Bad pianists of the world, unite!

A quick hat-tip to self-confessed "substandard pianist" James Sherwood, for this line in an old blog post:

I can play the piano not very well. I have played the piano not very well since I was seven, and I have now reached a degree of competence in the field of playing the piano not very well.

I couldn't have put it better myself. James, I salute you!

Talking to my builder about play

I've been having some building work done on my flat this past fortnight (hence the infrequency of posts recently). When not choking on dust or searching for clean socks, I've been having some very interesting conversations with my Argentinian builder, Sergio.

Every summer Sergio comes to London to build kitchens and bathrooms, and then goes back to Argentina to live like a king with his wife and kids. The first thing that surprised me about him (aside from his punctuality) is that he's actually a qualified geologist. He used to work in the oil-drilling industry, but the financial crisis of 2001/2 left him unemployed despite having "commercially valuable" skills. So, he came to visit his sister over here, did some work on a few friends' flats and houses, and hasn't looked back.

What really intrigued me about his story was how he acquired his building skills. He's never had any formal training or instruction, but his father ran a builders' supplies merchants and he grew up playing with the materials. At the age of six he build a twenty-foot racetrack for his remote control car, out of wood and concrete. As he grew up he treated his parent's house as a playground, moving walls and redecorating just to see what things would look like. (His first act on inspecting my kitchen was to tear my bedroom wall down and move it 15cm to the left.) When he came to England, all he needed to turn his skills into a career was to learn the conventions for building in the UK. For that, he needed people here to teach him the rules - but he learned much more quickly because he'd taught himself so much already.

Learning starts with curiosity. If we have that, and the space to explore it, then we can learn. Sometimes we need teachers to help us learn "the right way" of doing things, and peers to help us reflect on our experiences. But Sergio's story suggests that if you want to find your own way of doing something, self-guided play is the best place to start. And once you've got that, learning the conventions is much easier. So perhaps we should be spending more time and money encouraging curiosity in our children, and not just "teaching" them things?

Of course, if my kitchen falls apart in six months, I may revise my opinion. But I'd trust someone who loves what they do over someone qualified going through the motions any day.

What's in a name?

A few people have said to me that they don't quite understand the title and sub-title of this blog , and indeed they may appear a little incongruous. If I'm so interested in business, politics and society, they ask, why am I talking about doing things badly? What's so great about doing things badly anyway? And what's the connection with "Sociablism"?

Well, allow me to explain...

1. "Bad" is relative. We are often put off doing things we care about because of a perception of inadequacy relative to external standards. Often these standards are actually our own judgements, and we are harsh on ourselves; others may value what we do even if we don't. I don't consider myself to be a very good "blogger", but some people seem to enjoy what I write. If I censor myself, my contribution stops.
2. Good is dull. In this crowded world, we don't need millions of people aspiring to do the same things. Often the thing that you think is bad about what you're doing is actually what makes it stand out from the crowd. Bad is different, more human, more fun.
   
3. Doing things badly is actually the second stage of learning. We move from unconscious incompetence through to "conscious incompetence" - doing things badly - before we move onto conscious and unconscious competence. If we don't respect this second stage, how can we ever really learn?
4. Celebrating doing things badly gets us out of the standards trap. If we only value things done well, we are faced with the choice of praising others falsely for a quality which is in fact lacking, or crushing their passions by imposing external standards on them. Many young people these days seem to have unrealistic expectations of their own skill levels, both positive and negative. If you celebrate doing things badly, you can give someone encouragement without creating false perceptions.
5. The things we do have important incidental effects on our community development, social and cultural systems, mental and physical health and relationship with the environment. The things we do have all kinds of unintended consequences, good and bad. When people in rehab weave baskets, it's not because they need baskets. If we only do the things we are "good at", we will stop doing many of the things that imperceptibly nurture us and keep us healthy.
   

I believe that doing things badly provides a simple route out of some of the traps of the modern world, and moves us towards a more playful, sociable and constructive space. This is the root of "Sociablism": praising things not for their quality, but for the positive effects they have on our lives, both as individuals and as a society.

Over time I'll explore what this actually means in practice for politics, society, education and business. But for now, I'll leave you with the words of the great Samuel Beckett:

No matter. Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

A Professional Society

This blog is concerned with those activities which reinforce human sociability and social relationships, and how they relate to professionalism, money and our social and natural environment. Let's look at the first of those terms now.

We all have our own interpretations of what it means to be "professional". Etymologically the word implies a public declaration that you are skilled at something, so the word is at root a social creation, a term which defines the quality of relationships between individuals, and between an individual and society. In the Victorian era - that great bastion of objective standards - the word came to take on a second meaning, that of being the antithesis of amateur. Amateur itself of course derives its meaning from a love of something - so we might mischievously conclude that, for those poor Victorians, professionalism was the opposite of love.

To me the word "professional" implies one thing in particular: that an activity is being done to a standard that is worth paying money for. A professional is someone who works to agreed standards and in doing so qualifies his/her services as worthy of remuneration. Doing something "professionally" implies quality, but (and this is the nub of the matter) this quality is defined only in relation to money. The term is useless for describing skills that are not worth paying money for. You cannot, for example, be a professional friend.

It is important to have standards, of course. Professionalism, like money, plays a key role in establishing trust between strangers, which has been the key engine for the growth of our civilisation since the industrial revolution. I trust that my doctor works to the standards I expect because he is professional, just as my shopkeeper trusts that I am worthy of buying his goods because we share a currency system. But surely we are losing something if our only quality standard for judging others is defined in relation to money? Are there not other things which are valuable in our interactions?

Doing things for love is the lifeblood of our community: we build cathedrals, help our neighbours, put on amateur dramatics and play with our children - not because we're good at it, but because we enjoy it, because it's needed, because it brings us closer to the people around us. If we see all this excellent social activity as somehow sub-standard because it isn't worth paying for, we risk creating a society that values work over social life, and the creation of financial value over the creation of social value.

I therefore propose that sociablism might act as a useful term to help define the quality of an activity in another way: a sociable act is one that enriches the lives and strengthens the social relationships of those involved. In a financial context, sociable activities may earn us money as individuals, but they also create value for our wider community and enrich our lives and relationships at the same time. We are all social animals at heart, and the things we do should reflect this innate sociability if our society is to meet our basic human needs. So when I evaluate the work that I and my associates do, I now judge myself against two standards: did I meet the standards expected of me by others, and did I attend to the human relationships involved at the same time? Did everybody involved profit, materially or socially, from this exchange? And did we bring all the people affected materially or socially by the transaction into the process?

I believe if we can begin to bring this additional consideration into our professional lives, the twin engines of money and commerce will start working to enrich our communities and cement our social ties, and help us tackle the increasing social exclusion, social isolation and social poverty of all. I also think that standards that promote the value of amateur activities will empower all of us to act for ourselves, rather than relying on a priesthood of professionals to provide what we need. There is often more value in an activity than the quality of its direct outputs. But more on this later...