We’re far too polite in this country.  We talk of immigrants having a duty to integrate into society, for instance, but are too embarrassed to insist that they actually learn English, the essential prerequisite of integration. Instead, our public bodies go out of their way to provide expensive translation services. Last year, Crawley Borough Council spent £1,000 translating a single tenancy agreement into Urdu. Tameside Council’s website boasts of having access to a bank of interpreters covering more than 140 different languages, who can be on call for individuals “within 90 seconds”. These services are said to be required by equality and human rights laws, but this is “a myth. There is no legal duty for councils to translate.” If there were, the (Labour) Mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, “would have been in gaol long ago”. A crusader for integration, he has cut translation by 72% and got rid of foreign-language newspapers from libraries. We should make other councils follow his example. Funding these services, while making major cuts to free English language lessons, makes no sense at all. (Clare Foges, The Daily Telegraph).

This comes from the right-wing Daily Telegraph, which is full of such stuff.  But I have a feeling that, were Epicurus alive today, he would agree with the general sentiment. You cannot have a cohesive society if people can’t understand one another.  Nor does ataraxia come easily or naturally when everyone is constantly misunderstanding one another.  There are some natural building blocks of a culture, and speaking the native language is one of them.

There are some nasty neo-nazi rumblings in Germany, but Mrs. Merkel, accepting  refugees, has it right – welcome them, take them in, but insist on spreading them round in small numbers throughout the country.  Without big concentrations of foreign nationals people have to learn the language and integrate.

Tesco is one of the biggest supermarket chains in the world.  It has decided to scrap 30,000 of the 90,000 products from its shelves, partly in response to competition, partly because it is making huge losses. Tesco used to offer 28 tomato ketchups and 224 kinds of air freshener.  They now understand that customers are time constrained, that increased choice can be bad for you and, worse, it results in losses that upset shareholders.

We used to be told that choice is good for us, that it confers on us freedom, personal responsibility, and autonomy.  American psychologist and professor of social theory Barry Schwartz, in his book “The Paradox of Choice”, writes “If we’re rational, [social scientists] tell us, added options can only make us better off as a society. This view is logically compelling, but actually it isn’t true.”

For instance, a big accounting firm offers 156 different retirement plans. ”Which of us, really, feels competent to choose between 156 varieties of pension plan?” One of Schwartz’s colleagues got access to the records of Vanguard, a mutual-fund company, and found that for every 10 mutual funds the employer offered, rate of participation went down 2% – even though by not participating, employees were passing up as much as $5,000 a year from the employer who would happily match their contribution.

Increased choice can make us miserable because of confusion, lack of comprehension, opportunity costs and sheer impatience with the whole damn thing.  Worse, increased choice has created a new problem: the escalation in expectations. At a certain point, choice shifts from having a positive relationship with happiness to an inverse one. So, what’s the answer? “The secret to happiness is low expectations,” says Schwarz sensibly.

Most of us end up buying the same things we have been buying for years.  There are other issues on our minds than whether to buy French, Irish or New Zealand butter.  Familiarity breds ataraxia.  If you live in the United States everything has sugar in it, anyway, even soup, so there is no point in changing.  By the way, Epicurus lived on a Mediterranian diet. Another leaf to take out of his book.

“If you want a demonstration of the accelerating infantilism of contemporary culture, look at Lego. Its origins lie deep in the history of European pedagogy, co-mingled with the Scandinavian design ethic. The bricks [were designed] to encourage intelligent decisions about structures, stimulating a child’s imagination. It was the ultimate open-ended system, with infinite potential for the user to explore ideas of their own. These days, Lego wants to sell you Hollywood tie-ins, or to instruct you to build a McLaren P1. It’s an affluence that diminishes the imagination, while feeding the cupidity of the semi-literate.”  (Stephen Bayley in The Daily Telegraph).

And I thought it was just me who felt like that!  Giving ready-designed Lego products to small children has been such an empty disappointment, and not inexpensive, either.  You sit there, helping the child assemble a moon landing vehicle or whatever. But when it’s done, it’s done. Fini.  Complete.  It sits on a shelf to be admired for a few days, and that’s the end of it, until eventually it is dis-assembled.  Then you find the specially- designed parts don’t suit other, ad hoc, attempts to be creative.

My younger son wisely won’t allow pre-designed Lego products in the house, only loose bricks etc. The result is that, when we visit, the oldest grandchild has barely said hello before he proudly shows off his latest creation.  It is his, not something devised by grownups from a design department.  Alleluya!

The sad thing it that people – a lot of them – buy these pre-designed products, and Lego makes a fortune from them.  Let the imagination of kids flourish, free and creative!