologists interested in examining the non-pathological side of human behaviour and how happiness can be learned and a ‘science of happiness’ refined. Carr (2004) marshals a vast amount of psychological evidence to support the case for positive psychology and its applications. Learned optimism includes developing positive illusions. Self-deception is necessary, according to Carr, to help boost our resources in an often bleak world. Hence: Negative information which is contrary to a positive world view includes the facts that our talents and attributes are broadly speaking normal, not exceptional; we have limited control over an unpredictable and chaotic world and over our own impulses, emotions, thoughts and actions, and our future is bleak. Our future is bleak insofar as it entails many losses including: the loss of youth and vitality; loss of health; loss of intellectual abilities and talents; loss of valued friendships; loss of work role; and inevitably our future entails our own deaths and the deaths of everyone we hold dear. The self-deceptive strategies we use to manage this awful information, which is contrary to an optimistic world view, includes defence mechanisms and positive illusions. (Carr, 2004, p. 78)

In spite of this mass of negativity (Carr quite nicely echoes the sentiments of Schopenhauer and Houellebecq in Chapter 2), it is the way in which we manage our positive self-view in the face of all this that saves us and makes for optimism. Positive illusions are, in this view, good and to be cultivated. Positive psychology has been picked up eagerly by a number of psychologists and social policy academics (Layard, 2005) as well as business gurus (Leadbeater, 2002), and cognitive behaviour therapists and solution-focused therapists have anticipated many of its tenets. It is more elaborate than I can précis here but its essence is simply the boosting of positives through good parenting, education, relationships and personal choice. Segerstrom (2006) in fact calculates that ‘80% of people are somewhat to very optimistic’ (although this is an American survey) and believes that even pessimists can learn to be so. She also repeats the familiar finding that religion tends to bolster happiness and, along with positive thinking, is associated with longevity. Her

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findings do not mesh well with those presented by Lane (2000) on declining levels of American happiness; and they do not sit well with the knowledge that a huge majority of Americans are religious, as well as being soft on gun laws, pollution and other obvious ills; and a significant minority believe in UFOs and other dubious phenomena (Sagan, 1996). Positive psychology is a way of fighting an otherwise epidemic wave of understandable depression but I cannot see how anything built on admitted illusions can command respect or durability. Not strictly positive psychology as such, there are many texts and movements espousing religious and stoical reframing of misfortune that have this positive tenor. Simmons (2002), who was stricken by motor neuron disease, describes his vision of ‘learning to fall’, that is, accepting life in all its aspects. Hence, ‘here is where we go wrong. For at its deepest levels life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery’ (p. 8). And ‘the imperfect is our paradise. Let us pray, then, that we do not shun the struggle. May we attend with mindfulness, generosity, and compassion to all that is broken in our lives. May we live fully in each flawed and too human moment, and thereby gain the victory’ (p. 37). I’m afraid I find this sort of poeticized distortion of experience nonsense but clearly it ‘works’ for many people. Another popular American mindfulness guru is Kabat-Zinn (1990), whose stressmanagement meditation programme incorporates cognitive therapy with spiritual principles. It is at least less sickly than Simmons’ account. More palatable is Tedeschi and Calhoun’s (1995) scholarly examination of people who have experienced and recovered from trauma, often with enriched insight and deeper appreciation of life. Probably it is true that sudden confrontation by extreme adversity can lift someone out of banal anthropathology into a keener experience. A theological parallel to this is Alison’s (1998) argument for the positive value of suffering in the Easter context. But there is a big difference between trying to talk or theologize yourself into gaining from suffering and adversity and actually experiencing positive change unbidden. Krishnamurti frequently criticized such quasi-transformational reports. And let’s not forget the joke – a pessimist is someone who lives with an optimist.

VISIONARY AND THEORETICAL SOLUTIONS We have always had visionaries, inspired individuals warning of lifestyle dangers and suggesting new paths forward or a return to old paths. Mythology and religion may be considered nothing but explanations for our human predicament in the cosmos. With philosophy came the exercise and application of human rationality, and with politics


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and subsequent disciplines we have attempted to design best means of governing and understanding ourselves. Natural science has provided many answers to biological and cosmic questions and social science has grappled fairly unsuccessfully with questions about society and the individual. But even within so-called hard science there are many disagreements, one of the major ones being about the ultimate purposelessness of the universe versus its order and meaning. Alongside our self-conscious efforts to analyse life and plan our future, we have endured unpredictable natural events as well as the brutal and absurd side of our own nature; and have enjoyed our finer achievements and cultivated a necessary pragmatism. In many cases ‘good’ intentions and brutal (perhaps also psychotic) nature coincide: even Hitler presumably believed he had the best interests of most of his people at heart. Theoretically supported visions can become totalitarian nightmares, as in the Communist USSR. Or they can remain somewhat eccentric and/or untried on any significant scale: the visions of Rudolph Steiner or Wilhelm Reich may fall into this category. I am sometimes afraid that my own anthropathological ‘vision’ is merely an egomorphic eccentricity. But all ideas and ideologies come into and go out of fashion, some being fit only for their own time. We should perhaps note the association between alpha-male intellectual assertiveness (the overwhelming majority of visionaries and ideologypushers have been men, often in pursuit of fame, power and immortality) and our tendency to lurch from one messy epoch to another. But as a species of 6 billion plus humans we are bound to have to address challenges in somewhat crude, large-scale ways. Visionary Futurologists ‘End poverty, reverse climate change, eliminate infectious diseases, stop global conflict. It sounds like a Miss World contestant’s wish-list. But when Oxford University’s latest baby has these aspirations as its stated goals, you have to take them rather more seriously.’ This is the beginning of a journalist’s interview3 with Ian Goldin, Director of Oxford’s James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization. The institute is designed to be an interdisciplinary think-tank with some political clout. Similar institutions have arisen elsewhere to mark the psychological meaning of the twenty-first century and what are regarded as uniquely challenging times ahead. I have few comments to make on this particular venture, which appears to have all the right intentions. Do not good intentions, excellent scholarship and staff, with suitable financial backing, point the way towards likely solutions? Possibly. But it is rare that any institution, certainly one with centu-

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ries of tradition and reputation to uphold, public relations to maintain and inevitable vested interests of its own, can analyse and make recommendations with any revolutionary edge to them. It is not cynicism to doubt if any such institution can combine fierce loyalty to a truthseeking ethos, free from hidden agendas and willing to delve into and expose deeply unpopular material. The Christian church fails to do this in spite of its moral mandate. Academia generally succumbs to government policies and market whims, to human relations hyperbole, arcane traditions and conservative agendas. Most such endeavours begin one-sidedly or become so, usually addressing the gross problems (poverty, pollution, conflict) at face value, specializing trance-like in certain prestigious disciplines and ignoring the subtly destructive psychological trends that fuel failure. If there is an institution that can put the right material on the table and address it fearlessly and rigorously, all to the good. James Martin (2006) rehearses most of the negative scenarios found in this book and elsewhere and sees us as entering a ‘twenty-first century canyon’ from which we must rise if we are to save ourselves. Although he notes the gravest of possible grave outcomes, his emphasis is positive. Martin is an entrepreneurial scientist and consultant who lives in South Africa and on his own island in Bermuda. Although he has travelled widely, there is a sense that his overwhelming personal optimism, talent, wealth and good fortune and acceptance of capitalism have removed him from intimate and realistic knowledge of everyday life for what I have called the ordinary struggling human being. Technology can save and enhance us with eco-friendly innovations and direct brain–computer linkage, and the colonization and cultivation of Mars is part of the mid-term solution. Martin’s ideas are visionary but not fantastic. A new kind of civilization must arise. Young people must be allowed to unleash their entrepreneurial spirit. Disparities in wealth have to be addressed. But in the long term we are headed for a transhuman condition in which we will improve ourselves indefinitely with ‘automated evolution’. Martin’s view is probably as far as you can get from that of Jensen (2006), Zerzan (1999) and other anti-capitalist, anti-technology and anti-civilization anarchists (see below). I think Martin, from his optimistic tower, fails to address the finegrained limitations and psychological complexities of ordinary people’s lives. He fails to appreciate the burden of technological complexity that will be placed on individuals, many of whom may not adapt well to it. I doubt that he has much grasp of the depth of anthropathological entrenchment and the nature of anthropathological loops. The increasing ‘neocorticalization’ of humans4 – and corresponding suppression and distortion of emotion, itself an essentially patriarchal trend – may


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well breed further problems. Nevertheless, much of his analysis is astute and it seems likely that if we survive our urgent environmental and international problems, if we survive these canyon years, blueprints drawing partly from Martin’s and others’ ideas will be utilized for social change at the macro-remedial level, rightly or wrongly. Modelling of future catastrophes is already well under way. We are familiar with the idea of drills for terrorism-induced catastrophes, for example the unleashing of biological weapons. We may suspect that many governments have detailed plans for evacuations and emergency leadership programmes in the event of nuclear and other disasters, as well as secret mechanisms for dealing with renegade individuals. Some are advocating long-term thinking about population, health and birth practices.5 But we do not yet routinely, as social policy initiatives, build in thinking about anthropathology-loop correctives. The aviation industry factors potential human error scenarios into training, for example, yet the hospital industry, which is reckoned to be 33 000 more dangerous to health than the aviation industry, does not.6 This probably reflects the perceived greater danger (certainly more dramatic danger) of plane crashes. Arguably what we need are similar auditing strategies for risks in all areas of politics and life, so that future negative scenarios are routinely modelled and considered. Incidentally, the aviation industry would need also to factor in the real dangers it poses to the environment. Since all such auditing would have to be free from political or commercial interference, it is an implicit challenge to the very heart of capitalism. Anarcho-Primitivism References have previously been made to Jensen (2006) and Zerzan (1999, 2002, 2005). In a nutshell this kind of analysis of civilization’s woes traces them back to the end of hunter-gatherers and the advent of agriculture, territoriality, domestication of animals, patriarchy, hierarchy and so on. When once there was low population and sufficient food to meet human needs, there was a Golden Age of relatively leisurely existence. The trends set in motion from that time, anywhere from about 6000 to 10 000 years ago, have led inexorably to the rape of the earth, colonization of peoples, industrial nightmare and globalized social pathology. There is no solution in moving forward as we are and sustainable technology is an illusion. Our only solution is to destroy and abandon this civilization and return to an earlier, anarchic, cooperative existence, living off natural foods. Since upholders of worldwide capitalism and its lifestyle are not going to choose to do this, it is both legitimate and necessary to effect such a return by

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violence, for example destroying significant industrial and technological sites including dams. In the meantime, individuals and groups can of course choose to abandon the trappings of this civilization, including jobs, reliance on technology and consumerism. Here is how Jensen puts it: We all have choices. We can have ice caps and polar bears, or we can have automobiles. We can have dams or we can have salmon. We can have irrigated wine from Mendocino and Sonoma or we can have the Russian and Eel rivers. We can have oil from beneath the oceans, or we can have whales. We can have cardboard boxes or we can have living forests. We can have computers and cancer clusters from the manufacture of those computers, or we can have neither. We can have electricity and a world devastated by mining, or we can have neither (and don’t give me any nonsense about solar: you’ll need copper for wiring, silicon for photovoltaics, metals and plastics for appliances, which need to be manufactured and then transported to your home, and so on. Even solar electrical energy can never be sustainable because electricity and all its accoutrements require an industrial infrastructure). (Jensen, 2006, p. 148)

In very mild forms, aspirations towards this primitivist agenda have been seen in nostalgic anthropology, the 1960s hippy movement, ‘back to nature’ experiments, bushcraft projects and anarchist communes. And of course some communities have always remained at a naturally subsistence level. Now, in spite of arguments to the contrary, it would seem certain that many of us – softened and made ignorant of natural survival methods – would not survive the rigours of this kind of existence. It means less food and less reliable ‘deliveries’ of food, no artificial medication, no artificial heating or other domestic luxuries; it means a drastically reduced population. The strong and the lucky might prosper after a fashion but the weak, old and disabled seem likely to perish. Perhaps it is envisaged that some natural altruism would resurface and the weak would be provided for by the strong. Freedom from pollution and from a nine-to-five job might seem attractive but we are not talking here of a halcyon existence but a tough struggle; and it is not a temporary, environmental catastropheavoiding strategy that is envisaged but a permanently civilizationshunning one. Most anarchist remedies rest on a naively positive view of human nature rather than a Lord of the Flies scenario. While much of their aetiological analysis seems sensible to me, as does their outrage at contemporary living conditions, the anarcho-primitivists downplay the general lack of appetite for abandonment of luxuries and embracing of austerity and uncertainty. As Wheen (2004) puts it, ‘improved technology can’t be turned back or disinvented’ (p. 249). And


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of course there is the small matter of armies and police forces that will violently block their way towards the realization of such aims. I do not reject the principle of ‘going back’ out of hand – many aspects of ‘back’ may have much to commend them – but I am certain that most us will not readily abandon the perceived benefits of civilization unless forced to by some Armageddon scenario. Of course, the anarcho-primitivist challenge does raise the conundrum that we are willing to endure a great deal of one kind of misery (say, occupational misery or war) for the sake of retaining materialist luxuries and territorial, ethnic and religious passions, which also create miseries. Overthrow of Patriarchy The prospect of any imminent and serious undermining of patriarchy and patriarchal structures seems fairly remote, in spite of often voiced claims that the world is becoming feminized or the future is female. Men retain power in politics and commerce. Masculine technical – rational culture – if I can put it that way without suggesting that any irrational – primitive culture adheres to the feminine – holds sway. Historically, women have either remained silent or been suppressed when they have spoken out, and of course some relatively recent gains have been made (although these are still threatened in some patriarchally endorsed religious cultures). A tiny minority of women have momentarily become politically active in a radically anti-patriarchal sense. Events like women’s protests at the United Kingdom’s military base in Greenham Common in the 1980s stand out for their unusualness as much as for their bravery and sanity. But women have also been complicit in andropathy. Women have bought into the fruits of capitalism, they seek managerial posts, religious ministries and even military responsibilities. They are divided on maternal issues, many seeking the provision of childcare so they can compete in the workplace rather than opposing the very structures of time-consuming and alienating work practices. It continues to be glaringly obvious that men drive wars, environmental damage and other forms of mayhem, and part of a solution is surely exposure, analysis and turning from this, yet this kind of work has barely begun. However, unless gynopathy is in fact as enmeshed in anthropathology as andropathy is, it seems inevitable to me that the redundancy of patriarchal attitudes and momentum must begin to be made obvious and shameful sooner or later. Rather than women assuming equality with men in men’s andropathological mess of a civilization, I believe we need to understand how ‘female values’ might redress the madness of men’s. Let me suggest that

