Нервные государства

by William Davies, Уильям Дэвис, Дмитрий Лебедев (Translator)

Мировой порядок, основанный на разуме, определяет политику государств. Для этого привлекаются данные, собранные и проанализированные независимым экспертным сообществом, которому доверяют все граждане.

Таков был политический идеал, о котором философы мечтали с XVII века.

Все изменилось, и сегодня люди мало верят в опыт и нейтральность ученых. Миром стали править эмоции. Теперь они указывают направления политики.
Как и почему это произошло?
Почему политика cделалась такой капризной и воинственной?
Что это нам сулит?

На эти и другие вопросы отвечает Уильям Дэвис — профессор политэкономии, социолог, преподающий в Голдсмитском колледже Лондонского университета.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Psychology, Economics, Political Science

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

William Davies' writing has appeared in New Left Review, Prospect, the Financial Times, and Open Democracy. He's Reader in Political Economy at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently read The Happiness Industry by the same author and thought this was going to be basically the same book written with a different title. This is nothing of the sort and you should think about getting your hands on this book – it is stunningly good.

The Enlightenment could be seen as a long process where ‘the expert’ came to the fore. Prior to the Enlightenment truth came with position, if you were king you were also right. But a lot of what came with the Enlightenment foregrounded thinking over feeling and created a kind of cleft humanity. This is Descartes’ cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am – the shorter than a haiku version of this idea that demands a mind body split. I didn’t know that Descartes was so young when he died (not quite 54), he spent a lot of his life hoping science would find a way for him to live forever. That clearly didn’t work out too well for him.

The other man to watch was Hobbs – who believed that we needed a strong state so we wouldn’t kill each other. Basically, we enter into a contract with the state where we agree to be nice and the state agrees to make our lives increasingly better. And the state can do this, because there are experts working for the state and those experts know how to do stuff. Part of knowing how to do stuff involves gathering data to show that the stuff you know and that you are doing is making a difference. So, statistics becomes a thing that states do (yep, the hint is in the name) – and these can then also be used to show the onward and upward path of human progress. We still do this, of course, and even seek to shame people who don’t agree things are inexorably getting better – see Gapminder.org as a case in point.

This also relates back to the scientific method – where rather than attacking ideas becomes the person who came up with them is a loudmouth clod and as ugly as sin – you actually have to engage with that they say. All of which is, obviously enough annoying – and a state of affairs clearly not likely to last long term. What sort of world would it be if you couldn't reject an idea because the person who came up with it was fat?

Notice that feeling were getting pushed further and further to the sidelines here. The problem is that as people begin feeling that they are being lied to by experts their feelings come rushing back. The last few decades have presented us with precisely this problem – made much worse since the GFC. The stock market is booming, nations’ GDP seems to be going in the right direction – but people are feeling (and many objectively are) worse off.

But this is where the argument gets interesting. He quotes the Economist that drew an odd correlation between people being ill and voting for Trump. “if an additional 8% of people in Pennsylvania engaged in regular physical activity, and heavy drinking in Wisconsin were 5% lower, Mrs Clinton would be set to enter the White House”. Yeah, I know, one of those weird correlations, but we all know correlations don’t mean causation. Except, that this fits with other patterns too. That people in pain can prove to be more reactionary. That people threatened with death are more likely to support harsher punishments. The author says that when people are suffering, particularly when they feel they have played by the rules and done everything right, they are likely to feel particularly annoyed with people they believe are getting a free ride. Welfare cheats, queue jumpers, refugees. He draws our attention to the Leave campaign for Brexit using buses saying that leaving Europe would put lots of money back into the National Health System in Britain, rather than into the wasteful bureaucracy in Brussels. The link between real pain and politics being starkly made in this – even if those pushing this line never intended for it to be realised post the vote.

He also makes the point that billionaires – who you might otherwise think would be in the direct firing line here at a time of growing inequality – have mostly been able to complain about ‘elites’, elites that somehow don’t include them. He explains that this is because they are able to speak as ‘themselves’, whereas the ‘elites’ are virtually always linked to the groups they ‘represent’. So, climate scientists can’t be trusted, since they represent ‘interests’ that are able to gain from promoting climate change.

Those trying to stop this shift towards feeling as an argument often try to rely on fact-checking. But you would have to say that hasn’t proved a particularly effective strategy to date. I would guess that Trump is literally and congenitally incapable of uttering a true statement. I suspect there is some bomb discretely located in his body somewhere that he has been told will blow up if he says a complete, factual statement. Fact checkers that count his inaccuracies ran out of fingers and toes before his first day in office. Before you tell me, ah yes, but it is all catching up on him – my point is more to do with his pre-election win lies. The fact checking didn’t start after he was elected. His lying has never really impacted his support base. Facts are interesting weapons, but hardly weapons of mass destruction.

The author also ties this back to the opioid crisis – where people expect life to be essentially pain free, but that it rarely is. This is where I feel uncomfortable – as I’ve been remarkably lucky when it comes to pain. It really can’t be a nice thing to live with pain, but there are also clearly social inputs that make pain appear worse in some cultures. To quote: “A study published in late 2017 found that around a third of Americans and Australians reported that they’d ‘often’ or ‘very often’ suffered bodily aches and pains over the previous month, compared to 19% in China, 11% in South Africa and just 8.5% in the Czech Republic.”

The second part of the book is utterly stunning. Here he discusses the relationships between nation states, war and national identity. Pain again plays a key role here. I think we forget just how recent nation states actually are. As an identifiable thing, nations only really existed after the Treaty of Westphalia, only about 370 years ago. I know that might sound like ages, but we’ve had Shakespeare for longer than that.

The key shift identified here was Napoleon – and this was because he shifted war from being a game played by gentlemen with other people’s lives, to one that was tied to the fortunes of the nation state. What also happened was that virtually the whole of the nation state was involved in the war effort. If most of life is ennui mixed with dissatisfaction and followed by death – the one thing war has going for it is that it can provide meaning to people. There has been quite a lot of research into the Second World War where those who lived through it look back on those times as the happiest and best years of their lives. The feeling that everyone is in something together, and that that something is bigger than themselves are powerful ideas.

