This is a well paced and informative read without the epic amounts of padding that seem to come with so many promising titles. It’s not *strictly* about how to *break up* with your phone entirely. Rather, the author unpacks a strong case and gives very practical steps to take control of the relationship so the smart phone can be a tool and fun without stealing the emotional energy and attention we know we’d rather be giving to things that matter in life.
The first half of the book weaves together anecdotal and research-based evidence for the ways in which smart phones have been detrimental to our quality of life. By open admission of the creators of WMDs (Wireless Mobile Devices), they are designed to be addicting, and the evidence shows that they have us hooked. I like the tone the author takes. She presents the evidence without haranguing the reader, emphasising our choice to take it and do something or move on if it’s not for us. there was no guilt tripping or accusation. I found the exposé of just how insidious and strategic the commodification of our attention has been was starkly disturbing.
The second half of the book was the 30 day plan, which wasn’t the selling point for me as I am some way along the road of detoxing my digital life already and was just looking for something to keep my resolve on track. However, this section is full of practical advice, hints and tips, and encouraging testimonials from people who have reclaimed big chunks of life from the influence of these devices. So I didn’t do the plan, but I gleaned some good reinforcements. I think the plan would be great for those who can stick to these sort of things. Again, the author’s ‘take it or leave it; your choice’ approach was refreshing.
This book is not bedtime reading; it’s far too stimulating for the mind. It’s not a book I read at a steady pace either, I pretty much tangoed my way through it over a few months: slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. Sometimes reading with great speed and excitement, at others trying to slowly digest and apply the insights. As a steady consumer of the self-help genre and with long experience in coaching, mentoring and spiritual formation, I can say that this book certainly offers something a little bit different.
As it suggests in the title, the essential message of the the book is a call to trust and follow our intuition. This grand theme crystallises eventually and satisfyingly; however, it also comes with its matrix: a ‘mind dump’ of a lifetime of thinking and creating, researching and relating that the author has done.
Maberly builds his thesis, drawing from his experience in education, wide reading in psychology, friendships, current affairs – all becomes grist to the mill. Of course he has opinions and sometimes speculates, but you can sense ‘intuition’ at work in the early chapters, and that is the whole point. I’d recommend the reader just listen and keep an open mind. The elements do come together, like an impressionist painting.
After Part I, where he introduces what he means by the word ‘intuition’, Part II challenges us with ‘eight critical questions’. These may not seem immediately to be about intuition per se. It’s as if he’s let us peek through the window, and then taken us a circuitous route to the door, during which we learn what we’ll need to know about ourselves when we get into the house.
We begin to discern the small gestures of brush strokes in a generous distribution of quotes and anecdotes. The author uses stories very well, more with the pipe-and-scotch, here’s-my-pet-theory approach than the journalistic precision of, say, Malcolm Gladwell. However, as with Gladwell, there’s an incredible diversity of material hauled into the discussion. He doesn’t shy away from speaking unashamedly of the spiritual aspects of creativity or making certain assumptions about the cosmos. There’s a good measure of synthesis from the well-trodden paths of postmodernism and new-age philosophy, but it’s given with a refreshing naivete. Maberly is like a kid in a sandpit, building something completely awesome with whatever comes to hand.
Then, quite suddenly, I think he goes in for the kill when he comes to distinguish the ‘inituitive self’ from the ego. This was the moment in the book when my mind reached out and latched on for the ride and I felt I was about to see a new horizon. Like the greatest truths, it dips in and out of view like a ship on the swell but it is suggestive of a direction in which we might like to set our compass.
I’m a product of my generation. I’m suspicious of authority and I have no love for rules. Of course, I’m going to pick up a book like this and read it to reinforce what I believe. However, It has become clear to me that the second step of trusting my intuition is something I don’t know so much about. It doesn’t naturally follow. It’s easy enough to throw out the rule book and keep stoking the fires of the ego.
Part III of the book introduces five individuals who have ‘broken the mold’. In Maberly’s terms, they’ve followed an intuitive path and found freedom from the rules. There’s a good cross section here, from famous to relatively unknown in global terms: a millionaire, an artist, a musician, an educationalist. With the exception of Steve Jobs, these individuals are all known personally by the author. He allows them to speak with their own words, then mines their lives to show the outworking of the very things he’s discussed in the book so far.