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women are somewhat less territorial than men, less inclined to start wars and to see their children butchered in them, less tolerant of rape and violence generally. Women are surely far less inclined to behave rapaciously towards the environment. More in tune with children and with the human body and its rhythms, women are more likely to design a way of life that is child-friendly and non-alienating, from natural birth practices and breast-feeding to humanized education and work. Greater access to and trust in feelings (e.g. crying when one is upset instead of feigning bravery) might well result in fewer insane projective mechanisms linked with false stoicism, surplus aggression, crime and competitiveness. An obviously humanizing trend can be seen here, but women have exerted their influence more strongly in the personal and family spheres than in politics. But such feminine and anti-patriarchal values and potential social reforms spun from them are badly needed. That is, women’s alternative vision must become more pronounced and more ‘political’. I doubt whether vying for equality (equal insanity) is the answer; rather, an alternative lifestyle is sorely needed. Among possible solutions to our global problems, population management (and probably reduction) is a matter that will not go away. To some extent there has been an instinctive response to this, with many couples having only one or two children; but even this replacement rate is problematic. Some groups now recommend or urge ‘voluntary human extinction’, whether by sterilization, suicide or medication refusal. Often these are associated with a pathological misanthropy. On the other hand we have some individuals and groups (particularly religious groups) insisting on their right to have very large families; and as Lynch (1996) has argued, this is a sound strategy for propagating a religion or culture. We also have scientists committed to longevity research and visions of healthy humans hundreds of years old. Population expansion is a clear problem but population control is too. The essential question as to the Earth’s finite capacity for sustaining us, and in what numbers, remains to be calculated and accepted. Continuing population increase spells hunger and conflict and/or a drive to colonize other planets but population control (not only at the birth but also at the infirm and old age end) spells trouble in the form of totalitarianism. No doubt we will bumble along for now in the ‘catrastrophe first pattern’ (Martin, 2006) and ultimately one or other of the doomsday scenarios facing us will resolve the problem in the shape of a ‘Gaia’s revenge’ (Lovelock, 2006). There is now a proliferation of publications on climate change. Robin McKie reviewed just five of these in the Observer (12 November 2006). The overwhelming flavour is seriously pessimistic.7 We are told


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that we may have only 10 years before civilization ends, unless drastic actions are taken. Air travel must end, car use must be severely curtailed, homes insulated, energy use reduced and far better planned, and even then concerted effort is needed internationally. This doesn’t look at all likely to happen. Even worse, reduction in air travel, for example, would hit poor economies that rely on tourism for income. The choice seems to be between a blind ‘business as usual’ approach, an unprecedented collaboration in necessary hardship and radically new designs and lifestyles, and an unimaginable environmental inferno with relatively few if any survivors. The ‘containment’ of wars to regional proportions since 1945 has probably conveyed a sense of peace as prevalent. In the 1970s and 1980s public anxiety about nuclear destruction gradually waned and since the end of the Cold War has become negligible (Iran and North Korea currently notwithstanding). Fears of a computer-generated catastrophe centring on ‘YK2’ dissolved into an embarrassing nothingness. Although the 2000s are haunted by the spectre of religious and international terrorism and war, and environmental catastrophe, it may be that we have become desensitized to real danger and addicted to our materialist luxuries, and will sleepwalk into Armageddon. Those in the developing world who have been aspiring to affluent Western living standards are likely to disbelieve the call for the necessity of a new global austerity. Those who lived through rationing in the Second World War will not see a distinct enemy to be defeated in the current crisis. Individuals will remain fixated on their apparently unique suffering instead of attending to the common lethal threat. It may be that we are so saturated, almost paralysed with fears and anxieties, that we cannot discriminate which are real and require urgent action and which are not (Bourke, 2005). Global threats remain ‘theoretical’ to most of us until their effects bite into our everyday lives with unignorable negativity. Very broadly, all are likely to have some response to a negative portrayal of the human condition, either as presented in a text of this kind or in the course of their everyday life. Responses will range from the inarticulate to the explicitly ideological. They will obviously range from the acceptant to the rejecting and from the hopeless and nihilistic to the compromising, the moderately constructive and the fanatically determined. As well as basing responses on what we know, we have to allow in any forecasting for the unknown, which could include anything from environmental eschatology (an end-of-world or nearend-of-world scenario) to major scientific breakthroughs or discoveries, however fantastical these may currently seem (space and time travel, extraterrestrial contact). Figure 9.1 is an attempt to show some of the

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Mass denial, nonreflectiveness, indifference

Evaluative anthropathology

The unforeseeable (major events, alien discovery, scientific breakthrough, etc.)

Totalitarian regime(s) Hobbes Meaninglessness, hopelessness Schopenhauer

Radical anarchoprimitivism Zerzan, Jensen

Radical feminism, rejection of patriarchal structures

Human condition

Liberal progressivism, sustainable technology

Personal enlightenment Buddha, Krishnamurti

Extreme science (interplanetary migration, cryonics, etc.) Religious liberalism and fundamentalism

Fig. 9.1 Responses to the human condition/proposed solutions.

spread of such responses. These are of course not necessarily separate or equally weighted scenarios. But all individuals and communities, and groups formed by religion or politics, will lean towards some and not others. Perhaps naive fantasy has its place somewhere, if only as a stimulus to creative problem-solving. Why can’t we ban all lethal weaponry and materials? Why can’t we redistribute wealth so that hunger and poverty is made history? Why can’t we reorganize and reduce work so that its inessential and dehumanizing aspects give way to its more creative aspects and to greater leisure? Why can’t we abandon compulsory schooling or at least its unnecessarily boring, irrelevant, anxietymaking and competitive aspects? Why can’t we motivate ourselves to be innovative and to create life-enhancing products (like AIDS drugs for Africa) without the self-interest problems inherent in capitalism? Why can’t we, recognizing the mess made of human affairs by men, institute something like an international women’s parliament? Apparently we can’t do these things because tradition and habit, not to mention gravity-like self-interest, stops them in their tracks. We are told, or we tell ourselves, that they are naive and unworkable utopian fantasies and that we are cynical to dismiss the achievements of our capitalist civilization. But in the meantime we live with the fantasy of minute, incremental reductions in the sum of anthropathology and in denial of anthropogenic climate change, for example. Perhaps it is


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more a question of which fantasy we sign up to, rather than a fantasy versus reality scenario. Gould (2002, p. 207) puts it this way: ‘We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes – one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximal freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.’ It is simply up to us, individually and collectively, to respond as we will to the human condition, nested as it is within the cosmic condition. Putting it a little differently, Berlin (2003), agreeing with Kant that we are ‘the crooked timber of humanity’, necessarily non-convergent, argued for understanding and tolerance of our inevitable diversity and ideological pluralism. No proposed solution has all the answers or eternal validity, and all contain some seeds of absurdity, irrationality and destructiveness. All? I cannot pretend that I do not believe, if somewhat impotently, that personal enlightenment is a probable solution. But since it does not come on a plate or in response to effort, or to many (see my earlier reservations in Chapter 6), we may conclude either that scientific investigation or further evolution will one day reveal its mechanisms or that we are doomed to know about but not be able to grasp the solution. It is in our nature to look for solutions and it is frequently necessary. It is also obvious that to err is human, that we do not find solutions to all our problems and that many of our solutions make matters worse. We also need to learn when to act and change urgently and when to remain contemplative, delaying our knee-jerk problem-solving responses and planning for the long term. Notes 1. Wheen (2004, p. 135), deflating the claims of complementary therapists and New Age faddists generally, refers to the late Laurens van der Post (who acted as a mentor to Prince Charles) simply as ‘that absurd old charlatan’. 2. As some support for Griffith’s claim that people shut down at 12, there appears to be a fair amount of evidence that by the age of 9 many young people have lost the sense of enjoying learning, due to education itself (Oliver James, Observer Magazine, 24 July 2005). 3. This is taken from John Crace’s piece in the Guardian (24 October 2006), ‘Think global: can a university find solutions to the crises of the twenty-first century?’ 4. The neocortex is the evolutionarily most recent part of the brain and in humans, enables the functions of language and conscious thought and these are thought by some to be unhealthily dominant functions. 5. Odent (2004), for example, advocates long-term thinking about birth practices, commending research showing the damaging medical, psychological

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and social consequences of the intrusive, traumatic and unnecessary scientification of natural processes. 6. See ‘System failure’ (Jane Feinman, Independent, 14 November 2006) on the efforts of a pilot, Martin Bromiley, to understand how his wife died during routine surgery, and the connections made between this and airline safety. Figures for dying in a scheduled aircraft flight and dying in hospital due to medical error are thought to be one in 10 million and one in 300 respectively. 7. The Stern review of the economics of climate change (Stern, 2006), alludes on its first page to ‘the greatest example of market failure we have ever seen’, yet still predicts that if necessary urgent action is taken we need not expect lower aspirations for growth (see www.hm-treasury.gov.uk).

10

Taking the Anthropathology Thesis Forward

Citizens of the future will look back on us much the way people today look back on the slave traders or warmongers of past eras, with one twist: Future populations will be our victims. . . . The future will have its own version of Satan, and it is likely to be you and me (and our governments). But, like most perpetrators, we do not see ourselves as doing evil. (Baumeister, 1997, p. 385)

Unfortunately Baumeister may well be right. In the meantime, the kinds of questions facing us now are: 1. Is there some sort of universal trend like anthropathology, or not? 2. Was there a significantly wrong (or at least unfortunate) turn in human evolution or history, or not? 3. Can our many personal and social wrongs be corrected gradually or not? 4. Can the differences between us about what’s wrong ever be resolved? 5. Exactly who is going to address the anthropathology problem (and how)? 6. How are we to prioritize attention to our chronic malaise, the immediate/urgent challenges and the long-term planning issues? We have to look both back and forward. The historian Barbara Tuchman, reviewing the self-destructive policies and warring actions of nations, suggests that misgovernment is universal and to be

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understood in terms of tyranny or oppression; excessive ambition; incompetence or decadence; and folly or perversity. She concludes with the following sobering statement: If John Adams was right, and government is ‘little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago,’ we cannot reasonably expect much improvement. We can only muddle on as we have done in those same three or four thousand years, through patches of brilliance and decline, great endeavour and shadow. (Tuchman, 1985, p. 486)

The anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, in slightly more upbeat fashion, says this: We are a hotch-potch of things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but which, with hindsight, might perhaps have been done better or differently. In that respect, we are no different from any of the other species that has ever lived. Our challenge, as it has always been, is to live with our imperfections, yet leave the world a better place than we found it. (Dunbar, 2004, p. 200)

Words like those in Dunbar’s last sentence sound reasonable and good. But they are unfortunately merely hopeful and have no specificity. To whom is addressed the pious hope that we will improve the world? Such general sentiments are unfortunately impotent and I think we must learn not to be satisfied with blandly optimistic rhetoric of this sort. Of course we live with our imperfections. Anthropathology is all about imperfections. Tuchman’s words are at least unpretentious: we muddle along. But how, if at all, can we move beyond such repeating of the obvious to something actually qualitatively different? What has been the point, if any, of writing and reading this book? I said at the beginning of the book that we are explanation-beguiled. As de Zulueta (1993, p. vii) asked in her book on violence, ‘why write another book [on violence]?’ Books give hope, they stimulate, create debate perhaps, but rarely change much enduringly or profoundly. Staub (2003, p. 44) says with some pathos, ‘I have had a very strong need to make a difference in the world, to improve the world. But the world is not visibly improving.’ Philosophers have only interpreted the world, psychoanalysts have only analysed patients, and no fundamental change in human consciousness has resulted. Perhaps one of our problems is that, given our growing mass, which is reflected back at us through the density of our newspapers and other media, we must suffer from exhaustion with too much bombardment of moral concern, endless novelty of


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remedial suggestions and inevitable paralysis and guilt. Historians offer us ostensibly novel and accurate explanations for war, yet we remain unenlightened and enter another war. Indeed, it is remarkable how much energy we expend in documenting our species’ folly rather than changing it. Our apparent hunger for salvation is matched only by the weary experience of impasse and failure. We are under much more pressure to deal with short-term, immediately practical and personal challenges than anything else. Jiddu Krishnamurti constantly lamented such phenomena, finding especially dispiriting the fact that his listeners would return to his public talks year after year with no discernibly increased level of consciousness. I conclude this book with a chapter in which I am acutely conscious of such impotence and disappointment. After all the usual masturbatory rehearsal of the arguments about the human condition, where does this leave us?

THE ANTHROPATHOLOGY THESIS Aware that I have ranged widely and amateurishly across disciplines and probably not always focused well, what follows is a summary of the main thread of the thesis. While I am sure things haven’t happened quite as I outline them here and are not by any means this simple, an enumerated hypothetical account may yet be useful. 1. We do not fully understand the origins of the cosmos but the orthodox current account we have suggests that a ‘Big Bang’ started everything off accidentally about 13.7 billion years ago (Kaku, 2005). Perhaps we will never know and perhaps it doesn’t matter. 2. It is also speculated that the cosmos will end in a big crunch, perhaps about 5 billion years from now (McGuire, 2005). 3. We came into being (depending on how we define ourselves) anywhere from about 2 million to 200 000 years ago but we could disappear as a species by one catastrophe or another in the near future and probably will from anything from 10 or 100 years to about 5 or 6 billion years. 4. We have done our best to understand life, along the way postulating various explanations and mythologies including creation by God. This is very slowly coming to be seen for the unhelpful and dangerous, escapist anachronism it is.

