Embrace this day of rest and take a break from electronic harassment

IF half a million people attended the St Patrick’s Day parade, relishing the temporary community of other celebratory folk, a fair number used yesterday and will use today to do the opposite: To get away from other people.

To walk a beach. Climb a hill. Read a book. Listen to music. To even make the ultimately subversive gesture and pull the white strings with the earphones off their chests and go unplugged for a few hours.

Going unplugged is getting increasingly difficult. To relinquish your iPhone requires the courage to believe nobody will die or have a stroke while you cannot be reached. Of course, 99.9% of the time when you are plugged into the electronic world, what comes through to you is considerably due south of vital, but the hold it has on us is so profound that when we switch off, we become fearful. Some bad thing will happen and we’ll be the last to know. It never strikes us that being the last to learn bad news is quite a good deal.