mysterious disappearance

or absence, of what one could

call the psychological

within the world of

modern business, education

and life more broadly, but with

a particular emphasis on

business because that's partly

what we're here for. I want to begin

my story in ancient Greece

fourth century BC, Aristotle

the Greeks used to do some things very

good,

very accomplished, and one of the things

they were very good at was philosophy

and Aristotle famously

defined the goal of every

human being as that of acquiring

two kinds of knowledge

The first kind of knowledge he defined

as 'techne', that's where we get our word

technical from, and that's

all the sort of things that

make an economy work, in

his day it was ship building, silver

mining, you know, archery

that sort of thing, and the other

form of knowledge that he believed

we very much, all of us need

is what he termed 'sophia'

or wisdom, and that's of course

where we get the word philosophy from

philo, love, sophia, wisdom

He believed that all of us need to

spend a considerable part of our

lives in the pursuit of

sophia, and through

pursuing wisdom, we will

reach a stage of what he

called 'eudaimonia', another

complicated Greek word that is often

translated as fulfilment

we could translate it as happiness

but it's a deeper form of satisfaction

it's a way of fully exploiting

everything that makes us distinctively

human. It's a form of happiness

in line with our rational

natures and eudaimonia

is achieved through self-knowledge

Aristotle tells us, and it's connected

up with knowing who to be friends

with, knowing what your purpose

in life should be, being part

of a community to which you're properly

contributing, and other sorts

of ingredients like that. So a

very important part of

the meaning life at the beginning

of the Western journey

the Western experience, the meaning

of life is the pursuit of

wisdom. We might also nowadays

call it the pursuit of the psychological

the psyche of course another Greek

word, the interior, the soul

the bit of us that is most

closely connected up with our emotions

and our rational natures

Now I want to argue that

oddly, despite our accomplishments

in so many areas, we've become

very bad at the sophia

bit of the economy

and our human pursuits

A lot of the blame has to do with religion

because when Christianity descends

upon Europe, it sucks

up all the interest

in the soul, the

very word soul starts to become

a religious word, and

the whole study of the psyche

gets imported into

religion, and it's not really until

the middle of the nineteenth century

that suddenly people start

to reconsider the

psychological, and concepts

like wisdom apart

from a religious structure

So we're still very much in the early

days of knowing how to

think about ourselves

and our interior lives

without the particular

cast that Christianity

gave to the Western mind's

exploration of its own

processes. Part of

the really big problem, part of the reason

why we're not so good

at reason, we're not so good at

the psychological, is this movement

that also strikes Western Europe

in the 19th century known as

'romanticism', and romanticism's

number one concern

is the worship of what we

would call instinct. Now

if there's anybody in the room who's made

an unfortunate marriage

anyone who's unhappily married

picked the wrong person to marry

put up your hand, we'll talk about it

okay, yes thank you very much.

Anyone here who's fallen into

the wrong job, who feels

they've just fallen in love, as it

were, with the wrong job? Okay, we'll come

back with that later, but the reason I

mention these two things is because love

and work are the two constituents

of contemporary happiness, also

ancient Greek happiness, but they're

also the two things that we

imagine we can get right

simply by instinct. It

would be considered very rude to stop

anyone and say, 'Why are you getting married

to that person?' or, 'Why are you

going for that job?' We believe

that people's best chances

of finding fulfilment comes

from not thinking too hard

about why they're doing it. We

worship instinct

and impulse in the two

areas where they actually have catastrophic

results, which is in relationships

and in the pursuit of

our talents and our exploitation

of our talents within the workplace

so romanticism has a lot to blame

So what I'm trying to create for

you is a picture of how

at the dawn of Western civilisation

we have this tremendously exciting

mission, we can learn to be happy

by understanding the mind

the psychological part of our minds

we can pursue wisdom and that

should be the highest goal of

human beings. That disappears

for a long time and we are left

with this romanticisation of instinct

Now let me come to the modern

world of business, a lot

of the reason why business is

incredibly unpopular

and has come under a lot of suspicion despite

the recent conservative government

win, the crisis of capitalism is

not over. A lot of the suspicion

a lot of the reason why businesses routinely

become under suspicion, is because

they stand accused of selling

us bullshit, in other words

they stand accused of not

selling people the things

that they really need

in order to have a good life

so the phenomenon we know as consumerism

is attacked for

generating vain desires

exciting passions in

people which the products

that are associated and that

are being sold, cannot properly

deliver on, and that's a major

underlying-, there are other underlying

complaints around capitalism including

exploitation, environmentalism etc.

but if you want to look as it were at the core

intellectual complaint

it is that we are not buying

and selling those things which

actually lead to a flourishing

life. That if Aristotle walked

into the market place as

it were, he would not see us

spending our energies

devoting our energies to those things

that really could stand a chance

of delivering on happiness

These issues have a horrible

habit of coming to the fore, I'm

sorry if there are people here in the world

of advertising but let's go for

it, these issues have a horrible

habit of coming to the fore around

advertising. Think of the concept

of brand, much revered

within the industry, much maligned

outside of the industry

What a brand promise is

often pegged to are

all those things, those

higher needs, that are associated

with wisdom, with flourishing

with the good life, but the actual

product that is often being

sold is very far

removed from the actual

promises which are being engaged

in order to sell you that product

Let me give you a more concrete example

remember that famous Campari

advert of years ago? It

would show, it really struck me, this was my

teenage years, Campari were running

a massive campaign which would

show people hugging, holding

hands, hanging out with groups of friendly

looking people in beautiful locations

and the tagline was always the

same, 'Campari and

friends', and it was a lovely

idea. The problem is, and the reason

why people hate consumerism, is

that you will end up buying a crate of Campari

get it delivered to your flat, sit

alone at home and you wouldn't

have any friends, and the

purchase of those drinks

would not in any way have

advanced the cause that

was really motivating you when

you were buying that, which is the pursuit

of friendship, which Aristotle in the

Nicomachean Ethics devotes

an entire chapter to, as one

of the root pillars on which

happiness rests. In other words

Campari was exciting

was scratching a desire

for something, and it was then not

delivering on it, and that's why people

sometimes get angry. Remember that advert for

Dove soap? There was always a woman

lying in a bath looking extremely

relaxed and the tagline was something

like, 'The road to calm starts

here'. Again you buy a crate

of Dove soap, get it delivered to your house

but actually you're still wracked with anxiety

you've still married the wrong person, you're still

in the wrong job, the bar of soap

is lying unused next

to the bath, and you haven't made any

progress with one of the major

problems of existence, but

the soap has been

exploiting this, and you know, think of

those lovely adverts by Patek

Philippe which always show a father

and his son and they're hugging

and it's so poignant and so

moving but it's got nothing to do with

buying a $30,000 time

piece, but the problem is you

might, because of the power and

the intelligence, the psychological

intelligence, of that advert, be

lead to buy an unnecessary

time piece, and this is why

people don't like capitalism. Okay

because capitalism too often

stands accused of sucking

out the best energies

of workers and consumers

in the name of things which do not

deliver on the ultimate promise

which what we might in ordinary

language call customer satisfaction

and in fancy philosophical language

call eudaimonia, it does