Bringing back patience would be a good thing for democracy

By seeking shortcuts, we are issuing an open invitation to totalitarians

‘Our impatience is slowly making books obsolete, with long books on the way to extinction. Does anyone read Dickens or Tolstoy anymore?’ Picture: iStock

“We ruin ourselves by impatience”. I often think about this bold claim by French philosopher Michel de Montaigne.

He is so right. Montaigne wrote this in the 16th century; what would Montaigne make of our 21st century, when impatience is not only accepted, but revered? ‘Ruin’ doesn’t even begin to capture the devastating impact of impatience on our lives.