The School of Life

Once viewed as a kind of long dream that meant nothing and could be forgotten about as soon as it was over, childhood is now conceived of as a momentously consequential period in which the entire emotional disposition of a person will be formed and their chances of a mentally healthy life determined.

Whenever more casual relationships threaten to reveal the ‘difficult’ side of our natures, we tend to blame the partner – and call it a day. As for our friends, they predictably don’t care enough about us to have any motive to probe our real selves. They only want a nice evening out. Therefore, we end up blind to the awkward sides of our natures. On our own, when we’re furious, we don’t shout, as there’s no one there to listen – and therefore we overlook the true, worrying strength of our capacity for fury. Or we work all the time without grasping, because there’s no one calling us to come for dinner, how we manically use our jobs to gain a sense of control over life – and how we might cause hell if anyone tried to stop us labouring. At night, all we’re aware of is how sweet it would be to cuddle with someone, but we have no opportunity to face up to the intimacy-avoiding side of us that would start to make us cold and strange if ever it felt we were too deeply committed to someone. One of the greatest privileges of being on one’s own is the flattering illusion that one is, in truth, really quite an easy person to live with.

With such a poor level of understanding of our characters, no wonder we aren’t in any position to know who we should be looking out for.

The road to greater confidence begins with a ritual of telling oneself solemnly every morning, before heading out for the day, that one is a muttonhead, a cretin, a dumbbell and an imbecile. A few more acts of folly should, thereafter, not matter very much.

Almost all religions have made use of material objects. They’ve invested in particular sorts of furniture, clothes, buildings, statues and images, and seen these as adjuncts to their spiritual mission. This has not been without controversy within the religions themselves. Reliance on material forms has intermittently come under fire from a minority of believers who have argued that spiritual transformations should only ever require spiritual means, material objects being redundant in the project of healing the soul.

An eerie gap opened up between the dramatic events that were being narrated and the inertia and nonchalance one typically registered on reading two dozen of them over breakfast.

None of this would necessarily matter if the stakes weren’t so high. The tragedy of consumerism is that we have, over a couple of centuries, rearranged the world in the name of a privilege we may be unsuited to. We have diverted rivers, felled ancient woodlands, chained workforces to cubicles, darkened the skies and encouraged ourselves to spend the majority of our waking hours away from our loved ones in pursuit of ever greater incomes, all in the hope that we might, over time, come to smile more regularly.

We should be careful neither to decry nor excessively to celebrate material life. We should ensure that the objects we invest in, and tire ourselves and the planet by manufacturing, are those that stand the best chance of encouraging our higher, better natures.

Contrary to what economists tell us, there are better and worse kinds of demand. Demand for guns may really be less ‘good’ than demand for education. Demand for health-giving food truly might be ‘better’ than that for corn-syrup rich desserts.

A paradoxical element of the consumer revolution was how serious apparently ‘small’ things became in its wake. The most minor items — shirt collars, shampoo, scrubbing brushes, margarine — contributed to fortunes unprecedented in size and scope.

Indeed, as he knew so well, we often reserve our deepest love for those who are flawed and vulnerable.