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.

Respect, innit?

This week I heard a recent DTI statistic stating that almost 60% of the UK workforce don't feel respected by their bosses. When most people hear statistics like this they probably think about the implications for UK business. But in my case, I couldn't help wondering how this affects our society? Almost two thirds of our working-age population are being disrepected every working day. How must this make them feel in the rest of their lives?

Respect is a powerful word, and I believe also a very important one, implying as it does notions of attentiveness, regard, dignity and esteem. Malcolm Gladwell relates in Blink that the single most reliable factor in predicting the longevity of a marriage is the level of contempt: once there is contempt of one partner for another, the relationship is apparently doomed. So what then does this mean for our other relationships, with our friends, family members, the strangers we meet (or never will), and our relationship with nature?

I believe lack of respect (and fear of contempt) is having a profound impact on our ability to form healthy communities, socialise, work, and play, together, and learn from each other. After all, if you don't respect someone, how can you ever learn from them, understand them, or co-operate with them? The Government seems to agree: their website tackling anti-social behaviour is actually called "Respect". But although they naturally focus on families, parenting, neighbourhoods, activities for da yoof and so on, there is no mention of respect in the workplace, or any other of the many ways in which society disrespects its citizens.

We expect nearly two-thirds of the working population to fight for respect in their communities and then face daily contempt at work. I personally experience ongoing disrespect from my bank, various big businesses, my Government, the public services, tradesmen, supermarkets and even the media. We look on as our institutions destroy the planet and alienate small businesses, our schools teach our children they are wrong and that their curiosity isn't welcome, and our financial systems enslave anyone who dares to be poor or vulnerable. And then to relax, we can watch Simon Cowell telling people that they have no right to sing any more.

We have imprisoned ourselves in a system that doesn't respect us. And then we wonder why we're all so anti-social...

Many years ago, my father wrote an essay for his philosophy society arguing that it is morally admirable to respect a stone, because the act of respecting defines the person doing it, and not the recipient. He still has a quotation from Hamlet on the wall of his study, the spirit of which I have always tried to live by:

LORD POLONIUS:
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAMLET:
God's bodkins, man, much better! use every man
after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less
they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Take them in.

Don't wait for others to respect you; instead, respect them, and define yourself by that. The rest will follow.

It's a small world

I just got back from the Shambala Festival, a small but perfectly-formed event near Market Harborough. Massive congratulations to Sid and the rest of the organisers for creating such a wonderful playground for us all. I was particularly struck by the warm, sociable atmosphere all around the event. It felt like being in a small village for a few days.

I think this feeling had a lot to do with the strong emphasis on participation and interaction. Everyone was encouraged to have a go, through workshops, singalongs, discussions, games, whatever. The usual divisions between entertainers and consumers didn't seem to apply. Everywhere you went there were people doing things they'd never done before, and the community seemed much closer for that. I was very impressed by the attitude to education too: encouraging learning because it's a fun, sociable thing to do. I've improved my wicker weaving skills, and now have a nice wicker snail adorning my window box. (No doing things badly there though: it's a f***ing good snail.)

But it's the sense of smallness that has stayed with me since I've returned to London. Doing things badly is hard to do in our vast, multinational, ever-expanding world. After all, on the world stage what right do I have write about business and education? But in a small world, doing things badly is much more acceptable. In fact, lots of things seem to work better in a small community.

For a start, it's pretty easy to meet nice people there. I had a lovely conversation with the guys at Fairy Love about the need to make money - for the organisers, the stall-holders, the acts, everyone involved to make a profit, so that the festival could keep happening. Hearing a giant fairy talk about business is quite a mind-altering experience, and his words affected the whole way I saw the weekend. Everywhere I went at Shambala, I saw money, marketing, branding, enterprise, hard work - all the essential ingredients of hardened capitalism, and yet it all felt resolutely uncommercial.

I had a quick chat with very personable hip-hop guy Clayton Blizzard about "work". His CD's amazing (I paid him a fiver for a copy in an act of flagrant capitalism), and he'd clearly put loads of "work" into it, but he said he didn't think of music as work because he loved doing it. It seems to be the default association these days: "work" means doing something you don't enjoy. Strange how these words get distorted over time. Lots of people were working very hard at Shambala, but I didn't see many unhappy people.

I also had a very nice conversation with Tom Hodgkinson of the Idler, who was giving a talk about medieval values like neighbourliness, playfulness and community. I was particularly struck by his use of the word "trade", which seemed to carry with it all the humanity of commerce without implying the damaging excesses of modern enterprise. Tom's a marvellous advocate for the importance of idleness, which I've never been very good at myself. But I'm a firm believer in doing things for fun, and for spending more time socialising, which some may see as idleness. I'm starting to see Tom's point. He also played the ukulele quite badly and led us all in a most enjoyable singalong, so perhaps sociablism is close to idleness after all.