This is an inspiring section. Each case study brings to light a story of overcoming diverse struggles. I suppose it’s inevitable that each reader will identify more or less with them, but there’s something for everyone here. For me, particularly, it was reading about the cellist and improviser Francois Le Roux that set off a magnificent domino rally in my soul: an invitation to go forward intuitively, drop the trappings and live freely. The insights here alone were worth all the words in the book for me.
To balance my gushy response to this book, I’m not sure if a skeptic would be completely persuaded. If you resist the thesis of the work, you’ll find plenty to argue with, and anyone with an aversion to pop psychology or new-age jargon will need to sit on it in order to finish reading. If that’s you, I think it’s worth trying to hear this on its own terms rather than deciding whether it maps onto your own concept of personality or the soul. I was pretty much in agreement with the ideas before I started reading, and I’ve got pages of journaling and copied-out quotes to keep chewing on.
In some ways I feel the author has made a mistake by disclosing a lifetime’s worth of wisdom that could have been eked out over several books. On the other hand, I’m grateful for such a complete agglomeration to be mined and somehow feel that his continuing journey through intuition and persistent curiosity in the future will unearth still more to share with the world. I very much hope so.
It’s no surprise, this clip has gone viral on YouTube. I don’t think we should be surprised to hear evidence that a 9 year old thinks deeply about the meaning of life and the universe. I’m prepared to take it at face value and, even if he’s repeating verbatim material from overheard adult conversations. That’s not the point I want to bring out in this post.
What is the important difference between this and a TED talk?
At a TED talk, the speaker doesn’t roll around on the floor scratch the ground, swing a baseball bat, shred twigs and stare at the sky. At some point in our development, an adult tells us,
Stop fidgeting!
Stand still!
Sit up straight!
Look at me when I’m talking to you!
Right there I think we start to lose something.
Last Autumn, I spent a total of about thirty man-hours at floor level with primary school kids. No furniture, just crayons and paper and our imaginations. I was co-authoring a storybook with them. Although I used muscles I’d forgotten I had, and I ached every night, I rediscovered the joy of creating at ground level and fidgeting incessantly, and I began to experience an awakening of creativity and a shift in perspective that I suspect had something to do with going back to a 9 year old’s way of working.
I have begun to incorporate ‘floor time’ into my creative practice. The floor is bigger than a desk and offers so much more potential for spatial interaction with ideas.
When I was about 11, I was so impressed with the idea of the ‘Bayeux Tapestry’ that I sellotaped together a long line of A4 sheets and drew the story of the stuff I was into at the time: frisbee battles, water bombs, balloon helicopters, forts with heavily defended ramparts, and various inventions such as my toothpaste-powered boat and the perpetual motion machine I was certain would make me famous. I never finished the ‘tapestry’, I just kept adding to it until it went a few times around the room.
I have never been able to dismiss my curiosity about how life might be without furniture, ever since I heard that living on the floor (eating, sleeping, learning) was the norm at Gandhi’s ashrams. In fact, for most people outside of the West, it is still a way of life.
The positive implications of floor living and fidgeting, for posture, bone and muscle, economics and energetics, are probably fruit for a few more posts. But, for now, how might some floor time benefit your creative practice?
Earlier this week (8th April), Yo-Yo Ma delivered the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy the Kennedy Centre in Washington.
He called it “Art for Life’s Sake: A Roadmap from One Citizen Musician”, and it is well worth reading the transcript or watching the talk. As he champions the cultivation of collaboration, flexibility, imagination, and innovation, his vision of the future workforce is neatly echoed by a new study from Wikia and Ipsos MediaCT called “GenZ: The Limitless Generation”, which suggests these are the very strengths that Generation Z will bring to the table.
However, when Yo-Yo Ma articulates how a biological phenomenon, “the edge effect”, applies to the arts, you can hear the rubber biting the tarmac. This is not new, but he puts it well:
“In ecology, where two ecosystems meet, such as the forest and the savannah, the point of intersection is the site of “edge effect.” In that transition zone, because of the influence the two ecological communities have on each other, you find the greatest diversity of life, as well as the greatest number of new life forms.”
In my final year as an undergraduate in Anthropology, an interest in the edge effect drove me to spend five weeks studying Cercopithecus aethiops (the vervet monkey) in the wild.
