Tenets of the New Puritans
Reposting the first two in a series of old blog posts about what I called New Puritanism
The term New Puritan was used by Andrew Doyle as the headline for his book about how the ‘Religion of Social Justice’ captured the Western world. The book is excellent and worth your time, more evidence-based and intellectually sound than most books written by comedians and TV presenters. But, a few years earlier some of us were writing about the New Puritans from a different place where the focus was on the nanny state’s obsession with our choices of food, our enjoyment of booze and its belief that smoking is an absolute and unforgivable evil. I wrote a series of blog posts back then entitled ‘Tenets of the New Puritans’ that concluded with a call for some New Cavaliers. Thought I’d share them on here - for old times sake! I’ve lost some of the original links and have taken them out.
Tenets of the New Puritans #1: denormalisation and social direction
The essence of the New Puritan faith is not prohibition – the adherents of the Church of Public Health do not wish to ban pleasure, any more than their Puritan antecedents wished to do so, merely that such pleasure should be approved, communal and uplifting:
“From the rich array of popular pastimes in Tudor-Stuart England…the reform-minded founders of New England drew selectively, transplanting only those "lawful recreations" compatible with their errand into the wilderness. Cock-fighting, horse racing, and ball games were out; reading and writing were in. Far from offering release from social duty, recreation was rationalized to serve official ends. Puritans socialized at public worship, town meetings, funerals, and executions. Integrating work and play, they enjoyed a "productive party" -- a barn-raising or quilting bee -- that epitomized the ideal of "useful recreation". Such civic events "expressed the communal spirit of a covenanted people".”
The aim of the New Puritan is re-education – to bring about an epiphany of good behaviour. And while they make common cause with prohibitionists – and will support bans – New Puritans prefer the process of ‘denormalisation’:
“However, as recent observers have noted, through the widespread implementation of tobacco ‘denormalization’ strategies, tobacco control advocates appear to have embraced the use of stigma as an explicit policy tool. In a recent article, Ronald Bayer (2008) argues that the mobilization of stigma may effectively reduce the prevalence of smoking behaviors linked to tobacco-related morbidity and mortality and is therefore not necessarily antithetical to public health goals.”
While the ‘denormalisation’ strategy is most developed in the world of anti-smoking campaign, we see it begin to creep into anti-alcohol campaigns:
“One of the key issues coming out of this research is the lack of any evidence showing that normalising the use of alcohol is a good prevention strategy" says Professor Doug Sellman of the University of Otago, Christchurch, who was invited to write an accompanying commentary.
"In fact the opposite is the case. The less alcohol is normalised in family life, and particularly when parents avoid being at all intoxicated in front of their children or supplying them with alcohol, the better the prevention of alcohol problems in young people will be" he says”
And with ‘junk food’:
“The issue of junk food and its consequences is a major challenge for 21st-century society, one which requires actions that are concrete, complementary, and immediate. Concerned by the urgent need to address it, and boasting a solid track record in the promotion of healthy eating habits and denormalization in the tobacco industry, the RSEQ1 is now involved in denormalizing junk food in schools.”
Thus we see these “harmful” behaviours ‘denormalised’ while at the same time we are urged – and this is especially the case with young people – to seek “value” from leisure activity. Take this Chapter on “Youth Work Ethics”:
“The young people decide that this is the way they want to spend Friday evening. It will be a good time. They have been looking forward to do it. It is a chosen and planned part of their life.
Their parents are pleased about the youth project. Their child (who they worry about) is making a good choice: they learn more about life in good ways, they meet new friends, their horizons are widened, and so on. Their child is also not making a bad choice: they are not getting drunk, falling into fights, at risk of dying, and so on.”
Read those words – see the directions involved: “it will be a good time”, it is “chosen and planned” and the young people “learn more about life”. The New Puritan denies the possibility of pleasure for reasons of pure hedonism – fun for fun’s sake, if you will! Entertainment must only be entertainment with a purpose – the frivolity of mere fun is sinful. Or, as adherents to the Church of Public Health will say, ‘not in the interests of wider society’.
So youth work – activity taking place outside of formal education – seeks to indoctrinate young people with the tenets of the New Puritan faith: communalism, judgmental environmentalism, the stigmatising of sinful pleasures and the avoidance of risk.
This suppression of adventure, of exploration and of enterprise is carried forward by the New Puritans into their attitude to adult entertainment – the requirement for social meaning in art and literature, the preference for the uplifting story and the morality play, and the use of documentary to bend opinion towards purposeful pleasure and the denormalisation of hedonistic behaviour.
And educationalists grasp this in what they present to learners:
This unit helps students understand how artists can be influential in shaping human values. It does so by addressing social and global issues such as poverty, starvation, crime, discrimination, sickness, war and the environment. Students are encouraged to consider the subjective and expressive currents in art of our time in relation to these issues.
The idea that painting, music, reading and theatre are escapes from our workaday lives does not figure in the New Puritan’s mindset – these things are tools for passing on selected, preferred social values up to and including the denormalisation of those activities that are not approved.
That people continue to enjoy themselves – to reject the prescribed pleasures from the Church of Public Health in favour of hedonism remains a glint of sunlight in an otherwise bleak society. What we can hope for is that, as was the case in New England all those years ago, the search for real pleasure will triumph over the direction and denormalisation directed by our elders and betters:
“Pursuing pleasure for its own sake, New Englanders seized on solemn occasions as pretexts for parties. Austere funerals turned into lavish affairs; "ordination balls" celebrated the installation of ministers; execution days took on "a carnival atmosphere". Notwithstanding jeremiads from the pulpit, alcohol was ubiquitous; under its influence, militia drills could descend into drunken brawls and corn-huskings into trysts. "The tavern became the new meetinghouse": a centre of news, politics, trade, and entertainment. In the more permissive atmosphere of the eighteenth century, men and women flirted at singing schools, drank and danced in alehouses, devoured romantic novels, and engaged in a good deal of premarital sex.”
*The two New England quotes are from a review "Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England" by Bruce Daniels
Tenets of the New Puritans #2: "It's for the children" - the curse of the play strategy
“It’s for the children” or “think of the children” has become a core mantra for the New Puritan – we should hide cigarettes and alcohol just in case some child might catch a glimpse and be drawn inexorably towards the evil weed or corrupting liquor. And a host of restrictions and controls – some advocate building huge firewalls – are needed in case a child stumbles across a little bare flesh on the Internet.
Great calls go up when an actor lights up on film or television – especially when that actors is a cartoon chameleon.
Anti-smoking campaigners have branded the animated film Rango a public health hazard for encouraging children to take up the habit.
A raft of groups said the PG feature, which opened last Friday, is setting a bad example by featuring more than 60 instances of characters puffing away.
Doubtless our brave campaigners care only for the welfare of children, just as do those people who insist on airbrushing out I K Brunel’s cigar.
But there is a more insidious problem with the New Puritans and children – the de facto banning of play. Or rather its replacement with something that is similar to play but, by being directed by the New Puritan, ceases to be such a thing. After all we didn’t need a “play strategy” did we?
Children and young people are to be encouraged to give their opinions on Bradford's play strategy and play provision by calling a play "hotline".
The authority will publicise the All to Play For strategy using brightly coloured posters and cards featuring the number for Bradford early years and childcare service.
Ali Long, play development and training officer, said the play team of four full-time staff and other mobile playworkers wanted to hear directly from children and young people.
You see the problem is that we might just do the wrong kind of play – you know, the bad sort:
Teachers reprimanded two seven-year-old boys for playing army games - because it amounted to 'threatening behaviour'. The youngsters were disciplined after they were spotted making gun-shapes with their hands.
Play strategies are intended for purposeful things, they are part of learning – we might see them as the creation of a dutiful generation of young New Puritans. Children face barriers to play (which don’t extend to adults telling them to stop that and stop it now) and we should be concerned about “the quality of play environments”. This whole approach, the idea that we need centrally-directed strategies is deeply worrying.
In its way the Bradford strategy both compounds and also comprehends the problem:
Access to the outdoor environment for play remains a high priority for children and young people. We are currently witnessing the growth of a new phenomenon – that described by a number of professionals as the “battery child syndrome” where today’s children are often denied the play opportunities that earlier generations took for granted.
But nowhere does the document admit to the source of the problem. A while ago I mused on the joys of being ten:
We climbed over the fence to play football in the school grounds (it is only a rumour that we climbed on the roof) & could cross the fields to Elmers End Cricket Club and watch them play – and so long as I was back for tea no-one bothered
With Jeremy Lesuik I got the bus and tube to go to football – Highbury, Stamford Bridge, Upton Park – on our own and paid for from our pocket money. And in the Summer a trip to The Oval or Lords for cricket
Mr Sparks took us to the old golf course to play cricket – on occasion up to twenty or so playing an impromptu game. In bad weather he took us swimming. We walked the two miles there and back to South Norwood pool
...And climbing the cherry trees and digging for Roman remains in the garden (which of course we found in abundance)
Now I know part of this is nostalgia but the bigger part is a recognition is what we have lost in our search for a risk free “play environment”. And more importantly in making sure no voices other than the approved New Puritan voice are directed to the upbringing of children. We touched above on bad play for boys (you know the stuff with guns and violence – they wouldn’t play like that if it wasn’t for TV and video games) but there’s also bad play for girls too. The difference is that this sort of bad play isn’t attacked by punishing the girl but by directing our attention to mum or to the shopkeeper:
Bailey's report asks for government and business to work together to tackle the problem – for example, by ending the sale of inappropriately "sexy" clothing for young children, such as underwired bras and T-shirts with suggestive slogans. But Bailey recommends that if progress is not made the government should force retailers to make the changes in 18 months.
Cameron's letter says: "I note that many of the actions you suggest are for business and regulators to follow rather than for government. I support this emphasis, as it consistent with this government's overall approach and my long-held belief that the leading force for progress should be social responsibility, not state control."
That girls want to play dressing up, to try out make up, to pretend to be models or princesses is normal behaviour not premature sexualisation – if there is a problem it is with adults seeing anything sexual about a nine-year-old child, whatever they are wearing. Yet that is precisely what the New Puritans are doing – suggesting that girls dressing-up is ‘premature sexualisation’ is precisely the same mistake as we make by saying that a women in a mini-skirt is asking to be raped.
In all this we see a conflicted attitude to children but one dominated by a corrupted idea of childhood – one where children can have all of the fun we had without any of the risks, where our obsession with sex is visited onto the one group in society without that obsession, and where play must be directed to purposeful things rather than indulged in for its own sake.
It seems to me that when society thinks it needs a play strategy – apparently because children have “a right to play” under the “UN Charter on the Rights of the Child” – that society has lost its way. Yes children need to play but we don’t need a strategy, we don’t need directing in this, we know (and children certainly know) what to do.
Pleasure – hedonistic, undirected, indulgent pleasure – is a human need. Sadly, the New Puritans believe only certain kinds of pleasure are worthy of encouragement and that many great pleasures are harmful, sinful, a cost to society. And must be ‘denormalised’. So it is with children’s play – it must be supervised, directed, managed and prescribed , made ‘safe’ and expunged of any corrupting influences from ‘harmful’ adult pleasures.
But of course we do it all “for the children”.
I will post the remaining articles during this week along with the New Cavaliers call to arms. Meanwhie here is my original New Puritans blog post from March 2010.
The New Puritans
The essence of puritan belief was God's supremacy over human affairs through the church and through the bible. This required the simplification of worship - the ending of 'idolatry', the banning of music in church, the scrapping of prescribed prayers and the down-grading of the Eucharistic sacrament.