Festivals are well-known as bastions of "alternative culture", but what I experienced at Shambala wasn't all that different from the mainstream, just a lot more sociable. I've heard a lot of talk from anarchists over the years about the need to smash the capitalist system, to destroy money and stop work, but the system seemed to be "working" very nicely here. I gave my money to people I liked, for things I enjoyed, and I understood the consequences for my community and my environment. Suddenly capitalism didn't seem so bad after all. Perhaps in a smaller community, and properly balanced by sociablism, the old systems of money, work and commerce might actually start to work properly again.

I don't think I'd be happy to go back to living in villages though. I like the possibilities a larger world can offer. But we spend so much energy these days on making our world larger, maybe we could all benefit from being in a small world now and then.

Drawing animals badly

I spent some time this weekend drawing animals, thanks to some nice step-by-step guides in the newspaper and the encouragement of my friend Charlie. I drew an elephant, a giraffe, a rhino, and a lion. I was joined in this activity by my girlfriend, a couple of friends and my mum and dad (who did an excellent frog and eagle respectively). I'd heartily recommend it, especially if you sign them with your left hand and put them on the fridge when you're done.

I was amazed by the fear that ran through me when I started drawing the first one. The challenge of a blank piece of paper conjured up images not of possibility but of fear of failure, of getting it wrong and looking silly. Every one of us introduced our first drawing with some comment like "this is so hard" or "I was never any good at art". I was never much good at art in school, although I've always enjoyed it. I'll happily look at someone else's drawings, but it's been years since I actually did anything artistic. Art for me had become one of those "look, don't touch" activities, like lion-taming or accounting - best left to the experts.

Sitting around this weekend with friends and family, comparing horses and rabbits, I realised what I've been missing. Drawing things is wonderfully sociable. Playful, in fact. I wonder how I managed to forget that? And I also wonder what else I've stopped doing because I don't think I can do it well enough?

I'm much better at drawing animals now than I was last week. Perhaps learning is a process of doing things badly.

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...

So I started a blog then ...

The Great Blogosphere has beaten me at last. After years of plodding along perfectly happily without feeling the need to splurge my thoughts into the cybersphere for all to see, I've finally cracked. Strange how technology makes you think and act differently. After all, I've had pens, paper and blu-tack ever since I was a kid but I've never felt the urge to pin my thoughts up on a library door for every passer-by to read.

But a blog makes sense for this project, because anyone can write a blog. Even if you can't string a sentence together, you can put your half-formed, barely-supported opinions up on t'internet for All Thee Greate Worlde to see. There are no barriers to entry, no qualifications to acquire, no permissions to seek. Blogs are the ultimate antidote to an age of meritocracy, an age of skills, an age of "professionalism". Blogs are democratic, because they're a bit crap.

You see, I've felt more and more recently that the only way we can be truly inclusive as a society is to let people be crap at things. It's great to have experts, people who advance their crafts and reach new heights of science and artistry. We need doctors, and Murray Perahia, and people to build our blogs for us. But as Will Hay said, "We can't all be heroes: some of us have to sit by the side of the road and clap as they go by." If you have professionals, by definition you also have exclusion, and all the problems that brings. And more than that, some of the greatest challenges facing our civilisation - climate change, financial instability, global "terrorism", youth alienation, an aging population - will be solved not by a small clique of "professionals", but by everyone mucking in and doing whatever they can.

So I propose another -ism, to sit alongside capitalism, professionalism, terrorism and all those other big words invented by experts. We need a space to play, to explore, to invent new skills to master and do things just for the sheer joy of doing them. A place where we can be active in our lives and our communities rather than just sitting and clapping while the "experts" create our culture for us. A place where we can do the 80% of what needs doing, even if the other 20% is beyond us. A place where we can be a bit crap.

And I hereby name this -ism...

(drum roll...)

the new "sociablism"

(waits for applause, none cometh...)

"Sociablism" is life in praise of doing things badly. There are lots of stupid, badly-written, pointless blogs out there, and this is mine. Here I shall celebrate my rubbishness and do stuff badly, because doing stuff badly is better than doing nothing at all. Here I shall attempt to make sense of the jumble of thoughts in my head that make up this new "sociablism", to collect stories about sociablism in practice, and generally flail around in this delicate space like a drunk pig in a china shop. Because as a wise Scotsman once said:

if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly