World’s Most Livable Cities

The Mercer's Quality of Living Survey is released annually, and compares 215 cities based on 39 criteria such as safety, education, hygiene, recreation, political-economic stability and public transportation. The Germans have it sown up - German speaking countries dominate the list. 7 of the top 10 cities with the highest quality of life are in German speaking countries. Vienna (pictured above) is top of the list. Australia and Canada also do well. Dublin came in at 25. The most livable Asian city is Singapore, coming in at 26th. The United States struggles – its highest entries are Honolulu and San Fransico, which come in at joint 29th. 25 of the top 50 cities are European, compared to 7 of the top 50 for the US.

1 - Vienna, Austria
2 - Zurich, Switzerland
3 - Geneva, Switzerland
4 - Vancouver, Canada
5 - Auckland, New Zealand
6 - Düsseldorf, Germany
7 - Munich, Germany
8 - Frankfurt, Germany
9 - Bern, Switzerland
10- Sydney, Australia
11- Copenhagen, Denmark
12- Wellington, New Zealand
13- Amsterdam, The Netherlands
14- Brussels, Belgium
15- Toronto, Canada
16- Ottawa, Canada
17- Berlin, Germany
18- Melbourne, Australia
19- Luxembourg, Luxembourg
20- Stockholm, Sweden

Pigeon Annexes Reader's Balcony

A READER WRITES: "A pigeon has set up a nest on my balcony (see photograph), and I do not know what to do. Should I abort the eggs before they hatch? The father is also around, shitting all over my balcony. What should I do?"

BB SAYS: This is a tricky one. A friend of mine calls pigeons "rats with wings". Pigeons are notoriously ruthless - if you do not act now, they will take over your entire property. One option is to call in vermin control. But I would recommend taking matters into your own hands. Inoculate yourself against having any sympathy for the pigeons by watching Hitchcock's The Birds - this film will show you what's coming your way if you don't do the necessary.

The Great University Farce

The university as it currently exists has long outlived its usefulness. We should get rid of universities, and replace them with something else.

People are finally beginning to blow the whistle of the Great University Farce. The dirty little secret is this: most people employed by universities are mediocre and don’t do anything useful. According to the New York Times:

“Most graduate programs universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student
loans)”

Also, due to excessive specialisation, most academics have a "limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems".

The whole thing is a pyramid scheme: "young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments".

Swine Flu Histrionics

Frequent outbursts of irrational hysteria are one of the human species most charming characteristics. Remember when the cows went mad a few years ago? That was an enjoyable one. “BSE has the potential to infect up to 10 million Britons” crowed one “scientific expert”. Then there was SARS – there was "a 25% chance of killing tens of millions" according to one “scientific expert”. Then there was bird flu – “it will be the first pandemic of the 21st century" said another “scientific expert”. "One in four Britons could die" said the World Health Organisation.

Now the world is going mad over “Swine Flu”. Swine flu – sounds sinister and dangerous. What is swine flu? As Simon Jenkins points out in today's Guardian, Swine flu is flu. If you get it you go to bed for a while and take some medicine. Then you get well again, unless you are very unlucky. A couple from the UK who caught the swine flu on holiday in Cancun are getting better. That tends to happen to people who get flu, however much it may disappoint the media.

Anyway, don’t let the facts prevent you from going barking mad and worrying about Swine Flu – humans love to go berserk for no reason. Join in the fun! Get yourself a face mask and a germ warfare suit! The “experts” will be hauled out in front of TV cameras to intone about how “500 billion people could die from this … so give me and the health organisations more money”.

Anyone for Sheep Flu?

(Of course, when Swine Flu becomes a global pandemic and millions of people die, I’m going to feel a bit guilty about writing the above post)

Polly Toynbee on the UK budget

"Is this a people's budget? It did soak the rich - just listen to their indignation. The 1.5% who earn over £100,000 will yet again claim an assault on "middle England" [due to taxes being raised on their incomes]. They will protest that productivity, growth, aspiration and the very future of the nation will be imperilled by skimming just a little cream off top earners. They will warn that City talent will now take flight, the golden geese fleeing to Zurich, Monaco or Dubai. At last, so late in the day, Labour has called their bluff: let them go. There is no global shortage of those who ran banks into the ground."

"My daughter is a lesbian"

A READER WRITES: "I recently discovered to my shock that my daughter is a lesbian. What should I do?"

