According to the books which dominated best seller lists last year, indeed the last decade, the world is full of magic. But of course the wonderful Harry Potter is fiction for children.  Also riding high in best seller lists last year, helped by brilliant marketing and a DVD film, was “The Secret”, by Rhonda Byrne. This book by contrast was not intended as fiction and was written for adults. It is the most successful by some way of books espousing “cosmic ordering” or “the law of attraction”, which is broadly the idea that you get what you wish for as long as your wish is strong and persistent. It suggests that the universe will arrange itself to your wishes as long as you are clear, consistent and wholehearted in expressing them. The world, in other words, is full of magic and (even better) you are a magician. Like every apprentice sorcerer though you must be careful, because if you dwell on negatives they may manifest themselves instead of what you want, which the film illustrates amusingly.

That this idea is utter drivel may hardly seem worth pointing out, but the sheer success of the book/film means that it apparently needs to be done. Of course our thoughts and feelings influence the world in many complex ways, not least by the impressions they create in those we meet and our own assessment of the limitations we are prepared to accept. We can change our fortunes by application and attitude in many cases, perhaps more often than not if we live in prosperous societies and certainly more often than we think. But to extrapolate from this that we are masters of circumstance in every case is superstitious nonsense. What is worse, the political message it carries or at least supports is grim. If it were true those who lack or are disadvantaged would have only themselves to blame since their negative attitudes would be the causes of their suffering. There is something quite nasty about the idea that those who suffer have brought their suffering on themselves, not even by their actions but by hapless thought. Natural disasters, famines, wars and plagues apparently don’t just happen, they are conjured up by people, indeed by their victims, idly or fearfully thinking about them. It is only a small step in this magic-driven world to identifying the culprits and teaching them a lesson. Witch hunting may soon be back in season.

But let’s not blame the book or film. If a book sells like hot cakes it is only because we want to believe in it. Like children, we apparently want the world to be magic, or vast numbers of us do. Our thirst for magic is, surely, about control - over our own lives, our circumstances, the fates of our loved ones and ultimately our own mortality. We desperately want there to be a secret which, once we are in on it, will enable us to control the world. Perhaps this is one reason why centuries of rational thought have made far fewer inroads on religious belief than might have been expected.  The runaway success of The Secret is evidence that this yearning for magical control is alive and well, even in the Age of Dawkins.

Rational persuasion is likely to have a hard time if magic is what people really yearn for. Childish it may be, but if that is what people feel in their guts their feelings will not give way in the face of finely crafted arguments. This has consequences for all of us whether we share the feeling or not, for the gut feelings of our neighbours can govern our lives. Wily politicians will always tap such inchoate yearnings to gain favour, they always have. But it gets worse, for we can be led to pit one magic against another and find ourselves in conflicts without really understanding how we got there. If our decisions are based on childish yearnings for a controlled world reason will always struggle for a hold and we end with a world which is not only uncontrolled, but unreasonable.

There are answers to this “magic v reason” dilemma but they cannot lie in reason alone, any more than they lie in magic. They depend on satisfying or diminishing the yearning for control sufficiently to allow reason to govern the important decisions. Again, religion has sometimes achieved this by separating the realms of faith and reason but in societies which find faith difficult, or which see value in many faiths, something else is needed. Another way also found in religious traditions but more easily adaptable to secular society is to focus on the importance of the inner life as the key to personal satisfaction and a replacement for control of the external world. The first step though is to see that there really is a deep seated problem if people want magic and are offered reason. For making that obvious we should, reluctantly, thank “The Secret”.

In recent interviews, and indeed at the time, Tony Blair justified invading Iraq and many other things in the last years of his premiership because it was “the right thing to do”. This flavour of conviction politics apparently brooks no argument. “I know what’s right, so whatever reasons you may advance against doing it must be bad reasons, even if I can’t explain why.” At least two interesting questions are raised, though.

First, how come I know what’s right and you apparently don’t? How do I know what I know? If it’s just obvious to me, for example, why isn’t it obvious to you? Second, leaving aside any judgement of Blair’s particular decisions, is this kind of conviction politics to be admired, or feared? Because we do rather admire the convinced politician, the person of principle, even when we disagree with them.

On the first, it seems to me that the rightness of the decision either rests on reasons or it doesn’t. If it does, give us the reasons and convince us and the claim of rightness is little more than a rhetorical flourish. But if, as Blair increasingly tended to do, you offer rightness instead of reasons this is something very different. At the very least, it amounts to a claim of superior moral insight, coupled perhaps with a challenge to others to consult their own moral compasses. It suggests that there are moral absolutes, moral knowledge, which certain people can be aware of while others perhaps lack the capacity, a sort of refined sense akin to being able to hear ultra high frequencies or see infra red light but concerned with ethical matters. Is this true? Personally I need convincing that there are such truths quite independent of any reasons which might support them. If it were true our difficult task as voters in a democracy would be to choose leaders on the basis of their abilities to sense things of which we have no perception. Democracy, in fact, would have to give way to priesthood.

