Love and Other Devices

Love and Other Devices

To what extent should we medicate a lack of love?

Is a chemical attraction better than a digital distraction?

Or should we just be left to our own devices?

Google Trends report a surge in searches for ‘mobile phone addiction’, closely followed by ‘social media addiction’. Mine is on my lap. It’s not off. It’s never off. Because this is Normal? 2018, and we are living in an always-on culture. The conversation is ‘Love and Other Devices’. We are here to talk about love, and how the rise of mobile phone addiction might be the death of romance.

Love is critical to our survival. Babies are literally helpless without it. Without attachment, they die. They need us to be responsive to their cries, attending to their needs. Love carries us through life. Arguably, it is all we seek.

Yet in our relationships, we are choosing to be elsewhere. Sat with our phones never more than a reach away, we scroll through a never-ending sea of content. Like Pavlov’s dogs, we respond to each ring, ping and notification with a panting, slavering hunger. Leaving our partners starving for our attention. Our screens are the new seductress. What is left of love, if we are so easily drawn away into our mobile phones? And should we be chemically resuscitated to our desire once we have lost our passion?

I admit, the discussion wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Anticipating a chat about addiction to scrolling, the conversation swiftly segued into love and medication of love. It’s a difficult conversation. I confess to not knowing the voices of everyone who has a stake in it. Medicating those with depression, children with ADHD, prescribing pills, can sometimes problematise more than it solves. But it did beg the question. Should we ever be ‘prescribing’ love? Or, more fascinatingly, suppressing love?

A relationship expert, an addiction expert and a man with a PhD in Love walk into a bar…  

The conversation drifts from phone addiction, towards the ‘answer’ of medication. Why is medication the solution? Why should we not be left to our own devices? Have gone so far over the line that we no longer discuss the cause of the addiction, but head straight for medication?

The research is exciting. That we can track the brain's signals and chemicals and reproduce them as a cure, is a positive advance in science. I think. But.

What is love?

Baby don't hurt me

Don't hurt me

No more

- Bex Bell

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Love and Other Drugs - Philosophy Now

America's Love Affair with Prescription Medication - Consumer Reports 

Chemical Attraction - Observer

Phone Addiction is Real - Forbes

DIARY OF A MADMAN // Gate Theatre

Adapted from Nikolai Gogol’s short story of the same name, Al Smith re-sets Diary of A Madman in contemporary Scotland. The main protagonist, Pop Sheeran makes his living from the inherited trade of restoring Forth Rail Bridge. It takes him a whole year to complete the repainting, by which time he is ready to start over again. 

Sheeran is proud of this family heritage, which he is keen to see continue, as we understand his eldest son, Henry, used to work with his father. Henry is not physically present at any moment in the play, we know early on that he is “unwell”. 

Filling in for Henry in his absence is new recruit Matt White (sic), a research student in material sciences, sent by the University of Edinburgh to test a new kind of paint, designed to last over 50 years. As Matt and Pop’s daughter Sophie start to develop romantic interests in each other, a conversation between White and Sheeran begins to shed light on Henry’s absence.

Sheeran refers to an unnamed hereditary condition for which his son is hospitalised, and tells White that his own condition is managed with medication. 

The play’s pace accelerates proportionally to Sheeran’s “descent into madness” as he fears White’s feelings for his daughter will make the newcomer the “man of the house” and that the buying of the bridge by a Qatari company was in fact engineered by the young Englishman, marking the beginning of a new conflict between the two countries.

Not yet clearly diagnosed, Sheeran’s conversations and developing relationship with a soft toy puppet of Greyfriar’s puppy, as well as his increased obsession with his relationship to William Wallace, suggests that he may have been living with a form of schizophrenia. Sheeran ends the play (before his hospitalisation), being Wallace himself, also pointing to the literary rich Histrionic Personality Disorder. 

Beyond the piece’s staging of madness, and the possible triggers to moments of crisis, Haydon’s take on Smith’s play clearly points to how socioeconomic background affects our experiences of mental ill-health. For the Sheeran family, this hereditary ill health is tangled in nationalism, class and their role on the global market.

- Leo Burtin

Diary of a Madman is on at the Traverse Theatre at various times until August 28th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/diary-of-a-madman-1 

Free (public domain) Diary of A Madman by Gogol: http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6464/diary-of-a-madman

University of Cambridge research article exploring the relationship between social class, mental health stigma and mental health literacy: http://hea.sagepub.com/content/19/4/413

American Public Health Journal article on unemployment and mental health: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.94.1.82

American Psychological Association article on Histrionic Personality Disorder: http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2007-00410-008