BB SAYS: You should do nothing. This page is for people who have problems that need to be solved. Your daughter being a lesbian is NOT a problem.

Do YOU have a problem? Leave an anonymous comment, or send your problem in confidence to brianbarrington@gmail.com

A Review of the "Victory of Reason" by Rodney Stark

Professor Rodney Stark is one of the world’s most renowned Sociologists of Religion. The full title of this book is "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success". It received rave reviews in much of the American press. According the the Wall Street Journal the book is a “tour de force”. In his book, Stark argues that Christianity is responsible for reason, freedom, and science. He says that "the success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians." In a startling counter-factual claim, Stark announces: "had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls". Stark adds that if it wasn't for Jesus, we would live in a world where "most infants do not live to the age of five and many women die in childbirth". The argument is that science and freedom arose in Europe, and that Europe was Christian, therefore Christianity was responsible.

These are pretty strong claims for Christianity: the success of the West rests ENTIRELY on religious foundations, and all the people who brought it about were DEVOUT Christians. For Stark's thesis to stand, he needs to address several challenges to it, and unfortunately I think his book does not satisfactorily address those challenges.

1.
The first challenge facing Stark's thesis is the need to explain away the accomplishments of pre-Christian classical European civilisation - the achievements of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Stark ascribes freedom, individualism, democracy, science and technology to Christianity, yet NOT ONE of these concepts is promulgated in the New Testament, but ALL of these concepts are strongly and clearly advocated in pre-Christian Ancient Greek thinkers.

The Ancient pre-Christian world of the West produced Homer, Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, Archimedes, Hippocrates, Euclid, Galen, Cicero, Plautus. It somehow managed to do all of this without Jesus and without the Bible. Ancient Greece's leading thinkers were notable for their defence of reason, perhaps in contrast to the New Testament, which frequently instructs people to embrace "faith".

Stark's grasp of the achievements of the Ancient world is tenuous. He says that "Ultimately, Greek learning stagnated of its own inner logic [what does that mean?] . After Plato and Aristotle very little happened beyond some extensions of geometry". But some of the greatest work in Greek science, e.g. Ptolemy in geography and astronomy and Galen in medicine, took place over the four hundred years after Plato and Aristotle. How can Stark leave out Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Plotinus, Galen, Hipparchus, all of whom were writing in the centuries after Aristotle? Most historians of science give the Greeks precedence in science, but Stark says he knows of no real Greek achievements after Aristotle, which is when much of the greatest Greek work in science took place. If one wanted to be harsh, one could say that this level of ignorance disqualifies Stark from being taken seriously.

2.
The next challenge for Stark's thesis is to explain why Christian Medieval Europe was not obviously superior to the other great centres of Eurasian civilisation at that time, such as China, India and the Muslim world. Stark would also need to explain away the accomplishments of these non-Christian civilisations, which happened with little or no influence from Jesus or the Bible.

During the Middle Ages (from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern period in the 16th century) Christianity dominated European intellectual life. One could argue that the civilisational accomplishments of Europe in this era were inferior to those of the Ancient European era that preceded it, as well as to the Modern European era that followed it. In fact, before the spread of the water-mill after 900 AD, Medieval Christian Western and Northern Europe contributed hardly anything in terms of innovation - and even between 1000 and 1450 the flow of philosophical ideas and technological innovations was predominantly from the Muslim world (and elsewhere) to Christian Europe, rather than vice versa. The reason for this? The non-Christian centres of Eurasian civilisation frequently had more to offer Christian Europe, than Christian Europe had to offer them.

To take the most obvious example, Medieval China was technologically more advanced than Christian Medieval Europe. China had invented the iron plough, matches, the compass, gunpowder, paper, printing - many of these technological advances only became known in Europe towards the end of the Christian Middle Ages. China's naval power was also superior to that of Europe during this period. All in all, China's cultural achievements (Confucianism, Taoism etc.) had not been noticeably inferior to those of anywhere else. China managed to accomplish all of this without Jesus and without the Bible.

Nevertheless, the Christian world did have some accomplishments during the thousand years of the Middle Ages, and it would be churlish not to recognise them. But it would also be churlish not to recognise that, when these accomplishments occurred, many of them were very strongly influenced by non-Christian sources. For example, the greatest Christian thinker of the Middle Ages (Aquinas) owed much to the pagan Aristotle and the Muslim Averroes - so much so that in his writings Aquinas referred to the former as simply The Philosopher, and the latter simply as The Interpreter. Aquinas's cosmopolitanism and open-mindedness to non-Christian sources is a refreshing contrast to Stark's blowhard "it-was-all-down-to-Jesus" nonsense.

