Head, Hand, Heart

David Goodhart is a British “thinker” whose work arouses mixed feelings in good liberal circles. He was the author of “The Road to Somewhere – the new tribes shaping British politics” (2017) which I called, in an extended post of 2 years ago, “the most insightful analysis of contemporary British society I’ve read”.

But appearing, as it did, only a few months after the Brexit referendum, its sympathetic treatment of the “left-behinds” offended privileged Remainers. He may have been a founding member of the centrist monthly “Prospect” but his card had been marked from 2004 when he published a pamphlet entitled “Too Diverse?” - which argued that the country was approaching the limits of acceptable levels of immigration    

He’s just published a worthy successor Head Hand Heart – the struggle for dignity and status in the 21^st Century whose 280 pages I managed to romp through in a couple of days and whose key points I want to share with you. But first an explanation of the title's first three words - 

Britain and America in particular suffer from a condition he describes as “Peak Head”, where cognitive achievement acts as a sorting mechanism in a supposed meritocracy. Along the way, we have devalued both technical, practical abilities (Hand), and social and empathetic skills (Heart), while alienating and demoralising the people who do the jobs that require them.

Deindustrialisation is a big part of the story. In 1976, Goodhart writes, there were 45,000 steelworkers and 4,000 students in Sheffield. In 2017, 20 years after Tony Blair made a mantra of “education, education, education”, there were 5,000 steelworkers and 60,000 students.

One of the results of this profound cultural shift has been a stagnation in pay and a demoralising loss of status for jobs not deemed to be part of the graduate “knowledge economy”. The hourly pay of bus and coach drivers has risen by just 22% since 1975, compared with a 111% rise for advertising and public relations managers. 

The book is a remarkably easy read – with extensive quotations from (and references to) other books (not unlike the style of this blog!) – although I did find my eyes glazing over at the excessive references to statistical trends and percentages.  

Key Points (for this reader)

1. The chapter on the history and significance of the Intelligence Quotient is not as thorough or as useful as it might be – which is strange given that this is the basis of his critique. 

2. The chapter on “Whatever happened to Heart?” is only 30 pages long and devoted mainly to nursing and the social care of the elderly but makes no mention of the Dutch model for neighbourhood care – started by Buurtzorg a few years back which, for the past few years, has been inspiring people everywhere. This is a worker cooperative model… which, quite rightly, figures as one of the inspiring case-studies in Frederic Laloux’s “Reinventing Organisations”. Will Davies’ very useful review of the book notes that it is very weak (if not lame) on prescriptions – tending to rely on moral exhortation, pay adjustments and the dishing out of honours. 

Why on earth does he not recognise that cooperatives offer the strongest way to dignity?

3. The following chapter “The Fall of the Knowledge Worker” is even shorter (20 pages) and records an interesting interview with Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s Chief Economist, about the possible effects of automation on “the future role of humans” (!!). For Haldane these seem to consists of 3 Cs – Creativity, Craft and Caring. 

- First the cognitive skills requiring creativity and intuition.

- The second are skills of “bespoke design” – the market niches which require craft skills – be it in art, foodstuffs or textiles.

- “tasks requiring emotional intelligence (sympathy and empathy, relationship-building and negotiation skills, resilience and character) rather than cognitive intelligence”

4. The final chapter “Cognitive Diversity and the Future of Everything” is perhaps the most interesting since it relates to some of the posts of this year about how “outsiders” with “peripheral vision” who straddle different worlds produce the most insightful perspectives – except that it uses the concept of “cognitive diversity” and of “collective intelligence”. This takes me back to my consultancy days, when I used Belbin’s team roles and Harrison and Bramson’s The Art of Thinking to help my staff understand that there was no ideal way of operating in a team – there are distinctive roles or ways of thinking and the trick is to use them effectively…. 

5. I am a great believer in the concept of the “golden medium” – ie balance between opposing forces. And this is how the book ends – with the argument that what is needed is a better balance between head, hand and heart.

Further references

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/life-after-meritocracy

http://www.erstestiftung.org/en/the-three-hs-and-the-achievement-society/

https://unherd.com/2020/07/why-universities-had-to-be-challenged/

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-insufferable-hubris-of-the-well-credentialed?cid2=gen_login_refresh&cid=gen_sign_in

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/10/04/work-or-toil-in-the-pandemic/