I have often been asked to be fair and view a matter from all sides. I did so, hoping something might improve if I viewed all sides of it. But the result was the same. So I went back to viewing things only from one side, which saves me a lot of work and disappointment. For it is comforting to regard something as bad and be able use one’s prejudice as an excuse. (Karl Kraus (1874 – 1936), Austrian journalist, satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet).

My minor rant about cellphones on planes and trains yesterday caused me to wonder whether I was being reflexively grouchy and prejudiced, not having a constantly-used cellphone myself. In my gym cellphones are banned in exercise class, so people sneak out of the room every ten minutes (!) to check their messages. Hordes of people tapping furiously, heads down, come straight at you in the street. Clearly cellphones fill an important void in peoples’ lives.

I concluded (open-mindedly, I thought) that being in constant touch with people throughout the day must rank as the greatest builder and fortifier of friendship ever invented. You don’t have to actually be with your friends and have face-to-face conversations in the old way – you can follow every up and down of their lives by text message. Every tiff, every triumph, every item forgotten in the grocery shop is recorded and reported. Thus, you know them better, admire them more and love them more deeply than any other previous generation.

Or do you? As my geography teacher used to say, “Write an essay and draw a map”.