A Dane Abroad

Born and raised in Denmark and a resident of New Zealand for over 14 years, Kirsten has lived a pretty nomadic life since her early 20s. A physiotherapist, yoga teacher and keen home cook, she is passionate about food, good living and natural health. Email her at kirstenlouise@protonmail.com der, and that the use of mobile phone technology, namely social media, has ‘coincidentally’ been found to significantly disrupt concentration – and cause depression among youngsters and adults alike.

The use of technology, and in particular social media, has for a long time been strongly linked to poor mental health, yet we continue to blindly buy into it, unhinged and seemingly unbothered.

The right kind of activity

THE INCREASED use of digital technology has been shown to result in 1/ spending less time outdoors and 2/ being less active – time outdoors and being active being two of the most effective antidepressant remedies.

As a physiotherapist I find this extremely troubling. Being physically active is a determinant of health. Full stop. There cannot be health without physical activity – we cannot tech our way out of it.

The behaviour-regulating effects of technology are becoming a well-known fact, yet despite these discoveries people are carrying on as usual. Kids are on social media more than ever before, and mental health diagnoses are rampant.

There is talk of improving mental healthcare, yet nothing about addressing the actual causes of such a disastrous development. As per usual, our modern way of thinking squashes symptoms, not causes.

As dead as God …

THERE is an air of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ about this topic. Everyone knows there is something eerie about it, but noone is sounding the alarm. In a British documentary about Friedrich Nietzsche (‘Genius of the Modern World’), Bethany Hughes paraphrases Nietzsche’s chillingly accurate predictions for ‘Modern Man’, which he referred to as ‘The Last Men’. Hughes recounts Nietzsche’s contemptuous description of a future people who no longer care about challenging ideas and concepts, but instead live trivial and narcissistic existences, blindly buying into “the religion of comfortableness”, living lives of “timid mediocrity kidding themselves they are happy”.

Has the present world been foreseen by a philosopher living in the 1880s (interestingly during a technological upswing), who saw it coming that Modern Man will happily go down sipping on lattes, turning blind eyes and uploading stories to Instagram, while not having the faintest clue what hit him?

It might be time to relaunch and prioritise moral and philosophical conversations about life and technology that have the well-being of mankind as a primary goal, and not simply the blind quest for any and every ‘technological advancement’ at the cost, perhaps, of the greater good of humankind.

IT IS A WELL-KNOWN fact that English people are good at three things: drinking, hooliganism, and ignoring the true effects of our colonial past.

Historically-honed hooliganism

HOWEVER, are we the best in the world at those things?

We’re pretty good at the latter point. You’ll note how, out of habit, I refer to it as our colonial ‘past’, despite how we are currently invading Ireland. (Please forward all comments to the Editor.) But given that America was willing to go to the lengths of electing Trump to ignore their past, I’d have to call it at least a tie. That’s one down.

In a previous article for this publication, I shared my revelatory scientific findings on how Danish people are actually better than the English at hooliganing. Two down.

Pubescent pub pipe-dreams

SO DRINKING. It’s all come down to you. Surely you can’t beat an English pub? Pubs, when I was growing up as a child in the UK, were seen as these mythical centres of national pride, where people from lots of different backgrounds would collide and emerge after closing hour, arm-in-arm, singing offensive songs in a strangely wholesome way.

Based purely on cultural references, I imagined pubs as being the place where

JACK GARDNER VAA