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5. The principle of entropy explains how all phenomena begin well, energetically, before gradually and inevitably deteriorating and dying, even if interrupted temporarily by surges of creativity and apparent rebirths. 6. The insecurity of life and knowledge of death necessitated by entropy, destruction and uncertainty has always troubled humans and has informed our efforts to survive and to try to overcome or deny these facts. 7. Predation and stealth, and capitalization on their advantages, underpin survival for most animals. Human life and civilization is characterized by a mixture of vitality and virtues such as cooperation, language, toolmaking and creativity, with a negative underbelly of dysfunctionality, destructiveness, deceit, folly, suffering and death. 8. It seems highly likely that at some era in our evolution we lost touch with our animal-like, innocent, subsistence-centred, primarily sensuous nature and developed time, language, tools, measurement, property, patriarchal dominance, art, religion and thought that, as well as conferring some survival advantages, also came to be imperceptibly internalized to the extent that we became cognitively dominated, self-deceived, and alienated from our deeper (affective, somatic) selves. 9. Our very neuroanatomy, genetic structure, history, civilization and current lifestyles carry and perpetuate our uniquely human creativity and destructiveness, and our imagination and irrationality. 10. Many, perhaps all, of our attempted solutions to our problems (e.g. social groupings, religion, philosophy, politics, education, psychotherapy, science and technology) become problems themselves, compounding our tradition of failure to fully understand and confront our fundamental malaise. 11. We do not understand the relationship between the intertwined forces of positive energy, hope, or negentropy, and destructiveness and doom. We have known glimmers of hope, not only for piecemeal mitigation of our problems but for a final breakthrough in human consciousness, enlightenment; but this – if real – yet remains highly elusive. 12. The mass of human beings are alienated from their full consciousness, all societies and cultures are likewise fragmented and prob-


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lematic, and it is possible that humanity will sooner or later cause irreversible and catastrophic damage not only to itself but to the Earth’s environment. 13. It is possible that we are at least dimly aware of our cosmically lonely (post-theistic) situation and hence responsibility as a species to grow up; but we are simultaneously paralysed by terror and unwilling to do so. 14. Anthropathology is one name given to this whole scenario, to understanding it, to perceiving it as one dysfunctional movement and to postulating that some sort of solution, hitherto unknown and untried, just might be discoverable. But if so, it will be countercultural and eschatological; it cannot be compatible with conventional thought systems and social institutions, which are themselves anthropathologically infected. 15. Given the extent of self-deceit embedded in our nature collectively and individually, we are highly susceptible to denial, false solutions, premature celebrations of success and charismatic individuals misguidedly claiming authority. Any way forward must guard against such problems; dialogue should be set against dogma. This, then, is my summary sketch and I hope I have fairly explored some of the subtleties and objections to it in previous chapters. Now let me look concisely at the range of possible responses to this scenario.

RESPONSES TO THE ANTHROPATHOLOGY THESIS I believe we all have some intuitive ‘grounding’ in understanding anthropathology and an implicit response to it in the way we live. The following is an attempt to categorize likely responses: Hedonism – I acknowledge that life may be beyond my personal control as well as beyond our collective control. I accept that much of it is ‘bad’. In these circumstances, I enjoy myself as much as I realistically can (eat, drink, make love and be merry), without wishing to harm others. Personal and social responsibility – Accepting the folly and destructiveness of mankind, I want to do all I can to mitigate our problems. Individuals should lead healthy, moral, prosocial, eco-friendly lifestyles; social policies should be responsive to local and global needs.

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Heroic, self-sacrificing, revolutionary action – I fully subscribe to the thesis that civilization is sick but believe it is so due to concrete socio-political arrangements that can and must be challenged. I take it upon myself to suffer, endure hardship, die or kill if necessary, in order to bring about radical social change. Agnosticism – After listening to both sides of the anthropathology debate, I am unconvinced by either. I do not know what is true, I am suspicious of those who seem certain but I keep listening to evidence. I may remain agnostic or I may be persuaded. Cynicism and despair – I agree completely with the negative picture put across and its impact on me is one of enormous despair. I see no way out of our human impasse, I am depressed, resigned and inactive, perhaps even suicidal. Evaluative stance – Many of the negatives presented here warrant further investigation. Mindful of the temptation to self-deceit and selfserving politics, I demand objective data gathering in the interests of a rigorous anthropathology audit. Denial – I completely refute this thesis, it doesn’t accord with my own experience or temperament, nor with my reading of events. It is highly selective and does not warrant much, if any of my time. Denial may be intellectually robust or feebly head-in-the-sand. Criminal or psychopathological stance – The world is a mess, I take this as read. Mine is the response of the looter: take what you can for yourself, while you can. This corresponds with the politics of selfishness. The psychopathic leader is ready for any genocide, the amoral entrepreneur for any market opportunity. Religious fantasy – My group and I have faith that a better world awaits us after this one and that we cannot know God’s mysterious reasons for acting as he does. We accept our own shortcomings, try to follow God’s law, but ultimately throw ourselves on his mercy. Mystical transcendence – Fully accepting the enormity of the human condition, I do not resist, analyse or flee from it, or build a hedge of hope against it, but find myself moved profoundly into a new state of consciousness, beyond the tired, verbal, partisan and bargaining. I do not know if this list represents every kind of possible response but I believe that most of us will see roughly where we fit, and we may also see ourselves shifting from one to another. (I think I could sign up to six of these!1) Of course, the list and its phrasing are also contentious. Religious adherents, for example, will reject the epithet of ‘fantasy’. Pathological optimists may reject the label of ‘denial’. But this approximate categorization gives us something to work with. Within it, we can surely see tendencies towards and against genuine efforts to grapple with the problems that face us. But we must also


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accept that among 6.5 billion people there will be huge differences. Nothing is ever likely to stop the murderous fervour of some religious or revolutionary activists, except some form of totalitarian monitoring, incarceration or equally distasteful counter-tactics. We can hardly expect more than age-appropriate ‘hedonism’ from the very young. Hopefully, an increasing number of people feel a sense of personal responsibility and act guided by a ‘morality of decency’, and a hope for social and even global cohesion. How we respond depends on our temperaments but also on our personal horizons. Many of us see through the lens of immediate concerns (hunger, pain-avoidance, profit, sexual interest, etc.). Some of us are mainly concerned with those issues affecting our families, neighbourhoods, cultures and countries; our concerns are local and short-term (e.g. which political party shall we vote for?) Some have mid-term concerns about threats to the environment, global social justice, peace, which may cover a future period of decades. And some are preoccupied with the very longest of long-term scenarios: how long can humankind survive, what are the prospects for planet Earth, for the solar system and for the known cosmos itself? Perhaps most of us think about each of these to some extent. Possibly, some of us are unhealthily overconcerned with the immediate or the long term. My impression is that many sense the truth of what is said by critics of the human species and prophets of doom, but most feel helpless to do anything about it. And even those who want to change probably don’t know how, or don’t get genuinely very far in their efforts. Most of us are therefore left with a vague sense of failure and frustration and have no alternative but to just get on with life, with our own everyday survival, even if mixed with some prosocial and idealistic efforts. This aspect of the human predicament is perhaps the gloomiest. Acute anthropathology is bad enough but the common realization that we can’t after all do much to alter course is against our nature as survivors and problem-solvers. Despair is unpalatable and unsustainable; hope, faith and belief are much more attractive but ultimately transparent illusions. Living in the mental space between these is very difficult but perhaps the only honest position preparatory to genuine transcendence.

ANTHROPATHOLOGY: ONE FOCUS OR MANY? We have seen repeatedly that the topic of whether anthropathology itself is legitimate cannot be peremptorily brushed aside; neither can the questions of competing takes on what’s wrong with us, priorities

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for moral attention and outright disputes about whose version of wrong and right should take precedence. There are indeed many roots of our suffering. Clearly, some thinkers regard humans as stuck with pluralism that can be seen as morally neutral, threatening or enriching. This is complex territory, so I take some examples on which to reflect. Mackinnon (2005) argues that pornography is not a rare or isolated practice but something ubiquitous that damages society generally rather than leading ‘only’ to the exploitation, rape and degradation of, and violence of many kinds against, women. It is universally available and impacts on how women and girls are perceived and treated. It contributes to ‘mass desensitization’. Mackinnon decries the condoning of pornography, tacitly or otherwise, by governments, businesspeople, libertarians, writers and artists. The novel (or ‘upmarket high-concept work of fiction’) American Psycho is explicitly condemned for its use of examples of women skinned alive, mutilated and raped. ‘There is such a thing as pornography, as its producers and consumers well know. No one is making tens of billions of dollars from, or masturbating to, the Bible, for example,’ Mackinnon argues. It is hard to argue against the distastefulness and direct and indirect violating effects of pornography, and Mackinnon has pioneered the case that women should have the legal right to sue when they can show a direct connection between pornography and being hurt themselves. Without wishing to diminish such arguments, let me consider some related problems. First, it is notoriously difficult to agree on where to draw the line between so-called hard and soft pornography, and against these and sexually related material in other forms. Of course, difficulty doesn’t necessarily equal impossibility. Child pornography has been targeted as a priority for legal action, which shows that where the will exists, legislation can readily be changed. Secondly, it is difficult to determine who has the right to assert their own moral and aesthetic values against those of others. Certain religious adherents regard as pornographic in kind the ‘sexualized’ sartorial customs of millions of women who would refuse to accept their sartorial sanctions. Thirdly, while Mackinnon and others argue that women’s experiences and social science combine to create a watertight case against the alleged innocuousness of (any level of) pornography, others deny this and regard such a case as unproven and threatening to civil liberties. Fourthly, anti-pornography may be regarded as an instance of fighting back against one aspect of unjust patriarchal anthropathology but, along with anti-racism and the like, is clearly championed mostly by those who believe themselves (rightly or egomorphically, or both) to be disadvantaged or hurt by it.2 In other words, most of us have grievances and there is usually a high-level match between the personally


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or culturally aggrieved and the political cause being advanced. While understandable, this leads to my last point: we all tend to suffer differently and to have different priorities for moral and political change, and one group’s priorities almost always conflict with another’s. I mentioned earlier in this book the clash between French schools and certain Islamic sartorial customs. Moves to make the expression of ‘religious hatred’ illegal in the United Kingdom are promised to protect some sections of the community, but others object that these will disadvantage – or even criminalize freedom of speech for – others (Appignanesi, 2005). For example, exactly what may or may not be expressed, with what degree of passion, as regards sincere atheistic objections to religious beliefs? Mackinnon is rightly against violence towards women, but female genital mutilation, commonly demanded in some religions, is regarded as violent by many women. On the very question of pornography and its sartorial connections, many feminists are vociferous in their objections to certain religious demands for the burka or other restrictive wear. Mackinnon’s example of pornography versus Bible may be turned on its head: many will argue that the religious hypocrisy, sexual repression and violence generated by the Bible may be far more dangerous than a liberal culture that allows for aided masturbation, for example, or a politics of manipulative hypocrisy more dangerous than soft pornography (Flynt, 2004). Indeed, this is partly the position of original psychoanalysis. One might multiply examples of contradictory ethics endlessly. We must ask whether it is acceptable to voice them passionately and without fear and also suggest that convergence be looked for. At various points in the text I have expressed my doubts about the value of aspects of higher education.3 The discipline of psychology is one of these, first for its failure to get at the heart of what makes us human and what might change us and secondly for its complicity in the perpetuation of uncritical tradition, self-protectionism, reputation chasing, professional competitiveness and ultimate triviality. Joynson (1974) and Smail (1993) have been notable insider critics of psychology and its exaggerated claims. Take Sternberg’s (2002) attempt to map out a psychology of ‘why smart people can be so stupid’. One of the cases referred to is Bill Clinton’s sexual infidelity with Monica Lewinsky and the lies he resorted to in order to protect himself. Now, consider even briefly how trivial this much-publicized example of fellatio actually was (not to mention how costly the investigation into it), relative to Clinton’s relatively good track record as a leader. Then ponder on the track record of psychology and psychologists (without even knowing their private follies) and ask what psychology has done to make the world a better place in relation to the money and time it

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consumes and the reputation it projects and guards. How does generating another theory (say, the ‘imbalance theory of foolishness’ found in this book) actually take us forward? And how can psychology continue to operate largely as if the wider world and its dire ills do not exist, or do not constantly impinge on us? Psychology is a project defined and protected by the technical-rational society in which it exists; its history, values and aspirations are essentially Western and patriarchal. It aims to continue in the mould it has created (the breakaway faction of ‘critical psychology’ being an exception but not a truly radical one). Psychology does not, and cannot, engage with the real problems of the world with any moral urgency because it is sealed off in its own unbalanced sphere. It cannot or will not come up with a critical or useful psychology of the human condition, mainly because its scientific pretensions fasten it to conventional, expediently researchable micro-factors. But arguably a holistic study of psychological anthropathology is what we need. Mystics and philosophers like Bohm (1994), Krishnamurti and Bohm (1985), Tolle (2006) and others have argued that it is our very thought processes that are responsible for most of the mischief in the world. Psychologists like Goleman (2004) attempt to get at this problem (unconvincingly to my mind) but it is certainly an enduring problem, in spite of Tallis’s (1997) plea to see us in terms of an undeceived deliberateness. Like many academic subjects, psychology suffers from an intradisciplinary focus that corrodes it. Evolutionary psychology has promise, I think, but is locked into generating and embellishing speculative and sometimes spurious micro-explanations instead of broad patterns. It is also largely removed from contemporary real-world problems. I suspect that ‘anthropathology’ would not sit well with psychologists (and certainly not with the new breed of positive psychologists) as an academic proposition. Apart from any other considerations, psychology exists because it is well funded and its members know (but do not want to be reminded) that resources are finite. It is highly unlikely, but imagine if a watertight critique were made of psychology, showing that it wastes huge amounts of money, has an ‘emperor’s new clothes’ character, and has little practical impact – surely psychologists would fight to the death to defend it. We understandably defend our livelihoods but we also defend our group identities. Individually, culturally, religiously, politically and nationally, at any one time there are myriad clashes of views on what is wrong and who is right and wrong. Singer (2004b) has argued that in the face of world problems (the natural environment, economy and law), a common, globalized view, even government, is required. This may be a doomed hope in the short to medium term and many would object to the