Often war turned out to be a horrible numbers game – so when Napoleon invaded Russia, the sheer weight of numbers of the Russian population made whatever advantages he started out with impossible to sustain. There is a statue somewhere of a Russian peasant chopping his own arm off to show the sacrifice that was prepared to be made to stop Napoleon. Both became true - sacrifice and victory.

Interestingly, he points out that defeats can be stronger rallying forces than victories – think of the Confederate States as a case in point. And Australia’s national day to recognize our military is ANZAC Day – literally the day Australia began the Gallipoli campaign, one of the worst defeats of the First World War. Getting the opportunity to re-fight old battles – and thereby right past wrongs – is a powerful call of nationalism. We are loss averse, but this can then motivate us. The current day reference here is to Make America Great Again – which is, obviously enough, a loss averse slogan to its core.

He quotes that famous distinction Rumsfeld made about known-knows, known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns. But he adds a fourth – unknown-knowns – that is, things other people know that we don’t know. This last category is potentially the most dangerous. What we need in this case is fast access to knowledge – and not necessarily ‘expert knowledge’, but more ‘just-in-time’ knowledge that gives you an advantage. Here knowledge has significantly changed shape since the Enlightenment ideal. That knowledge was really about causation – but now correlation is more than enough. As long as it gives us an advantage.

And this is where the book turns to discussing neoliberal economics – mostly how prices function as information, but neoliberal economics positions the world as a kind of war of all against all too. This war for economic success in a world that is beyond human understanding needs the instantaneous price information as an indicator of human desires, but even this isn’t enough – it also requires entrepreneurs who are prepared to take ‘all or nothing’ risks based on their gut. I can’t tell you how much this made me think of Trump’s Art of the Deal. Anyway, this forms the key to the neoliberal rejection of state socialism (a system designed to plan the economy) and their embrace of laissez faire capitalism.

Just when you think the book has to be about to run out of steam, he starts talking about how the internet is changing the world – also away from the enlightenment slow and deliberative contemplation on causes, towards correlations that predict human emotional states, not least fear and anxiety. I loved his metaphor of why regulating companies like Google or Facebook is going to prove very difficult. He says it is like they own a beach, which they are happy for you to use for free. The only problem is that they are able to make money out of the footprints you leave on the sand. It is very hard for us to see those footprints as truly belonging to us or part of our creative legacy – but they are able to turn those ephemera into billions of dollars.

I guess nearly 10 years ago I wrote a review of Tuesday’s with Morrie. It soon become the bane of my life – I hated the book and said so in the review. And then a couple of times a month someone would jump onto the thread under it and tell me I was an arsehole. Finally, a woman literally joined Good Reads to tell me how upset she was by my review since a relative of hers had died of the same disorder the professor in the book died of. I deleted the first review. But what was interesting was that people then said I’d done the wrong thing – since too many people take offense now and we need to fight against this new way of silencing the truth. My first concern was that I’d meant the review to be funny, I really didn’t have all that much ‘fundamental truth’ tied up in the review. But secondly, I hated the idea that I’d caused someone pain pointlessly. A lot of the end of this book looks at the phenomena of trolls on the internet who say things like they are only standing up for free speech – when really, they understand how much their words can injure. Often these are people who otherwise say that they support the enlightenment – the new Atheists are a case in point. Again, the link between feeling and pain and reason is complicated here.

I really liked this book. As he makes very clear, there is no going back to the world where pure reason will answer all of our concerns. It also seems true that the right have understood the emotional aspects of how the world works much better than the left has, and have weaponized emotion. If the left is going to fight back it will need to consider its strategy carefully. Screaming ‘fake news’ is unlikely to prove as winning a formula for the left as it has for the right. But bloodless facts are not enough to encourage people to help transform the world either. The author doesn’t quite say this, but other things I’ve been reading do – what is needed is a vision splendid, of utopia, a vision of what the world can and should be.

I’d better stop now – but this really is a book that is overflowing with ideas and interest.

[Joe Bambridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me preface this by saying I am a huge fan of Davies’ academic articles, though this is the first book of his that I have read cover to cover. In a way I regret that, because I’m sure it’s not his best. I’m slightly confounded as to what kind of book this was meant to be; it touches on some big ideas in the history and philosophy of expertise and makes interesting contributions, but with little depth to the analysis, minimal citations, and combines this with references to recent viral moments only tangentially related to the subject of discussion that kind of cheapen the whole thing. Davies’ key argument - that the conditions that allowed for the cultivation of progressive expert knowledge have broken down as the features of war creep into every aspect of social life, with the result that people seek napoleonic leadership over consensus, intelligence over knowledge, and violence as a response to fear- is strong, and some details to the argument are great. Davies’ attention to pain and the corporeal side of politics is particularly novel and could have been developed even further, as is the section on how the validity of statistics disappears under conditions of geographic inequality. But again these moments of real breakthrough, which have the potential to provide the ‘fake news’ discourse with some actual intellectual ballast, are interrupted with randomly selected and rather trite examples of twitter spats or recent news items. It gives the impression that while Davies wanted to provide a contrast to the more reactionary and conspiracist interpretations of fake news, a publisher was there constantly reminding him of the centrist baby boomers who might buy his book if he mentioned Russia and Sean Spicer.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fascinating!

If I'm frank, I liked it better when it was drawing attention to the problems than when it was suggesting solutions. But I really loved the presentation of the problems.


On the Oxford Circus / Selfridges drama: "The media was not so much reporting facts, as serving to synchronise attention and emotion across a watching public."

"Events such as this typify something about the times in which we live, when speed of reaction takes precedence over slower and more cautious assessments. As we become more attuned to 'real time' events and media, we inevitably end up placing more trust in sensation and emotion than in evidence."

"Information becomes valued for its speed as much as its public credibility. This is a whole new way of handling the question of truth, that often runs entirely counter to the original scientific ideal of reason and expertise."

