If I ruled the world: the best of - suggestions from the likes of Grayson Perry and Richard Dawkins
A musician ruling the world? Well, firstly there would be a lot less music and the music that remained would be lower in volume. Banished would be music as wallpaper, music to block silence, music to fill empty space—enough! Jingles in lifts, jingles on aeroplanes, jingles on the phone as you wait to speak to the bank—enough!
Speaking of phones, I would ban marketing calls from loan and credit card companies and I would make illegal their slick, brilliantined envelopes that thicken our doormats. They are a waste of paper, a waste of mental energy and lethal for a pianist who can suffer a paper cut ripping open their often-disguised contents.
I would launch other green offensives: solar power in every structure and lights off in all public buildings at night. The daily glitter of skyscrapers competing with the stars is an unnecessary, unforgivable decadence. Food waste is an atrocity that is reducible, if not completely avoidable. Restaurants should be forced to recycle their leftovers for animal consumption—and should create fewer leftovers in the first place. And please: liquid soap in hotel rooms not those fat tablets, which end up squished into rubbish bins, imprinted with one stray hair from one stray night.
Aside from the bigger issues of worldwide hunger, disease, conflict and inequality (I’d need to consult my team of experts on those) I would address some aspects of domestic education. I would make sure that every school day began with 15 minutes of communal silence, meditation, deep breathing or prayer… but no music. Out of silence is born concentration and from that comes learning. I would extend this to universities and to workplaces: bosses, secretaries and janitors breathing the same air of tranquility in a 15-minute truce.
And, back to school: languages. I remember begging one of my primary school teachers to let us learn French instead of wasting time digging around in the classroom sandpit. Forty years later I’m neither able to garden nor speak French. Every child entering secondary education should be able to speak two languages equally fluently. This is the case in many countries, except the English-speaking ones.
I would require an hour once a fortnight of music (classical, I’m afraid) appreciation. A gentle but systematic journey through music history, unlocking the treasures of the greatest composers and their masterpieces. Every child would have to learn a musical instrument. Why would this be a priority, other than for this world ruler’s self-interested prejudices? Well, in the west, one of the greatest curses in this mostly-blessed age is distraction and boredom amidst plenty. Learning a musical instrument is one of the best ways to discipline the mind to do something for more than a minute’s duration, an activity into which you must plunge rather than surf, requiring skill and involving purpose. It engages the whole person in something physical, mental and (at its best) spiritual, all in one burst of sound. The hope is that this would be artistically enriching (I might limit the number of people choosing to learn the drums), but it’s also more than that. Concentration, or “attention” as the French philosopher Simone Weil put it, is part of living a civilised life, with happiness derived from well-being rather than mere well-feeling. Paying attention, to people, to ideas or to ourselves is oxygen for the soul. A constant flitting from gimmick to fad to video clip is an attempt to grow the tree of life in just an inch of soil. Learning a musical instrument is not the only solution to the problem, but it’s a good one which is easy to implement.
As I jot down these thoughts I’m reminded how frightening this business of power is, how easily ruling the world morphs into recreating the world in our own image. What courage it takes to leave things undone; what wisdom is involved in refusing to meddle in other people’s private lives. If it has been said that youth is wasted on the young how much more dangerously is power entrusted to the powerful. Few people hunger for power who hunger for the good things it can achieve. Power should be handled as if on short-term loan, or as if it could explode in our faces at any moment.
So I’m not really enjoying this hypothetical “being the boss.” Every day I ruled the world I would be looking to find someone to take over from me as soon as possible. But before they did I’d make sure I had secured a nice flat overlooking the water somewhere warm, Sydney perhaps, where I could relax, read, sip leisurely on a glass of wine and consider what I would do if I ruled the world.
Stephen Hough has been described as "Britain's finest pianist" and was the first classical performer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. His new recording of the Brahms Piano Concertos is released on 1st December on Hyperion Records