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totalitarian threat implicitly posed but it does possess a sharp ethical logic. Now, it may be possible to entertain and advance the case for anti-pornography alongside every other case with some similar merit, but it may not be practicable. The British government outlawed fox hunting around the same time as it entered into an illegal war with Iraq and committed troops to participation in the killing of many thousands of human beings. Governments tend to do what is expedient and timely for them, as do individuals. We are all also at the mercy of our current state of knowledge and need to make decisions on the basis of best available information and best estimates. Hence, nuclear power came to be decried for its dangers but many, including the scientist James Lovelock, have now recanted and argue that alternatives like wind power are by comparison hugely inefficient, insufficient and ugly, therefore more nuclear power plants need to be built. Singer puts certain ethical contrasts keenly: Consider two aspects of globalization: first, planes exploding as they slam into the World Trade Center, and second, the emission of carbon dioxide from the exhausts of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. One brought instant death and left unforgettable images that were watched on television screens all over the world; the other makes a contribution to climate change that can be detected only by scientific instruments. Yet both are indications of the way in which we are now one world, and the more subtle changes to which sport utility vehicle owners unintentionally contribute will almost certainly kill far more people than the highly visible one. (Singer, 2004b, p. 1)

Now, take a mythically average, ethically sensitive citizen. How is she or he to respond to the teeming demands for justice facing us all? Can every one of us make some significant personal contributions to our global environmental problems, poverty, disease, pornography, racism, urban violence and so on, at the same time as juggling the many demands of our busy and stressful personal lives? Jack (2005) gives the personal example of trying to decide on the best ethical course for arranging a family holiday to France; whether to go by train or plane, the former means of transport costing £630, the latter £238, with the plane being six times more environmentally damaging. One might be heroically austere and either pay more or not go at all, but the point is that everyday ethical decisions are complex enough (not to mention that one may be desperate for a holiday after a year of occupational misery). Similar decisions face us every day in matters of whether to buy – and pay much more for – environmentally and animal friendly organic food, whether to cycle to work and risk traffic

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accidents and toxic fumes. In order to make such decisions, we must consult and try to discriminate between competing sources of information and political arguments. If I were a young person considering a choice of degree subjects, exactly why would I choose psychology, for example, in the current global context of environmental threats and terrorism? Indeed I may consider ethically whether a degree is a priority at all. There are no easy, straightforward answers, and there are complex and numerous ethical demands facing us all the time, collectively adding stress to our lives. It is this stressful plurality of demands that I want to address here. We must either believe that a gradually worked through agenda for justice and coexistence claims can be achieved, and achieved in a timely and effective manner that does not in itself introduce unwitting anthropathological loops, or that some other, more urgent and unified way forward is available. To some extent Jack (2005) intimates awareness of just such a dilemma and suggests that ‘in the end, only fear in our guts will change us’. While this is probably not true for some wellinformed individuals who are in a position to weigh up scientifically and respond wisely to the merits of information on, say, climate change, genetically modified food (Smith, 2004b), health habits or cloning of embryos, most of us are likely to change our behaviour only when we suffer or see its negative effects proximally for ourselves. As politicians in democracies know, it is those issues that affect or hurt voters most directly that are likely to influence their personal voting priorities. We may experience fear in our guts, and hence collective unity, when we perceive ourselves faced with a common human enemy (as in war) or common natural adversity (e.g. as in extreme weather conditions and volcanic eruptions). Usually, then, it does take an emergency to galvanize large groups into consensus and action. Acute macroanthropathology can focus the group mind, as can acute microanthropathology the individual. Unfortunately, as seen in Singer’s example, above, it is the subtle and almost imperceptible, chronic trends that we fail to grasp, agree and act on. If it is difficult enough for individuals to weigh up evidence and act on it, it seems also too difficult for institutions. The traditional Christian church is ambivalent about its role beyond preaching and commending its traditional morality; and the more energetic faith movements of Islam and Christianity have marked biases towards anachronistic moralities and an eye on the alleged afterlife. Democratic governments are slow to act, sensitive to votes, unhelpfully biased by traditional party politics and corrupted by self-interested politicians. In local and international activist politics lies some hope, perhaps (Notes from Nowhere, 2003). To quite an extent, government


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and society look to universities for unbiased data gathering, analysis and recommendation. Yet, as I have suggested, universities today are hopelessly fragmented by discipline and increasingly forced into a servant role to bureaucratic illusions and capitalist masters. As far as I can see, every group, however well meaning and well informed, has its biased focus and agenda. To take one example, politicians (or anyone who thinks politically) have a poor grasp of the psychological dimensions of social pathology and psychologists (and counsellors, psychotherapists and their like) have a poor political grasp. I am constantly disappointed to discover that a promisingly titled new book contains such biases and omissions. Academics are bogged down in the minutiae of scholarship, passionate moral writers dispense with accurate detail, and almost nowhere can one find accurately analysed but passionately argued cases that are not egomorphic or deceived by visions of fragmentary wholeness.

ESCHATOLOGY AND HOPE There is an eschatological impact associated with insight from anthropathology. The more I ask ‘What’s wrong with us?’ and ‘Why do we suffer?’ the less satisfactory are the answers put forward by politicians, priests, psychologists and others; these see the symptoms and treat the status quo as normal and inevitable, even positive. The more I see the universal consequences of anthropathology, the less able am I to tolerate acquiescence in its everyday web, for example sitting through time-wasting bureaucratic meetings. ‘Business as usual’ looks like madness to me, a social madness in which all collude. Krishnamurti constantly confronted his audiences with the insistence that our way of life and the predominant mode of thinking driving it had to change completely. Presumably this eschatological attitude is something like that experienced by revolutionaries, terrorists and millenarian mystics. However, with the benefit of historical hindsight, we also see that these movements were mistaken. Attempted grandiose solutions to anthropathology have generally resulted in widespread, unproductive violence (Glover, 2001) and nothing fundamentally has changed. We are at a point now, I believe, when we must see that the ‘business as usual’ stance will not work, the cheerful progressivist philosophy is not credible and the various revolutionary scenarios are based on poor analysis and doomed to a pattern of violence followed by the same old anthropathological problems. While attractive as an individual solution, enlightenment simply doesn’t come to more than a handful and even then solves nothing practically.

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The constructive way forward is more likely to be one of consciousness-raising towards a major shift in understanding, perhaps incorporating an analysis like Taylor’s (2005) of our probable historical human ‘fall’, linked with urgent ecological education and action (Singer, 2004b), radical social policy changes (Somit and Peterson, 2003) and radically changing lifestyles. Unfortunately, the interests and momentum of patriarchy, capitalism, nationalism and religion are very likely to obstruct the realization of this post-anthropathology project. Imagine for a moment that fantasy were realized: a critical mass of humans see the human condition and its imminent consequences for what it is, see its dire consequences, realize how powerfully it operates in themselves, are determined to embrace radical change and become psychologically transformed: they are enlightened, unselfish, but simultaneously technically competent, and they command respect and are able to usher in a timely new civilization with minimal opposition. Now, that would be just great except for one thing – it isn’t going to happen. I don’t believe this is my pessimism speaking; there is simply no historical basis for confidence that large numbers of humans have the capacity to become so transformed. We certainly have visionaries and entrepreneurs and a handful of genuinely wise and almost enlightened people but the former group lack psychological acuity and selflessness and the latter tend to lack practicality. It’s possible we could move towards the realization that another ‘catastrophe-first pattern’ (Martin, 2006) cannot be risked, a realization that could jog the consciousness of a critical mass into a necessarily improved state. But the current norm for us is uninspiring and corrupt leaders and sleepwalking masses. Meanwhile, as we have always received apocalyptic pronouncements and warm utopian visions, so we do today. The contemporary mystic Eckhart Tolle (2006) expects a ‘new earth’ and sees signs of increasing numbers of people awakening to their true consciousness. I do not. Just as Krishnamurti saw little change among his listeners across the years, I doubt whether many are actually ‘getting’ the elusive quality of personal awakening. Taylor, advocating ‘spiritual practice’, is similarly optimistic, believing that after ‘6000 years of insanity’ we are coming full circle, towards a pre-Fallen state: ‘a bright future which rekindles the Golden Age of our past’ (p. 307). Griffith (2003) prophetically sweeps aside the New Age movement, feminism, environmentalism and so on. He expects to see a battle between those who deny and those who accept that there is a dreadful human condition as he describes it and those who bring the revelation of a new denialfree way to live: ‘the final “Battle of Armageddon”, between those who initially find it overwhelmingly difficult to cope with the truth


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about humans and those that don’t, will be short’ (p. 401). Radical, fundamentalist Islamists hope and struggle to institute an Islamic world state in which, presumably, women would have few rights, dress would be prescribed and rituals strictly adhered to, and harsh laws would be enforced by corporal punishments and extreme penalties. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and others await a second coming after which they and their faithful elites will ascend to heaven. Gray (2002, 2004) sees bleak historical cycles, recurring struggles and ultimate destruction and human oblivion. We have those declaring that oil will run out by 2040 and alongside this other resource shortages and environmental catastrophes may tip us over the edge into nick-of-time reform or disaster. An interesting prediction by Rear Admiral Chris Parry was published in the Sunday Times (11 June 2006). He forecasts that large numbers of immigrants with little loyalty to their host countries will effect a reverse colonization. Likening this to the fifth-century Roman empire being invaded by the Goths and the Vandals, Parry sees this movement as being caused by environmental and demographic factors, leading to a return of high seas piracy, erosion of borders, abuse of robots, nanotechnology, lasers, microwave weapons and so on. Africa, the Middle East and central Asia are prime areas of militant unrest. The current world structure will crumble, he says, by 2018. However extreme, xenophobic and unlikely, these are models that many governments rehearse in order to prepare themselves for worst scenarios. Firm dates for the end of the world are regularly given by religious prophets (Stone, 2000) but we now also have to weigh up military and scientific predictions with dates attached. Stephen Hawking posted a question on the Internet as follows: ‘In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?’ Among the 25 000 replies were the expected hopes for technology, love and peace, religion, and the misanthropists’ dark views. Hawking’s response was that he does not know but suspects we will have to migrate to other planets (Guardian, 3 August 2006). The article speaks of the online community’s ‘broad camps, populated by optimists, religious groups, climate change deniers and fellow doom-mongers’. We have always had eschatological scenarios but the current one is an interesting blend of seemingly ultimate environmental threats and religious-terrorist threats: indifference to the taken-for-granted earth, an insanely agitated religious and territorial-cultural fervour – these male-driven trends look set to make us implode or expand. We will wipe ourselves out or colonize other planets and/or learn sustainable means of living collaboratively on this earth.

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As Neiman (2002) says of Schopenhauer, ‘In an age bent on inventing whole sciences to detect signs of progress, his vision of a cosmic trend toward self-destruction was bound to be ignored’ (p. 196). But a trend is not an inevitability. When I began this book, I was much gloomier about the human condition than I am now. This may simply reflect various feel-good undercurrents in my personal life, of which I am only half aware, but I think it has to do partly with a sense of liberation. If we look at how bad things are, we may be freed from some of the inchoate enormity of the task, that is, it is not quite so bad nor hopeless when looked at and broken down. I also feel confirmed, even if it turns out deludedly, in my sense that both a hysteria to survive and entropy, and our attempted denial of these, are primary engines of our destructiveness. We are bound to fight to survive and thrive (a kind of eros) and bound to deteriorate and die (thanatos). These are legacies from nature, from archaic being itself. Was there an actual ‘wrong turn’ in our development about 6000 or so years ago? Or a painful bifurcation between our consciousness and our instincts 2 million years ago? I suspect something of the sort but we may never know and it may not matter. Very definitely, I have come to the conclusion that patriarchy and the ‘male mind’ are responsible for a great deal of our anthropathology, that is, anthropathology is in many ways andropathy. Is there such a ‘thing’ as anthropathology? And is mine a hopelessly egomorphic, flawed view of the human condition? I leave these questions for the reader to decide. On a constructive note, let’s fantasize tentatively. Let’s begin to demote or contextualize men, obviously not in a mass, man-hating way, but beginning with the most obvious culprits. In particular, national rule by ambitious, aggressive, unwise men needs somehow to be phased out in favour of government by the thoughtful, wise, listening and well informed. Neither sham democracies nor state-inflicted pseudoegalitarianism work. Some new blend of enlightened cooperation allowing for optimal freedom within agreed human and environmental tolerances must be found. But in some global matters, someone must ultimately take global decisions (e.g. what to do about asteroids?) Our grave environmental problems must be faced and acted upon, hopefully not by frustrated radicals using violence. Lifestyles must change accordingly, probably towards a more self-contained, low-consumption, austere kind, but work demands will lessen and the contemplative mind might blossom. Population must stabilize and probably fall. Religions have had their day and should not enjoy the uncritical privileges they have been accorded; they are simply bodies of anachronistic thought driven by fear, hope, myth and tradition, in most cases patriarchal anthropathology-in-disguise. Individual differences


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need to be honoured but fetishized group ‘difference and diversity’ made suspect. Perhaps there is a place for education to help induce a post-anthropathological era, by making space for meditation, dialogue and genuinely well-motivated and needed scholarship. Perhaps there is a small place for counselling and therapy, although by definition a more humanized world will generate far fewer personal problems and not require specialist confidants, interpreters and helpers. Along with reduced populations, communities will probably need to be smaller, with schools being much smaller and economies more regionalized. Unfortunately, the more one tries to imagine all this, the more unlikely it seems that it will ever come about, given the entrenched nature of anthropathology today and the impossibility of foreseeing quite what geopolitics and technology will throw up in the decades to come; and I am aware that it is my (naive) fantasy that will not be shared by fox-hunting, smoking, SUV-enthusiastic religious rednecks and many others! And the whiff of futility hangs over us too: if we could ever miraculously agree to establish something mildly utopian like this, what then? It could not last. Where you stand in the pendulum between Pollyannaism and denial on the one extreme, utterly bleak anthropathology-recognizing nihilism on the other, and pragmatics in the centre, is up to you.