"The promise of expertise ... is to provide us with a version of reality that we can all agree on. The promise of digital computing, by contrast, is to maximise sensitivity to a changing environment. Timing becomes everything. Experts produce facts; Google and Twitter offer trends. As the objective view of the world recedes, it is replaced by intuition as to which way things are heading now."

"there is something telling about the fact that this inauguration row arose around this particular topic: a matter of great emotional significance, but where experts are comparatively powerless to resolve differences. ... A neutral objective perspective is hard to come by, difficult to defend."

"As Hannah Arendt wrote, 'there is hardly a political figure more likely to arouse justified suspicion that the professional truth-teller who has discovered some happy coincidence between truth and [political] interest.'"

"The civil and gentlemanly dimension of expert knowledge never includes everyone as a participant, and can be actively oppressive. This exclusion may not have been recognised as a flaw to those at the centre of such clubs and networks, but for colonised territories and peoples, the potential violence of expert research, experiments and measurement has always been clear. Colonies were governed without regard for the distinction between 'military' and 'civil' tools of power, and the difference between civil policing and military conflict was not clear-cut. Developing societies have been used as test beds for economic policy experiments and drug trials, which produce knowledge to be brought back to centres of learning. Political opposition to expert knowledge has been with us all along, merely pushed out of the eyeline of many Westerners. The thing that has changed in recent years, however, is that large swathes of Western populations appear to now view expertise in a similar way. ... The nativist idea that the nation needs reclaiming from the elites has echoes of the rhetoric of anti-colonial nationalism."

"The objective reality of peace has not prevented a rising sense of fear."

"Experts and policymakers can talk about things like unemployment or the environment, but they will never know how it feels"

"As states become more statistical in their outlook, the feeling arises that they don't really care about the people themselves."

"In the 350 years since statistical expertise came into being, it has been a victim of its own rhetorical success. So much trust has been placed in numbers that anyone wishing to be trusted (for good reasons or ill) inevitably cloaks themselves in a veneer of mathematical reason. But it's not clear if this ploy is working any longer."

"Donald Trump won 2,584 counties to Hillary Clinton's 472, but those counties that voted for Clinton account for 64% of American GDP. ... Britain's economy is the fifth largest in the world and yet the majority of regions experience GDP per capita below the European average"

"In many ways, the lives of individuals in Manhattan have far more in common with those with those in central London, Barcelona, or Paris than they do with other Americans in rural Ohio. National aggregates and averages no longer reflect lived reality to the same extent that they once did. They are failing to represent how things are."

"As policymakers came to view knowledge and cultural diversity as valuable economic assets, so the conflict between metropolitan and rural values was heightened, adding economic inequality to a set of moral controversies."

"Opinion polls in the UK, for example, have shown that 28% of British people believe 'torture works' and 27% think it should be permitted. But among supporters of the UK Independence Party, the figures are 53% and 56% respectively, indicating that some UKIP supporters are sceptical that torture works, but believe it should be permitted anyway."

"The lure of authoritarianism lies in the ideal of resurrecting a more visceral, less careful form of power, that could settle matters of life and death in public, and gives vent to anger."

"But the wager of progress assumes that safety, health and welfare are more important than fundamental beliefs or cultural romance. If these goods start to recede, at least for certain significant sections of society, then we shouldn't be surprised if the same sections turn against the progressive modern project more generally."

"The modern, technocratic state promised to protect people from avoidable harm, such as violence, severe poverty or disease, but it had never sought to guarantee a complete absence of pain."

"This desperation for control is also a political syndrome, in which disenfranchised groups might go as far as sabotaging their own prosperity, if only that grants a little more agency over their own future. Better to be the perpetrator of harm than always the victim, even if it is harm to oneself."

"War helps to narrate pain rather than treat it. ... Part of the appeal of war, at least as an idea, is that ... it represents a form of politics where feelings really matter."

"Like anything else in war, [intelligence] is valuable to the extent that it facilitates speed of decision-making and victory over the enemy; whether it is 'true' is something that the public cannot establish, given the secrecy that surrounds it."

"Where victory is enjoyed and then quickly taken for granted, the experience of loss shapes our identity, forging a melancholic sense of nostalgia."

"The reason guerrillas, computer hackers, suicide-bombers or Internet trolls are so difficult to disempower is that they have very little power in the first place."

"Resentment can even be the basis of self-sabotage, if in damaging oneself one is also damaging the other."

"What allows entrepreneurs to do this is not facts or professional qualifications, so much as impressions and information that others haven't (yet) received. As in war, speed, secrecy, and courage are of the essence."

On futures, derivatives and all those trading things I don't understand: "The economic rewards for the institutions and individuals who construct and sell these insurance products are legion. The stark implication is that there is more money to be made in what cannot be known, namely the future, than in what can."

"In these conditions, individuals must focus less on seeking truth or objectively, and more on being adaptable."

"Rumour offers far more potential for profit than published fact."

"Equally, the main political question that arises is not 'can I trust this person to tell the truth?' but 'will this person lead me to my destination?'"

"Stripped of strategic goals, the findings of data science have a strange banality, even on obviousness."

"Digitisation of everyday life seems to be offering rising opportunities for violence, but little additional capacity for power, other than for the tech giants that own and control the new infrastructure."

"What Silicon Valley technology giants share with fascism is an insistence on fixing problems immediately, and not bothering to debate them first."

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Half the American population experienced no form of economic progress in nearly forty years. Every time Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama stood up and shared some good news about ‘the economy’, they were speaking about something that effectively excluded half the population. This is an astonishing state of affairs. Could anyone possibly be surprised if that lower 50% lost interest in statistical economical pronouncements of politicians and experts?”

Davies does what so many academic writers fail to do, he acknowledges and explores many of the legitimate concerns of the majority of the workforce who are not ensconced in a well-paying metropolitan bubble or cocooned in the higher echelons of elsewhere. Many of whom, will have voted for Brexit and Trump, and will have been wholly dismissed and patronised as a result by the metropolitan elite who’s moral superiority is only trumped by their ignorance.

