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The London Underground used to be a happy place for authors. We would get into a carriage and see rows of people, studiously ignoring their neighbours – unless their neighbour was a dog – and reading a newspaper or an actual, physical book. The same went for the New York subway and, to a lesser extent, all train networks.
Today you get into a carriage and everyone is staring into the same phone screens that they stare into most of the rest of the day.
I try not to be judgmental about this, since I always try to see the best in people, however disgusting they might look. So I tell myself that perhaps some portion of the passengers are reading Thucydides or the latest highbrow novel. But I doubt it.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Spectator (Paywall)
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Douglas Murray is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal