MercatorNet: The case against cellphones. Reforming Islam? | MercatorNet | March 22, 2017

After a day in which I checked my smartphone maybe 16 times, and would have done so more frequently had I not been at my laptop for a few hours, glancing at emails from time to time, I read Phillip Reed’s article on why he has never had a cellphone and is not going to get one. And I felt justly rebuked for my intemperance, although I know that it is mild compared with that of the average teenager or 20-something.

In his critique of today’s always-connected culture Reed, a philosopher, echoes a growing army of critics who say we are distracting ourselves to death – literally, in the case of people who text or even just talk while driving. Here’s a paragraph from his piece that shows how drastic the effects can be:

Long before cellphones, human beings were good at diverting themselves from disciplined attention. ‘The sole cause of man’s unhappiness,’ observed the French philosopher Blaise Pascal in the 17th century, ‘is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.’ This propensity for diversion was notably confirmed in a recent study where subjects preferred to give themselves electric shocks rather than occupy themselves with their own thoughts for 15 minutes.

Even if you have no intention of going cellphone free, Reed's arguments for doing so are good ones and worth reading. 

Carolyn Moynihan
Deputy Editor,
MERCATORNET

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