ANTHROPATHOLOGY AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT We live at a time when the commercial dominance of universities means that some science and humanities subjects have disappeared from some universities, temporarily or otherwise, while in some cases Golf Studies thrives. Yet, psychology remains strong (I must admit, to my puzzlement, given frequent complaints from students that it is arid and inhuman). Recalling the case for interdisciplinary convergence put by Wilson (1998), cited in the preface to this book, and remaining aware of the environmental crisis we are in (Laszlo, 2006) and the canyon years ahead (Martin, 2006), is it too much to wonder if the establishment of a serious study of anthropathology (or whatever our collective problem be called) might be considered? Fashionable subjects like citizenship come and go, and Peace Studies continues in an increasingly conflicted world. Traditional subjects like literature and languages have little problem continuing, even though we might object that the study of story-telling and perpetuation of divisive languages are neither priorities nor feasible as long-term developments. Theology continues to be studied and financed despite the very high probability that its central focus, God, simply does not exist. A certain ‘business

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as usual’ ethos prevails in universities beneath popular anxieties and international conflicts. Is it a reasonable idea that we bring some focus on the human condition (on chronic as well as acute micro- and macroanthropathology) within higher education? (I do not assume that a focus at other educational levels is not to be considered but neither do I concentrate on it here.) Although I think it is a good idea, I also have serious reservations. It seems a good, even necessary, idea to bring the seriousness of the human condition and the current crisis into our universities. But universities are traditional places that contain, as I have argued, large anthropathological obstacles within themselves. Universities are constructed and defended along certain lines and in spite of rhetoric about innovation and relevance remain deeply resistant to fundamental change. Suppose, as Martin (2006), argues, we wanted to foster and utilize the energy and idealism of our young people. Would we be willing to sweep away arcane traditions in order to facilitate this? I doubt it. Would we allow universities to become the hotbeds of debate and protest they were during the 1960s and 1970s? It seems unlikely. Would it be a good idea to create a journal of anthropathology? At one level, yes: let’s facilitate interdisciplinary convergence in this very way. But imagine the ways in which the norms and traditions of the publishing and academic industries would appropriate and misshape it. How can you meld together radically new ways of thinking with old, and how include passion about confronting human dysfunctionality with the anachronistic values and practices of esoteric and competitive journal submissions? Indeed, how would you reform the research, conference and journal traditions so that instead of being self-serving and childish ventures, they became revolutionary contributions to a new kind of civilization? How would you protect the energy of discovery and urgency from anthropathological drift and entropy? Clearly there is a place for scholarship in uncovering and protecting an accurate grasp of human history and reality (and many other areas of knowledge) but infinite information-expansion for its own sake is not helpful and is probably counter-productive, as discussed in Chapter 1. Both the trance-like pursuit of trivial forms of knowledge and of contemporarily seductive forms of capitalistic pseudo-knowledge must start to give way to a necessarily revolutionary examination of the chronic human condition and its current crisis. But a judicious marriage of scholarship and passion could both enliven the former and dampen the waywardness of the latter. I am thinking here of the dangers inherent in radical political activists (e.g. right-wing nationalist party members) dispensing with an accurate grasp of truth.


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Empirical research has a much higher profile in academia today than critical thinking or theorizing does. This in itself says something about prevalent values. To my mind, a great deal of research is trivial, hardly improves on the obvious, on common sense, and does not warrant public funding. Elliott and Rotherham (2006) give some examples of government-funded research they regard as sheer wastefulness. But could anthropathology be fruitfully researched? We might canvass the public on their views as to their perceived happiness levels, their concept of the human condition (if any) and their perceptions of the deep causes of the current environmental crisis. We could investigate the claims regarding enlightened, anthropathologyfree individuals. We might devise a research programme to discover whether young people do experience the dawning of an awareness of universal anthropathology and of becoming resigned to it. In a spirit of evaluative anthropathology, we should certainly attempt to elucidate and rank the elements of human dysfunctionality. An objective comparison, for example, of the relative ecological burden of ‘fat, highpolluting Americans’ versus ‘thin, low-polluting Africans’ might tell us a great deal. A thoroughgoing attempt to understand the troublesome features of many young men, their chronic drive towards crime and aggression, would be valuable. Obviously much greater commitment is needed to conduct research into sustainable technology and other solutions to the environmental crisis but even then it should be balanced by attention to critiques like those of Jensen (2006); and exposés of research wastage and distortion like those of Davis (2002) must be heeded. It wouldn’t take much thought to create a few research scenarios and to apply for funding. Unfortunately, I suspect that the level of truthfulness demanded by a rigorous commitment to a study of anthropathology would scuttle the prospects of launching a rigorously comprehensive, empirical research project into anthropathology (even supposing that the research body assessors were to give a second thought to offering financial support to such grey-skies thinking). Talk alone will not change our lifestyles or save our planet, but a revival of lively seminar systems in which contributors are encouraged to voice social concerns and critiques passionately might take us a little closer to social change than our current inauthentic practices of trance-like lecture attendance and robotically criteria-meeting essay writing. Experiments with mixtures of personal development groups, dialogue on current affairs and perennial themes, contemplation and meditation, and political action, might create something usefully new. Universities may or may not be the right places for this but if they are not, where is? I do not want to repeat arguments from Chapter 5 but I suspect that the days of universities as centres of passionate debate

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may be all but over. Passionate debate does not have to displace traditional learning but it is likely to alter the balance considerably. We may need to learn how to make our houses more energy efficient and how to ward off asteroids but we also need to learn how to dialogue about relationships and religion and value each other more than longstanding myths and ideologies. Do we really need to perpetuate universities as temples for the worship of dead white intellectual males and their hallowed ideas? We do not have to jettison this sort of heritage but we can begin to get it into proportion. Again, such ferment does not have to take place in universities but it almost certainly must happen somewhere soon. Interestingly, a topical belief in late 2006 is that universities are by default sites of unrest and radicalization among some young Muslims: can we not encourage genuine radical debate as something overt rather than covert? I do not mean to condone irrational thought systems or violence in their name but to commend informed and rigorous open debate; in this process it would be probable that the irrationalities of both religion and capitalism would be exposed. Our current dualistic stand-offs mean that all islands of irrationality maintain their position rather than all being exposed. Just as many students experience disquiet at the dehumanizing aspects of studying academic psychology, so some academics will privately confess to wondering how relevant their subject now is. The urgent interdisciplinary and ‘one world’ focus that is probably required more than traditional subjects simply doesn’t yet exist. Universal environmental literacy is becoming more important than literacy itself, for example, yet we still fret over misspelling and poor grammar as if it is vital. Universities in gradual entropic melt-down house academics who drive their subjects, anthropathological drift-style, into ritualistic, detached and trivial patterns, while students sleepwalk through their pseudo-learning to a qualification that employers mesmerically accept as a ticket of general competence. In the meantime, human beings lose their vitality and the world about them falls apart. You may not recognize this picture of events and you are quite likely to dismiss such an observation as an unhelpful generalization without copious supporting evidence. But there is mediomorphic evidence (and often too much of it and much of it is contradictory) and there is the evidence of our senses, and sometimes we must choose between these (Berman, 1998).

THE ANTHROPATHOLOGICAL CRUNCH The most pessimistic of environmentalists give us 10 years until doomsday. McGuire (2005) suggests we have perhaps 100 years before


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significantly harsh environmental change occurs, 10 000 years until a certain Ice Age and 5 billion years until solar death. Along the way, devastating geological and meteorological changes will render mass human survival extremely difficult; and we have no way of calculating precisely what devastation will be wrought by our own international wars and their increasingly insane weapons of mass destruction. For Kaku (2005), human ingenuity might still save us. For Lyotard (1991), even the longest-term figure for solar death should urgently preoccupy us, indeed should come to define us as humans.4 In the meantime we are not acting with urgency in relation to the most proximal doomsday figures and most of us are unconcerned with the longest timescales. Since I have discussed in Chapter 1 the ‘hysteria to survive’, I have to concede that perhaps the mass of humans are in fact unconsciously resigned to perishing as a species. We may be lazily concerned for our children’s future at most. Individually we often act as if we are not going to die, while we know that we are. Collectively we seem to deny our long-term certain demise, perhaps due to the mismatch between the immediate horizons of our bestial inheritance and our advanced knowledge. But I am in some agreement with Lyotard that our collective end should probably inform our view of ourselves. Just as we all know we have at best 80 or so years to live, and possibly much less if faced with a terminal medical diagnosis, we should know that our species, all species, our planet and solar system have a finite lifespan. This knowledge, although initially depressing, could just become the parameter we need to get our affairs in order, to cease our unnecessary childish behaviours and to live wisely – as post-anthropathologically as possible – in the time we have. From my counselling context, I am of course acutely conscious that matters of global and long-term concern are not everyone’s day-today priority. It is also quite possible that increased awareness of our hazardous global prospects will add to rather than diminish personal depression and anxiety. If we are required to adopt more austere lifestyles, for example, such adjustments may cause a deep sense of loss for the material comforts and aspirations we have grown used to. If we continue to experience anthropathological escalation in the form of terrorism, war, religious and inter-ethnic conflicts, anxieties about personal security and death will escalate. If our short- to medium-term future should turn out to be dystopian ‘canyon years’ and a ‘dark age ahead’ the incidence of conflict, depression and suicide could well grow. But the inevitability of an anthropathology-facing agenda means that we will have to adapt somehow sooner or later. ‘In the end, only fear in our guts will change us’? Necessary change seems unlikely to come about spontaneously or by democratic or revolutionary means. Academics, who may be well

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informed, do not tend to adopt or excel in public leadership roles. As I have argued earlier, we have few appropriately inspired and noncorrupt leaders and we are probably right to question the model of yet more alpha male leadership. I wish it were true, on the anarchist model, that leadership emerged from the people as necessary, but this hopefulness looks extremely implausible. Unfortunately fanatical revolutionary and religious groups do breed charismatic leaders but of exactly the wrong kind. So kairotic and appropriate leadership has to come from somewhere, and probably somewhere new – from people with no obvious or hidden anthropathological agenda of their own. Part of our adaptation might entail a reconceptualization of the very idea of individuality and individual responsibility. We might just willingly renounce our habitual acquisitiveness, competitiveness and other forms of patriarchal madness. We could perhaps adapt to the kind of non-egoic consciousness envisaged by Taylor (2005), the altruism advocated by Griffith (2003), the ‘one world’ ethic recommended by Singer (2004b); and, politically, to social policies based on a grasp of compassionate nihilism instead of troublesome group identity. In short, given the common enemy of resource shortages and with time running out, we might reorganize ourselves along compassionate and collaborative lines. Selfless friendship might displace any need for counselling and psychotherapy; enlightened shared interest might displace our long-standing dog-eat-dog behaviours. Or not. Notes 1. For the record, the four I cannot subscribe to are: heroic or revolutionary activism (I am too cowardly or introverted); denial (just can’t do it); the criminal or psychopathological stance (too introverted, parents too decent – but I’m perhaps somewhat capable of small psychopathic thoughts and deeds); and religious fantasy (just can’t do it). But while I object to denial and religious fantasy, I cannot deny that vestiges of the other two exist in my ‘sick soul’. 2. As a personal example, I am not aware that, as a man, I suffer in any obvious way from pornography. What I am aware of as something that adversely affects me on a daily basis is work. We might say that I prostitute myself as a photographer’s model might in order to earn money from pornography. I often experience work as demoralizing, as ‘useless toil’, especially its bureaucratic aspects, and not infrequently I experience a sense of disgust at necessary compromises, interpersonal games and neurotic ambitions. Egomorphically, I seriously regard bureaucracy as obscenely wasteful of my own and others’ lives. It doesn’t usually lead to violence or rape but often it does lead to misery, depression, stress and negative psychosomatic outcomes. 3. As Bayley (2004) scathingly puts it, ‘although often intellectually belligerent and opinionated, academics are also famously reluctant to reach conclu-


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sions, citing the principle that “more research is required” in order to forestall the energetic activity of jumping to conclusions’ (p. 17). I have made further criticisms in Chapter 5. 4. We commonly tend to think about possible major negative scenarios in worried, pessimistic or constructive, optimistic terms, we throw around insults like ‘climate change deniers’ or indulge in the niceties of ‘evaluative anthropathology’. But Baudrillard reminds us that ‘le pire n’est jamais sur’ (the worst is never sure to happen) (2005, p. 91). We surely have a better scientific grasp than ever but our science can be wrong or events and complexities can surprise us.

