{"id":186,"date":"2014-11-22T23:03:01","date_gmt":"2014-11-22T23:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?p=186"},"modified":"2018-02-19T15:00:33","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T15:00:33","slug":"society-can-drive-you-mad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?p=186","title":{"rendered":"Society Can Drive You Mad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the beginning of this century we started to think a bit more explicitly about wellbeing in society \u2013 what it might mean and how we might measure it. <strong>In 2010 \u2018The Big Society\u2019 was a \u2018big topic\u2019<\/strong>, but not only was there scepticism about the political motives but in many ways, it missed the point.<\/p>\n<p><em>YouTube Video, David Cameron launches Big Society Capital, 10 Downing Street<br \/>\n10 Downing Street, April 2012, 13:53 Minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nmT4RChwvWc?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Big Society missed the point<\/strong>, partly because it was about more of the same (e.g. volunteering and promoting the third sector) just presented under a new banner. It was not about doing things that would really make a difference. It was not about bringing the bankers to account. It was not about finding mechanisms to identify and head-off systemic failures. It was not about really understanding what wellbeing is, in the individual and in society, and designing really effective ways of addressing it. And, in the event, most discussion about it turned out to be the same tired old politics, in exactly the same rut of traditional thinking about the distribution of wealth.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the final audit report on the Big Society, published by The Civil Exchange in January 2015: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.civilexchange.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Whose-Society_The-Final-Big-Society-Audit_final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">The Final Big Society Audit<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Blog 2 \u2013 \u2018Society Can Drive You Mad\u2019 turns its attention from the individual to society but tries to use the same models, language and analysis as applies to the individual to look at structures on a larger scale. This will turn out to be a brief diversion, just to flag the direction of travel, before returning to a deeper analysis of the meaning of wellbeing and control.<\/p>\n<p>We only have to look at the European Union to illustrate how larger <strong>social structures affect the individual<\/strong>.   The fault-lines in the design of the economic elements of the EU have been growing since they first cracked open in 2008 as a result of the global crisis in banking. Looking back, we can now see how lending and debt was used by the designers of the system, primarily Germany and France, to influence economic policy decision-making in countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland.  The longer-term consequences are now being picked up, not by the system designers, but by ordinary people across Europe (including those in Germany and France). <\/p>\n<p><em>BBC Radio 4, Start the Week, Greece and the Eurozone with Yanis Varoufakis, April 2016, 48:19 minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b075pb4r\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b075pb4r<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Once it was the practice that the designer of a bridge had to live under it for a year to be sure the design would be robust.  Now, designers and the people affected by the consequences of the design, have become dissociated.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Much of the change and dissonance in our lives is brought about by the actions of others<\/strong>, either as individuals or in society at large &#8211; family and friends, peers, organisations and the state. Life is unpredictable \u2013 things just don\u2019t turn out how we expect them to.<\/p>\n<p>In much the same way that the body automatically gets hungry to motivate eating, the mind tries to maintain its world model by dealing with dissonance, and society adapts to resolve dissonance between interest groups with differing value systems. It\u2019s a similar type of process where change creates imbalance (i.e. dissonance) that requires action to restore a stable state of affairs. In physiology this may be maintaining levels of blood sugar. In the mind it might be maintaining the correspondence between the world as it appears and the model of the world in the mind. In society it may be the balance between different interests and value systems. Although there are many different sources of dissonance and many different methods of resolving them, the homeostatic model provides a good starting point for understanding all self-regulatory systems &#8211; from the body, to the mind, to society.<\/p>\n<p><em>YouTube Video, Consciousness and the Underpinnings of Social Behavior, Big Think, June 2011, 4:54 Minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/8obbZwJ-THQ?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This blog starts to sketch out how the ways in which organisations work can impact on the wellbeing of the individual. This jumps to a point on the larger scale \u2013 somewhere between the individual and the state. It illustrates both where the type of thinking in this blog leads, but also how <strong>a consistent story about wellbeing and control can be made all the way along the spectrum from physiology to society<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The ways in which organisations can operate is insidious<\/strong>, and often under the cover of a plausible, but flawed, story. Who told us the story that the banks are too big to fail? (I pick the banking industry because it is an example most people will understand and agree with but the points apply in many other sectors including health, benefits, housing, the law and more). <\/p>\n<p><em>YouTube Video, David Cameron in conversation with Nassim Taleb, 24 Feb 2010, 29:14 Minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/QQAVDg4yqUU?