The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Hiraeth from their Saudade.
This week we ask, having listened to a new BBC series, about the rise of online gurus. Why do these individuals have such sway over their audiences, and what does their popularity tell us about how values are evolving?
And of course, there’s the temple of wisdom/ snake oil that is Charlie’s Attic, this week including the story of the world’s first Labradoodle.
The New Gurus
We’ve recently been listening to The New Gurus, a BBC radio series presented by Helen Lewis. It explores the rise of online gurus – individuals from outside the mainstream, who promote better ways to live.
Guru specialities covered during the series range from wellbeing to Bitcoin to productivity to social justice. The programme seeks to trace a thread between Steve Jobs’ preoccupation with eastern mysticism in the 1980s, and an individual like Russell Brand’s descent into conspiracy theory in the past five years. Both Jobs and Band sought alternative gurus of their own, Lewis points out; both in some sense aspired to guru status themselves.
An underlying subtext for the series is that gurus, and the cult of personality that surrounds them, have supplanted the role once played by organised religion. Where once there were a handful of very large churches promoting a better way to live, now there are thousands of small online ones promising the same thing – through a secular but equally doctrinal lens.
Another way of reading this would be about the rise of post-material values. This isn’t a Values Lab weekly, but it’s worth noting that the Pioneer grouping which we often describe has grown massively over the past 50 years. This group is defined by a post-materialist desire for meaning and self-actualisation. They shun money-making for its own sake and seek inner fulfilment.
Not all of the gurus Lewis speaks to are left liberal, it should be pointed out, as we tend to think of post-materialists and Pioneers as being. The conservative academic Jordan Peterson is cast as a guru in one episode, for instance. But all of them make a virtue of spurning conformity, and many claim to value (or to help others to appreciate) the things money can’t buy.
The rise of post-materialism is often cast as a good thing for Western nations, creating more sceptical and just societies, which avoid conspicuous consumption or mob behaviours. The New Gurus perhaps reflects the darker side of this, showing that a society where people seek meaning over money – or prize the alternative over the mainstream at all points – can come with its own problems.
And finally, Charlie’s Attic, the spiritual guru we turn to each Friday:
Imbibe the wisdom (or otherwise) of crowds, with this YouGov polling on whether it’s wise to tell kids to hit their bullies.