The millions of people who have seen no meaningful rise to their wages, working conditions or standard of living, regardless what experts, polls, surveys and politicians tell them. The misleading hocus pocus around GDP, like the trickle-down effect it has no meaning in the real world for the majority, it is just another catchphrase, buzz word or gimmick discarded by a grinning liar on his way towards the next scam.

Davies builds a really well-constructed case weaving many elements into this book. He draws on evidence from economics (Mises, Hayek and Friedman), politics (Trump, Brexit), technology (Amazon. Google, Facebook), sociology, psychology and philosophy (Hannah Arendt, Edward Bernays, Thomas Hobbes and Gustave Le Bon) history (Carl von Clausewitz and his great admiration for Napoleon) and health (the US opiate epidemic) and pulls them altogether to present a really engaging piece of work.

Throughout this book we get one compelling and troubling fact after another, the fact that 42 people own half of the world’s wealth and the richest man in the world, earns several times more every minute than the average American makes in a year. Does anyone not directly related to these people think that this is a good thing?...

Elsewhere in the health section he touches on the Case and Deaton study of 2015, which revealed the rise in mortality of middle-aged, white non-Hispanic Americans. Other troubling facts were apparently that the US is the only country in the world where maternal deaths in child birth have been steadily rising over the last 30 years. By 2017 opium overdoses were the leading cause of deaths of Americans under the age of fifty.

I had no idea that when David Cameron ran away in June 2016 he did so with the UK life expectancy falling. No other post war prime minister had managed such a feat. Though maybe May managed to continue that trend when she ran away, consumed with her tears of self-pity a few weeks ago?...

He raises many concerns over society’s increasing value placed on speed and drama over factual accuracy. The attention economy and how moral outrage is always good for business and paves the way for brash, over-confident, unqualified hatemongers who peddle opinion over fact, and emotion over reason, exploiting people’s feelings and twisting them to their own needs.

I read and enjoyed Davies last book a few years back, but he has definitely stepped it up a gear with this book. There is a real satisfying progression and development in the depth and breadth of his writing that makes this a real pleasure to read.

[Andrew H · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating investigation of the connection between the political state and states of mind. Hobbes's Leviathan image hangs over the book and Davies moves expertly (in an Age that despises experts, as he points out) between contemporary reality and the history of political ides from Hobbes and through the Enlightenment. The first section of the book made cohesive sense to me-- the second section teemed with so many insights that I was engaged, as a reader, and occasionally lost. The writing is incisive, provocative and original and explains well how we have created a State that cannot deliver all we expect of it as our needs have gone beyond its economic and philosophical limitations.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nervous States : Democracy and the Decline of Reason, by William Davies, is a book that looks at the conflicting political worlds of reality and fact, against emotion and ideals. Davies takes us through history, looking at both the development of technocratic government institutions, based on principles of fact finding, scientific analysis, and reason, versus the development of nationalistic sentiment, characterized by a distrust of elite interests, academic thought, and a promotion of emotion and feelings over fact and truth in the realm of politics. Davies book is a hodgepodge of historical analysis mixed with contemporary example, and it works well in some cases, but not in others. The historical analysis is interesting for sure, but the length of it in this book is onerous. This happens to the point where Davies thesis is hard to ascertain, and the book feels more like a ramble of ideas versus a concrete text with any sort of thesis or central idea.

That being said, the analysis of the Hobbesian state and the logic behind it is interesting, as well as Davies look at the differing worlds of nationalism and national sentiment/culture, versus a technocratic state run on the principles of utilitarianism, public good, and ideas of efficiency, economic well being, and scientific analysis. These two worlds clash in modern democracies, allowing space for the rise of Trumps across the globe, and promoting voting behaviour that experts would say is irrational (ie. Brexit). The playoff here is not lost on the reader. It is clear that the disconnect between citizen and expert is fairly wide - to the point where ideas and principles dear to each sides hearts are alien to the other. Experts might see voting patterns that do not focus on critical analysis of a party or politicians platform as inefficient and silly - citizens might see the over-reliance on statistical analysis as cold, and not representative of peoples needs. The way in which data is gathered, processed and reported by agencies in the development of systems of governance is often clear, unbiased and scientifically sound, but the results can be misused, abused and twisted to suit a political narrative. This issue ties experts/academics and politicians into the same category in many peoples eyes - that being the elite. This opens the door to mistrust. People trust their own eyes and mind - a la crowd theory - over what they may hear from others. This fallacy of knowledge is important in a democracy in many ways. It allows voters to look critically at those in power, and keeps the democratic system democratic by ensuring a turnover of experts and politicians as they lose favour - even if for reasons that may not be fully rational to some.

Davies book is an interesting analysis of feeling vs. fact. It takes historical analysis of the development of many ideas that modern democracies utilize in their framework and foundations. It also looks at the counterbalancing forces that the public/citizens/mob/masses bring to democracy and its institutions, and ties these together to examine the modern decline in trust in democracies, and the rise of populist reformers that are hell bent of bringing down the "elite" and closing borders to newcomers. These populist ideals are largely irrational when examining statistics, principles and systems of governance, but make sense when one ties in declining rates of trust in democratic systems common throughout many democratic systems across the globe. This book is interesting in many ways, although it can feel more like a dump of ideas than a concise text at times. Even so, worth a read if the subject matter seems of interest.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are in the age of Nervous States, constantly living in fear of terrorism. Le Bon first noted the psychology of crowds and its contagion effects of emotions and dumbing down the individuals. Social media now performs a similar function. Terrorism scares us so we are willing to let the State have more and more power in return for safety.

Hobbes: humans value their own observation more, and thus cannot be trusted to make observations. They are prone to violence, so they choose to have the state (Leviathan) to maintain peace.

Boyle & Royal Society: scientists, judges, and other experts can have objective observation and discussion apart from their own ambition and biases. So they can be trusted to tell us what to do and know. William Petty pushes mathematical and empirical knowledge further, creating social and political science where numbers can be used for ‘evidence based management’. John Graunt published the first mortality table. Technocrats are thus born and it’s common for experts and politicians to become the same elite group.