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We all have a need for fair play but this blog is not about the most obvious and deliberate injustices. The argument being made is more to do with what organisations do as part of everyday and commonly accepted business practice. Sometimes this is at the fringes of legality but for the most part <strong>there is very little \u2018checking\u2019 to correct any issues<\/strong> in this form of \u2018accepted\u2019 behaviour. If there is a homeostatic mechanism then it operates over the longer term and can be thwarted by agile management and individuals that move around the system in time to avoid the long-term consequences of their actions. It is here where the plot is hard to follow and we need a much more robust understanding of the relationship between wellbeing and control in order to see what is really going on. As <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Black_swan_theory\" target=\"_blank\">Taleb<\/a> says \u2013 it is about nuances \u2013 <strong>the devil is in the detail<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In particular, it is about how <strong>organisations use their power to shift costs away from themselves and onto others<\/strong> &#8211; the individual, smaller businesses, and society generally. Customer service has changed. The customer must now do much more work to select suitable products where the market is deliberately designed to confuse.  Big companies bully little companies, squeezing their margins to the limit.  To keep costs down problems, often created in the private sector, end up in the public sector, then because of limited budgets, are passed around from agency to agency (social care, to healthcare, to the legal system).  We have been paying for banking and insurance products that are next to worthless.  These ways of working can deliver economic benefit to particular organisations, and even society at large, but <strong>do they deliver a net increase in wellbeing?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While larger organisations may have genuine benefits in terms of efficiencies and economies of scale, often they survive by simply moving costs off their own profit and loss account and onto society at large. These <strong>social costs are unaccounted for<\/strong>. They are ignored by most of us as part of life. They are written off by society, but if they were tracked, aggregated and invoiced for, many large businesses would go bankrupt (or at least show a considerably diminished return on investment).<\/p>\n<p>Even the organisations with noble objectives can err badly. Take the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust for example, where many patients died due to lack of care despite the sustained protest of relatives, friends, and the media. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For illustration of the way in which the actions of governments, regulators, banks and global corporations can impact on the lives of individuals, take the case of somebody who suffered the effects of negative equity. Let\u2019s say that the mortgage payer also lost their job and suffered a bereavement. This led to <strong>anxiety and then depression<\/strong> and, after a period, to family breakdown. They then became homeless, and having few sources of support, found themselves on the streets. They were already drinking heavily. Some minor criminal act leads to temporary imprisonment, following which they had nothing left. Let\u2019s say they ended up in a psychiatric hospital with clinical depression and suicidal thoughts.<\/p>\n<p><em>YouTube Video, Depression is a disease of civilization: Stephen Ilardi at TEDxEmory, May 2013, 22:20 minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/drv3BP0Fdi8?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But although depression is more recognised in the developed world, it is endemic throughout the world and potentially much the same analysis and remedies can be applied.<\/p>\n<p><em>TED Talk, Vikram Patel, Mental Health for All, 12:19 minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed-ssl.ted.com\/talks\/vikram_patel_mental_health_for_all_by_involving_all.html\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The decline from normality to depression involves many agencies including banks, employers, the family, government (the job centre, benefits, housing, police, courts), and healthcare. In a sense it is the failure of these agencies that has led to the decline. People slip through the holes in all the layers of support.<\/p>\n<p>What starts with the operation of macro-economic forces (rises in interest rates, sub-prime mortgages) and the operations of banks, ends with the taxpayer footing the bill for healthcare. <strong>The original act is dissociated from its outcome.<\/strong> The people who created the starting conditions may benefit (in this case, the bankers) while those at the other end suffer.<\/p>\n<p><em>YouTube Video, The banks: how am I here again? Paul Mason on the news, Channel 4 News, November 2014, 2:20 minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Wf7a53y9RRM?