To become effective in a knowledge-based economy, we should make time for solitude
William Choong, Straits Times 13 Oct 09;
At a recent briefing for parents, a school principal at a top school here spoke of the importance of children learning to appreciate nature and art: 'Spend some time with them at the nature reserve,' he urged the parents.
I DON'T watch soccer on TV. I don't even have a TV at home.
So, it was a revelation to me to see usually quiet Singaporeans going at both SingTel and StarHub after the former beat the latter in a bidding contest for rights to the English Premier League. Some railed against the idea of adding one more set-top box to their collection.
I have got nothing against television per se. Like most people, I appreciate Discovery Channel and BBC World. I have been a Manchester United fan for 20 years; to keep myself updated with the latest scores, I resort to the Internet (or Richard, the manager of the office canteen and rabid Man U fan).
But my wife and I decided not to have a television simply because we did not want another distraction on top of all the other distractions the digital age has to offer.
To paraphrase the celebrated Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, the issue here is not just about the ease of watching EPL matches; rather, it is much more important than that. Singaporeans have too many digital distractions on tap - via the Internet, smartphone, cable television and other sources. The 24/7 digital assault screams at us through 98 channels, at 900Mhz, 10Mbps.
No wonder we are afflicted by a severe bout of digital fidgetitis. Put a dozen of us (myself included) in an empty room, and chances are we would start fiddling with our BlackBerrys and mobile phones - even if there are no missed calls or SMSes.
I am not a Luddite. Technological thingamajigs have made us more productive and effective. But a Wikipedia man may not necessarily be a wise one. Google might not necessarily have made us stupid, but its aid in marshalling a wealth of facts does not necessarily make one sharper or more discerning.
A body of research - not to mention common sense - indicates that the quality of one's output and the depth of one's thought deteriorates as one attends to ever more tasks. Maryanne Wolf, the author of Proust And The Squid: The Story And Science Of The Reading Brain, notes that the immediate nature of Internet reading has damaged our capability for deep reading.
How, then, do we slay the modern day beast known as information overload? We need something relatively ancient: Solitude.
Early psychologists believed that solitude warded off the potential perils of over-stimulation. Their contemporaries today argue that solitude - defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the 'state of being or living alone; loneliness; seclusion' - helps us to engage in interesting thoughts and action, fosters creativity and enhances spirituality.
Spiritual figures such as Moses, Jesus, Muhammad all sought solitude, and then returned to share with others what they discovered. Likewise, many famous writers such as Thoreau, Dickinson, Kipling and Kafka have leaned on solitude in their creative process.
Some researchers note that when levels of stimulation drop significantly, a person may generate 'internal stimuli' such as physical sensations, daydreams, distorted thoughts and shifting emotions - all of which contribute to creativity.
A group of researchers based in the Antarctic for an extended period exhibited higher degrees of creativity there. Members made comments such as: '(I) could make my own stories, live them in my mind as if they were real life', or '(I had) more vivid daydreams'.
Paradoxically, solitude also leads to intimacy, in that many people who are in solitude experience feelings of intimacy for others. The poet Lord Byron described solitude as the place 'where we are least alone'. Similarly, Henry Thoreau wrote: 'I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.'
All this talk about solitude is not mere ivory tower mumbo-jumbo. Arguably, the effects of the two biggest crises of the early 21st century - the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and last year's global financial turmoil - could have been ameliorated by a healthy dose of solitude and out-of-the-box thinking.
In 2004, the Sept 11 Commission found that the US intelligence community suffered from a lack of imagination before the attacks. This made it impossible for most analysts and policymakers to accurately gauge the terrorist threat.
Similarly, the 2008 financial crisis was caused by traders who misperceived the possibility of rare events, misperceptions that were reinforced by other faulty risk assessments.
In the poem Enter Without So Much As Knocking, Australian poet Bruce Dawe evokes the theme of man being dust and returning to dust. The poem begins with the birth of a boy, born into a confusing world of television advertisements, consumerism, fashion and the glaring lights of a city that never sleeps.
At every juncture of the poem, the beauty of living is overtaken by the detritus of modern life, such that the beautiful babe at the start of the poem becomes a horrible creature at the end.
The man finally gets time to reflect when he dies: 'No downpayments,
Nobody grieving over halitosis, Flat feet shrinking gums falling hair, Six feet down nobody interested, Blink, blink. CEMETERY. Silence.'
Where does this leave us? To become more effective in a knowledge-based economy, we should make time for solitude. For a few hours a day, or even a full day occasionally, we should learn to switch off all our digital devices and read a book, walk in a nature reserve or meditate.
At a recent briefing for parents, a school principal at a top school here spoke of the importance of children learning to appreciate nature and art: 'Spend some time with them at the nature reserve,' he urged the parents.
'You will hardly find a crowd at the MacRitchie Reservoir. You can reflect there. It is way better than spending your weekends at the shopping mall.'
Wisely put.
As The New York Times writer Mark Bittman has suggested, we should declare a 'secular Sabbath'. And while we are at it, it might not be a bad idea to switch off, or even junk, that set-top box, which increasingly looks like a set-up hoax.
