I took part in a live discussion of the results of the BBC Loneliness Experiment at the Wellcome Collection in London. It was presented by Claudia Hammond, with musician Jazz Morley, poet Daljit Nagra, and researchers Christina Victor and Pam Qualter.
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Nervous States sits at the intersection of ongoing debates about post-truth, the assault on reason, the privileging of personal feelings and the rise of populism. The book stands out for its sincere attempt not simply to lament these trends but to understand them.
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It is too much to expect not to be stung by criticism. To be completely unaffected you’d need to have an indifference to the opinions of others that bordered on solipsism. The knack is to feel the sting and let it fade, avoiding the temptation to scratch at it and make it even worse. You have to accept that some critics are like blood-sucking insects who are only happy when feeding on others.
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A civilised society gives you the right to be an offensive, insensitive asshole; a civilised person doesn’t use it.
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The different ways in which philosophical traditions have conceived time turn out to be far from mere metaphysical curiosities. They shape the way we think about both our temporal place in history and our relation to the physical places in which we live. It provides one of the easiest and clearest examples of how borrowing another way of thinking can bring a fresh perspective to our world.
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