So many of us are not only ensconced in ceaseless screen life, but we are also often saturated in these cyber worlds in protracted, bi-polar ways.
The overriding impression is not of triumph and defeat but of a ceaseless rivalry between life and death.
Think of me as an undiscovered country, a remote Patagonian tribe untouched by western civilisation, a second world war soldier still living in the jungle with no idea the war is over, a forgotten prisoner deep in the bowels of the Tower of London, cut off completely from the ceaseless bustle of life that runs on oblivious overhead.
Thing is, I once thought DJing would be my ticket to the glamourous life: Ceaseless jetsetting, casual yacht parties with my new BFF Diddy, spinning bedside at the royal childbirth.
Long had written that after many years of studying wild animals, he was "convinced that instinct plays a much smaller part than we have supposed; that an animal's success or failure in the ceaseless struggle for life depends, not upon instinct, but upon the kind of training which the animal learns from its mother".
It is, on the historical record, much more a response to the ceaseless anxieties of modern life than to any financial angst of the moment.
So the old are repaired and recycled according to the swings of fashion, their life a ceaseless struggle against erosion and decline.
Alma commits her life to ceaseless study, but reading this vibrant, hot-blooded book about her takes no work at all.
Going underground meant a life of ceaseless vigilance, alert to every sound or glance, never staying anywhere for too long, negotiating hiding places, walking the streets.
I thumbed through my copy of the "Essays" and found this: "The ceaseless labor of your life is to build the house of death".
The huge array of experiences that she managed to pack into her first 16 years presages a life of ceaseless, albeit occasionally calamitous, adventure.
