What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

Everybody has a mobile device these days, whether it be a mobile phone, iPad, tablet or some other variation. We all like to talk to our friends, catch up on the latest news, shop online, and share our ideas and gossip. But if there is one piece of advice I would give a young person today, it is this; our mobile devices are there to make us available, they are not an electronic leash.

When you are on the phone, please be mindful of your surroundings. While it may be a matter of life and death to you whether you get mayonnaise on your sandwich, the rest of us have our own lives and problems, and really do not care about your daily dramas.

It started innocently enough…..a young woman, probably in her early twenties, got on the train at Blacktown station in western Sydney. She was on the mobile phone. Not many passengers were on the carriage, and I was reading on my iPad. You cannot help but overhear parts of her conversation.

She was talking with someone about whether or not she would go to university, or TAFE, and what kind of job she wanted. Typical fodder of conversation for a person her age, I thought – indeed, that is what I talked about when I finished schooling, and contemplated university education.

I ignored her and went back to my reading. And then it started; voices became raised. The train is moving, there is another hour until we get to the city. Tensions are rising. The entire carriage can now no longer avoid overhearing her conversation.

At this point, it turns into a full blown rage episode. Shouting at the top of her lungs, she launches into a torrential tirade against her interlocutor. The volcanic eruption is in full swing.

Hurling words like it’s my life!’ and ‘Uni is not for me!’ as verbal missiles at the person on the receiving end of her broadside, I did my best not to react. Indeed, the other passengers buried their heads ever deeper into their mobile devices.

I dared to turn around, however briefly, to catch a glimpse of our local firebrand. Not many other passengers risked incurring her terrible wrath by turning to look at her. She was completely oblivious to her surroundings. The shouting and expletives continued for the remainder of the train journey. She got off at Redfern station, the one within walking distance of Sydney University.

I never saw her again, but I remembered her as an example of a mobile phone zombie. Unaware or uncaring about their environment or other people, mobile phone zombies are dead to the world, walking while completely entranced by their mobile device, much the same way that Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man walked around transfixed by his portable television.

In 1988, that behaviour was considered eccentric; only a developmentally delayed person, incapable of understanding social norms, would walk around staring at a small portable tv. Well, here we are today, a nation of Rain Man-like Raymond Babbitts, unable to raise our collective gaze from our mobile phones.

Reading books, you know, those iPhone-like things that don’t need batteries or charging, is a declining practice in the age of social media. TikTok reels and short form videos have largely overtaken every aspect of our lives, from our shopping habits to news feeds.

The brain needs practice, just as the biceps need regular exercise and weightlifting to increase in strength. Books are the weightlifting of the mind. Tackling the heavy-going books is its own reward.

No, I am not insistent that everyone become a history professor or literature expert. Every person has their own preferences and tastes. I have never read J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you have, congratulations – I doff my cap to you.

I have, a long time ago, ploughed through the pages of Beowulf, which was tough going to be sure, but ultimately rewarding. An old English heroic epic poem, Beowulf is the first identifiable major work of English literature. Blending elements of myth, folkloric tales, old Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology, it is an alliterative poem that reflects both old Norse-pagan myths, but also incorporates early Christian themes well.

That is not surprising, when you consider that Beowulf was recorded – derived from the oral tradition – in the early eighth century, when Scandinavian people migrated to what is now the British Isles. Some scholars put the first manuscript much later. Be that as it may, its composition reflects the intermixing Norse-Anglo Saxon cultures and competing religions frameworks, of the time.

The brain requires constant exercise. If you do not like the weightlifting analogy, then how about the following metaphor. Reading the difficult books are to the brain what running a marathon is for the body.

One of Vladimir Lenin’s under appreciated books, but I think critically important as his other works, is Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Published in 1908-09. In its pages Lenin explores the relationship between physics and philosophy. He emphasised that while these two topics may appear far apart, even physics has a philosophical basis and particular implications for philosophy. He elaborated the relationship between the natural sciences and what became known as the philosophy of dialectical materialism.

Why would a political revolutionary take the time to write about such an obscure topic as physics and philosophy? There were new discoveries in the field of physics – what used to be called the natural sciences – and this had repercussions for philosophy. Lenin saw the politically reactionary application of these underlying philosophical positions proposed by the physicists of the time.

No, it is not my purpose here to go into an elaborate discussion of his book, otherwise this article would expand into 10 000 words. Besides which, I am certain that you will have already fallen asleep.

Nevertheless, I wanted to share my main point – the brain requires exercise. Absorbing the contents of books is muscular training for the mind. No, I am not suggesting that you tackle all the issues of quantum mechanics yourself. But please do not outsource your cognition to AI. It is the gentle friction of problem solving and grasping topics by reading that increases your brain-muscles.