Notes on a Nervous Planet

by Matt Haig

If a rat presses a lever and gets a treat every time, it will keep pressing. But not as often as the rat who presses the lever and gets mixed results—sometimes a treat, sometimes nothing at all.

Increasingly, our towns and cities are places which want us there primarily as consumers, rather than people. Which makes it all the more important that we value those threatened spaces where economically irrelevant being is still allowed. Forests, parks, state-funded museums and galleries, libraries.