Glossary of Terms

Acute anthropathology an outstanding event of anthropathology at either individual or societal levels, for example, a psychotic breakdown or holocaust respectively. Although it contrasts with chronic anthropathology (see below), each can fuel and turn into the other. For example, following the violent American ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003, news reports appeared in 2004 of Iraqi prisoners abused by American and British soldiers. Amid the outrage, it was pointed out that already the everyday killing of people (something by now relatively chronic and taken for granted) appeared to have become far less of an outrage than their humiliation and denial of human rights, dramatized by these incidents of acute and self-evident anthropathology. Andropathology what’s wrong with human males. A comprehensive analysis might include the tendency of most male primates to be dominant; male chromosomal characteristics; testosterone implications; historical patriarchal dominance; aggression, competitiveness and destructiveness; and so on. Anthropathogenesis the origins of anthropathology; or more accurately, the proposition that such origins exist and the attempt to trace them. The biblical story of Adam is one version of this. ‘The being of evil coincides with anthropogony’ says Ricoeur (1967, p. 232) of the ‘Adamic myth’. Anthropathological drift the notion of loss of fidelity to an original state or identity. The restless mind appears almost unable to remain true to direct, embodied and non-dualistic experience. Contrary to any ‘sitting with’ ‘what is’ (the latter term frequently used by J. Krishnamurti), we actively convert original simplicity or direct compassion

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into complex illusions of understanding and necessary elaboration. For example, one’s own suffering may be simply responded to by another, who converts this into ‘counselling’, which is then heavily theorized, trained, supervised, researched, appropriated and professionalized, with little if any significant improvement on the original amateur response. Likewise, authentic mystical experiences are converted into elaborate religious beliefs and rituals. In information theory, it has been said that ‘noise’ drives out the signal. But all such diminishing returns and distortions are not noticed. Similar to ideas about unity and multiplicity from Empedocles onwards (Plotinus’s tolma also resonates here), anthropathological drift resembles an active form of entropy which drives civilizations and prevents (even forbids) direct perception. Unfortunately, the initial seriousness with which anthropathology may strike one will also be converted into theories of anthropathology and a drift into pseudo-seriousness about the human condition. Anthropathological enmeshment the common experience of (i) finding oneself in a difficult, painful situation; (ii) recognizing the high costs, perhaps impossibility, of extrication, and (iii) experiencing a sense of impotence. An example might be that you are stressed by working conditions but are trapped by financial constraints and, even as you visualize an escape, such as downshifting, you recognize that such a move will simply enmesh you in a different set of difficulties. Most of us are enmeshed in the conditions of capitalism but recognize that the alternatives of homelessness, voluntary austerity, communism or anarchism also have their unattractive aspects. Arguably, we are all systemically enmeshed: ‘the whole word is faking it, and everyone is complicit in everyone else’s frauds’ (Miller, 2003, p. 120). Paradoxically, the ensuing sense of impotence may save us from worse anthropathological loops. Anthropathological escalation the term for phenomena such as violent retaliation against violence and group and transgenerational, negatively reinforced momentum (e.g. aggressive racism and aggressive anti-racism, Islamophobia and Islamist terorism), cycles of child abuse and deprivation, and so on. This is one wrong or error feeding another. Anthropathological loops the tendency of anthropathological phenomena to be paradoxically reinforced and repeated – if in different forms – even through well-intentioned efforts to reduce and eliminate them. This is an attempted solution becoming another problem (via

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the mechanisms of self-deception and over-correctiveness), which is sometimes as bad as or worse than the original problem. Explicit examples are iatrogenic illness, that is, that caused by a doctor or medical treatment or environment (e.g. MRSA), a dangerous diet, or harmful or time-wasting psychotherapy. Such loops operate at both individual and social levels and the concept is similar to the Buddhist samsara (a repeating or circling), or vicious circle (German Teufelskreis) (see Batchelor, (2004, p. 59). It can also be related to Jung’s concept of enantiodrama – things eventually turn into their opposite – and to Wright’s (2005) ‘progress traps’. Or as Robinson (2005) puts it humorously and plainly, ‘Trying to make things better only makes things worse’. Anthropathology like psychopathology, this term is ambiguous: (i) the marked, universal tendency of human beings individually and collectively towards suffering, deceptiveness, irrationality, destructiveness and dysfunction, including an extreme difficulty in perceiving and freeing ourselves from this state; and (ii) the theory and study of why and how we suffer and the problems of remedying this. Unlike other disciplines, anthropathology must be described as an attempt to understand the phenomena of human dysfunction by none other than those, ourselves, who contain and suffer from these dysfunctional phenomena. It is therefore closer to humanistic psychology than traditional psychology but it cannot presume to be hopeful. Strictly speaking, the term should be anthropo-pathology but the elision is neater. Anthropology the academic discipline taking human beings as its subject. Unfortunately, anthropology is always fragmented into further fields, as indicated in placing the following limiting terms before it: social, cultural, physical, medical, moral, philosophical. Exceptionally, Graeber (2004) discusses a politically informed, socially engaged anarchist anthropology which assumes optimistically that human cooperativeness might be fully released. Anthropathology takes man, everyman, everywoman, you, me, steeped in the human condition (including the follies of academic correctness), as its subject. Anthropomurphism the principle that if anything can go wrong, it will. Taken from Murphy’s Law (also known as Sod’s Law and Finagles’s Law), it extends to the idea that nature itself contains the seeds of destruction and dysfunction. (Drees, 2003). Childishness a common attitude and behaviour that refuses mature responsibility, while often masquerading as mature. Examples include

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professional hierarchies and titles, perpetuation of outmoded traditions, game-oriented bureaucratic meetings, the ‘men’s club’ of the House of Commons, universities competing over who’s best, and film awards ceremonies. In my view, religions tend to promote childish dependency on parental gods and make-believe. Childishness is oblivious to urgent and real needs. An example of its escalation is a politician acting badly, refusing to acknowledge this, then being interviewed on television by a journalist who becomes childishly immersed in trying to catch him out: a futile game. Hence, atheism can become as childish as religion. ‘Childish’ is not the best epithet, apparently demeaning children as it does, but no satisfactory alternative exists. Chronic anthropathology in contrast to acute anthropathology, this refers to long-standing, everyday forms of anthropathology, such as patriarchal and capitalistic norms, universal irrationality and neurosis, to which we easily become desensitized to the point of denial; it becomes imperceptible. Compassionate nihilism any form of compassion or compassionate endeavour (e.g. simple human kindness, counselling, or philanthropy) that is based not on any ideology but on direct, warm fellow-feeling and pragmatic action. Since much nihilism has a bleak, absurd or violent character, it is important to mark this distinction. Contemporary anthropathology any form of anthropathology especially characteristic of the present. Although anthropathology is conceived as a perennial condition, one can identify peculiarly modern forms, for example, terrorism, vast environmental damage, globalization, threatened nuclear holocaust. Cosmopathology the notion that there is something inherently ‘wrong’ with or flawed in the cosmos/universe, whether predominantly or in balance with what is good. Theological disputes about theodicy (how an omnipotent God could allow evil to exist) have tried to tackle this by conceding that God is not quite omnipotent, that destructive forces equal creative forces, or that man (in the shape of Adam) caused nature to become fallen by sinning (i.e. original sin, as expounded by Augustine); or that we cannot know God’s ultimate purpose. Egomorphism the tendency to perceive and unwittingly conceptualize phenomena through our personal experiences. Like anthropomorphism, egomorphism points out that our constructs of history, everyday events, religion and so on are all at the very least tainted by subjectivity and

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limited information. This is the case even when posing as an objective expert, since infinitesimal unconscious (deceptive) forces and sociocultural circumstances will always introduce some self-serving bias. One whose life is going well (psychologically, materially, health-wise) is likely to perceive life as generally benign and hopeful (optimorphic), while one whose life is not going well is likely to perceive life as generally hopeless, difficult and so on (pessimorphic). Enlightenment equivalent to complete personal freedom from anthropathology; the ‘end of woe’. Genuinely embodied mystical enlightenment – strangely, historically more evident in the East and Middle East and among men more than women – appears to come to few. When it does, the person feels reborn, in a radically different state of consciousness, free from preoccupations and from attachment, fear, desire, suffering, ego, time. Problematically, however, this state seems impossible to study, capture or predict, and hard to communicate without distortion. Some doubt that it exists at all; others say that it may exist but solves nothing; yet others that it is an unhelpfully all-or-nothing concept. It is, of course, not the same as the historical period known as the Enlightenment. Entropy The outcome of the second law of thermodynamics, which states that any closed system has a propensity towards disorder. Since this is true of the universe itself, many thinkers believe that it is true of all phenomena, as witnessed in the collapse of civilizations, failure of businesses, decay and death of individuals, crumbling marriages, and the predicted ultimate demise and extinction of humanity. Negentropy is the term sometimes used for the forces of order, creativity and renewal. See also anthropomurphism. Eschatology the theological concept of the ‘last things’, traditionally understood in terms of death, judgement, heaven and hell. This may apply to individuals and to humanity. Adapted to anthropathology, it refers to the view from life’s end, to our final moments as individuals and to humanity’s end. As well as finality, it also has the flavour of urgency, as in the need to awaken and act before it is too late; and also refers to the reality of the ‘eternal now’ which, properly experienced, ends the experience of time and of anthropathological procrastination. Essential anthropathology that part of the human condition that we did not create or apparently exacerbate, but suffer from nonethe-

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less. The most obvious ingredients are biological problems, ageing, pain and death, as well as our helplessness in the face of natural disasters. Evaluative anthropathology any version of anthropathology that is driven by the will to discover objectively the micro and macro ingredients of anthropathology. Quantitative surveys of war, poverty, ill health, pollution and so on and their effects are examples (Ritzer, 2004; Worldwatch Institute, 2005). A caveat here is that deceptive quasiobjectivity can produce evaluations that downplay the extent of anthropathology, regard it as all micro or all macro, and distort the prognosis for improvement. Evolutionary psychology, psychiatry/psychotherapy any analysis of human behaviour, suffering and indicative remedies based on Darwinian principles. Broadly, this means that we look for long-term causative phenomena, such as, in primitive conditions of hardship and predation, vigilance leading to anxiety and defeat leading to depression. Although this kind of view can easily be criticized for being highly speculative and seems to imply a necessary determinism, I think it offers a better explanation for common and stubborn psychological traits than most competing theories; and it need not imply wholesale determinism (we are still evolving, culturally and physically). Equally, it doesn’t necessarily offer any obvious solutions. Fragmentary wholeness partial or transient experience of transcending anthropathology; inauthentic enlightenment. Most people experience some degree of apparent non-anthropathology at some time, via love, sex, alcohol, drugs, meditation, prayer, art, music, jogging and so on. But all such experiences, however extended or repeated, lose energy and fragment. Unfortunately, much that is fragmentary is mistaken for wholeness, which leads to pseudospirituality. Most such experiences have to be repeated, like drugs, in order to recapture the sensation and simulation of wholeness. Whether partial transcendence is sometimes cumulative is another matter. Gynopathy what’s wrong with human females. While the contribution of women to anthropathology is less obvious than that of men, we might say that women have allowed themselves to be chronically subordinated, have colluded with male oppression, sought possessions and status and inflicted psychological harm on other women as well as men.

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Hedonic asymmetry Frijda (1988) proposed that suffering and pain last longer as emotion than does pleasure. ‘Pleasure is always contingent upon change and disappears with continuous satisfaction. Pain may persist under persisting adverse conditions’ (p. 278). This is, according to Frijda, due to our being made for survival, not happiness. The 2005 declaration by the IRA of cessation of violent activity after 35 years of ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland did not atone for the years of suffering. We may see this imbalance, if there is any truth in it, as either a cruel legacy or a condition to be actively opposed by means of positive psychology of one kind or another. Imperceptibility factor the human perceptual limitation which often leads to a distorted view of life and its problems. Examples include our necessary insensitivity to evolution, ageing, environmental damage, cruelty to others, self-deception, bad habits, accidents and mistakes, and so on. Strictly speaking it may not be that we cannot perceive such things as that we often do so in a dangerously delayed manner. We tend not to see the subtle personal and collective damage we are causing, due to the illusions we hold, time-blinkeredness, limits of available knowledge and self-interest; and insensitivity to chronic anthropathology. But to some extent we cannot perceive certain phenomena simply because our human physical and sensory apparatus is limited. ‘We do not see ourselves as doing evil’ (Baumeister, 1997, p. 385). Macroanthropathology anthropathology occurring at collective, societal and historic levels, whether acute or chronic. Examples include patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, globalization. Contrast with microanthropathology. Mediomorphism perceiving according to intermediary data and interpretation. Although we may make our own judgements about events, we are largely governed by the traditions and inputs of our culture, family and media representations of events (de Zengotita, 2005). Crudely speaking, we are presented with selective information, told what to think, most of us seem to prefer it that way and few of us seem affected emotionally to the point of being deeply moved. Academic input is also part of this. Psychology, according to Rose (1989) has shaped our attitudes profoundly in the twentieth century. Microanthropathology anthropathology occurring at small-scale, personal or communal levels. Examples include anything from per-

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sonal misfortune, daily hassles, illness and breakdown to specific crimes, cults and distressing incidents. See Feltham (2004a). As Cioran (1998c) has it, we are each a ‘unit of disaster’. Misanthropy hatred of mankind. Usually stemming from entrenched personal attitudes from early childhood negative experiences and/or innate attitudes, misanthropy views the human species as evil, destructive, ugly, worthless, a scourge – and often as inferior to other animal species. Evaluative anthropathology is not misanthropic. See ‘compassionate nihilism’ above. Morbid anthropathology any version of anthropathology that is egomorphically driven and biased by subjective, pathological, pessimistic factors. Calvin, Schopenhauer and Cioran are examples, probably Beckett too. This is similar to Griffith’s (2003) concept of being denial-free but resigned. Contrast with ‘evaluative anthropathology’. Most psychoanalysts will likely interpret most anthropathological views as symptomatic of unconscious conflicts driven by early childhood deprivations and abuse, exceptions including Weatherill (1998). Nihilistic undercurrent the necessarily suppressed awareness that we are always a hair’s breadth away from ceasing to exist, from losing loved ones, employment, home, meaning and so on. This also refers to an awareness that all our taken-for-granted or prized institutions exist by ‘grace’ and can (and eventually will) cease to exist. Non-anthropathology all that is untainted by anthropathology, including any unpolluted natural environments, some aspects of human functioning like (some) artistic and technological creativity and momentary experiences of love, transcendence, and so on and some stages of human development (e.g. babies) and differences among humans (e.g. certain ‘innocents’ with learning difficulties as well as some small egalitarian and anarchist societies; see Taylor, 2005, on ‘unfallen peoples’). Even so, such groups are susceptible to suffering. Anthropathology as an enquiry aims implicitly and explicitly at nonanthropathology or post-anthropathology. Non-anthropathology is seen symbolically in the concepts of paradise, heaven, salvation and utopia. Patriarchy rule by men, domination of women. Some feminist historians place the origins of patriarchy at about 12 000 years ago, before which time either shared arrangements or matriarchy were common. Arguments revolve around whether it was inevitable due to men’s

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allegedly superior strength and/or women’s weakness, child-centred, caring role and so on or whether it was instigated by force and guile by men for their own ends; and remains in force worldwide today simply because it suits male privilege. Many of its negative characteristics – violence, war, patriarchal religion, alienating cognitivization, excessive technology, environmental damage – seem to make it coterminous with anthropathology. Pollyanthropology a Pollyanna-like attitude to the human condition that sees only present good or good outcomes and downplays the negative; pathological optimism. It is the obverse of morbid anthropathology. An optimal (wise) position may be evaluative anthropathology or a putative, actuarial anthropology. The term ‘pollyandroid’ has been coined for compulsive/robotic optimists.

