One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” In today’s go-getting world, philosopher Bertrand Russell’s quote must be incomprehensible to many. For those to whom work and careers matter, stress is not a symptom of an irrational belief, but the natural by-product of having a job.
Too much work and stress may be bad for individuals. What is good for nations, however, is harder to know for sure.
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We use the word “nice” to describe people we come across who seem charming and kindly. It is not a word we use often to describe those to whom we are closest, because we know they are complex beings with faults and virtues. And these invariably come out in different ways.
I remember one chap who was very popular in the office; he was just being divorced by Wife No. 4. There was another colleague, a renowned curmudgeon, who disappeared unsmilingly at the earliest possible moment. I only found out later that he had been nursing his sick wife for years.
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Stressed-out world
Published: March 19 2010 09:40 | Last updated: March 19 2010 10:36
”One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” In today’s go-getting world, philosopher Bertrand Russell’s quote must be incomprehensible to many. For those to whom work and careers matter, stress is not a symptom of an irrational belief, but the natural by-product of having a job.
That is one conclusion from this year’s Grant Thornton International Business Report. More than half the 7,400 heads of private businesses surveyed feel more stressed than last year. Top of the list is China, with three-quarters of bosses feeling the heat. Also up there are Mexico and Vietnam. The link? The three economies are all expected to grow more than 4 per cent in 2010, yet their workers have fewer than 10 days off on average per year.
But it is not just those rolling-up their sleeves heading for a nervous breakdown. The Spanish and Greeks take plenty of holidays yet bosses there are increasingly touchy too. Obviously, these countries are suffering and across the survey the two main causes of stress were the economic climate and cash flows. Norway and Sweden fell into recession last year too yet their businesses report the lowest stress. Both top the table, however, in terms of days off.
Such surveys are not scientific. But there seems to be a correlation between stress and lack of holidays. More important, however, is whether a relationship exists between either and economic performance. The data is equivocal. On average Americans put in an extra two hours a week compared with UK workers. Yet both countries had almost identical crises, while lazier nations fared considerably better. Too much work and stress may be bad for individuals. What is good for nations, however, is harder to know for sure.
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Outside Edge: Towards a theory of finite niceness
By Matthew Engel
Published: March 19 2010 22:36 | Last updated: March 19 2010 22:36
There was a report this week from the journal Psychological Science (my nightly bedtime reading) entitled Do Green Products Make Us Better People? The answer, according to two Canadian psychologists, was emphatically not.
After conducting a series of tests, they concluded that those who buy supposedly ethical products were more likely to lie, cheat and steal than those who did not, and less likely to take the chance to be kind. They described this paradox as “moral balancing” or “compensatory ethics”.
Like so much science these days, this was reported by the British press in partisan tones. The liberal, greenish Guardian published a straight news report, which was nonetheless full of subliminal self-laceration. The right-wing Daily Telegraph laughed deliriously. Despite being an occasional buyer of organic carrots, I myself take great satisfaction from this study because it fits with a long-held hypothesis of mine: Engel’s Theory of Finite Niceness.
We use the word “nice” to describe people we come across who seem charming and kindly. It is not a word we use often to describe those to whom we are closest, because we know they are complex beings with faults and virtues. And these invariably come out in different ways.
I remember one chap who was very popular in the office; he was just being divorced by Wife No. 4. There was another colleague, a renowned curmudgeon, who disappeared unsmilingly at the earliest possible moment. I only found out later that he had been nursing his sick wife for years.
The figure of the “telescopic philanthropist” was identified and satirised 150 years ago by Dickens when he invented Mrs Jellyby, devoted to the natives of Borrioboola-Gha while completely neglecting her children. And it has often been noted that the selfless politics of the idealistic Left is conducted with the most poisonous venom. My own experience was that the old-line Afrikaaners and Ulster Protestants, their politics based on hatred, were among the most hospitable people a non-combatant could meet.
So I try to go along with the line coined either by Robert Louis Stevenson or my grandmother: “There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behoves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.”
I’m not quite sure where Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot fit into this, but maybe psychopaths are exempt. Then again, when a respectable member of the bourgeoisie is unveiled as a murderer, the neighbours do tend to say how nice he was. And even at the trial of the Kray brothers, Britain’s most notorious gangsters, it was remarked that they had been very kind to their mother.
On the other side of the coin, I remember the advice of Philip Hope-Wallace, the Guardian’s great theatre critic: “Never work for a liberal newspaper. They’ll sack you on Christmas Eve.”
The writer is an FT columnist
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