Vervet Monkey (Via Wikipedia)
This primate is virtually ubiquitous in sub-Saharan Africa, having even adapted to urban settings in some cases. They also have one of the most complex documented “languages” or systems of calls and vocalisations of any species. I had an inkling that, in some way, the complexity of their language would be matched by a fluidity in social organisation and driven by their occupation of marginal environments (edges) and, ultimately, the physical distribution of their food.
Without boring you with the details, in grossly simplified terms, a gorilla sits around and grunts a lot because most of his food is the same and in the same place. He also has a rigid social structure that has to do with who gets to sit in the middle, eat the good stuff and who defends the territory. The vervet, on the other hand, exploits a huge variety of foods, distributed almost randomly in a marginal environment with lots of space in between. He has to have a language to talk to his tribe fifty meters away and tell them where the good stuff is (or the bad stuff, like predators or anthropologists). He also doesn’t benefit hugely from eating in the same tree as everyone else, so social structure is more “easy-come-easy-go”.
Why does this matter? I asked myself that a few hundred times as I tried to follow the critters for hours through dense bush on mosquito-bitten legs. But it seems likely that innovations, such as language and walking upright, happened under very similar circumstances in the mysterious pre-prehistory of our own species.
Back to the Kennedy centre …
Ma brings on a series of artistes to illustrate the edge effect. What does it look like, for instance, when Lil’ Buck performs his own street-forged dance moves to “The Swan” by Saint-Saens?
He then points out that the pianist on stage with him, Cristina Pato, is also Cristina Pato the bagpipe player from Galicia, a member of the Silk Road Ensemble, who just released her first jazz CD.
“One might say she is an artist who creates her own edge effect!”
That fascinates me!
I don’t think we are particularly comfortable with polymaths these days. Fame, success means being the biggest fish in one pond, not the second biggest in two, or the third biggest in three ponds.
I’m not a Leonardo da Vinci and nor are you (probably), but what can I do to be less of a gorilla: to occupy and exploit the fringes where linguistic innovation flourishes and social interaction is open and uncharted?
Firstly, as someone who primarily wordsmiths, I don’t hang out much with other writers. I love you guys (and gals), hugely, but sometimes I feel mildly threatened because we are grazing the same patch. Hooking me up with a muso, thesp, calligrapher, or chef is more likely to bring out the best in me (with the exception of a mime, perhaps).
Secondly, I hate it when people wibble on about “getting out of your comfort zone”. This is probably because I’m very happy in my comfort zone, thank you, but I’m also very tired of the cliché. Is there a better way to put it?
Induce a creative crisis (go analogue for a week).
I think everyone needs to read this book in order to get a better understanding of what is behind that tiny word, “Iran”, when the newsreader says it.
Maziar Bahari, a Newsweek journalist, was arrested following the Iranian election in 2009. Beatings and solitary confinement ensued as the regime attempted to extract a confession from him that he was a spy.
In spite of the agonising circumstances, he had been expecting to return to the side of his pregnant fiancée in London in a matter of days, Maziar writes with warmth and flashes of humour that betray enormous strength of soul. He comes from a family of dissidents whose love for their nation has forced them to defy three generations of tyranny. His father and his sister and numerous friends were incarcerated and tortured under successive regimes and Maziar uniquely weaves their story into an account of the recent history of Iran since the times of the last Shah.
This is not just a book about his imprisonment and eventual release, it is an insightful and authoritative analysis of the tensions within Iran and a snapshot of a generation that is ready for a change that was quite brutally denied them in the last election.
The author is at pains to bring a journalistic fairness to bear even on his captors and tormentors and the human elements of his relationship with his interrogator are poignantly told with a sense that the man who beats him is, himself, a puppet of the regime. This objectivity gives the author the moral high ground at every turn. The paranoia and ignorance of the authorities is starkly contrasted with his attempts to speak the truth. At one point he is interrogated about his relationship with the dead playwright Anton Checkhov, who they are convinced is another zionist spy.
The Iranians have a beautiful and ancient culture and many of the kindest and most well mannered people I have ever met are from Iran. It is tragic that this is not reflected in all the “bad news” that comes from that part of the globe and it is important that we do not respond with the same blindness that grips the current regime. Please read this book.
Before we got rid of our TV, I was becoming weary of the amount of hours dedicated to cookery programs which encourage people to “fetishize” food and slaver over exotic culinary preparations. Historically, an unhealthy fascination with gourmandise seems to have proliferated in civilisations on the cusp of decline and I think we are no exception.
