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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
42September/October 2015
C
ONTEMPORARY job insecu-
rity is more than a byproduct
of prevailing neo-Liberalism.
Technological change often
reduces the need for labour
inputs. A serious mismatch has
emerged between skills and the require-
ments of our economies. Only a
revolution in work will allow for greater
fulfilment and individual autonomy in
this changed environment.
Theodore Zeldin’s latest work: ‘The
Hidden Pleasures of Mankind: A New
Way of Remembering the Past and
Imagining the Future’ offers a profound
examination of the failings of contem-
porary corporations to offer dignified
employment to their workers. He mines
history for alternative responses to
contemporary challenges.
The book is an extension of the work
of Zeldin´s non-profit Oxford Muse
foundation that provides an online plat-
form “to stimulate courage and
invention in personal, professional and
cultural life”. It is a forum where ideas
are flashed before participants, offering
a kind of intellectual Tinder. Proceeds
from the book go to that project.
In terms of originality and variety,
Zeldin – born to Jewish-Russian parents
in – is arguably the pre-eminent
historian of his generation in Britain.
His lack of a deserved public profile
derives perhaps from his concentration
on the history of France, although his
‘Intimate History of Humanity’ (),
like this work, provided a staggering,
global range of sources in his explora-
tion of the human condition.
But as well as providing a collection
of portraits that yield insights into his-
torical processes, in his latest work he
looks explicitly at how contemporary
societies might offer greater satisfac-
tion for beleaguered citizens.
He is a trenchant critic of large cor-
porations and trends towards
privatisation. In spite of this, Ikea
allowed him to conduct research into its
modus operandi which he criticises as
ruthless expansionism and an inability
to nurture the hidden talents of many of
its workers.
Zeldin yearns for an economy com-
posed primarily of micro businesses
operating at all levels of society facili-
tating greater communication, and a
personal relationship with money as
opposed to one mediated by impersonal
banking institutions.
Zeldin argues that individuals must
overcome an inability and unwilling-
ness to share deep thoughts, attributing
this to how: “Many are schooled to
believe that they need to be hypocrites.
The hidden thoughts in people´s heads
are the great darkness that surround
us”.
The utility of the historical knowl-
edge he has accumulated over a long
and impressive career is apparent: “I
juxtapose people and ideas from differ-
ent centuries and backgrounds so as to
find new answers to the questions that
perplex the Earth’s present inhabit-
ants”. Hidden pleasures of life lie in the
exchange of creative ideas that has
brought satisfaction throughout
history.
He is also a restless soul himself. He
says: “I do not wish to spend my time on
earth as a bewildered tourist sur-
rounded by strangers, on holidays from
nothingness, in the dark as to when the
holiday will end, stuck in the queue
waiting for another dollop of ice-cream
happiness”.
It appears that a life of climbing the
greasy academic pole accumulating
honours has proved insufficiently
rewarding for the author.
He wonders what the great adventure
of our time should be, recalling (Euro-
centrically) that in the sixteenth
century it was the discovery of new con-
tinents; in the seventeenth, questions of
science challenged great minds; while
in the eighteenth, equality was the
great idea that gripped intellectually
Also in this section:
Rugby’s social benefit 48
Artists’ exemption 50
Abbey Theatre 52
CULTURE
Workers
of the
world
A polyglot, over-broad path to
revolution
Frank Armstrong reviews Theodore
Zeldin’s ‘The Hidden Pleasures of
Mankind: A New Way of Remembering
the Past and Imagining the Future’
September/October 2015 43
energetic individuals.
Echoing from history hears a wide-
spread contemporary concern to live
less self-centred existences; or in har-
mony with all the earth’s creatures; or
“a quest for beauty, and its appreciation
in many forms”.
Although good Village readers will
feel equality of outcome and sustaina-
bility or even transparency are big
contemporary imperatives Zeldin feels
that the great idea of our time remains
elusive during an epoch when more
people than ever seek a purpose to their
lives, and where dominant corporations
offer scant reward for skill and artistry,
preferring instead a form of ‘teamwork’
where orders are taken from on high.
Later in the book Zeldin considers
that giving new meaning to work could
be the great adventure of our time: “so
that it is more than the exercise of a
valued skill, more than the enjoyment
of collaboration with others, more than
a price that has to be paid in search of
security and status”. He sees work as a
way to redefine freedom”. Zeldin is
calling for a subtle but far-reaching
evolution. Quite what this “freedom”
connotes is not explicit but he favours
the more haphazard arrangements that
once obtained, to the formality of most
work environments today, a formality
that sees individuals carry masks into
their daily lives.
He traces the origins of the compa-
nies that now dominate the world’s
resources, recalling how for over a cen-
tury between and , in
England, during an era of seismic devel-
opment, it was a criminal offence to
start a company. He draws attention to
how in the United States until the nine-
teenth century there were two
competing ideas regarding the purpose
of companies: the first were those with
charters restricted to the pursuit of
objectives in the public interest such as
canal building; the other was charters
of a general character allowing compa-
nies to engage in whatever business
proved profitable. The latter category
remains the dominant form: divorced
from responsibility for fellow-citizens,
it has carried all before it.
Zeldin quotes Adam Smith, the
founding father of modern economics,
who predicted that the tedium of per-
forming monotonous tasks would
render workers: “stupid and narrow-
minded. The torpor of his mind renders
him not only incapable of relishing or
bearing a part in rational conversation,
but of conceiving generous, noble or
tender sentiment; and consequently of
forming any just judgment concerning
even the ordinary duties of private life”.