However over use of statistics by politicians render it less trusted over time. The financial crisis showed the folly of blind trust in numbers. Also just because economic growth is positive on average does not mean it benefits me in particular. While American GDP per capita grew over the past 40 years, the bottom half actually saw a drop of 1%, and the top 10% saw 115% growth! Even though the bottom half did not become poorer, they encountered relative economic deprivation that feels unfair, so they vote for Trump. Likewise for polls, for result of voting depends not so much on opinion but the strong feeling that pushes people to actually vote. Furthermore, the well educated experts seem to be the same people who would benefit from their own analyses of capitalism!

When people are without hope and meaning, it can manifest as physical pain; opioid addiction becomes a kind of comfort. People who are in pain are more likely to vote for authoritarian politicians, because they are more willing to inflict pain, such as repression and torture, on the ‘others’.

It’s getting hard for the public to distinguish impartial analysis from spin. So campaigns such as Brexit that eschew economic analysis can win by paradoxically branding dispassionate analysis as ‘project fear’! As a result, with regards to British immigration, anecdotal reports are received wrongly but statistical analyses provoke anger. This is irrational and totally inexplicable from the numbers point of view. Facts are often manipulated to cause maximal impact, especially when used in social media. Gerasimov’s doctrine considers many non-traditional ways of war.

Emotion and morale are great elements in fighting wars, and shopping and have been harnessed by generals and marketers. Losing a war permanently changes the national psyche, whereas winning affects it little. Demagogues harness the bitterness of the disenfranchised very well.

A great general does not know the whole truth, but has the courage to bend reality to his own vision. Napoleon unleashed the nationalist feeling of the French. Great politicians and entrepreneurs are thought by some people such as Peter Thiel to completely dominate their industries. ‘Competition is for losers.’

Hayek thought markets are supreme to socialism; it gauge our feelings. ‘Knowledge and ignorance are relative concepts’. Expert knowledge is not necessary for it to work. Central bankers must therefore weigh each word with care, so as not to unduly affect market ‘sentiment’. Truth becomes less important but adaptability is paramount. Education is all about signalling for employability.

Social media can control our emotions, and allow trolls to inflict pain on others. It is easy to blame and attack, but hard to build on the internet.

Nationalism:
1. Gives the feeling of solidarity and equality
2. Gives meaning. Authoritarianism is attractive when community collapses
3. Gives self esteem

Scientists need to fight back by sharing their own feelings about their work, especially for catastrophies like climate change. No longer can science be the dispassionate voice and facts cannot speak for themselves.

I found this book interesting but rather disorganised, with points being repeated many times. I feel sometimes I have read some parts when it is really a new chapter. A 4 star book.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a fan - a huge academic fan - of William Davies. He is courageous, robust and is prepared to 'take on' assumptions, slogans and mantra that slip through our empowered systems.

Can I also note, the title listed in GoodReads is Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason. You can see some of the argument in that subtitle. However my version has a fascinatingly distinctive title.

Nervous States: How Feeling took over the world. That is a terrific title. While both subtitles are intriguing, 'feeling' taking over the world is a powerful argument to consider, and an intriguing trope to understand the last two years.

This book was released in February 2020. Yes - just as the pandemic was to ignite and agitate (and infect) our planet. The arguments raised in this book - stand through the pandemic. That is rare - and it shows their accuracy. It was written in 2017 and 2018, and the heat of Brexit and Trump still flame the sentence structure.

At its most basic, the book probes what happens when the mind/body and peace/war binaries start to corrode. The resultant analysis is stunningly horrific. If you wonder why people were so obsessed about toilet paper and going to hairdressers during the pandemic - the answer is available for you in this book.

There is also strong attention to what has happened to Science - capital S. And - further - what has happened to our universities through this post-expertise knowledge economy.

I appreciated this book. I was fascinated by this book. I was provoked by this book. While I disagree with some of the commentaries - that space for alternative views demonstrates a strong and robust analysis that welcomes new scholars and adjacent disciplines.

My only quibbles were the lack of Virilio in the theorizing of speed, the lack of Laclau and Mouffe in the investigation of populism and - yes - the absence of late Baudrillard and the "double refusal" when exploring the changes to leadership, power and authority.

Read this book. Have arguments with it. Consider the nature of fact and - politically - why 'feelings' matter.

Yep. A ripper.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bummed this wasn't better because Happiness Industry was very formative for me. Unfortunately, I found myself doubting his argument as often as I was being convinced. Overall, felt disjointed and surface.

[Leif · Rating 2 out of 5]

William Davies is a classic liberal whose dream technocracy is threatened by "populism" from people such as Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump, and this book is his take on the institutions and relationships formed in the Enlightenment that are threatened by modern life. If that pairing makes sense to you as two threatening politicians, and if you too are concerned about societal dysfunction (but you don't want to talk about redistribution, inequality, or other dangerous concepts), you are in for a treat. If, on the other hand, this introduction is throwing up all kinds of warning signs, then you can predict the contents.

Some specifics, if the above hasn't already sent you fleeing. Davies goes back to the well of Thomas Hobbes and Carl von Clausewitz with depressing regularity and, more troublingly, seems relatively oblivious when it comes to many subjects - he will do something like write out a description of an infamous (and misleading) meme about smartphone use on trains, for instance, and over his many subjects his citational practice more often seems to entrench his narrative authority than it does provide useful detail or intellectual traditions. There are areas where Davies makes small gestures of independence, such as when he approvingly cites Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins as champions of Enlightenment reason (which, can I just say: read Jason Hickel on Pinker, PLEASE, or just maybe this piece by Jessica Riskin), but goes on to accurately note the strong Islamophobia of the latter. Nevertheless, there's not much here that's original, and the synthesis is only going to enrich the technocratic libido for self-righteous reassurance.

Sigh.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just didn't get on with this book.

The Guardian review described this book as "Adam Curtissy", which feels exactly right.
The premise is probably from a good place, and there's some interesting ideas, but it rambles in a slightly self-indulgent way on a thousand different current societal ills.

