The World According to The School of Life

Having read some 200 or so articles by The School of Life (SOL), as well as making summaries of many, I have become familiar with their approach. Rightly or otherwise, I feel able to describe their over-arching mindset. I believe it can be summed up in three main strands: pessimism, psychoanalysis, and the importance of culture.

Pessimism

SOL is consistently pessimistic about life, and especially about relationships. It repeatedly reminds us to lower our expectations of a relationship: "There can only ever be a 'good enough' marriage." The SOL view of relationships can be summed up as expecting much conflict, many problems and no romance (after a few months). "Most relationships are a calamity of ugliness; we are almost always far better friends than we are lovers."

Quote: "A pretty high level of conflict, meanness, folly and disappointment are standard. They are part and parcel of good enough relationships. A good relationship isn't one in which the couple get along well most of the time. It's one in which they've learned to accept that appalling difficulties and frustrations are normal."

SOL takes an even dimmer view of our mental functioning: "We are, to put it mildly, idiots... The way to greater confidence isn't to reassure ourselves of our own dignity; it's to grow at peace with the inevitable nature of ridiculousness. We are idiots now, we have been idiots in the past, and we will be idiots again in the future - and that is OK. There aren't any other available options for human beings." To be fair, SOL does not always insist we are all idiots. Sometimes they say we are crazy.

Moreover, SOL sees friendship and intimacy as being fundamentally about sharing our woundedness. People connect if and only if they show each other how deeply flawed they really are. We create a real connection "by making ourselves vulnerable before another person, by revealing some of what is broken, lost, confused, lonely and in pain within us." So friendship and love are portrayed as arising out of shared pain, not joy.

More generally, SOL takes a dark view of the human condition: "A world in which suffering is a constant and failure is the norm." Much of the thrust of SOL articles is to help us become resigned to being mediocre, misunderstood, unsuccessful and in general not very happy. "There are many things we want desperately to avoid, which we will spend huge parts of our lives worrying about and which we will then bitterly resent when they force themselves upon us nevertheless." They mention approvingly Cioran's view: "civilization as an absurd distraction from the ultimate meaninglessness of existence."

Psychoanalysis

SOL is very much focused on psychoanalysis and the wounds of childhood. "Our feelings are for the most part errant and encoded with primitive responses from a troubled past... We all emerged from childhood with various biases in our character which evolved to help us cope with our necessarily imperfect parents. And these acquired habits of mind will reliably let us down in adult life... Most of us still haven't dealt with our childhoods in old age."

Time and again, SOL remind us that we behave irrationally, childishly and unreasonably because of unhealthy lessons that we learnt in childhood. "Our current emotional troubles are usually symptoms of problems located in the rarely-visited caverns of childhood memory... Therapy seeks to facilitate the intimate rediscovery of apparently distant emotions so that we can rethink them with our adult faculties and liberate ourselves from their frequently mysterious and painful hold on us."

"Psychotherapy is built round the idea that every childhood involves an inevitable degree of emotional wounding. The child's fragile, immature self can be hugely distorted and damaged by these very normal experiences that occur long before they can be processed or properly understood... The catastrophes we fear in the future are generally those that have already happened to us in the past."

Culture

"The real purpose of art is to give sensuous and emotional lustre to a range of ideas that are most important to us - but also most under threat in the conditions of everyday life... Art should help us to feel and then act upon the truths we already know. Culture should not be an object of academic study, but a living resource that could offer counsel and direction."

SOL contrasts the Romantic novel with what it calls the Classical one. "In the archetypal Romantic novel, the drama hinges entirely on how a couple get together: the 'love story' is no such thing, it is merely the account of how love begins. All sorts of obstacles are placed in the way of love's birth, and the interest lies in watching their steady overcoming: there might be misunderstandings, bad luck, prejudice, war, a rival, a fear of intimacy, or - most poignantly - shyness... but in the end, after tribulations, the right people will eventually get into couples. Love begins - and the story must end."

"Classical novel: This wiser, less immediately seductive genre knows that the real problem isn't finding a partner, it is tolerating them, and being tolerated, over time. It knows that the start of relationships is not the high point that Romantic culture assumes; it is merely the first step of a far longer, more ambivalent and yet quietly far more heroic journey - on which it directs its intelligence and scrutiny."

SOL laments that Western philosophy has abandoned its role of providing wisdom and guidance in favour of dry and largely irrelevant academic study. "The philosophy department (a natural place one might go to in search of wisdom and consolation) was trying to define ontological naturalism, situate Wittgenstein in his proper historical perspective, footnote a volume of late Heidegger and compare Plato's Phaedrus with Aristotle's Ethics. It's not a bad way to spend the time, but it isn't - arguably - very helpful to anyone with anything resembling a real problem." See one of my top favourites: Philosophy East vs West.

I think the programme of SOL could be summed up as the attempt to make culture, especially writing, psychology and philosophy, a living resource that imparts consolation and useful wisdom to people.

My Views

Firstly, I do not share SOL's pessimism about relationships. I believe that a close relationship should be primarily a source of joy, and this has been my experience over the decades. Secondly, I do not think that I am an idiot, nor am I crazy. Neither are the people around me. Sure, I have my hang-ups, anxieties, unwarranted negativity and I am unbalanced in various ways. But this does not make me an idiot, nor warrant the label 'crazy'. Although I don't share SOL's over-riding pessimism about life, it is a useful corrective to unwarranted optimism.

As for the practical value of psychoanalysis, I have my doubts. Even if we accept the notion that most of our problems stem from childhood, the "talking cure" is a doubtful remedy. However, I agree with their view on the importance of culture.

In view of my dissenting opinions, why do I keep reading, summarising and disseminating the SOL articles? It is because they present many fresh and valuable insights, which counter widely held views. Even when I disagree with SOL, its views can be a useful corrective. They write with much humanity, compassion, understanding and acceptance of the human condition, especially its folly and its frailty.

One of the best articles by SOL explains what it means to be ready for an intimate relationship.

Another of my favourites is the diagnosis of the ills of the modern age.

Alain de Botton gave a fine speech on love.

This is the credo that summarises the teachings of The School of Life.

Here is The School of Life home page.