Another point: if the West's supposed "innovation" and "superiority" in the Middle Ages can be attributed to Christianity, then why were the same "advances" not realised in the Byzantine east, where Christianity also reigned? In other words, any unusual advances (if they occurred) in Medieval Western Europe need to be explained by factors other than Christianity, since Byzantine Europe was also Christian.

3.
The next challenge facing Stark's thesis is to explain why Europe's rise to genuine global predominance after 1500 coincided with a marked DECLINE in Christianity's hold over European intellectual life. From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, European technology and ideas advanced at such an exponential rate so as to virtually dominate the entire world. According to Stark the rise of Europe to global predominance was largely due to Jesus, the Bible and Christianity. But by the end of the Middle Ages, Christianity had been dominating Europe for over a thousand years, and Europe had not risen to global predominance.

What happened in the time after 1500? What happened was that Modern Europe emerged. The intellectual life of these centuries was marked by:
- the emergence of humanism
- the weakening of Christianity's intellectual authority
- the placing of pre-Christian classical learning on a more equal footing with Christian theology
- the emergence of secularism
- the increasing focus on naturalism
- the strengthening of science
- the increasing political separation of church and state
- the Enlightenment revolution in thought
- the notion that reason should be the source of authority rather than revealed religious texts, or church hierarchies.

It was during THIS period that Europe really did storm ahead of its competitors in terms of wealth, culture, science, and technology. And THIS period was marked, as I have said, by an increasing secularism and by the undeniable weakening of Christian intellectual authority in Europe.

4.
Yet another problem for Stark is the RESPONSE of Christianity to these new Modern European developments after 1500. Frequently it left a lot to be desired. The Catholic Church's index of banned books from this time almost reads like a Who's-Who of great Enlightenment thinkers: Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Hume, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Kant. In every case, the Catholic church banned all or some of their books. Other people on the list of banned books include Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus.

And what about the Protestant Christians? Calvin's Geneva had very little freedom of any sort, and was not a hotbed of modern innovation. As for Luther, his contribution to the defence of reason was to announce that "Reason is the Devil's greatest whore ... it ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed ... Reason should be destroyed in all Christians ... Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason."

So the most influential Christian thinker of the last 500 years was a vehement opponent of reason - this hardly strengthens Stark's case that Christianity is responsible for the "victory of reason".

The Christian churches often did what they could to retard the development of Modern Europe. In many ways they were a reactionary force - they defended superstition rather than reason. Stark's case for Christianity is comically overstated.

Overall, one might say this: during the Modern period, in so far as Christianity made itself compatible with the Enlightenment, Reason, Humanism and Science, then it did not retard European development. In so far as Christianity REJECTED Enlightenment, Reason, Humanism and Science then it did, indeed, try to retard European development.

CONCLUSION:

One well-known professor of sociology, Alan Wolfe, has described Stark's "The Victory of Reason" as "the worst book by a social scientist that I have ever read". Perhaps this is a bit extreme. But unfortunately Stark's bias and prejudice are obvious. This is not a balanced or objective work of history. Indeed, it is not intended to be balanced or objective. It is an exercise in vulgar apologetics, and its appeal will be limited almost entirely to insecure Christians who need to be told that they are better than everyone else.

The rise of Modern Europe to global predominance was largely caused by more prosaic factors than those put forward by Stark. For those interested in the real reasons, I would recommend Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" and Michael Cook's "A Brief History of the Human Race".

What is the meaning of life?

A READER WRITES: “You keep on referring to the philosophy of Epicurus, the philosophy of Socrates, the philosophy of Nietzsche and so on. But what is your own philosophy? What do you think is the meaning of life? I want answers. I want to know what you think yourself. Don’t fob us off with ‘Hegel says ….’”

BB SAYS: My answer is embarrassingly simple. This is because I think that the answer to your questions is quite simple. So if you are looking for something devastatingly exciting, revelatory and original then I’m afraid you will not find it here.

So what is the meaning of life? The purpose of human life is happiness. This is what all human beings aim to achieve. Happiness and Joy are a by-product of certain human activities. So happiness is an activity rather than a state. The activities that bring us happiness and joy are based on our human nature – we are happy when we exercise various human faculties. I divide our human nature into three key components.