I would have much preferred a long form article. Some great ideas, and the last chapter does link some of them together well, but overall felt like a slog to get through.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting observations on the decline of democracy in favor of populist sentiment. If you're wondering how we got to a post-truth world, this book will give you plenty to think about.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book argues a fascinating theory that explains why politics has become so combative and irrational. William Davies argues that changes in the economy and technology have rendered feeling and emotion more important that rational reflection. Increasingly, our politics is not driven by rationality because the arbiters of what is rational (the elites, if you like) have lost credibility, partially because of their own misdeeds. Instead, civic life has become more combative and reactionary, leading to the primacy of feelings of safety, anger, revenge, and belonging (among others). Davies connects the rise of Silicon Valley's data mining and aggregation as a force that undermining rationality in favor of reactionary feeling. This is because data science depends on the ability to record as many emotional reactions to things as possible in order to understand how to affect peoples' behavior without their knowledge.

The discrediting of our institutions, ideologies, and leaders has disrupted what Davies calls a "narrative of progress", in which people believe that operating within existing institutions will continue to drive improvements in life. Because people observe and feel that progress has stalled, the narrative is disrupted and people look outside mainstream institutions and ideas for hope. On top of this, the emotionally manipulative nature of platforms such as Facebook feed peoples' beliefs that progress has stalled and that trust is no longer a basis for civic and economic life. Davies believes that combat and mobilization have replaced trust and expertise in our politics.

Davies' theory is fascinating and builds on neuroscience, psychology, technology, philosophy, history, and politics. He makes a compelling case for why factchecking and other didactic efforts to assert reason over fanaticism aren't likely to correct our politics because fanaticism has an appeal even when people know the facts. He is extremely persuasive when he connects the shift from reason to emotion to the new personal data economy. While I appreciate that he used his last chapter to suggest ways to leverage emotion to fight for a more peaceful and productive politics, I don't know that I was sold on his suggestions. He seems to be suggesting the use of emotion to mobilize a left wing populist movement centered primarily on environmentalism. I did not find this compelling at all. Even if emotional politics could mobilize a mass movement of left wing environmentalism that can seize power (and there's considerable evidence at this point that it cannot do this), the same emotion that mobilized this movement can divide it or even lead to violence.

Emotion is an effective mobilization technique for the Right because they are only interested in holding power. They have no particular policy agenda. The progressive Left is definitely interested in policy so it must find a way to not only take power in an election but also how to use the power to implement reform. Unfortunately, I think the only solution for the progressive Left (or liberals or whatever) is to create a heterodox movement for all races, genders, and religions that is oriented around concrete, but not radical progress in the world. The narrative of progress needs to return so that even if the Left is not in power, we can at least agree that the state must do no harm.

[Maxim Kavin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Вспомните свою бытность студента. Писали ли вы курсовые и дипломы? Разумеется, да — это неотъемлемая часть образовательного процесса в ВУЗах и колледжах. Однако кто признается, что писал свои работы, так скажем, не совсем честно: к примеру, использовал заимствование без соответствующей цитаты на источник?

Автор работы «Нервные государства», видимо, застрял в студенчестве. Эта книга — сплошное заимствование. Но отличие Уилльяма Дэвиса от ленивого студента в том, что он не совсем заимствовал в том смысле, в котором я писал выше. Ведь у любой работы должен быть критерий научной новизны, который невероятно важен в ее оценке. Не будь новизны в твоей работе, она станет никому не нужной, особенно научному сообществу. Зачем читать работу, которая ничего не даст? Дэвис, конечно, указал источники, то есть заимствованием это назвать нельзя. Но то, что автор вообще не постарался каким-либо образом связать разных авторов, тем самым создав уникальную работу, у которой был бы критерий научной новизны, — факт. Автор лишь выделил тезисы из работ Лебона, Гоббса, Граунта, Декарта, Хайека и Клаузевица. Поначалу вам кажется: ну да, Лебон, можно сказать, был отцом-основателем психологии толпы. А затем это перерастает в непонимание того, зачем эта книга была написана. Тем более, если вы знакомы с работами вышеперечисленных авторов, работа Дэвиса вам покажется невероятно скучной и никчемной.

Если автор пытался, таким образом, синтезировать авторов в единое целое, чтобы не пришлось читать работы каждого из них, — боюсь, он ошибся. Дело в том, что эти тезисы вырваны из контекста. Вот как я делаю заметки в книге, выделяя маркером все то, что нужно мне, так и Дэвис сделал, но уже не для себя, а для всех читателей, кто взялся за эту книгу.

Разумеется, любую тему нужно анализировать, а любой анализ начинается с изучения источников, которые уже существуют. Но это можно сделать так, чтобы создать полемику прямо на страницах своей книги, как это делают многие ученые в своих научных статьях. К примеру, не надо перечислять тезисы каждого автора абстрактно, где они последовательно следуют за друг другом. Нужно кооперировать тезисы одного автора с другим, тем самым создав полемику и начать анализировать с двух сторон: один видит так, другой вот так. А у Дэвиса тезисы идут один за другим, не вступая в какой-либо конфликт с тезисами другого автора, ибо все они не синтезированы и не скооперированы, а абстрактно лежат в разных главах. А это не способствует желанию прочитать эту книгу.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A big picture attempt to explore today's social, political, and technological anxieties. If you like your nonfiction interdisciplinary and multilayered, Nervous States is in your wheelhouse. While I'm not sure I learned anything new factually, Davies's convincingly combined ideas about human physiology, Enlightenment epistemology, 20th century culture and counterculture, big data, and current identity politics to tell a story of who and what advanced Western societies have become. Nervous States defies easy categorization which I'm sure is one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much. Some readers may dislike the lack of a narrower focus in service of a more limited argument, but I enjoyed this book's wandering path. Definitely one that's going to linger for awhile.