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This blog is not so much a rant at what\u2019s wrong with society, as an observation that the system can fail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not only can it fail but it&#8217;s just not very good at supporting wellbeing. At every stage the <strong>various agencies (particularly banks and financial institutions, but also many private and public organisations, the operation of the law and educational system etc.) seem to act to push the individual down<\/strong> and a person must have some resilience to fight against the pressure. There is a touch of Nietzsche&#8217;s notion of &#8216;<strong>ressentiment<\/strong>&#8216; and the &#8216;<strong>will to power<\/strong>&#8216; (i.e. not be pushed around by those that have more power), but in the main it attempts to be an impartial analysis of &#8216;how things work&#8217; to empower everybody to enhance wellbeing. Power, control, mastery, competence, agency and autonomy are all themes in Nietzche and this blog.  We all have a desire to be effective agents and seek the power to impose our own values on the world.    <\/p>\n<p><em>YouTube Video, PHILOSOPHY &#8211; Nietzsche, The School of Life, October 2014, 6:56 minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wHWbZmg2hzU?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In case it all looks like doom and gloom, I support Pinker in his view that, all in all, there is plenty of evidence that the world is becoming a better place.  <\/p>\n<p><em>BBC Radio 4, Start the Week: Fascism and the Enlightenment with Steven Pinker, February 2018, 45 minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b09rwszj\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b09rwszj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>We ought to be able to do better at maintaining individual and societal wellbeing than we currently do. We ought to be able to create organisations and systems that push people up the wellbeing ladder, that capitalise on their capabilities \u2013 that recruit the best that we know about wellbeing and control to motivate and support the individual. We should make this type of fall resist gravity. If we were serious about creating a \u2018Big Society\u2019 we would not still be arguing along the traditional political grounds, we would be rolling up our sleeves and <strong>debugging the system<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>At least now, wellbeing is on the agenda and discussion about it is \u2018legitimised\u2019. What\u2019s more there is a different mood and some attempts to think through how change can be brought about. For example, Daniel H Pink\u2019s book \u2018Drive\u2019 sets out how people doing more creative work benefit from a \u2018Results Only Work Environment\u2019. This is where <strong>the individual is tasked with some goal but has autonomy to achieve it <\/strong>how they like. Many of the biggest and most successful companies have introduced this style of working.<\/p>\n<p><em>YouTube Video, Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, April 2010, 10:47 Minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u6XAPnuFjJc?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Also, there are tools like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oecam.com\/articles\/better-lives-better-organisations-better-world\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dolphin Index<\/a> and companies that espouse this philosophy that will help benchmark organisational culture. Whilst discussion on the \u2018Big Society\u2019 may have gone flat there are government initiative such as the Behavioural Insights Team <a href=\"http:\/\/www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk<\/a> (originally part of the cabinet office) that apply knowledge from social science to help achieve policy objectives.<\/p>\n<p><em>YouTube Video, David Halpern: Nudge and Beyond: Behavioural Science, Policy and Knowing What Works, July 2012, 24:30 Minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E-CXdFKZIMk?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As things stand in 2014\/2015, we are waking up to the idea that the design of society and its <strong>social structures need not be around the classical economic model<\/strong>. We have some clues about where to go, some initiatives and some experiments. But really we are at the stage where this approach is on the fringes. To be really effective it needs to be developed as an applied science, then fully embedded into everything we do. This is the direction that these blogs lead.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This Blog Post:<\/strong> &#8216;Society Can Drive You Mad&#8217; shows why it is important to understand wellbeing in the individual and how society often undermines it. It <strong>provides the rationale for a better understanding of wellbeing and control<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Next Up:<\/strong> &#8216;Wellbeing is not just the Satisfaction of Needs&#8217; presents some popular and expert definitions.  This kicks off the process of tying down definitions for all sorts of slippery terms. <\/p>\n<hr>\n<h1>More<\/h1>\n<p>Nietzsche&#8217;s notion of &#8216;<strong>ressentiment<\/strong>&#8216; in more detail:<\/p>\n<p><em>Youtube, Video, Nietzsche &#8211; Ressentiment, Power, &#038; Values, Philosophy Overdose, January 2018, 44:37 minutes<\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Wsjwch_J83w?