1.
Bodily life. Human beings are animals. We have the characteristics of mammals: sleeping, resting, breathing, eating, drinking, sex, reproducing, moving our bodies (dancing, running, climbing etc), sensory perception, growth. Participating in these activities brings us joy. Also, we are tool using animals, so making things can also bring us joy.

2.
Social life. Human beings are social animals. We live in groups. We live with other people. So social activities bring us joy. These include: love, friendship, family, parenting, laughing with others, helping other people. As well as being co-operative animals we are also competitive animals. We seek status in our social groups – via popularity, influence, wealth, fame or power. The pursuit and attainment of these things can also bring joy. But social status is a zero-sum game. There is only a fixed amount to go around. More for one person means less for another person. This “zero-sum” characteristic means that the quest for status is in many respects the most problematic part of human nature, since it leads to conflicts of interest, in a way that the others do not.

3.
Contemplative life. Human beings have evolved exceptionally large and complex brains. We are contemplative beings. We are curious animals, and the acquisition and discovery of knowledge is a joyful experience for us – whether in the form of science, psychology, history, philosophy and so forth. We also have aesthetic experiences (nature, art, music, literature) – so these are also a source of joy. Meditation, spirituality and religion are also components of this contemplative aspect of our nature, and they can also be a source of joy and happiness for many people.

Now whilst the basic structure of human nature is the same for nearly every human being, there are variations. Some people are more intellectual and contemplative, some are more religious and spiritual, some are more artistic and creative, some more sociable, some more competitive amd ambitious, some are more active, and some are more sensory and focused on the pleasures of the body. So each human being should work out what type of person he or she is, and act accordingly in order to live the most joyful life s\he possibly can. Thus the dictum: Know Thyself.

Do YOU have a problem? Leave an anonymous comment, or send your problem in confidence to brianbarrington@gmail.com

The biggest theft in the history of humanity

Mark my words: what is going on now with the bailouts of financial institutions will one day be clearly seen for what it really is – the biggest theft in the history of humanity. The money is being stolen off you and me - and off our children and grandchildren - in the form of higher taxes and higher future taxes. This is being done in order to bailout financial institutions that have made estimated world-wide losses of 4.1 trillion dollars (according to the IMF) - ) – “The next estimate will presumably be higher” notes Martin Wolf of the Financial Times dryly. The financial institutions knowingly took the risks that led to these losses, because they knew that they would be bailed out when things went wrong, and because they knew that the people who run the banks would make personal fortunes before the bailout became necessary.

Where is the biggest bank bailout theft occurring? Here in Ireland. According to the IMF, Ireland will pay a higher price (proportionately) to stabilise its banks than any other developed country in the world. This is because Ireland had a bigger property boom than anywhere else, and so there are more bad debts here than anywhere else. Thus, young people in Ireland will have to continue paying off the most over-priced mortgages in the world – but they will also face huge increases in taxes in order to fund the largest bank bailout in the world. Many people will start to ask themselves: Is there any point in staying in this country? And this is not just my opinion – it is the opinion of twenty of Ireland’s leading academic economists, all of whom think that the current proposed government bailout of Irish banks is basically a disguised rip-off of the Irish tax-payer. These 20 economists think that the government should nationalise the banks – so that the tax-payer might at least have the possibility of getting something in return for his money.

But remember that the governments of developed countries, including Ireland, have one objective: to give these financial institutions as much of your money as they possibly can, with a minimum of fuss, and without nationalisation. The IMF expressed concern that taxpayers were becoming weary of supporting the financial sector: “There is a real risk that governments will be reluctant to allocate enough resources” it fretted. Personally, I think the IMF is worrying for no reason: the public objects to these bailouts, but the governments will just ignore those objections. The bankers will not give back the money they made during years of illusory profits. They will just take our money now, in order to cover their losses.

So why do the banks need to be bailed out with your money? The official answer is that there is a “shortage of credit”. If the banks are not bailed out there will be no lending, so the story goes. This is rubbish.

If governments really wanted to increase “credit” here is what they would do: set up new state-owned banks using the money that they are giving to the existing banks OR nationalise the systemically important parts of the existing banks. But they wish to avoid nationalisation at all costs. By giving your money to the existing banks, governments are ensuring that your money will be used to write off the bad debts of those banks, rather than to “expand credit”. The purpose is to use your money to keep the existing institutions in tact, with as many of the same people in charge as is possible. And remember that the REAL problem with the world economy is not a shortage of credit – it is a shortage of demand.