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Index

Abraham 145, 161 absurdity 29, 106, 129, 130, 139, 215, 229 cosmic-existential 13–14, 28, 204 abuse 57, 119, 180, 245, 254 child 14–15, 27, 64, 77, 104, 110, 152, 162, 168, 204, 205, 211, 213, 255, 261 environmental 110 family 64 physical 64, 115, 213 sexual 15, 151, 152 therapist 174–7, 191 acute anthropathology 101, 163, 185, 237, 248, 254 Adler, Alfred 40, 173 Afghanistan 99, 106 Africa 40, 41, 48, 90, 93, 98, 102, 103, 108, 228, 245, 249 aggression 3–5, 60, 77, 87, 88, 91, 142, 158, 163, 226, 249, 254 and men 10–11 agnosticism 236 AIDS 40, 41, 94, 103, 146, 228 alienation 1, 6, 19, 35, 36, 50, 77, 92, 201, 213 anarcho-primitivism 223–5, 228 Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, The (Fromm) 87–9 andropathology 254 anthropathogenesis 43, 52, 254 anthropathological crunch 250–2 anthropathological drift 163, 248, 250, 254–5 in therapy 185–90 anthropathological enmeshment 115, 135, 255 anthropathological escalation 37, 62, 98, 120, 161, 251, 255

anthropathological loops 60, 143, 159, 212, 222, 242, 255–6 enmeshment in 31–4 anthropathology as academic subject 247–50 acute 101, 163, 185, 237, 248, 254 biased miscellany or significant force? 34–7 chronic 58, 69, 101, 130, 163, 211, 217, 248, 257 contemporary 108–14, 257 definitions 2–3, 233–5, 256 denying and refuting 192–208 essential 101, 133, 258 evaluative 2, 199, 203, 205, 206, 228, 249, 253, 259 impact on therapy 183–5 individual 64–7 macro- 242, 260 mainstream arenas of transmission 117–41 micro- 76, 242, 260 morbid 80, 197, 199, 207, 261 non- 138, 261 one focus or many? 237–43 origins and development 43–70 personal notes 101–6, 114–16 proposed solutions 209–30 group and educational 215–20 personal 210–15 visionary and theoretical 220–9 and psychological therapies 165–91 and religion 142–64 today 147–54 responses to thesis 235–7 roots of contemporary 108–14 and science 44–8 self-fulfilling 261 support and evidence 71–94

278


anthropathology cont. synonyms 36 taking thesis forward 231–53 thesis 233–5 today 95–116 transgenerational 63–4 what is it? 1–42 anthropology 123, 224, 256 anthropomurphism 256 anxiety 7, 8, 23, 32, 37, 64, 76, 81, 100, 106, 108, 116, 169, 179, 182, 183, 227, 228, 251, 259 archaeology 61, 161, 194 Arendt, Hannah 36, 71, 72 Aristotle 35 astrology 188, 218 atheism 9, 34, 79, 143, 149, 151, 159, 160, 162, 178, 195, 239, 257 Augustine 36, 58, 68, 257 Auschwitz 71 Australia 217 béance 36 ‘beast in its own zoo’ 19–20 Beckett, Samuel 34, 36, 44, 57, 68, 79, 110, 121, 261 Bellow, Saul 36, 68 Benedict XVI, Pope 158 Berlin, Isaiah 36, 111, 229 Big Bang 14, 45–6, 49, 70, 134, 197, 207, 233 Blair, Tony 12, 97, 99, 148, 204 ‘blind evolutionary drift’ 78 Bloom, Howard 36, 52, 135, 151 Bohm, David 16, 36, 41, 49, 53, 154, 157, 187, 190, 213, 240 Bourdieu, Pierre 8, 26, 36 Brennan, Teresa 6, 36, 63, 109, 123, 184, 211 Buddha 22, 31, 57, 86, 110, 114, 145, 146, 156, 158, 228 Buddhism 15, 35, 36, 55–7, 142, 143, 146, 156, 158, 161–3, 188, 256 Zen 163, 188 Burns, Robert 36 Bush, George W. 35, 121 Calvin, John 261 Calvinism 114, 125, 198 Camus, Albert 14, 68, 72, 93 capitalism 17, 52, 63, 83, 89, 92, 101, 109, 110, 123, 128, 177, 202, 204, 222, 223, 225, 228, 244, 250, 255, 260 global 27, 29, 79, 89, 111, 223

negative characteristics 5–7 Catholicism 41, 120, 123, 147, 149, 151, 159, 194, 218 CBT see cognitive behaviour therapy CFCs 32 Chardin, Teilhard de 194, 217 child abuse 27, 64, 77, 104, 110, 152, 162, 168, 204, 205, 211, 213, 255, 261 as normal 14–15 childishness 256–7 Chomsky, Noam 83 Christianity ix, x, 12, 15, 25, 28, 35, 37, 40, 41, 55, 57–8, 104, 120, 142, 143, 147, 149, 150, 159, 161, 174, 181, 187, 194, 217, 222, 242 Christmas 10 chronic anthropathology 58, 69, 101, 130, 163, 211, 217, 248, 257 civilization 2, 10, 17, 19, 22, 36, 38, 39, 45, 48–50, 52, 53, 56, 67, 76, 82–4, 88, 103, 113, 114, 117, 133, 135, 137, 153, 163, 170, 173, 195, 198, 201, 211, 212, 221–5, 227, 228, 234, 236, 244, 248, 255, 258 pathology of 36, 50, 82–4 classical mythology 54–5 Clausius 36 Clinton, Bill 239 co-counselling 178 cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) 181–3 common purposes 138–40 Communism 6, 63, 110, 170, 255 compassionate nihilism 190, 252, 257 confusion 55, 155¸169, 180, 190, 194 contemporary anthropathology 257 roots of 108–14 corruption 21, 41, 62, 73, 95, 104, 155, 214 cosmic-existential absurdity 13–14, 28, 204 cosmopathology 14, 43, 257 counselling 3, 27, 32, 53, 103, 164–72, 174–6, 178, 183, 185–91, 210–12, 215, 216, 247, 251, 252, 255, 257 crime 3, 5, 10, 27, 38, 39, 51, 77, 91, 92, 103, 104, 112, 127, 131, 136, 150, 161, 204, 226, 249, 261 crooked timber of humanity 36 culture of lies 11–12 current events 97–100 cynicism 236 daimonic 36

Index Dalai Lama 158 Dante Alighieri 36, 146 Darwin, Charles 34, 65, 72, 109, 121, 143, 164, 195, 259 Dawkins, Richard 9, 15, 36, 44, 46, 47, 49, 109, 144, 155, 162, 200 debt 92, 93, 103, 104 deception 6, 11, 12, 39, 49, 80–2, 109, 155, 163, 203, 206 self- 32, 49, 52, 53, 80, 82, 109, 205, 219, 256, 260 demands of modern life 26–7 demonic 36, 89–92 Demonic Males (Wrangham and Peterson) 89–92 denial 228, 236 depression 7, 8, 65, 66, 83, 86–8, 96, 106, 157, 169–71, 182, 183, 189, 202, 220, 251, 252, 259 despair 236 dhanb 36 disease 1, 6, 27, 48, 56, 60, 64, 65, 95, 104, 126, 132, 144, 195, 201, 203, 207, 214, 220, 221, 241 distress 18, 33, 38, 64, 99, 110, 166, 169, 180, 183, 185, 187, 190, 202, 214, 261 Dresden bombings 98 drug addiction 4, 10, 16, 24, 39, 92, 96, 104, 105, 112, 122, 166, 167, 173 dualism(s) 140, 195, 196 traps of 18–19 dukkha 35, 36 earthquakes 5, 16, 38, 56, 71, 98–100 Easter Island 197 education 117–25 effectiveness, problem of in therapy 172– 3 egomorphism 203, 257–8 Eliot, T.S. 68, 111, 201 Empedocles 36, 45, 255 enduring relationships 131–5 enlightenment, personal 1, 17, 56, 114, 147, 154, 156–9, 163, 169, 209, 211, 213–15, 228, 229, 234, 258 as solution 213–14 Enlightenment (historical period) 35, 40, 96, 109, 143, 200, 258 entropy 36, 45, 46, 59, 69, 70, 135, 202, 217, 234, 246, 248, 255, 258 see also negentropy environmental problems 1, 9, 12, 17, 42, 46, 53, 56, 64, 77, 83, 101, 108, 110, 116, 170, 198, 202, 223–5, 227, 241,

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242, 245–7, 249, 257, 260, 262 eschatology 45, 227, 258 and hope 243–7 essential anthropathology 101, 133, 258–9 evaluative anthropathology 2, 199, 203, 205, 206, 228, 249, 253, 259 Evil in Modern Thought (Neiman) 71–3 evolution and prehistory 48–54 evolutionary psychiatry/psychology/ psychotherapy 38, 49, 80, 217, 232, 240, 259 evolutionary theory 41, 43, 46–54, 77, 78, 87, 103, 109, 143, 197, 222, 229, 231, 234, 260 existentialism 1, 13, 23, 68, 72, 111, 143, 159, 215 exploitation 6, 7, 10, 25, 58, 109, 129, 159, 175, 201, 238 Eysenck, Hans 172 faillibility 36 The Fall (Taylor) 76–8 Faulks, Sebastian 68, 144 family abuse 64 famine 16, 56, 103, 108, 202 fear of being wrong 24–5 feelings, promotion of 213 female genital mutilation 239 feminism 19, 20, 25, 38, 39, 50, 91, 109, 148, 178, 201, 228, 239, 244, 261 radical 228 feminist therapy 178 football 107, 129, 141 hooligan 201 Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood 216–18 fragmentary wholeness 59, 147, 154, 190, 243, 259 fragmentation 25, 36, 85 fragmented self 25–6 Frankl, Viktor 36 Freud, Sigmund xii, 19, 34, 36, 72, 82, 87, 109, 116, 121, 137, 143, 170, 173, 176, 178, 188, 195 friction of adversity 36, 195 Fromm, Erich 4, 36, 140, 170 The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness 87–9 fucked up 36 futility, whiff of 27–8 futurologists, visionary 221–3 Gaia 226 Gautama see Buddha

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genocide 4, 13, 60, 236 Gestalt therapy 178 God, there is no 159–63 Golden Age 60, 76, 77, 79, 83, 198, 223, 244 Golding, William 68, 200 Gray, John 2, 4, 18, 27, 35, 36, 78, 82, 108, 111, 144, 149, 151, 162, 203, 245 Straw Dogs 78–80 greed 6, 8, 50, 56, 58, 60, 74, 88, 95, 105, 106, 146, 158, 163, 196, 202, 204 Greenham Common 225 Griffith, Jeremy 36, 49, 50, 53, 123, 184, 192, 216, 217, 229, 244, 252, 261 Project for Humanity’s Adulthood 216–19 group and educational solutions 215–20 guilt 9, 32, 56, 73, 96, 113, 151, 189, 198, 201, 233 gynopathy 225, 259 habit and tradition 9–10 hatred 3–5 Hawking, Stephen 45, 245 Hazlett, R. 1 hedonic asymmetry 202, 260 hedonism 235 Hegel, Georg 72 hell 9, 36, 59, 131, 142, 149, 258 heroic action 236 higher education 121–5 Hinduism 36, 63, 104, 142m, 143, 160 Hiroshima 71, 98, 102, 110, 143 historical momentum 16–17 history 60–1 Hitler, Adolf 4, 87, 89, 100, 150, 188, 221 HIV/AIDS 40, 41, 94, 103, 146, 228 Hobbes, Thomas 62, 92, 135, 209, 228 Holocaust 35, 61, 63, 67, 89, 110, 143, 146, 254 Homo paciens 36 Homo rapiens 4, 36 Homo sapiens 2, 49 homosexuality 46, 77, 131, 150, 217 honesty, radical 212–13 hope and eschatology 243–7 hopelessness 93, 228 Hopi language 36 human condition 4, 36, 49, 57, 67, 69, 77, 89, 111, 134, 154, 157, 158, 163, 169, 192, 202, 207, 209, 210, 216,

