Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests (17 page)

Robin M. Kowalski,
Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors
(Yale University Press, 2003)

Michael J. Sandel,
The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering
(Harvard University Press, 2007)

Henry David Thoreau,
Civil Disobedience
(1849)

Mary Woollstonecraft,
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792)

Thanks to: series editor Lisa Appignanesi, Daniel Crewe and Andrew Franklin at Profile for helping to develop the idea for the book, commissioning it and offering numerous excellent suggestions; Lizzy Kremer for continuing advice and encouragement; Robin M. Kowalski and Charles F. Hanna for sharing their knowledge of work on complaint in psychology and sociology respectively; Gavin McLaughlin at Netspace and Mike Baker at Aileach Design for the book’s web site and survey; everyone who took part in the survey; Dorset Humanists and Burnham Philosophical Society for comments on work in progress; David Walter Hall for information about Jean Meslier; Matt Seaton at
Comment is Free
; Maureen Rice at
Psychologies
; and above all to Antonia Macaro for reading and commenting on the draft, and not complaining about how much time I spent working on it.

1
. Academic research in the area of complaint is scarce, except in the case of consumer complaint. Exceptions to this rule are the excellent popular book
Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors
(Yale University Press, 2003) and the academic paper ‘Complaints, and Complaining: Functions, Antecedents and Consequences’ (
Psychological Bulletin
, vol. 119, no. 2, 1996), by the psychologist Robin M. Kowalski, and the paper ‘Complaint as a Form of Association’ (
Qualitative Sociology
, vol. 4, no. 4, December 1981) by the sociologist Charles F. Hanna.

2
. David Walter Hall,
The Last Priest.
Hall also includes an actual passage from Meslier’s Testament (Gourmelon translation): ‘This is what gives all these gentlemen the means to entertain themselves and have all kinds of amusement, while you the poor, abused by the faults and superstitions of religion, groan sadly, poorly and without protest under the yoke of the oppression of the great.’

3
. See Michael Onfray,
In Defence of Atheism: The Case against Christianity, Judaism and Islam
(Serpent’s Tail, 2007), esp. p.195.

4
.
Dhammapada
(124), trans. Juan Mascaró (Penguin, 1973).

5
. From
Majjihma Nikaya
, in
Teachings of the Buddha
, ed. Jack Kornfield (Shambhala Publications, 1996), p.74.

6
. From
Vissuddhimagga
, in Kornfield (ed.), op. cit., p.18.

7
. From
Dhammapada
, in Kornfield (ed.), op. cit., p.15.

8
. All passages from
The Koran
, trans. N.J. Dawood (Penguin, 1974).

9
. ‘Noble or Savage?’,
Economist
(19 December 2007).

10
. Frans de Waal,
Our Inner Ape
(Granta, 2005).

11
. Summary of LAAG response to airport planning application, 26 April 2007, posted at
www.kentnet.org.uk/laag/Planning?20Application-LAAG?20Response-summary.pdf

12
.
Environmental News Daily
, issue 690 (31 January 2000).

13
. George Orwell,
The Road to Wigan Pier
(Penguin, 2001), pp.88–9.

14
. National Statistics Online,
www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=934

15
. Presentation given 30 March 2004,
www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/downloads/files/lifechances_socialmobility.pdf

16
. BBC News Online (3 September 2007),
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6972699.stm

17
. The text of this interview is widely available online, for example at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2726831.stm

18
. ‘Morality? Don’t Make Me Laugh’,
The Guardian
(20 April 1999). See
www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=203

19
. Slavoj Žižek, interviewed in
What More Philosophers Think
, ed. J. Baggini and J. Stangroom (Continuum, 2007).

20
. George W. Bush’s speech to the American Enterprise Institute, 23 February 2003,
www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/iraq/bush_2–26.html

21
. Prime Minister’s statement on Iraq, 25 February 2003,
www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page3088.asp

22
. See ‘Blair: Saddam Most Dangerous Leader’, CNN.com (20 February 2001),
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/UK/02/20/bush.blair/

23
. See Robin M. Kowalski,
Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors
(Yale University Press, 2003).

24
. Robert Hughes,
Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America
, (Oxford University Press, 1993).

