RSA Thursday - Complaint: from minor moans to principled protest

19th Jun 2008; 13:00

Please right-click button and choose "Save Link As..." to download audio file onto your computer.

With Julian Baggini, philosopher and writer, author of Welcome to Everytown and The Pig that Wants to be Eaten and editor of The Philosophers' Magazine.

Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA

Conversation would be extremely limited if we stopped moaning. But whereas we once complained about the things that really matter, now we are most likely to be stirred by late trains and bad television programmes. Moreover, often our complaints are misguided: people often protest, on the one hand, that political parties ought to bicker less; but on the other, that we are cheated because there is nothing to choose between them. Isn't there something serious to say about complaint?

Join Julian Baggini at the RSA to examine what we complain about, why we do so, the different kinds of complaints we make, why men and women complain about different things, why we complain less than Americans, and whether we should complain differently.

Download full lecture and Q&A session (MP3)