The rest of us can go screw ourselves while the bankers laugh at us because we let them steal our money.

Will the government continue to treat you with contempt by refusing to nationalise the banks? Will you vote for them if they continue to treat you like this?

Why does Obama do what the banks tell him to do?

Leading Noble Prize winning economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz say banks should be nationalised. But when Obama has an economic summit to decide what to do, people like Krugman and Stiglitz are nowhere to be seen. Why not? Noam Chomsky explains why:

Obama’s plan is the same the Bush plan - it's based on the principle that the financial institutions should remian intact, no matter how much it costs taxpayers. They have to remain intact, and must remain under the control of the same people who destroyed the economy. Why?

“Obama’s constituency is basically the financial institutions. Just take a look at the funding for his campaign. I mean, the final figures haven't come out, but we have preliminary figures, and it seems to be mostly financial institutions. I mean, the financial institutions preferred him to McCain. They are the main funders for both—you know, I mean, core funders for both parties, but considerably more to Obama than McCain ... That's the way the system works: you make risky loans, you make a lot of money, and if you get into trouble, we're here to bail you out, namely the taxpayer … What does ‘too big to fail’ mean? ‘Too big to fail’ is an insurance policy. It's a government insurance policy. Government means the public pays, which says, ‘You can take huge risks and make plenty of profit, and if anything goes wrong, we'll bail you out.’ That's ‘too big to fail.’ Well, that's extreme protectionism … We lectured the third world that they must accept free trade, though we accept protectionism.”

“The modern information revolution—computers, the internet, fancy software and so on—most of that comes straight out of the Pentagon. My own university, MIT, was one of the places where all of this was developed under Pentagon contracts in the 1950s and the 1960s. In fact, that's another critical part of the way the economy works. The public pays the costs and takes the risk of economic development, and if anything works, maybe decades later, it's handed over to private enterprise to make the profits. And that's a core element of the economy. Of course, we don't permit the third world to do that. That's considered a violation of free trade when they do it. But it's the way our economy works. And it's kind of complementary to the ‘too big to fail’ doctrine of protectionism for financial institutions. But in general—we do not have a capitalist economy. We have kind of a state capitalist economy in which the public has a role: pay the costs, take the risks, bail out if they get into trouble. And the private sector has a role: make profit, and then turn to the public if you get into trouble”.

Is Muhammad more influential than Jesus?

In the below list of the history’s most influential people Muhammad comes in at number 1 whereas Jesus only makes number 3. Can this be justified? There are 2.1 billion Christians (about a third of the human race) compared to about 1.3 billion Muslims (about a quarter of the human race). So surely Jesus wins? Well, not necessarily. Jesus was the principle prophet of Christianity and Muhammad the principle prophet of Islam. But the primary text of Christianity (the Gospels) were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, whereas the primary text of Islam (the Koran) was written by Muhammad. The primary missionary and proselytiser of Christianity was St. Paul, whereas the primary proselytiser of Islam was Muhammad. Muhammad is also a unique example of a political and military leader who was also a religious leader – he conquered much of the Middle East, and created his own Empire. On the other hand, Jesus let Julius Caesar and Augustus do the dirty work – they created the Roman Empire, and then Christianity took it over, when Constantine converted. So Mohammed is Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Julius Caesar, Augustus and Constantine all rolled into one. This is why he is the most influential human in history. The philosopher Nietzsche defined the Overman or Superman as “the Roman Caesar with the soul of Christ”. I submit that the prophet Mohammed was Nietzsche’s Overman – the prophet Mohammed was the Roman Caesar with the soul of Christ.

(PS: the above picture is of Muhammad Ali, rather than the prophet Muhammad)

The 100 Most Influential People in History

A book has been written, ranking the most influential 100 people in human history. Below are the top 30 most influential people. I have my doubts about the list. Einstein in the top 10? What did Einstein ever do? His so-called theory of so-called relativity makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, if you ask me. And why is Christopher Columbus at number 9? Because he "discovered" America hundreds of years after the Vikings, and thousands of years after the Native Americans? Big deal.

