Above: old guidebook to Hughendon Manor in Buckinghamshire, which is preserved as a Benjamin Disraeli museum. This booklet has a pre-decimal price so must date from the 1960s. It lists hundreds of Disraeli books, pictures and mementos, and is an example of a scholarly guidebook from the pre-dumbed down era.
David Cameron intends to model his premiership on that of Benjamin Disraeli, the only British Prime Minister from a minority background. There was a distinct Young England tone to his speech in Downing Street yesterday – the need for effective and sustainable social justice in an industrial society. It’s an interesting ideology.
He will also have to manage popular expectations in dire economic circumstances.
The challenge will be to make austerity and restraint desirable, rather than encouraging people to expect an early return to the boom and bust cycle.
Although consumerism is constantly portrayed as a “good” there is no rational reason for this. Consumerism has brought a lot of problems to society, to the environment and to individuals. It is irrational for people to over-eat until they are fat, over-shop until they are burdened with debt, over-work themselves until they become stressed etc.
Consumerism relies for its power on the trigger of Maslow’s needs for Esteem and Self-Actualisation.
If the government can deliver to its population access to “Esteem” and “Self-Actualisation” without the purchase of consumer goods (which do not actually satisfy either of these needs) not only will many economic and environmental problems be solved, they will also have established a political usp that will be of value at the next election in 2015.
3 comments:
Andrew, I do agree entirely with Maslow's and I guess your position on the issue but I can't really see how all this is going to come from people who basically own everything. I disliked Blair's policy on lots and lots of decisions but did you happen to see the picture of Gordon Brown eating a yoghurt in his own kitchen? It might have been something fake and made up (sort of kitchen sink drama) but I think essentiality has always and should have always been part of a truly democratic and leftish party.
Ciao, luca
Hi Luca,
Neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown can be described as democratic or leftish as those terms are normally understood - they were both opportunists and populists and their governments were "intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich".
They both put Peter Mandelson at the heart of their administrations.
Tony Blair was (is?) a great personal friend of Silvio Berlusconi.
You can judge a man by his friends!
New Labour betrayed the working class because they thought there was no-one else politically the working class would vote for.
They need to apologise for what they did to working class communities in this country.
If the Labour Party is not for the working class then it has no real purpose other than power for its own sake.
As for the yoghurt picture, Gordon Brown is not a slim man, and to become as overweight as he is he must eat much more than an a occasional yoghurt.
But anyway, these people are all gone now.
There is no suggestion I have seen that members of the new administration are motivated by materialism.
Regards,
Andrew
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