It was this extraordinary photographic project from the book “Hungry Planet” that gave me the impetus to embark on my next experiment in simplicity.
Not only do I feel convicted about the excesses of our western diet but it has become a matter of financial importance to rationalise our grocery bill. I have also noticed that the only times I have been successful in losing weight and enjoying the benefits of a healthier diet where when I pursued a simple and fairly repetitive “ethnic” diet in the past.
Previously this consisted of a “raw” porridge of soaked oats for breakfast (with salt or honey), miso soup for lunch and simply prepared vegetables for tea (usually stir fried with rice or noodles). Knowing that the majority of people in the world do a full day’s work on a bowl of rice or some other staple, with some sort of garnish, convinces me that it must be possible to flourish on a much simpler diet.
Only eating our own baked bread has helped me to cut down a bread addiction.
I think it was Mahatma Gandhi who said the table fork is the most destructive weapon wielded by humans. For ethical reasons, meat and dairy no longer make an appearance on our plates but I have noticed how I have still clung to the pursuit of a rich and exotic palate. After paying our mortgage, it is our grocery bill that consumes the next greatest segment of our household income. No small contributor to this is the tendency to need a specific, exotic ingredient for a particular dish, that usually prompts a trip to the supermarket where a number of luxury “treats” also tend to be put in the basket before the checkout is reached.
For the sake of austerity and health and in order to bring our pantry more into line with the simple food of our fellow humans in poorer parts of the world, the next step was to cut the number of ingredients available.
Initially I have opted to limit the entire grocery stock to 35 items. This is still incredibly generous in world terms and I think we will still be enjoying a richer and more varied diet than most global citizens. However, it is just an experimental step in the general direction of a simpler existence. At the same time I hope to cut the weekly grocery bill to £30 a week for the two of us. I think that is realistic.
So, for the curious, here is the new stock list:
Staples
1. Rice (at the moment this is white basmati rice)
2. Pasta (dry fusilli)
3. Rolled Oats (jumbo organic – for raw porridge and the occasional flapjack)
4. Wholemeal Flour (for bread making and other baking)
5. Maize or Plantain Meal (African staples that are filling and nutritious and hopefully making more frequent appearances as I learn how to prepare them)
Pulses (Our core source of protein – I adore all beans but had to pick my favourites)
6. Lentils (for bulking up soups and preparing dhals)
7. Butter Beans (I usually use in stews or mash)
8. Mung Beans (for sprouting and other uses)
9. Chick Peas (one of the most important items in our diet of curry, hummus and falafel; also delicious roasted as a snack)
10. Red Kidney Beans (mainly end up prepared with chilli or refried, Mexican style)
Ingredients
11. Olive Oil (only used sparingly for dipping and dressing)
12. Rapeseed Oil (absolutely my oil of choice, a great “butter” substitute in most recipes and doesn’t burn easily)
13. Salt (of course)
14. Agave Nectar (trying to switch refined sugar out for this)
15. Vinegar (prefer cider vinegar for most purposes but it will be a case of what is available)
16. Cocoa Powder (Probably one of my most useful ingredients, not just for hot chocolate and baking projects but I have it on my oats and am currently exploring other uses)
Seasoning (these tend to be ones that are easily and cheaply bought in bulk)
17. Chilli Powder
18. Paprika
19. Coriander
20. Cumin
21. Black Pepper
22. Mixed Herbs
Miscellaneous
23. Dessicated Coconut (for baking and dhals and other curries, can be soaked and blended for use as “creamed coconut”)
24. Almonds (appearing a lot these days, I’m learning to prepare my own almond milk)
25. Dried Dates (use as a sweetener and a snack)
26. Tinned Tomatoes
Beverages
27. Tea (for drinking but also makes rice more interesting, just as toasted rice makes a cup of tea more interesting …)
28. Ground Coffee
29. Rooibos (also known as Red Bush Tea, can be used as a herb in cooking)
30. Peppermint Tea
Vegetables
31. Garlic (I’m not ashamed to say we eat a lot of it and I believe in its medicinal properties)
32. Onions (everything starts with onions)
33. 3 Other Seasonal Vegetables
I don’t expect to be either bored or malnourished … but I’ll let you know how we get on.
How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life by Catherine Price
These lines ... 