25
. Michael Power,
The Risk Management of Everything: Rethinking the Politics of Uncertainty
(Demos, 2004).

26
.
www.accidentclaimscountrywide.co.uk/services.html
, accessed 12/11/07.

27
. Mary Warnock,
Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?
(Oxford University Press, 2002).

28
. Michael J Sandel,
The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering
(Harvard University Press, 2007).

A

airport protests
46
–8

Aldridge, Stephen
57

Allen, Woody
50
,
70

American independence
18

American foreign policy
66
–70,
91
–3

Anglican Church
119

Annie Hall
70

apathy
33
–4

Aristotle
65

atheism
10
,
17
,
60
–61

automorphism
98

B

Benedict XVI
11

Benn, Tony
67
–9

Blair, Tony
6
92
–3

Brahms, Johannes
73

Brent Spar
62
–4

Brown, Gordon
58

Brown, James
73

Buddhism
12
–14,
16

Burma
13

Bush, George W.
92
–3

C

catharsis
32
–4

Catholic Church
11
,
119
–120

Chartism
18

Chomskyism, cod
66
–70,
76
–7

Christianity
9
–11,
105
,
119
–120

Clarke, Arthur C.
22

comedy
81
–3

community
40
–41,
94
–5

complaint

and age
98
–101,
136

conformist
71
–5

contradictory
37
–42

definition
2

empty
77
–9

and gender
95
–8,
135

impossible
21
–35

insincere
4
–5

leisure activity
87
–9

Luddite
49
–54,
99
–100

misdirected
54
–64

and nationality
89
–95,
97
,
133
–4

nostalgic
49
–54

paranoid
64
–71

proportionality
42
,
59
–62

quotidian
4
,
81
–102

self-defeating
42
–5

self-serving
45
–9

specificity
42

survey
84
–102,
131
–6

wrong/right
21

consumerism
113
–14

cosmopolitanism
44

credulity
66

crisis or moral legitimacy
105
–6

The Culture of Complaint
103

D

Dawkins, Richard
60
–61

democratic politics
38
–40

diet, Western
50
–53

displacement
55
–9,
61
–2

E

education
123
–5

empty gestures
62
–4

entitlement
93
–5,
112
–18

environmentalism
46
–9,
61
–4

ethics, the return to
118
–25

European Football Championship (2004)
23

evangelism
120

F

failure, intolerance of
109
–110

fall, the
7
–9

fascism
11

Faulkner, William
22

Fellowship of Reconciliation
88

feminism
18
,
97
–8

freedom
109
–11

Freud, Sigmund
63

fuel protests
48
–9

funk
73
–4

G

Garzón, Judge Baltasar
29

Gaye, Marvyn
74

globalisation
46

God
8
–10,
113

gratitude
113

Greenpeace
63
–4

grievance culture
103
–25

H

Hall, David Walter
10

High Fidelity
72

homophobia
13

Hughes, Robert
103

human nature
24
–8

Hurricane Katrina
69

Hussein, Saddam
67
–8

I

Ikeda, Daisaku
22
,
23

Independence Day
70
–71

individualism
94
–5

insurance
104
,
110

Iran
118
–19

Iraq war
92
–3

Islam
15
–16

J

John Paul II
11

Job
9

K

kainotophobia
53
–4

King, Martin Luther,
3
,
129

Kosovo
68
–9

Kowalski, Robin M.
96

L

leftist utopianism
24
–9

legalism, moral
106
–9

liberation theology
11

Liebeck
v
. McDonalds
104

life expectancy
52
,
57

litigation
103
,
104
,
111
–12

Luddism
97

Lydd Airport
47
–9

M

Macchu Picchu
43
,
45

Magna Carta,
18

Mandela, Nelson
3

Marx, Karl
58

McDonald’s
52
,
104

Meslier, Jean
10

Military-industrial complex
66

moaning
1
,
2
,
19

moral hazard
110

moral philosophy
120
–23

musical taste
72
–4

N

neophobia
53
–4

Neuro-Linguistic Programming
77

New Testament
9
,
120

Niebuhr, Reinhold
21

Nietzsche, Friedrich
10

Nimbyism
47
–9

O