[Alistair · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am sure this is not the author's fault but this was not the book i hoped that it was going to be . I thought it was about contemporary culture where feeling has taken over from reason and every one wants to tell you " how they feel " and emotion has taken over from fact and where the facts as promoted by experts are manipulated to coincide with their feelings . In a crowded multi media no one has time to explain complex facts so why not just " feel " in order to get attention for ones views and hoodwink the already confused overwhelmed with stuff public .
TBH I didn't understand a lot of it and threw the towel in half way through .

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some interesting ideas in Nervous States, but Davies rarely tied the things that he explored back to his central thesis. Ultimately, that made the book seem muddled and disjointed with no real punch to it.

[Chakib Miraoui · Rating 1 out of 5]

A cheeky rulebook for the liberal progressive base, and a memorial to their times of crushed descent from their smaller rivals.
In his last chapter, this University of London teacher even calls his lefty friends to escalate the cultural war and fight against conservatives, as if they haven't devised it in the first place. "Beyond reasserting facts and expertise, maybe the “culture wars” need to be joined from both sides. This isn’t necessarily as frightening as it might sound." what????

According to this man, one has to have been abused in childhood, emotionally repressed, or warmonger, for him to be anything but flagbearer for progressives and liberals. he goes to lengths to establish this narrative in every possible way.

[Corina Murafa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all arguments throughout the book are as easy to follow/ pertinent, but all in all the narrative fabric holds and supports Davies’ claim that feeling replaced reasons in today’s society, hence the advance of populism all over the world. The section of the book which talks about the politics of pain and how different dimensions of chronic suffering led to disenfranchisement is particularly strong. The main flaw of the book, of course, is that it doesn’t even hint at ways we can escape the mess we got ourselves into. It definitely looks like the extreme entrepreneurial visions of Musk and Thiel and the like will shape our common future, but it is completely uncertain how and in which direction.

[Graeme · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent original thinking in parts, but not sufficiently coherent. A brave book that does move us forward.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his book Nervous States, William Davies provides a convincing explanation of how facts, reason, and expert-opinion have come to be scorned by so many today. A political economist at the University of London, he reminds us of the vital role that our experiences and feelings have always played in helping us interpret, and respond to, “the world.”

In fact, trusting in our “gut instincts” is deeply human; numerous studies have revealed that many of our decisions and assumptions of “facts” are more instinctual than logically thought through. We each rely on the lessons we have drawn from our experiences to help us navigate our daily lives, unconsciously adjusting elements of what we have learned as we assess new encounters. Together with the codes of behavior we absorb from our culture, these form the “truths” by which we steer.

Unfortunately, our present divisions make it difficult for us to compare our own “truths” with those of others whose observations and conclusions may well be quite different from our own. Not only does this make it more difficult for us to converse in a reasoned and civil manner, but it also impedes our ability to work in restoring a properly functioning government and creating a more peaceful society.

In a way, the current suspicion of and disregarding for “expert-opinion” is a return to a time – not so long ago – before the scientific method approach became popular. It was the Enlightenment of the 18th century that claimed that the powers of human reason were far superior in ascertaining “truth” than the unprovable assertions made by faith or present in myth. Their steady application of reason’s razor began to expose the degree to which unsupported myths had shaped our earlier understanding of human nature, of our world, and indeed of the universe itself, inevitably leading many to come to doubt the legitimacy of other — even all — authority, a process that continues ¬¬¬today.
There have always been those who, either with malicious intent or for the sole purpose of their own amusement, sought to sow confusion and doubt by spreading rumors and disinformation. Such dissemblers, as we well know, have become even more skillful — and, thus, more dangerous — in our day. Little wonder that so many are unsure just where they can turn to find “the truth.”

Davies very importantly explains how experts, and even the most skillfully researched and presented studies, sometimes inadvertently create doubt or disbelief.

For example, while a statistic reporting the level of national unemployment might be very accurate, the real level of unemployment in many areas of the country might be quite different. In such places — where unemployment has either remained static or increased — citizens can understandably be nonplussed by the reporting of such nation-wide data, perhaps causing them to begin to look more suspiciously upon the accuracy of all authoritative reports and studies. Such experiences can feed the suspicion that “we” are not even thought of when those responsible — the “elites” in government, universities, or think-tanks — prepare such reports. This, in turn, easily fits into the narrative peddled by sowers of dissent: “of course they don’t think of you; they are different from us.”

Davies also points out that far too many specialists have damaged themselves and, by extension, all legitimate authorities, by failing to keep their pronouncements restricted to their actual field of knowledge and, instead, opined about matters in which they are not expert.

Taken together, the result is a corrosive mix of suspicion of, and resentment toward, “elites,” and a bewilderment about whom to trust if one wants to know the “real score.” This creates such unsettling emotions as feeling isolated, unimportant, and uncared for, a very rich soil in which would-be demagogues can create even more discord and pose as the “only” legitimate information source.

As but one of the many consequences of these developments, politics in recent years has become markedly less civil and rational and much more emotional and tribal, a phenomenon Davies attributes to the “rise of feelings.”

[Trevor Kidd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why did I choose this book: I must have run across a mention of it somewhere. I can’t remember where, but it was on my hold list at the library so I picked it up. I had also read and enjoyed The Happiness Industry by the same author so I had pretty high hopes for it.

This book is an intellectual history about how expertise became a concept in how we understand the world and has fallen into distrust. Expertise was actually something sort of invented in 17th century Europe to calm society rattled by the religious disputes of the Hundred Years War. Hobbes, Descartes and Robert Boyle are particularly important figures in setting up Davies’ argument. Expertise came to mean that there could be a consensus about the nature of reality backed up by testable facts.

Emotion has come to largely replace trust in expertise for a whole variety of reasons that can basically be summed up (to the detriment of Davies’ book) as every bad thing contemporary society faces. So here we get arguments about income inequality and the opioid crisis and social media and algorithms and artificial intelligence and the war on terror. The strand of Davies’ argument is in there, somewhere, but the overall effect is a sort of throw everything at the wall and see what sticks strategy. These arguments are in themselves interesting and well thought out, but the connection to each other is not the easiest to follow.