History certainly shows how many indi-
viduals have risen above their lot as
unskilled workers; nonetheless a life of
unceasing monotony can have disas-
trous effects. But was there ever, or
could there ever be, his fabled ‘New
Jerusalem’ or ‘Holy City of Byzantium’
where physical work and mental
engagement attain a balance; an artisan
creativity? A worthy goal certainly.
It is apparent that multinationals
such as Ikea and Walmart, biographies
of whose founders (Ingvar Kampard
and Sam Walton respectively) he
explores, have gobbled up huge num-
bers of smaller enterprises. Zeldin
found that before the nineteenth cen-
tury villages and towns contained
multiple businesses which demanded a
wide variety of skills rather than the
narrow specialisation that bedevils
contemporary life. Peasants found
many outlets outside of the cycle of the
harvest. He argues that: “Without a
reformation of work the wonderful
aspirations of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity cannot grow to more than an
incomplete slogan”. Many workers now
lack a sense of fulfilment in their jobs,
their real passions and talents not rec-
ognised and nurtured, by their remote
employers.
Albert Einstein was among those who
bemoaned the dominance of specialisa-
tion in his field. He decried how it is
“providing an ever-widening gulf
between the intellectual worker and the
non-specialist”; even going so far as to
joke that “since the mathematicians
have invaded the theory of relativity I
do not understand it myself anymore”.
Zeldin himself argues that: “Speciali-
sation has been responsible for
innumerable improvements in skill and
knowledge, but it now only bears fruit
when it is pollinated by seemingly
unconnected visitors from other speci-
alities and when it can escape from
being paralysed by bureaucratic
Without a
reformation
of work the
wonderful
aspirations
of Liberty,
Equality and
Fraternity
cannot grow
to more than
an incomplete
slogan
“
44September/October 2015
CULTURE Theodore Zeldin
medication”. He disparages the legacy
of a century of academic growth: “I did
not foresee, however, nor did anyone
else, the huge cloud of ignorance that
the explosion of university education
would spread across the world”.
Insightfully he writes: “every time I
want an answer to some questions … I
risk being buried under a torrent of
responses, a hurricane of facts never
imagined before, and an onslaught of
ever-more ingenious explanations, each
from a different point of view. The more
information there is, the more igno-
rance there is”. He seems convinced
that most academics have lost
perspective.
The author provides an interesting
analysis on the history of the hotel
trade. He argues that this sector could
become “a significant force in promot-
ing a better understanding of enigmatic
strangers and mysterious neighbours”.
But these institutions have changed
considerably since the nineteenth cen-
tury when in most parts of the world
meals were served at communal tables.
That was until Ellsworth Milton Statler
(-) began to offer “a bed and a
bath for a dollar and a half”, and stand-
ardised the experience in the way
Henry Ford did for cars, spawning the
hospitality industry.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the
Atlantic Cesar Ritz was building imita-
tion palaces as hotels that parodied
aristocratic rituals of ostentatious opu-
lence for a newly ascendant bourgeoisie.
The cumulative result is over-priced
and impersonal institutions rapidly
reaching obsolescence. Unsurprisingly,
many people choose the more social and
often cheaper experience of Airbnb, or
even couch surfing.
As part of his research into the
‘Future of Work’, Zeldin examined the
experience of hotel workers and guests.
Interestingly, in light of the recent ter-
rorist attack, one of the hotels he
researched was in Tunisia. He found
that “In a Tunisian seaside resort, most
hotel guests on holidays were too
exhausted by their jobs to want to do
anything more than rest, and never
spoke to the locals; they went back
knowing very little about the country
they had visited, while the locals who
cleaned their rooms and served their
meals felt insulted by their lack of inter-
est”. Unfortunately, one local took it
into his head to respond to insult with
injury. It is a depressing thought that
travel can be so anti-cultural.
The book has chapters with surpris-
ing, quirky questions such as “How
many nations can one love at the same
time?” and “Is ridicule the most impor-
tant form of protest?”.
He provides short biographical
accounts of a range of diverse charac-
ters: artists, businessmen, philosophers
and scientists, who have already sought
answers to some of the questions that
he pursues.
At times these biographies seem cur-
sory but the breadth of his knowledge
ranging across eras and continents
allows what may seem broad-brush
history to form a vivid picture, and
assuredly a guide to different forms of
life.
It is obvious that we need to develop
new economic models that allow greater
human flourishing and exert less
demands on the environment. Zeldin’s
polyglot contribution is inspiring even
if it does try to do too much: exploring
important questions such as gender
relations and the capacity for religions
to change dilutes its core enquiry into
the evolution of work practices and
their possible reform.
Finally, Zeldin’s draws an interesting
analogy between the importance of
human connections and the cells in our
bodies billions of which die and are
replaced inside our bodies every day:
“They are born with a capacity for sui-
cide, which they trigger when they fail
to exchange signals with their neigh-
bours; they survive when they succeed
in combining with other cells to pro-
duce something more than themselves.
Cells are constantly transforming
themselves, and the proteins in them
adapt to the other proteins around
them, like dancers joining a ballet”.
Humans flourish through social
interaction and revelation.
Working life should nurture this but
often it has the opposite effect. Political
rights conferring freedom are of little
relevance if individuals are not free in
themselves.
A revolution in how we work, over-
hauling the economic system that
underpins it, would be a start. •
The book has
chapters with
surprising,
quirky
questions
such as “How
many nations
can one love
at the same
time?” and
“Is ridicule
the most
important form
of protest”
“
artists
September/October 2015 45
