In a world full of distractions, it’s getting harder to think – but has it ever been easy?
Socrates
It’s a familiar moan. Phones, apps and selfies keep us distracted and prevent us from thinking. Instead of cogitating, it’s easier to watch Netflix or buy stuff online. Social media has replaced reading and reflecting. We are busy, greedy and exhausted. It’s the curse of the modern age – or so we’re told.
But thinking has always been hard to do. Even in ancient Athens, the authorities were prejudiced against it. Socrates was accused of corrupting the morals of the young; one of his critics, Meletus, called him “an evil-doer and a curious person who searches into things… and makes the worse appear the better cause”. In other words, he thought too much. A jury of 500 found him guilty, condemning him to death by drinking hemlock. At his trial, the bearded, pot-bellied 71-year-old defended himself by arguing that the “unexamined life is not worth living”. People spend too much time chasing money and status, he said, and not enough of it philosophising.
His typical audience consisted mainly of wealthy Athenian trustafarians – young men with well-off parents. Plato, Socrates’ biggest fan, eventually established a place in which to think called the Academy, which was essentially a cross between a university and a monastery. Then, as now, you needed leisure time – meaning money – to attend. Escaping everyday demands to philosophise tends to be easier when you live a life of abundance.
The Academy closed after a few centuries but great thinkers continued to go to extraordinary lengths to evade real life. In the third century, St Anthony, who also came from a monied background, lived in the Egyptian desert for more than 80 years in order to get some proper thinking done.
Governments, society and technology have long conspired to make it harder to ruminate. But it’s hard enough to reflect even without these external influences. Martin Luther King once said, “Nothing pains some people more than having to think.” Philosopher Hannah Arendt’s work was all about encouraging people to do it more. In her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, she argued that if we spent more time cogitating, we would not submit so meekly to tyranny, as the unthinking Nazi Adolf Eichmann did.
Today it’s largely the fortunate who find space and time to muse. It’s the wealthy who limit their children’s exposure to phones and other technological distractions, giving them more time to ponder. Even tech bros – such as Snap Inc’s CEO, Evan Spiegel – closely keep tabs on their kids’ screen time. Not so long ago, The New York Times reported that poorer children spend more time on phones than richer ones. While spending a gap year in the desert is an option for some, the rest of us must police our own distractions and carve out time for contemplation during busy days.
So thinking has always been a luxury – but it isn’t beyond your grasp if you consciously pursue it. Turn off your phone. Wonder whether you’re in the right job. Plot that business plan. Tackle a problem head on. Alternatively, you could always confine yourself in a cell built into a church wall for the rest of your days, as the contemplative medieval mystic Julian of Norwich did in the late 14th century.
Tom Hodgkinson is a British writer and the editor of ‘The Idler’ magazine. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
