In the 1960s, two American psychologists coined the phrase “learned helplessness”. They had found that if you repeatedly gave an animal an electric shock from which there was no means of escape, the unfortunate creature would simply lie there and whimper – even if you later changed the parameters, and gave it a shock it could evade. The effect was also discernible in humans. “Like the dog, cat, rat, and fish, when a human being is faced with noxious events that it cannot control, its motivation to respond seems to be reduced,” they wrote.
The learned helplessness hypothesis comes to mind when I consider what is happening to the arts, particularly classical music, in England. Those who should know better at the supposedly politically independent Arts Council England (ACE) have come to consider it tolerable, even desirable, for organisations such as English National Opera and Britten Sinfonia – both leaders in their field – to have their regular funding withdrawn, their business models upended and their survival put in jeopardy because of the Conservatives’ levelling-up agenda.