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png?w=605&#038;ssl=1\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\",\"Email\",\"Print\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Society%20Can%20Drive%20You%20Mad\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the beginning of this century we started to think a bit more explicitly about wellbeing in society \u2013 what it might mean and how we might measure it. In 2010 \u2018The Big Society\u2019 was a \u2018big topic\u2019, but not &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?p=186\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Society Can Drive You Mad<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\",\"Email\",\"Print\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Society%20Can%20Drive%20You%20Mad\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,7,11,15,17,10,5,4],"tags":[39,92,40,38,19,25,21,35,36],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-control","category-happiness","category-influence","category-mental-health","category-mental-health-health","category-power","category-well-being","category-wellbeing","tag-anxiety","tag-big-society","tag-depressed","tag-depression","tag-economics","tag-society","tag-sociology","tag-ted","tag-youtube"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4OZBF-30","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":215,"url":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?p=215","url_meta":{"origin":186,"position":0},"title":"Wellbeing is not just the Satisfaction of Needs","author":"Rod Rivers","date":"December 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"It may be obvious, or even tautological, that wellbeing is about the satisfaction of needs but it is a useful way of putting it because it begs the question \u2018what needs?\u2019. This grounds the notion of wellbeing in something more concrete and leads to more precise definitions. Wellbeing is about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Happiness&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Happiness","link":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/maslow_blog004.jpg?fit=548%2C331&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/maslow_blog004.jpg?fit=548%2C331&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/maslow_blog004.jpg?fit=548%2C331&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":453,"url":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?p=453","url_meta":{"origin":186,"position":1},"title":"Are We Free?","author":"Rod Rivers","date":"February 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Consciousness, freedom and moral responsibility Answering the question 'Are we free?' at the level of society suggests that the big multi-nationals have assumed control over many aspects of our lives (see: \"What is control?\"). Answering the same question at the level of the individual is much more difficult. It raises\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Control&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Control","link":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?cat=9"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":62,"url":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?p=62","url_meta":{"origin":186,"position":2},"title":"It\u2019s Like This","author":"Rod Rivers","date":"October 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"We are all deluded. And for the most part we don\u2019t know it. We often feel as though we have control over our own decisions and destiny, but how true is it?\u00a0 It\u2019s a bit like what US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld,\u00a0famously said in February 2002\u00a0about the \u2018known knowns\u2019,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Mind&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Mind","link":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?cat=14"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/ted7.jpg?fit=358%2C264&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":319,"url":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?p=319","url_meta":{"origin":186,"position":3},"title":"Knowledge is Power to Control","author":"Rod Rivers","date":"December 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In order to control you have to know something about what you are controlling. You have to know the levers you can pull and have some understanding of the effects. You need some more or less accurate 'mental map' or mental model of what you are controlling. You have to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Control&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Control","link":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?cat=9"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/www.mindmapart.com_v2.jpg?fit=425%2C300&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":270,"url":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?p=270","url_meta":{"origin":186,"position":4},"title":"What is Control?","author":"Rod Rivers","date":"December 17, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Control is a huge subject spanning from self-control through to state control. It is also fundamental to wellbeing, particularly when needs are not being met. Control is such a familiar concept that a lot of our thinking about it is implicit. We don\u2019t think \u2018how will I control the pot\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Control&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Control","link":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?cat=9"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/unmet.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/unmet.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/unmet.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/unmet.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/unmet.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":726,"url":"https:\/\/wellbeingandcontrol.com\/?p=726","url_meta":{"origin":186,"position":5},"title":"Who&#8217;s to Blame?","author":"Rod Rivers","date":"July 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I sometimes think that, although there is currently a great inequality in the world, there will come a time when we will have found ways of making society more equal and particular groups in society will no longer be disadvantaged. 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