Those crazy Americans

Oliver James, clinical psychologist, broadcaster and author last night gave a controversial and at times difficult lecture on the subject of his new book Affluenza, which examines the long-held belief that money won’t make you happy and that ‘keeping up with the Jones’s is detrimental to one’s mental health. James pushes his argument though one-step further citing political and economic reasons why people in English-speaking nations are twice as more likely to suffer from a mental illness than those who aren’t. James’s basic argument is this: We’re run by selfish capitalist governments that promote materialism, materialism makes us mentally ill – the main complaints being anxiety, depression and substance abuse (interestingly Keith Allen who arguably may have suffered from the latter also claimed that ‘materialism and MySpace’ was ruining our culture and society – single-handedly forgetting where his daughter’s fame came from).

James’s notion that pursuing money, wealth, celebrity and appearence was doing nothing for our state of mind, may seem obvious to many, especially when he described the life of a New York billionaire arsehole who had a magnificent apartment, was rude to people and paranoid and was also a sex addict sleeping with a different 18 year old each night (yeah, his life… sounds… terrible…). Instead we were asked to champion Chet a Nigerian immigrant who worked as a taxi driver and who was the pinaccle of happiness because he was effective in his workplace, he was meeting his ‘survival needs’ and he had an effective social network around him. James then went on to bemoan the fact that Chet’s children would grow-up to be ‘f*cked-up Americans’.

And this is where James really seems to have a problem. To make sweeping generalisations about a country as vast as America is not useful especially when you’re also eager to point out how rosy everything is in a country as small as Denmark. Also James pointed out that those people with a strong religious faith were less likely to become mentally ill, yet at no point in the talk did he reconcile America’s huge and diverse collection of faiths against his findings in the country. Later into the talk the States became a greater political problem for James. As far as he is concerned we currently live in an evil neo-liberal society that favours possessions above all and that was created by means of a conspiracy between big businesses that ‘bought-off politicians, academics and other businesses’ at somepoint between 1979 and 1980. It gets worse – James claims there is no War on Terror, that a country as socially bankrupt as the United States had to invent a Muslim threat in the wake of the Cold War. He was one step away from claiming 9/11 to have been a fabrication. He couldn’t resist from referring to Tony Blair as “Blatcher”. Even other scientists weren’t immune from his ranting. Richard Dawkins was apparently a tool of the neo-liberal con because his book The Selfish Gene promoted self-serving capitalism. At one point James said “not to get too Dave Spart about this” and all I could think was “too bloody late, mate”.

At his best, James gave superb insight into why some countries and socities to appear to be happier than others and his worst he sounded like a drunk activist ready to pass out under his copy of the Socialist Worker.

Conversely General Sir Michael Rose was able to give superb insight into the current problems facing the USA in Iraq by virtue of studying the lessons learned from the War of Independence some 230 years ago. Rose’s new book examines the links between the two Georges – the III and Bush – and what lead them to fight unwinnable wars in locations they didn’t understand and how a further George (Washington) taught them a thing or two.*

Rose’s talk seemed at times relentless, ploughing on to reach his objective, but the basic argument, that people should read history and LEARN FROM IT was completely true and revealed a sad state of affairs in education, more so than in the deserts of Iraq. Rose certainly knows his stuff and once you get past his slightly plummy, Sandhurst-trained voice you have an entertaining and self-effacing character who can argue why America is in the mess it is by virtue of studying history and remind us of that.

On the subject of colonialism I was fortunate to see a great discussion between Anton Gill and Lord David Steel (who looks more and more like Ernie Wise each day). I’ll say little about this as Mark will have more to write on this subject tomorrow, only that Steel was a superb guest and whose unique upbringing certainly drew a great deal of interest from the audience about him and Gill’s book.

And if you’re wondering where Mark is now, apparently he’s just made it inside Bruce Parry… draw your own conclusions.

*The Three Georges, a new musical, will make its West End debut in Spring 2008, just as soon as I’ve finished writing it.