And from all this came the rejection of public pleasures - drinking, dancing, drama, gambling, sport and, famously, Christmas.
"The long Parliament gave orders, in 1644, that the twenty-fifth of December should be strictly observed as a fast, and that all men should pass it in humbly bemoaning the great national sin which they and their fathers had so often committed on that day by romping under the mistletoe, eating boar’s head, and drinking ale flavored with roasted apples." (Macaulay)
The 17th century puritan-led governments also opposed the extension of science and promoted hysteria about witchcraft:
Hath not this present Parl’ament A Lieger to the Devil sent, Fully impower’d to treat about Finding revolted Witches out? And has he not within a year Hang’d threescore of them in one Shire? Some only for not being drown’d, And some for sitting above ground. Whole days and nights upon their Breeches, And feeling pain, were hang’d for Witches And some for putting knavish Tricks Upon green Geese or Turkey Chicks Or Pigs that suddenly deceast Of griefs unnatural, as he guess'd Who after proved himself a Witch And made a rod for his own Breech. From Samuel Butler's - Hudibras (first published in 1663).
It was not a reign of terror - all pleasures were not stopped but the promotion of moral panic by public and ecclesiastical authorities brought about the suppression of good cheer and its replacement with a dour, prejudged world of sins to be avoided and expunged.
Travel forward 350 years in time to today's world and listen to the cries: binge drinking...sexualisation of young girls...childhood obesity...smoking. Those puritan sins have returned labelled rather with the groupthink and collectivism of social democracy than with the strictures of bible bashing certainty. We are lectured about the "cost to society" of our sins: "...drinking costs the NHS £2.7 billion", "...a generation of 'damaged' girls", "obesity set before the age of two" - you are all sinners, repent, repent, repent!
This 'your sins are bad for society' message extends to what we put in our bins, what car we drive, our choice of holiday and, of course our choice of pleasure. Every agent of the collectivist, socialist state is brought to play - here is the leftie feminist rant about bad girls:
"There was a moment in the 90s – I wince to recall it – when women themselves fell in with the view that feminism was unglamorous and inhibiting. It was cramping our style and even worse, stopping us from shopping! Middle-class commentators encouraged their readers to embrace their "inner bimbos". Their paeans to hair products and sexy knickers read like new lad-mag paeans to tarty women. Comic exaggeration made it clear that the writers were self-aware –women who "should know better".
So girls like to dress up, look good, smell nice and feel sexy? Is that anything new? For the new puritans it is a sin. It is bad. It is corrupting society. And the same goes for lads who like a noisy night out and enjoy the sight of pretty women. Not much has changed there either, has it? Yet for the new puritans this is a sin. Here's Michael Gove:
"That's why I believe we need to ask tough questions about the instant-hit hedonism celebrated by the modern men's magazines targeted at younger males. Titles such as Nuts and Zoo paint a picture of women as permanently,
lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available."
The truth of which those lads quickly discover, of course! Those bad girls condemned by the Guardian will put them straight!
Just as did the Long Parliament, today's New Puritans propose to use the power and authority of the state to control pleasures of which they disapprove. We already have a heavy-handed smoking ban, we are moving towards an ever more restrictive approach to alcohol, a vast horde of 'experts' is crawling over our kids berating them about what they eat and we now have the dreadful recommendations of the Papadopoulos Report including:
launching an online ‘one-stop-shop’ to allow the public to voice their concerns regarding irresponsible marketing which sexualises children
encouraging the government to support the Advertising Standards Agency to take steps to extend existing regulatory standards to include commercial websites
Perhaps, we will shift back to a more balanced approach to these issues. Less judging, less hectoring. Or maybe we'll sleepwalk into a ghastly, oppressive world where the New Puritans police our behaviour for its adherence to the received orthodoxy of believe about pleasures. I am not all that hopeful right now.