Who should read this book: If you like intellectual history, are a fan of William Davies’ other writing or like esoteric non-fiction that relates to current events.

[Mannie Liscum · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Davies’ “Nervous States” is an outstanding piece of work. Davies uses political and psychological history and science to shed light on recent right-wing populist movements around the world. Using examples from England, Europe and the US, Davies paints a clear and sober picture of democracy in flux (if not decline). Trust is experts/technocrats/scientists is clearly one area that is central to understanding the current upheavals. People who have had their lives thrown into chaos by globalization and the 2008 economic crash are in need of vent, and what better release than to find the culprits of their demise: elites and experts. This anxiety is fomented and encouraged by any number of populist right politicians to gain support. While these movements offer little more than a place (a who/what) to focus anxiety, they provide the emotional suave the people desire. Logic isn’t at play here; feelings and emotions are key. If it feels right it is. The experts and technocrats of neoliberal democracies must learn to accept that this new reality is at play. Learn to adapt or disappear ‘into the dustbin of history.’ This is a deep and thoughtful book. It is not simple or binary, it is nuanced and complex but eminently understandable. I can not recommend it highly enough.

[Alejandro V. Betancourt · Rating 2 out of 5]

William Davies, a political economist and sociologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, is the perfect representation of the 'liberal elite' described in his book. Davies research is fantastic, and the first half of every argument where he provides a brief summary of history or of Austrian economics are very interesting and enlightening. However, things rapidly collapse the moment he provides his own interpretation of things. His reasoning makes it blatantly clear that he has never left the 'ivory towers' from academia. His arguments lack logical continuity, with myriad contradictions and a clear left-leaning ideological bent (Ironically, as he explains that political biases from experts that portray to be neutral is a leading cause of decline in respect of said 'experts'). This is particularly the case towards the end where he goes deeper into areas, such as big tech and data science, where he clearly has no idea what he is talking about. To claim that free markets are driven purely on emotions and that BIG DATA simply captures the 'sentiment' of the crowd and not 'facts' is intellectually lazy and the kind of petty semantics people are fed up with.

[Santi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very uneven book where commonplace observations are mixed with interesting points. The authors is always threading the line between explaining anti expert sentiments and justifying them. It is a weird book where cheap shots at "elites" are mixed with statements about how appalling populists are.

The bits that I found more interesting where those that link chronic pain, illness and decreasing life expectancy with nationalism and far-right attitudes. In line with the cultural explanations of populism, Davies argues that older generations feel meaningless and displaced and thus vote to overthrow technocrats, scientists and cosmopolitans. His new insight is how pain and death add to this by fostering authoritarian and backward attitudes. I full agree with the need to integrate psychology more into political analysis. The hypothesis is suggestive but not met with much evidence. After all, it is an anti-experts book!

[Greyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is a bit all over the place, and I'm not sure I'd use the word "provocative" when the privatization of gov't services and big data/information is clear and present. Clever pun in the title, but when reading it was more nods of "of course, but now what?" than of discovery.

[Laura May · Rating 2 out of 5]

10% and DNF - a disappointing book. It certainly hits all the buzz words, and it absolutely addresses concerns we're facing, but it uses consistently outdated research to do so. He has a lovely manner of writing, but this was a waste of my time.

[Mike Cross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started out very good, linking what you thought could not be linked. But then wandered at the end and never pulled it all together. A lot of potential missed.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

An urgent book addressing the crises of knowledge, fact and feelings.

[John Martindale · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first half of the book was interesting. He seems to argue the psychology of crowds (where people are cup in the group mind and will do things they never would do as an individual) may explain some of the madness we see influenced by social media

He goes into various histories and relates to how people who live in fear are inclined to violence.
Writes about Hobbes, who laid the idea that a totalitarian state was needed for peace, for otherwise, it would be a war of all against all. The police state would make people act nice towards each other. But Hobbes presented a false dilemma.

The British gave us the sense of the expert, not researching and gathering the facts, without agenda, political motives, etc… The gentlemen did not lie. Knowledge was to be shared. Ideas were to be challenged; records were to be kept and shared. This new ideal (while never living up to its ideal) did result in more peace and progress, as people begin to trust each other.

What breaks it down is when we discover the experts are in bed with political agendas, that they cooked the books, that they lied. Trust begins to break down. Statistics are general and can be used by leaders to say the economy is great. However, a lot of individuals are on the losing end, to be told everything is rosy, in light of their lived experience, is infuriating.

A fundamental fact is people likely will feel resentment. It feels zero-sum; the successful, regardless of reality, will gain their wealth at our expense. Emotions of status are tied in too. People take things personally. In the broad, these destructive forces are so likely and powerful, in the construction of society, they need to be considered.

His ideas on the rise of nationalism are interesting.

Anyhow, Mises and Hayek, recognizing the disastrous results of centralized planning, and the insular dogmatisms and groupthink among intellectuals who were never held accountable for their bad ideas, think they are a major reason for the doom we now face, as libertarian forces have undermined people trust in the experts.

The book takes a nosedive from here. He thinks free speech, if it is from libertarians and conservatives is violence. He seems to be in favor of identity politics, censorship, and leftwing activist mob attacks, who dox, de-platform, and cancel all descanting voices, so hopefully, we can entire some Maoist utopia where the new Red Guard will enforce conformity with the “truth” according to the elite. At last, we will have another glorious inquisition that enforces conformity with the orthodoxy of leftwing experts. He wants experts to embrace politics too--embrace power. Especially in light of the doomdays prediction of global warming alarmists, we need all people to surrender their rights and allow absolute Leviathan to save the planet. It appears he’d be delighted if we moved into the glories of Lysenkoism, at last, the leftist elite will never be questioned (if they are, to the gulag with them), and no, there will be no competition as the central planners make decisions. Sure it will lead to the starvation of millions upon millions, the mass extermination of others, concentration camps, and the impoverishment of most, but at least the experts will be at the helm of the ship again!

Seems to have been written before COVID-19, but it seems world governments and technology took to heart his message and ran with it.