A Society of Amateurs

When did the word amateur take on such negative connotations? We talk of an “amateur mistake” or an “amateurish performance”. What? The performance of someone who loves to perform? That sounds like a compliment. The word is derived from the Latin “amator”, simply meaning lover. Over time it has been constructed in opposition to “professional”, and the implication is that anything not pursued with money as the primary motive is second-rate, shoddy, worthless. When did money-making become a guarantee of quality? How many of our favourite albums, books, paintings, plays, films were pursued with dollar signs in the eyes of their creator? Unless your favourite film is The Hangover: Part 2 the answer is not many. In fact there’s a credible argument that anything created simply to cash in will always be tainted by this original sin. It will be soulless and trite (see The Hangover: Part 2.)

This is broadly accepted when discussing the arts, so why not in any other sphere of life? I was moved by Diana Athill’s interview in the Guardian last week where she discussed the not-for-profit care home in which she lives. My own gran actually lives there as well and I witnessed myself the generosity of spirit of the staff there the first time that I visited her. She was so excited to show us around the beautiful gardens that she tripped and cut her leg. The on-duty nurse already knew her by name even though she had only just moved in and she cleaned up her cut immediately without any hint of disdain or impatience. I’d consider it an insult to call her a professional nurse, as that reduces her kindness to an economic transaction when it was clearly much more.

Diana Athill talks in the interview about “the extraordinary feeling of goodness” she gets from her environment and I’ve definitely felt it when I’ve been there. According to Diana, “You can't get it if you're a remote company, running a scruffy little place and trying to make some money out of it.” She didn’t mention Southern Cross by name but she might as well have done. We are constantly told that the profit motive leads to greater efficiency, and that competition between profit-making companies leads to better service. That is essentially the ideological basis on which the welfare state is currently being dismantled. And yet Britain’s largest care service provider is struggling to pay its rent, 30% of the homes have been served with improvement orders by the Care Quality Commission and 3,000 staff are being laid off. So much for economies of scale as well then.

I’m not joking when I say I’d rather have amateurs providing elderly care than Southern Cross. The money motive has failed time and time again. Let’s start doing things for love.