1. Muhammad
2. Isaac Newton
3. Jesus Christ
4. Buddha
5. Confucius
6. St. Paul
7. Ts'ai Lun (inventor of paper)
8. Johann Gutenberg (developed movable type)
9. Christopher Columbus
10. Albert Einstein
11. Louis Pasteur (invented pasteurization)
12. Galileo Galilei
13. Aristotle
14. Euclid
15. Moses
16. Charles Darwin
17. Emporer Qin (unified China)
18. Augustus Caesar
19. Nicolaus Copernicus
20. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (beheaded during the French revolution for being a chemist)
21. Constantine the Great
22. James Watt (developed steam engine)
23. Michael Faraday (discovery of magneto-electricity, boring git)
24. James Clerk Maxwell (discovered the electromagnetic spectrum – who cares?)
25. Martin Luther
26. George Washington
27. Karl Marx
28. The Wright Brothers (inventors of airplane)
29. Genghis Khan
30. Adam Smith

Slavery and Fear of Death

"The man who is not afraid to die will always be your master." - Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher.

A corollary: Fear of death is what enslaves a person, and a person who is not afraid of death cannot be enslaved. Given that death is inevitable, it could be argued that to let one’s life be determined by fear of death is the most irrational thing in the world.

The above painting is “The Death of Seneca” by Rubens. Seneca was accused of treason by the Emperor Nero and was forced to commit suicide.

Other quotes by Seneca:

“Life without the courage for death is slavery”

“He who is brave is free”

“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.”

“Death is the release from all pain and complete cessation, beyond which our suffering will not extend. It will return us to that condition of tranquility, which we had enjoyed before we were born. Should anyone mourn the deceased, then he must also mourn the unborn. Death is neither good nor evil, for good or evil can only be something that actually exists. However, whatever is of itself nothing and which transforms everything else into nothing will not all be able to put us at the mercy of Fate.”

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”

Worry Machines

A READER WRITES: “I am amazed that you have not taken the opportunity to heal the masses or at least alleviate their post-budget trauma by a few well-chosen philosophical adages. Are you neglecting your mission?”

BB SAYS: So the masses are suffering from post-budget trauma. Why? What are they worrying about? There is nothing to worry about. Human beings are designed to worry – we are created in order to be fearful and anxious. We have evolved to notice bad news and to ignore good news. Often the bad news is not even bad news at all.

Psychologists call this human trait Negativity Bias – this is the psychological phenomenon by which humans pay more attention to and give more weight to negative than positive experiences and information. Negativity bias is the biggest source of human misery in the world. Some people literally worry themselves to death, mostly over nothing. Most of the fear and anxiety we experience is completely unnecessary.

Why do humans suffer from negativity bias? Because we have evolved that way – during the most of our evolutionary development, the potential cost of not noticing something bad, far exceeded the potential cost of not noticing something good. The people who spent all their time worrying were less likely to be eaten by tigers.

The environment in which we humans evolved was much more dangerous than the environment we now live in. Thanks to efforts of our stressed-out ancestors, we actually live in the safest period ever in human history. There is higher life-expectancy, much less violence, much less hunger, much less disease and much less suffering than there ever has been before. But you wouldn’t know this by reading the newspapers would you? There is actually much less need to worry about anything than ever before in history. But are people worrying less? Like hell they are. They still have the same brains that they had during the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution when there was a predator around every corner, and when life-expectancy was about 30. But our ability to assess risk is hopeless.

Here is a small list of things that people spend their time worrying about, even though there is no need to worry about any of them: the recession, terrorism, religion, unemployment, crime, illness, careers, nuclear warfare, the environment. Expand the list for yourself. Doing so will brighten up your week.

There is too much worrying in the world, and there will continue to be too much worrying. A deficit of worrying is not our problem. So the wise thing to do is this: stand back and let other people do the worrying.

Boris to save us from the Great Bee Crisis – 4 years left for the human race?

The Mayor of London has much on his mind these days – the financial crisis, traffic jams, crime rates … but above all bees. This is what happens when you elect amusing, lovable sociopaths to be mayors of major cities.

Recently there was a bee in Boris’s bedroom annoying him, so he “bound naked from the bed, brandishing the 580-page biography (unread) of Marcus Aurelius” and launched himself at the unsuspecting creature. However, at the last moment Boris held back because bees, he tells us, are “as threatened as the panda”. If you are lucky enough to have any bees in your house “you must treat them as honoured guests” because “the global bee population has recently entered a catastrophic decline” and “if the bees go, the human race will perish four years later”.

