Philosophy by accident

Families where everyone agrees are happy families. But a nation in total agreement is the first sign something is wrong.

Ask a developer, a protester, a tourist waiting for a bus that never comes and they will all tell you, with identical conviction, that what we need is “quality of life”. We have just had a general election campaign that achieved the rarest of modern feats: universal consensus on what is needed. Our suspicions should have been aroused then.

Consensus this total is usually purchased by emptying a phrase of content. We discuss the horrors: the cranes, the noise, the takeovers of public land and sea. We do not discuss what we mean by quality. We want a good standard of living – but which standard? And whose?

The Greeks would have found our debate bemusing. Not because they lacked the concept but because they argued about it properly. They did not ask what quality of life was; they asked, with clearer heads, according to which life. 

And they produced three recognisable answers, which have never gone out of circulation, only out of fashion and back in again, like flared jeans and Victorian beards.

There was the Stoic, who believed that every disorder of the soul could be solved by discipline and correct organisation of the self. 

There was the Epicurean, who suspected – despite his later reputation as a glutton – that the good life consisted of knowing precisely when to stop wanting things. 

And there was the Cynic, who suspected something worse: that the entire arrangement, the city, the propriety, the dinner parties, was a fraud, and that the only honest response was to live in a barrel, unkempt, and say so loudly.

Three types – and we still have them.

The Stoic is now the productivity guru, optimising his performance, measuring what he needs to manage, making do with T-shirt and slim-fit pants, scaling back his needs while sleeping on an office floor he could, several times over, have bought. 

The Epicurean is the white-collar professional with the eclectic tableware, perfecting the art of a simple supper in the garden, which is not actually simple at all – it has been curated into simplicity at considerable expense. The good life is retreat from the aggressions of the streets, Facebook and public life.

The Cynic is the man who waves at traffic with nothing on, which looks like spontaneity but is, in its way, as deliberate a philosophical statement as Diogenes’s barrel, minus the barrel and minus, one suspects, the philosophy. The internet trolls and the lifestyle ‘goblins’ – who make a virtue of their exhaustion and dishevelled appearance – are members of this caste.

There are obvious differences between the Greeks and us. Our commercialised world leaves nothing untouched. So an ethical system that mocked consumption gets sold back to us as a consumer good. Stoicism becomes a substack subscription. Epicureanism becomes a lifestyle brand –complete with travel itineraries. And Cynicism becomes a meme, irony as merchandise.

Self-styled goblins now have their own food delivered, Instagram influencers dictating clothes and HR corporate departments giving them permission to go make-up free.

You cannot have a quality-of-life debate without an argument about the values that determine quality- Ranier Fsadni

Beyond these differences, there is a difference of free choice. The Greek philosopher chose his withdrawal. He decided, after argument, that simplicity or discipline or contempt for convention was the better life and he built a doctrine to defend the choice. 

When modern citizens do not debate these choices, however, the choice is made for them. Someone else decides what counts as quality of life and they have to adapt. 

The withdrawal of the modern Epicurean may be wisdom; it may equally be the consequence of a country that has become unliveable any other way. The private swimming pool is not chosen; it is the dirty crowded beach that has been ruled out.

As for the modern Cynic, they might not be rejecting society as much as noting, correctly, that, if they have no chance of joining the property ladder, then it was society that disinvited them.

Which brings us, by the back door, to the island and its traffic. Everyone here wants less of something: less construction, less noise, less congestion, less pressure. Nobody asks the only question that matters, which is: In service of what? 

Because ‘quality of life’, stripped of its vagueness, is not a measurement. It is a verdict about the good life. You cannot have a quality-of-life debate without an argument about the values that determine quality. 

And here is where the masks come off, because nobody on this island is honestly just one of the three types. The developer building the minimalist villa borrows the Epicurean’s vocabulary of simplicity while producing the opposite of it at scale. 

The politician borrows the optimiser’s metrics and dashboard to reassure the frustrated citizen and then enjoys his own holidays in a personal oasis created by gaming planning rules, which created the frustrations in the first place.

And the cynic on social media, who built his whole brand on contempt for the property ladder, is secretly checking listings.

We may, in fact, have more choices on this island than any Athenian ever did. Cafés, lifestyles, minimalist villas, naked Tuesdays on the Regional Road if that is your inclination.

What we are no longer sure of is whether we are choosing among them or simply selecting from a menu that someone else has written for us.