And of course all of us who are have retired have had to come to terms with our changed position in the economic/social firmament. Coming to terms and making the transition is a profound but essential challenge.
Arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 1:58 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] The perfusion of a theme In a conversation with another member of FW I once made a forecast that when Tony Blair had resigned as Prime Minister he would then be so ashamed of his support for Bush's invasion of Iraq that we would hear no more of him and that he would slide into oblivion. I had the precedent of Sir Anthony Eden in mind. After attempting to assassinate President Nasser of Egpyt (for nationalizing the Suez Canal) in 1956, and then attempting to invade the country in a secret collusion with France and Israel, he then had to withdraw after pressure from America. A medical condition was invented for him and he left the country for a while. He'd wanted to remain as Prime Minister apparently but he was then manoeuvered out of office and he retired to a house in the Wiltshire countryside. Although he wrote a highly acclaimed memoir and was made Earl of Avon he hardly showed his face again in public. I was partly wrong in Tony Blair's case. After his resignation he went on to make a fortune around the world from lectures, mainly in America and, under the Old Pal's Act, was made some sort of wunderkind for the problems of the Middle East. However, even though he has a couple of expensive houses, and made a brief semi-public excursion at a friend's medical clinic during the recent General Election, he has hardly shown his face at all in his own country in the last two years. He is obviously too ashamed of the way he persuaded the House of Commons and the public on the basis of a flimsy pretext that Saddam Hussein could rain missiles on this country at 45 minutes' notice. Essentially it was a lie and he's been found out (increasingly so as the evidence mounts in the in the present Chilcot Enquiry). Much the same applies -- this time in aces -- to Gordon Brown. Both as Chancellor for ten years in the Labour Government and Prime Minister for two he had been increasingly rumoured to be an office bully of the very worst sort -- and fully revealed more recently in two books by those who knew him well when in office. He bullied all around him and even Tony Blair himself. After losing the recent General Election, Brown left London and retired to his constituency home in Kirkaldly, Scotland, from which he hasn't stirred since. Unlike Tony Blair, no top jobs have been found for him, he's been on no lecture tours and his previous closest sycophants have turned on him. Apparently, he says he will resume his seat in the House of Commons when the Labour Party selects its new leader but it's doubtful whether he'll ever do so, or even show his face in London again. His shame and loss of status is such that I wouldn't be surprised if he commits suicide. This is not meant to be a piece of Schadenfreude at Gordon Brown's expense. Rather, it is to reinforce a constant theme in my thinking and writing -- the importance of status, particularly in the male. Second to eating food, it is the strongest genetic predisposition the male has. Without status a male can never acquire a partner or have sex -- unless he pays spot-price for it or rapes someone. All normally raised boys compete with one another for status long before puberty while the rear cortex is developing and his sensory and physical skills are being fully potentiated. During frontal cortex development after puberty when much more subtle social and intellectual skills are being refined in preparation for adulthood, competition for rank order continues in all sorts of other ways, too. Usually it is largely over by the age of about 30. Most young men "know their place" or, perhaps are content with only modest advancement within their social or work circle as they grow older. However, given that modern society consists of many circles -- and highly stratified ones, too -- then there is no limit to the energy of the highly ambitious as they seek higher and higher levels of wealth and/or power. Sooner or later, even the most able and the most ambitious reach the limits of their social standing. They will either be checked by fate -- or "exogenous" circumstances as economists like to say -- or by someone else (often a younger aspirant with more energy coming upstream ). They will become depressed to a greater or lesser extent by how deep their loss of status turns out to be, or how long it endures. The male walrus dominates -- or even kills -- all other male walruses in his vicinity as he acquires his harem of dewey-eyed females. Most mammalian males have other methods of showing off their rank order to females than by brute strength -- by their energy, their voice, their wiliness, their body coloration, by their imaginative displays, or whatever. Humans do so even more subtley -- by their clothing and speaking voice (to show their social class), by their income, by their profession, by their possessions, by their characteristics of dependabilty, etc. All these principally show his economic value to a female who wants to be married and be looked after comfortably and securely while they have children. Once again -- second to food only -- status is the strongest driving force of all, whether it's modest or excessive, whether in society or in economics. Without the mechanism of male status, sex wouldn't occur at all, nor the next generation ever appear. The sooner that economists are taught the modern findings of evolutionary biology the better. The sooner that economists realize that their subject is actually perfused by one powerful theme and one theme only -- the relative adjustments of status throughout the life of an individual, or class, or firm, or culture or country. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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