Which leads us to the second issue. I don’t think we should admire politicians who tell us that they are passionate in their beliefs without being able to justify those beliefs with understandable reasons. I think we should run like hell. Perhaps we confuse consistency with fervour. We admire the politician whose decisions are consistent one with another even when some are uncomfortable. If that is conviction politics, let us applaud it or at least grudgingly concede it makes sense even if we disagree with the underlying principle. (The recent PM was incidentally not a conviction politician in this sense – for understandable practical reasons there were no invasions of North Korea or Zimbabwe to unseat their tyrants. Principle was allowed to bend to practicality when occasion demanded.) But fervour without reasons or consistency is another matter. It may make a person interesting (although it may make them a bore!) but it is no basis for exercising power. It makes government subject to an individual’s whim, even (especially) if the individual thinks they are inspired. Tyrants, demagogues and theocrats govern with moral fervour. Let us hope it does not become fashionable.

I watched Channel 4’s “two part thriller” last week and although it was flawed – for example, the savage beating of a loved one would surely have caused anyone to rethink their commitment to a political cause – I thought it was a good piece and more importantly a brave attempt to make us think about terrorism in the only way which will make a difference. It is easy to demonize people who kill others and therefore just look at the issue as one of prevention, as if the terrorists were robots. But unless we can understand why killing themselves in this way can come to be attractive to young, intelligent people we have very little chance of bringing such activity to an end. This play ranks with Ed Husain’s (factual) “Islamist” as an important step towards such understanding.

Once people forget or gloss away mercy and compassion as the heart of religion extremism quickly follows. Truth is traditionally said to be the first casualty of war but in this case, ironically both for “jihadism” and the “war on terror”, consistency went first. The extremists advocate violence in the name of a compassionate religion while the West dismantles ancient freedoms in the defence of a free society.

The other well-treated theme was just how easy we make the task for terrorist recruiters by our political actions. Injustice justified by hypocrisy and backed by force is too often all we offer, from invading other countries to condoning disproportionate violence by our friends. This is hardly a new point, of course, it was even reported as having been made in advice to the government before the Iraq invasion. The West is left looking as though we have no values at all to contend with the easy certainties of scripture, however conveniently misinterpreted. It would be better from this perspective for our politicians to admit, say, that Iraq was just about oil than to pretend that it was about something else which no one can believe. But then of course Western public opinion would have been even more opposed to the invasion.

The question I am left with is this: what are the true values of our society now, if they are not religious - and how can they be if we are multicultural? Are they then political – Freedom, Social Justice, Democracy etc? But are these more than just slogans? For example, I know what freedoms are, but I’m not sure about Freedom. I think I know injustice when I see it, but what would Social Justice look like, really? And isn’t Democracy a way of taking decisions rather than a value in itself, and a highly stylised way at that? But if these are indeed our values, why do they seem to stop at national boundaries? If we don't want to live under religious extremism or in a state of war with it don't we have to think hard about these questions?

It’s always strange to read or re-read a work of great influence many years after it has passed into legend, because ideas which might have struck contemporary readers as startling and original are now part of everyday consciousness. I have just re-read Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful” after a couple of decades. What struck me first, given the book’s status as a seminal work of the green movement, is how little it is about ecology, profound as Schumacher’s concern for the environment is. For those who haven’t read it lately, there are tirades against the misuse of forecasting; a great deal about what nationalised enterprises should have been about (although I don’t think anyone took much notice before they were all privatised again); and some convincing ideas (convincing at least to me who knows little of the subject) about development in the third world needing to be on a human scale aimed at providing low cost, low technology production for local consumption rather than grandiose mega-projects.

But the unifying theme and overriding message is the one in the subtitle of the book: economics as if people mattered. Yes, indefinite growth as an economic goal is unsustainable and self defeating but more important, the book is clear, is the effect on us as people if we enshrine such a goal as the aim of our lives. Production is for people, not the other way around. People may be considered as consumers or workers for some limited purpose but they are first and always people. We need material goods, we need economic activity and work, but we need it for a purpose and economic activity itself is not and cannot be that purpose. What is? The Schumacher of this book clearly found part of the answer in religion but also in a deep respect for people and their potential to answer the question for themselves.

We attended the "Happiness and its causes" conference at the weekend and previewed the book there - sold out of the copies we brought, in fact, but we didn't bring many! Met lots of very kind, lovely people. The conference was organised by a foundation which aims to help people to be wise and kind - how cool is that?

There was great emphasis on the need for happiness skills to be presented in a form which young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, can accept and absorb. I remember one contribution from the floor which showed from first hand experience how materialistic and at the same time unrealistic the aspirations of many young people are. But how can that be a surprise when, as was pointed out, children are bombarded from their earliest years with the constant media and advertising message that only materialism/consumption matters? If children are offered no other values they cannot be blamed for adopting the ones the adult world is clearly living by.

It made me wonder whether there is a case for publicly funded adverts (from a levy on advertising?) to counter the torrent of "gimme" messages which form the background to childrens' lives. Would this have any effect? I don't know - the record of anti drug, anti smoking messages is not encouraging. But something is needed.

Almost there! After what seems like years (mainly because, in fact, it is) the book is being printed as I write and will be published within 2-3 weeks. And to celebrate, the website is now live, as you can see.

We are currently finalising arrangements to preview the book at the "Happiness and its Causes" conference at Savoy Place in London on 13/14 October.