The narrative that Jesus came to save our economic skins was given extra credibility with news that retail sales in November were significantly up on last year, thanks to the shopping scrum that was Black Friday. This is a myth now more potent than the story of the baby of the manger. It persists, however, because it’s a story that is equally convenient for both defenders and detractors of the economic status quo.
ReadWith so many calls on our goodwill, Giving Tuesday is the perfect time to stop and think about how we should give and to whom. Here are my opinionated answers to the big giving questions, such as Should I grow a moustache or pour ice over my head? and Should I be rude to chuggers?
ReadAmericans are the 10th richest people on earth, yet as a recent Gallup-Healthways report puts it, the country has “good-but-not-great wellbeing compared with the rest of the world”. Many people think they know why…
ReadWe should not just run down the road marked “evidence base” but should also make an argument base for the arts, one which is convincing independent of any measurable social goods. ACE’s chair Sir Peter Bazalgette points towards something like this when he looks to “articulate a new language of cultural value that will help all of us to understand better the essential contribution that the arts make to our lives.” He is right, and that new language is not the old bureaucratic language of economic and social impacts.
ReadI say ‘very’ rather than ‘super’. I think mountains are awesome but simply having the right money for my waiter is not. I don’t think I’m amazing: I don’t even believe I should think that. In sunny Silicon Valley, this moderate British scepticism makes me feel churlish and cynical. It certainly has no place at Googleplex in Mountain View, California, where I found myself recently, among 250 ‘thought leaders’ – researchers, writers, educators, artists, policymakers, investors – gathered for the Sci Foo ‘unconference’…
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