Tom Hodgkinson

Don’t listen to Johann Hari to help your attention span

Meditate or go for a walk: haven’t we heard these self-help platitudes before?

‘Meditation, or Madame Monet on the sofa’: portrait by Claude Monet of his first wife, Camille Doncieux, c.1871. [Bridgeman Images] 
issue 05 February 2022

In 1887, Friedrich Nietzsche made a complaint about the modern world, writing in The Gay Science:

Even now one is ashamed of resting, and prolonged reflection almost gives one a bad conscience. One thinks with a watch in one’s hand, even as one eats one’s midday meal while reading the latest news on the stock market; one lives as if one always ‘might miss out on something’.

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