Never write off a Korean

A much underestimated peninsula is Korea, sandwiched between its two more powerful neighbours – China and Japan. I have long admired the tenacity and audacity of the plucky Koreans. Where else, for example, can one find a head of state who has written an opera? Not one opera, not two operas, but SIX operas. Sure, Barack Obama may have written a couple of lively autobiographies, and Brian Cowen has done his bit for the arts by posing nude for young, ambitious painters. But what world leader has even come close to matching the cultural achievements of Kim Jong-Il (pictured above)? His latest opera was met with standing ovations in North Korea and received unanimous critical acclaim in the press there, where it was declared to be “a triumph”. “Our Deal Leader’s arias kick the ass off Verdi, and leave Wagner in the dust” cooed the opera correspondent in the state run newspaper. Or something like that.

My latest brush with Korea is “Buya’s Diary” by graphic artist Seyeong O - a rather splendid novel, which I would recommend.

“Your posts are too long”

A READER WRITES: “Your latest post on Epicurus was a real snooze. It rambled on and on and on. I thought it would never end. Haven’t you ever heard of editing? Please keep your posts shorter.”

BB SAYS: Okay.

“Do not fear god”

The philosopher Epicurus is often held to be an advocate of hedonistic indulgence in the pleasures of the senses, even though his philosophy was, in fact, a teaching in moderation. This erroneous view results from the anti-Epicurean propaganda of Stoics, Christians and others. Powerful people and priests have always hated Epicurus, because he teaches people to live without fear, and people cannot be controlled unless they are fearful.

However, Epicurus is sometimes held to have based some of his ideas on Aristippus, a student of Socrates and founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy. The central injunction of the Cyrenaics was “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”.

But Epicurus advocated the pleasures in moderation: “No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves”. He advocated the pleasures of the mind and friendship, as much as he advocated the pleasures of the flesh. “If the things that produce the pleasures of profligate men really freed them from fears of the mind concerning celestial and atmospheric phenomena, the fear of death, and the fear of pain; if, further, they taught them to limit their desires, we should never have any fault to find with such persons, for they would then be filled with pleasures from every source and would never have pain of body or mind, which is what is bad.”

Regarding death, Epicurus regards it as inevitable: “It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls”. But there is no point in worrying about the inevitable: “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist”. So, according to Epicurus, when we die we will return to the same state we were in before we were born – a state of non-existence, which was not bad, and which is no cause for fear. In order to live well one must free oneself from fear of death: “The art of living well and the art of dying well are one”.

Also, living well means that the mind must control the flesh: “The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh is, and banishing the terrors of the future, procures a complete and perfect life, and we have no longer any need of unlimited time. Nevertheless the mind does not shun pleasure, and even when circumstances make death imminent, the mind does not lack enjoyment of the best life”.

Regarding religion, Epicurus believed that the gods are utterly unconcerned with us, and therefore there is no need for us to be in the slightest bit concerned with them. For all practical purposes, his teaching was indistinguishable from atheism. He was also sceptical about the effectiveness of prayer: “If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another” and “it is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself”.

He advocates knowledge as a means of liberation from fear: “It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.”

Epicurus advocates acting in accordance with reason – this is wisdom: “Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life”

In order to live a joyful life that is free from fear, one must, says Epicurus, be just:

“It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.” What is justice? “There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men”. It is based on the Golden Rule. Epicurus says: “Justice is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed” and “Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another”.

Epicurus is a great advocate of friendship: “Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship”. Also “The same conviction which inspires confidence that nothing we have to fear is eternal or even of long duration, also enables us to see that in the limited evils of this life nothing enhances our security so much as friendship”.

The unjust man cannot have friendship and love in his life, and is therefore depriving himself of the greatest joy and happiness that human life offers. Not only is the unjust man depriving himself of positive joy, he deprives himself of the protection of friends, and he also lives a life of fear: “It is impossible for a man who secretly violates the terms of the agreement not to harm or be harmed to feel confident that he will remain undiscovered, even if he has already escaped ten thousand times; for until his death he is never sure that he will not be detected”. Thus “The just man is most free from disturbance, while the unjust is full of the utmost disturbance.”

So Epicurus says that we should live joyfully, without false hopes and without false fears. The Epicurean formula for the best life was stated by Philodemus in four simple lines:

“Do not fear god,
Do not worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure”