The modern world has become an anxiety machine
Photo: Aarón Blanco Tejedor/Unsplash
‘The modern world has brought us a range of extraordinary benefits and joys, including technology, medicine and transport. But it can also feel as though modern times have plunged us ever deeper into greed, despair and agitation. Seldom has the world felt more privileged and resource-rich yet also worried, blinkered, furious, panicked and self-absorbed.’
A Must-read book
How to Survive the Modern World
Photo:Rizzoli Bookstore
‘How to Survive the Modern World is the ultimate guide to navigating our unusual times. It identifies a range of themes that present acute challenges to our mental wellbeing. The book tackles our relationship to the news media, our ideas of love and sex, our assumptions about money and our careers, our attitudes to animals and the natural world, our admiration for science and technology, our belief in individualism and secularism – and our suspicion of quiet and solitude. In all cases, the book helps us to understand how we got to where we are, digging deeply and fascinatingly into the history of ideas, while pointing us towards a saner individual and collective future.
‘The emphasis isn’t just on understanding modern times but also on knowing how we can best relate to the difficulties these present. The book helps us to form a calmer, more authentic, more resilient and sometimes more light-hearted relationship to the follies and obsessions of our age. If modern times are (in part) something of a disease, this is both the diagnostic and the soothing, hope-filled cure.’
Read An Extract HERE
Read more: WHAT IS WRONG WITH MODERN TIMES – AND HOW TO REGAIN WISDOM
Photo: Via TelegraphIndia
Modern masterpiece
The relevance of Chaplin's 'Modern Times'
‘…According to the opening title, the film narrates a “story of industry, of individual enterprise — humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.” The machine is projected as the most outstanding achievement of human beings. However, Chaplin presents a contrasting picture of the devastating effects of industrialization on human beings. The brutal nature of the work at the factory leads to Chaplin’s character suffering a breakdown and being sent to an asylum. After his recovery and release from the hospital, he is arrested mistakenly and sent to jail. His presence at a mental asylum and a prison is, therefore, the direct consequence of working at the factory…’- Continue to read
How To Survive The Modern World
A pick from our GCGI archive
How to lead our lives, function and prosper in an increasingly polarised world?
Photo:Via Medium
Compassion, kindness, hope, courage and joy: The Path to a More Loving World
Healing the world as if the web of life mattered: In Praise of Ancient Wisdom
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New Year calls us to hope beyond despair and light beyond darkness
One who dreams is called a prophet
Decoding Beatrix Potter’s Secret Life and her Love for Nature
Composing a New Life: In Praise of Wisdom
The Beauty and Wisdom of being Ordinary
The heart and the soul of education is wisdom
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‘Nature and Me’: ‘Nature as a Cure for the Sickness of Modern Times’
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Detaching Nature from Economics is ‘Burning the Library of Life’
Are you physically and emotionally drained? I know of a good and cost-free solution!
On the 250th Birthday of William Wordsworth Let Nature be our Wisest Teacher
The beauty of living simply: the forgotten wisdom of William Morris
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