218, 219, 227–9, 233, 236, 240, 244, 246, 248, 249, 255, 256, 258, 262 responses to proposed solutions 228 human destructiveness 36, 87–9, 193 human evolution and prehistory 48–54 humanistic therapies 178–81 humanities 36 humanizing 211–12 humour 214–15 hunger 99, 144, 146, 149, 187, 201, 214, 226, 228, 233, 237 Hurricane Katrina 100 hypocrisy 25–6, 32, 33, 38, 41, 83, 102, 146, 154, 215, 239 hysteria to survive 5, 12–13, 28, 30, 33, 53, 80, 246, 251 illness 3, 4, 13, 23, 25, 27, 28, 44, 47, 55, 66, 68, 69, 75, 88, 92, 110, 127, 128, 133, 168, 180, 256, 261 illusion of progress 17–18, 22, 79 immiseration 36, 83, 199 imperceptibility factor 52, 53, 82, 163, 180, 186, 260 individual anthropathology 64–7 information overload 23–4 insecurity 8–9, 129, 131, 143, 234 intelligence, scarcity of 21–2 Iran 37, 100, 106, 227 Iraq 12, 40, 97–100, 106, 186, 204, 241, 254 irrationality 8–9, 15, 27, 28, 30, 33, 36, 58, 124, 141, 147, 161–3, 177, 197, 200, 204, 229, 234, 256, 257 Islam 36, 58, 59–60, 77, 83, 100, 104, 111, 120, 139, 143, 153, 161, 162, 164, 217, 218, 242 jahiliyya 35, 36 James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization 221 Janov, Arthur 36 jealousy 16, 38, 54, 74, 131 Jehovah’s Witnesses 245 Jesus Christ 11, 22, 31, 34, 38, 57, 58, 125, 142, 145, 149, 152, 153, 161, 162, 194 Jews 142, 149, 160 Job’s suffering 170 journomorphism 260 Judaism 38, 58, 143 Jung, Carl 170, 173, 176, 187, 256 Jungians 153, 170, 189, 217

Index Kafka, Franz 68 Kant, Immanuel 36, 72, 229 Kierkegaard, Soren 1 Kleinman, Arthur 36, 94, 108 Koestler, Arthur 217 Koran 59, 151 Koresh, David 152 Koyaanisqatsi 36 Krishnamurti, Jiddu ix, 31, 34, 36, 41, 76, 84–7, 118, 142, 218, 220, 228, 240, 243, 244, 254 ambiguous case of 154–9 Krishnamurti, U.G. 154, 157–8, 194 Lacan, Jacques 36 Laing, R.D. 217 Larkin, Philip 36, 63, 68 Leadbetter, Charles 203–4, 219 Leary, Timothy 121–2 liberal progressivism 228 lies, culture of 11–12 Lisbon earthquake 99 literature 67–70 Lomborg, Bjorn 198–200 loneliness 32, 106, 131, 132, 135, 143, 189 Lord of the Flies (Golding) 68, 200, 224 Lucifer Principle 36 macroanthropathology 242, 260 ‘Mad World’ 36 man’s inhumanity to man 36 Marlowe, Christopher 68 marriage 10, 95, 104, 131–5, 139, 162, 166, 258 Martin, James 222–3 Marx, Karl 25, 34, 36, 72, 83, 92, 109, 121, 143, 201 Marxism 72, 83, 109, 123, 188, 202 mass regulation 135–8 May, Rollo 36 meaninglessness 14, 20, 30, 46, 93, 105, 138, 139, 155, 215, 228 méconnaissance 36 mediomorphism 108, 260 men as aggressive and problematic 10–11 microanthropathology 76, 242, 260, 261 Middle East 50, 56, 108, 111, 145, 245, 258 Milton, John 36 misanthropy 79, 226, 261 misère du monde 36, 92

281

misery 25, 36, 63, 69, 70, 72, 73, 92, 94, 178, 187, 203, 205, 206, 214, 225, 241, 252 modern life, demands of 26–7 Mohammed 59 Montaigne, Michel de 36 morbid anthropathology 80, 197, 199, 207, 261 Mormons 152, 245 Moses 145 Mother Teresa 146 murder 15, 38, 55, 73, 97, 149, 150 Muslims 35, 59, 99, 100, 142, 143, 147– 9, 151, 159, 164, 250 mystical transcendence 236 mythology, classical 54–5 Nagasaki 98, 102, 110 nationalism 20, 62, 139, 177, 244 negentropy 46, 234, 258 Neiman, Susan 71–3 neurosis 7–8, 33, 64, 162, 172, 177, 188, 257 universal 35, 36 New Age 23, 85, 115, 229, 244 New Testament 33, 36, 57, 58 Nietzsche, Friedrich 9, 34, 57, 72, 109, 121, 143 nihilism see compassionate nihilism nihilistic undercurrent 261 9/11 97 ‘no baseline’ problem 171–2 non-anthropathology 138, 261 North Korea 37, 227 Northern Ireland 149, 260 obviousness and simplicity, taboo against 30–1 Old Testament 36, 57, 58, 193 omnidolence 36 oppression 6, 17, 77, 102, 146, 152, 153, 211, 232, 259 ordinary suffering individual 166–9 original sin 1, 35, 36, 47, 57, 192, 194, 257 origins and development of anthropathology 43–70 paap 36 pain 13, 15, 33, 36, 41, 47, 51, 54, 57, 63, 66, 101, 117, 150, 169, 180, 181, 196, 202, 213, 214, 237, 258, 259, 260 Pakistan 99, 100, 120, 148 Parry, Rear Admiral Chris 245

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pathology of civilization 36, 50, 82–4 patriarchy 10, 11, 38, 52, 76, 77, 101, 110, 204, 223, 244, 246, 260, 261–2 overthrow of 225–9 PCA see person-centred approach personal responsibility 235 person-centred approach (PCA) 170, 178–80, 189–90 Peterson, Dale 89–92 physical abuse 64, 115, 213 Pius XII, Pope 4 Plato 36, 122 cave 36, 217 Plotinus 36, 45, 255 politics 61–3 pollyanthropology 199, 207, 262 population control/increase 13, 61–3, 93, 126, 185, 202, 204, 210, 226 pornography 39, 74, 238, 239, 241, 252 positive psychology 219–20 poverty 6, 27, 40, 92, 93, 96, 99, 103–5, 111, 127, 129, 136, 153, 192, 199, 204, 214, 221, 222, 228, 241, 259 prehistory and human evolution 48–54 primal therapy 178 progress, illusion of 17–18, 22, 79 progressivism 2, 84, 228, 243 proliferation, problem of 173–4 promotion of feelings 213 psychoanalysis 21, 33, 80, 82, 87, 88, 109, 170, 172–5, 177–8, 181, 182, 188–91, 210, 218, 232, 239, 261 psychodrama 178 psychological problems 7–8, 33 psychological therapies, what’s right with 169–71 what’s wrong with 165–91 ‘no baseline’ problem 171–2 problem of effectiveness 172–3 problem of proliferation 173–4 psychology evolutionary 38, 49, 80, 217, 232, 240, 259 positive 219–20 psychopathology and therapies 188–90 racism 26, 92, 148, 154, 176, 177, 211, 238, 241, 255 radical honesty 212–13 rape 38, 90–1, 131, 152, 223, 226, 238, 252 Reich, Wilhelm 36, 77, 129, 137, 170, 221

relationships, enduring 131–5 religion(s) roots and dynamics of 144–7 and theology 55–60 what’s wrong with 142–64 religious anthropathology today 147–54 religious fantasy 236 responsibility, personal and social 235 restless mind 15–16, 23, 30, 85, 163, 254 revolutionary action 236 Ricoeur, Paul 36, 55 Ritzer, George 36, 94, 123, 196, 211, 259 Rogers, Carl 178–9, 189 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 72 Running on Emptiness (Zerzan) 82–4 Sagan, Carl 8, 36, 58, 154, 220 Sartre, Jean-Paul 34, 68, 93, 102, 121, 162, 201 scarcity of intelligence and vision 21–2 schizophrenia 50, 51, 77 school 117–21 Schopenhauer, Arthur 3, 34, 44, 57, 66, 72, 79, 82, 108, 121, 167, 168, 209, 219, 228, 246, 261 science and anthropathology 44–8 Scientology 143, 147, 153, 164, 188, 218 Second World War 100, 227 self-deception 32, 49, 52, 53, 80, 82, 109, 205, 219, 256, 260 self-fulfilling anthropathology 261 selfish gene 36, 46 self-sacrificing action 236 sex and sexuality 8, 19, 20, 39, 46, 64, 65, 75–7, 88, 90, 105, 108, 131–4, 142, 146, 156, 162, 175, 237–9, 259 sexism 26, 74 sexual abuse 15, 151, 152 Shiite Islam 218 Shiva 36 simplicity and obviousness, taboo against 30–1 sin 52, 55, 57, 73, 143, 151 original 1, 35, 36, 47, 57, 192, 194, 257 slavery 6, 14, 17, 50, 60, 109, 125, 126, 211 Smith, David Livingstone 80–2 social problems 36, 94, 202, 215 social psychosis 36 social responsibility 235 society 135–8 Species in Denial (Griffith) 217 Spector, Tim 73–6

Index Steiner, Rudolph 212, 221 Straw Dogs (Gray) 78–80 stress 6, 10, 12, 26, 27, 33, 66, 97, 112– 14, 116, 119, 120, 122, 126, 128–30, 187, 202–5, 220, 242, 252, 255 strife 36, 54, 133 structural malignancy of human animal 36 suffering 8, 27, 35, 36, 43, 44, 56–8, 63, 67, 68, 71, 73, 76, 77, 92, 94, 99, 103, 106, 110, 114, 125, 128, 146, 150, 155, 158, 162, 165–70, 178, 180, 185, 188, 189, 192, 194, 197, 201, 202, 205, 213, 214, 220, 227, 229, 234, 238, 255, 256, 258, 259, 261 the ordinary suffering individual 166–9 suicide 4, 8, 38, 65, 107, 113, 126, 171, 226, 251 bombings 5, 99, 102, 197 supervolcano 84 support and evidence for anthropathology thesis 71–94 Sutherland, Stuart 8, 36, 121 survival hysteria 5, 12–13, 28, 30, 33, 53, 80, 246, 251 symbolic activity, entrapment in 28–30 systemic fault 36, 190 TA see transactional analysis Tallis, Raymond 18, 23, 40, 193, 195, 200, 201, 202, 203, 240 Taylor, Steve 76–8 technology 2, 5, 13, 16, 17, 26, 27, 29, 30, 37, 40, 46, 52, 53, 61, 62, 77, 78, 83, 84, 91, 98, 109, 110, 116, 123, 139, 153, 154, 180, 193, 194, 200, 202, 203, 210, 211, 222–4, 228, 234, 245, 247, 249, 262 Tendzin, Vajra Regent Osel 146 terrorism 3, 38, 59, 62, 73, 88, 97–100, 112, 147–50, 163, 203, 223, 227, 242, 243, 245, 251, 257 Thatcher, Margaret 136 theology and religion 55–60 therap(y)/ies anthropathological drift in 185–90 impact of anthropathology on 183–5 problems of different 177–83 cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) 181–3 humanistic therapies 178–81 psychoanalysis 177–8

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and psychopathology 188–90 what’s right with 169–71 what’s wrong with 165–91 therapist abuse 191 and character of therapist 174–7 thlipsis 36 Thought as a System (Bohm) 84–7 time blinkered 22–3 tolma 36, 45, 186, 255 torture 5, 68, 94, 211, 214 totalitarianism 61, 69, 120, 139, 153, 210, 221, 226, 228, 237, 241 tradition and habit 9–10 transactional analysis (TA) 178, 189 transgenerational anthropathology 63–4 transpersonal therapies 178 traps dualisms 18–19 symbolic activity 28–30 tribalism 20–1, 33, 35, 62, 139, 173 tsunami 98 tyranny 232 unemployment 7, 17, 93, 104, 124, 128, 129, 136, 167, 183 United Kingdom 8, 24, 42, 116, 127, 129, 136, 201, 225, 239 United States 13, 24, 32, 35, 41, 93, 99, 100, 107, 111, 121, 129, 134, 136, 139, 153 universal neurosis 35, 36 university 121–5 urban living 4, 115, 126, 171, 185, 211, 241 us-and-them-ism 20–1 USSR 13, 139, 221 Utopia 27–8, 135, 168, 204, 209, 228, 244, 247, 261 van der Post, Laurens 217 Vedanta 156 violence 10, 14, 15, 27, 29, 37–9, 48–52, 56, 77, 83, 88, 94, 97–100, 104, 105, 112, 115, 126, 128, 133, 148, 150, 161, 177, 201, 204–6, 224, 226, 232, 238, 239, 241, 243, 246, 250, 252, 255, 262 and hatred 3–5 origins in humans 89–92 vision, scarcity of 21–2 visionary and theoretical solutions 220–9 visionary futurologists 221–3

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volcanoes 16, 56, 84, 242 Voltaire, François 72, 143 war 4, 5, 9, 12, 13, 17, 20, 24, 37, 39, 40, 51, 55, 60, 73, 76, 77, 88, 90, 91, 94, 98, 100, 110, 111, 137, 150, 154, 177, 186, 196, 199, 203, 204, 225, 227, 233, 241, 242, 251, 259, 262 Weight of the World, The (Bourdieu) 92–4 what’s wrong with psychological therapies 165–91 with religion 142–64 with us 3

with us today 96–7 with what’s wrong 192–208 whiff of futility 27–8 Why We Lie (Smith) 80–2 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 34, 121 work 125–31 Wrangham, Richard 89–92 Your Genes Unzipped (Spector) 73–6 Zen Buddhism 163, 188 Zerzan, John 19, 22, 25, 30, 32, 36, 43, 50, 79, 82–4, 87, 103, 123, 128, 166, 200, 222, 223, 228

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What's Wrong With Terrorism

Shipwrecked with Mr Wrong

Shipwrecked with Mr Wrong

Whats a Hundred Dollars

Whats Your Pleasure

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Be with Us

Be with Us

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God with us

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What's Wrong with Right Now?

What's Wrong with the British Constitution?

What's Wrong with the British Constitution?

What's Wrong with the Liberal Party?

What's Wrong with the Liberal Party?

Dianetics: The Original Thesis

Wrong Place Wrong Time

The Longevity Thesis

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