In a world in which we are about to have the surreal experience of watching Donald Trump being sworn in as US president for the second time, the politics of France, Germany and Italy are moving gradually rightwards, and Nigel Farage’s chances of gaining power through the UK ballot box seem to be on the up, what better year to celebrate Winnie the Pooh Day on 18 January?
Why, you may ask? Is she really referring to that threadbare old British teddy who became a whimsical hero for children, who is almost a century old? What possible use could he be in the effort to stem populism? Well, maybe more than you think.
Pooh was a favourite of mine from the earliest time I can remember; watching my dad’s finger moving along the lines of the rhymes in When we were very young, realising that the words that sounded the same had the same shape at the end. There was something about the world in which Pooh lived, the ‘enchanted place in the forest’ within Hundred Acre Wood, that felt very much like home; a feeling that never completely dissolved.
Pooh and the Tao
Benjamin Hoff, author of The Tao of Pooh, points out that Pooh, in the child’s fantasy world created by AA (Alan) Milne for his son Christopher, acts within the story as the Taoist ‘uncarved block’. He has no fixed expectations, he relishes his small pleasures like a pot of ‘hunny’ or a tin of condensed milk, and the world he inhabits is a source of endless fascination for him, even the unpleasant experiences.
He is a problem solver, boldly venturing out into a world which he only partially understands unhampered by fear, constructing mishaps as lessons. “If the string breaks”, he says, “we just need to find another piece of string”. For the Taoist, he accepts life on life’s terms, embracing it without seeking to control it, or to transcend it. He is not arrogant, complex or angry, and he never tries too hard. He just ‘is’ within his world, and willingly absorbs the lessons that come his way.
In the spirit of Taoist Wei Wu Wei, he manages to do without actively doing; he cultivates sufficient silence to listen to his own intuition. That doesn’t mean he is passive. When he feels threatened by heffalumps and woozles, he seeks out his friends to help conquer his fears, and to engage with him in collaborative experiments to create ways for them all to remain safe.
The value of friendship is a narrative that underpins all the Pooh stories and rhymes. When his friend Christopher Robin mistakes angry swans for dragons, Pooh stands staunchly by his side:
“Let’s frighten the dragons,” I said to Pooh.
“That’s right,” said Pooh to Me.
“I’m not afraid,” I said to Pooh,
And I held his paw and I shouted “Shoo!
Silly old dragons!” – and off they flew.
“I wasn’t afraid,” said Pooh, said he,
“I’m never afraid with you.”
Pooh the psychologist
It has even been suggested by John Tyerman Williams, in Pooh and the Psychologists, that Pooh’s friendly presence, alongside his simple, ‘uncarved’ but receptive presence, makes him the perfect therapist. In Taoist terms, he is able to both ‘flow like the water, but reflect like a mirror’.
As he interacts with his friends, he neutralises the turmoil they sometimes create simply by being there. Rabbit’s bossiness, Owl’s social awkwardness, Tigger’s excessive energy, Eyeore’s depression and Piglet’s anxiety are all mediated when Pooh arrives in a situation. He never meets force with force; his reflective presence is calming, giving space for some type of resolution to be reached, inviting all to participate.
He even provides practical help for anxious mother Kanga, when her infant Roo decides to leave the safety of his mother’s pouch and falls into the river. Pooh saves the day by holding a branch over the river to pull Roo to safety. Roo demonstrates his secure attachment to the ‘family’ of toy animals in which he lives by insisting throughout that he is ‘just swimming’, and trusts that he will, in the end, be perfectly safe.
Eminent psychologist Donald Winnicott once commented “one must recognise the central position of Winnie the Pooh”. He probably meant this as a reference to his theory of the ‘transitional object’ – a much-loved object such a teddy bear that can bring comfort to a child when the adults to whom they are attached are not present. But still, in the deepest part of the psyche, there is a correspondence with that companion with whom you can fight dragons.
There is something about Pooh, when you meet him in childhood, that drops a small seed into your subconscious that remains lifelong. As a psychology academic who specialised in child development, I always had a picture on my office wall of one of the EH Shepard illustrations, with the caption “Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing”.
This reminds us all of the child we were, who still lives inside us; the child who calls upon their inner Pooh to help them to frighten away the dragons of life ‘outside’, which have become increasingly ferocious over the current decade.
Pooh the philosopher
The Tao of Pooh also reflects upon his non-striving nature. When asked by Christopher Robin what he likes best, he replies “me and Piglet going to see you, and you saying what about a little something [to eat] … and it being a hummy sort of day outside, and the birds singing”. The author points out that, like the Taoist, Pooh has no concept of striving towards some kind of ‘great reward’; he is content with the simple life that he leads.
In many ways, Pooh exhibits a leaning towards Victorian Romanticism. Milne would no doubt have been very familiar with this set of philosophical ideas, lamenting the loss of the pre-industrial simplicity that had underpinned the culture and society of earlier generations. Romanticism harked back to a world in which people had no expectation beyond the same seasonally demarcated rural existence that their ancestors had inhabited over countless generations.
In Taoist parlance, Pooh has mastered living ‘in the middle of nothing (thereby) joining the source of all things’. In our complicated, high-tech networked world, this is probably too much for many real people to hope for. And, as Benjamin Holt points out, in the real world that Pooh entered as a privileged man’s creation for his infant son, there was much private desperation that does not impinge upon the enchanted place in the forest.
Today, however, much of that desperation is lived out in public, with angry people screaming at us from the internet, whipped up by tech bros and trolls who can use such anger to pursue their own lucrative agendas. Which brings us back to Trump and his acolytes; masters at dangling the illusory ‘great reward’ to entice people to vote for them.
Pooh the economist?
Perhaps an adult, 21st-century Pooh might be able to frighten away these modern dragons by acting as an ambassador for ‘Doughnut Economics’, which aims to ‘thrive rather than grow’.
“Doughnut Economics is to change the goal from endless GDP growth to thriving … [it] recognises that human behaviour can be nurtured to be cooperative and caring, just as it can be competitive and individualistic … It calls for turning today’s degenerative economies into regenerative ones, and divisive economies into far more distributive ones [and] recognises that nothing grows forever: things that succeed do so by growing until it is time to grow up and thrive instead.”
Like all philosophical contemplations, this one ends with questions rather than answers. Which is the more childish illusion, the ‘great reward’ offered by populist ringmasters to muster votes from hate and division, or questioning the increasingly desperate, divisive striving of the post-industrial world that we have created for ourselves?
Does Winnie the Pooh still have a few more lessons to teach us as he enters his second century?
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