50 ways TO LEAVE YOUR LOVER
Declan Lynch’s tales of addiction
There’s this book that I’ve been meaning to read. No, it’s not some great new book that I’ve been too busy to get into — it isn’t even some old classic that I never got around to, nor is it the kind of book I used to read when I read a lot of books. But I’ve really been meaning to read it
for a long time now, this book called The Laurel and the Ivy — The Story of Charles
Stewart Parnell and Irish Nationalism, by the late historian and broadcaster Robert Kee. Indeed, I have been meaning to read it for such a long time, when I got the book he wasn’t the late Robert Kee — he was alive, and would remain so until his death in 2013.
But this is not about Robert Kee, nor is it about Charles Stewart Parnell, or about Irish Nationalism; it’s about me and the state of my mind — because it’s a big hardback history book, with more than 600 pages of smallish print in it, and I don’t know if I can read such a book any more.
Now there are certain factors to be taken into account here, such as the fact that I tend to be doing a lot of writing, which greatly reduces my appetite for reading anyway, and the fact that it’s been there, unread, on the table beside me for so long — I really can’t be that interested in it.
But the biggest thing stopping me from going on this long journey with Charles Stewart Parnell and Robert Kee is that I just don’t know if my attention span can take it any more. I have become so accustomed to reading shorter pieces of 600 words, or less, on the old internet, I am now convinced that it has permanently altered the structure of my brain. And that, as a result, a 600-page book now looks so daunting to me, I can hardly even contemplate it.
But I’ll tell you one man who’d have no trouble reading The Laurel and the Ivy — Bill Gates. Indeed, Bill may actually have read it, because he’s quite partial
“The world has become addicted because that’s how the gods of Silicon Valley ordained it”
to reading big history books. He’s partial to all good books, of all sizes, and despite his many commitments as one of the most important men in the universe, he is thought to read at least one ‘improving’ book a week.
He is one of the many gods of Silicon Valley who are reported to spend a great deal of their energies trying to find ways of avoiding personal engagement with the devices which they have presented to the world, and to which the world has become massively addicted.
And the world has become addicted, not just because the world is weak; it has become addicted because that’s how the gods of Silicon Valley have ordained it. They have constructed their smartphones and their social-media concepts and all their magical machines in such a way that you will become addicted quicker than it takes a crack dealer to enslave a deprived neighbourhood.
But they know that, which is why they are so concerned for their own mental health and that of their children, they will introduce all sorts of restrictions on the use of their own technologies in their own homes. As they used to say, in another kind of California, a long time ago: they don’t get high on their own supply.
At the extreme end of these industries devoted to the creation of addicts, you have the gambling websites, one of which, Paddy Power, recently decided to allow its employees to bet with the company — but again, they imposed controls which they do not extend to the outside world, the most notable of which was an upper limit of €500 a month in deposits.
And yet it is hard to single them out for special disdain, when they are merely doing what some of the most admired individuals of the age have been doing — protecting themselves from the dangers of their own creations. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s this book that I’ve been meaning to read...