How to Survive the Modern World

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.
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.