Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is probably best remembered for his ‘wager’: a rather fraudulent argument for believing in God. However, belief is seldom a pragmatic choice made after after weighing up all the options, and objections to Pascal’s craven hedging of bets are not hard to find.
My favourite Pascal quote, also well-known, is more applicable to the world as we know it in April 2020, with its lockdowns, social distancing and self-isolating. “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. We’re desperate to be distracted, which is why we spend hours with our mobile phones: tapping, swiping and scrolling. We will do almost anything to avoid sitting in a room with nothing to do but think (experiments have shown that we would rather give ourselves small electric shocks than contemplate the contents of our own minds!).
A Punch cartoon of 1906 depicts the vicar’s wife visiting the hovel of some local worthy, whose foot is bandaged. The caption reads: “Now that you can’t get about, and are not able to read, how do you manage to occupy the time?” Old man: “Well, mum, sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”
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