BY MICHAEL FOLEY (2010)
SIMON & SCHUSTER LTD, 272 PAGES; £10.99
ISBN: 978-1847375247

We live in an age where the X Factor receives more votes than the general elections, where thousands of people suffered from depression after seeing the 3D movie Avatar and where people are walking faster, eating faster and working faster just because everything has to happen now.  Michael Foley calls this “The age of absurdity”.

The world and how we live is changing rapidly, and so it is important to stand back and observe just how bizarre, inauthentic and counterproductive so much of how we live is. Michael Foley helps us do this by taking us through a fascinating journey looking into this peculiarly modern problem.

Foley argues that in order to seek true fulfilment, attitudes such as personal responsibility, autonomy, detachment, understanding, acceptance of difficulty and ceaseless striving are essential for meaningful human existence. Yet these attitudes turn out to be the very same things most devalued and constantly undermined by modern life.

The 21st century consumer culture makes people feel entitled to everything but responsible for nothing. When anybody can be anything, talent and effort become irrelevant. Only desire matters and nothing is easier than wanting — “never have so many wanted so much so badly”.

Change is another obstacle which is now believed to be a must for everyone. Not the type of change in the means of self-transformation towards self-perfection, rather change from one position to another just to avoid difficulties and to escape reality. It leaves people with a constant sense that they’re missing out on something, that a better time is to be had elsewhere, so we’re constantly on the lookout for the next big thing – the next job, relationship or holiday. According to Foley, it is a common mistake to assume that liberation is in itself enough for fulfilment, that everything will be fine if one can just escape the soul-destroying job, oppressive relationship and boring town.

As we are increasingly making use of the internet — now easily available through our Blackberry or iPhone — quiet reflection is almost impossible. Foley talks about how difficult it is to switch off in the modern world: “Wherever we go, whatever we do, we are simultaneously assaulted by numerous extraneous noises and invasions on our privacy, where everyone is friends with everyone else and everyone is in constant communication with everyone else” — the so-called social networking community. The trend is to have more and more friends and to share more and more with them, while little remains private. It is even more bizarre that we are adding this phenomenon to our hobby list whereby the common phrase ‘interested in networking’ is overly accepted.

It would be extremely hard to imagine the modern world without multi-tasking. It has become such a widespread habit that virtually everyone does it, with the belief that it will help us to be more productive.

Picture this: you’re trying to study, your phone rings and you answer while simultaneously surfing multiple websites with one eye directed towards the television and the other towards your textbook. Does this sound familiar? Foley contests this form of continuous distraction by saying that our modern culture encourages people to live this way while “anyone doing fewer than three things at once is not living to the full.”

He argues that there is little prospect of changing the modern culture. However, if you can’t change the world, don’t let it change you. Most thinkers from East to West agree that the root problem is ignorance, which encourages attachments that lead to desires and cravings, which in turn bring dissatisfaction. And if ignorance is the problem, the solution must be knowledge. So the trick is to live your life to the full in this modern age with constant awareness, mindfulness and keen purposeful clarity.

Michael Foley is able to combine great insight into the modern human condition with a great sense of humour. This book is not a self-help manual, rather a mix of philosophy, spiritual teachings, contemporary psychology and anecdotes from everyday life to explain the absurdity of the modern world.