>> For a long time it seemed that cultural capital was mostly accumulated by consuming literature, music and art (before that was superseded by having the right beliefs). It still paid social and professional dividends at various times when being excellent at maths or tennis might have just seemed kind of meh.
This is a really important statement because I think it could honestly tl;dr about half of the essay (don't actually do that, though).
We are NOT grazing on the cognitive fast food of social media and Buzzfuck and blog posts with time estimates at the top as an apology for their length for anything like the same motivations as reading a book or even a longer-form post like this.
We are mostly consuming this kind of "information" not as enrichment but to keep up with the instinct to remain apace with The Discourse in the same sense that broad awareness of celebrity gossip, trending music, and broadcast TV was 30 years ago. It's just the rat race element of popular culture in its final form- and I do mean final, because I think the media of delivery have run up against the cognitive maximum for humans; we have arrived at being completely out of attention and cannot possibly consume any faster.
"Reading" social media and other shit is motivated by wanting to stay apace. Reading a book (or similarly "challenging" experiences) is usually motivated by other things.
Pop culture and (please forgive me) FOMO are hijackings of primal brain social instincts to keep up. When I look at how information is presented online, there's very little doubt in my mind that it is largely crafted, and consumed, in alignment with that urge- not curiosity, a will for self improvement, or anything else that prompted you to pick up Dostoevsky.
I started reading when I was 2. It was a tremendously accelerated, high school kids handing me their textbooks to read as a freakshow kind of thing. Fathermouth was obscenely proud of this fact and bragged about it far into my childhood well past any value it had to impress. I was and still usually am an obsessive reader- if something is sufficiently engaging I will sit at it for many hours to get the job done. It had a voracious quality to it- at one point I recall being so bored, having exhausted everything in my room, that I began reading the fold-out pamphlets that used to go in prescription medication bottles in the bathroom.
If I had been that age with that sort of cognitive practice today, with devices being among my first reading sources, Freyja pity me. My mind would have broken on 8-hour Reddit binges and I'd probably have been intellectually useless- a midwit at best (being able to spout quite a lot of verbal content as shallow as a plate), literally cognitively impaired at worst.
I really pity a lot of the developing minds I see around me when I'm in a child-rich environment and am disproportionately happy to see a kid who has no apparent access to a tablet or smartphone.
I often struggle with the temptation to force my eldest daughter to read The Wind in the Willows or The Hobbit or something. At 8 years she reads constantly, but primarily modern drama diary books for girls. I worry a bit about the quality, but then part of me thinks that if she reads enough that a trip to the library for refills is necessary every week it can’t be too bad.
Reading more challenging books like that together goes a very long way, if you can swing that in your relationship, because it allows for discussion/clarification/context/interaction that will make them more engaging.
Reading together, aloud, is abandoned far too early in childhood. My husband and I still do it as a bedtime ritual almost nightly.
Yea I might try reading aloud to her along with her sisters again. Her complaint with the books isn’t that they are hard but that they are boring, which... grow some taste? I don’t know, girls’ preferences are a mystery to me :)
I had better taste in books when I was your daughter's age than when I was a teen, but I outgrew the "chick lit" phase pretty quickly as it was mainly rooted in a desire to fit in than because they were actually any good.
But children are the new teenagers, so here we are.
She'll probably come around to the good stuff later.
Great article! I love the idea of monitoring how often our attention is hijacked. The first step to change is the awareness of the problem.
I first read Infinite Jest (one of my all-time favorite books--and yes, I agonized with Gately over his gunshot wound and his heroic decision to forgo painkillers) when I was a high school English teacher and routinely putting in 65-hour weeks. I decided to read the book over one month, giving it the attention it deserved. I don’t know what my excuse is these days, when I have so much more free time, for avoiding the more challenging great books that are out there. You are inspiring me to pick up Bleak House again!
I would say in your defense that many of the “great books” really aren’t all that great. Too many classics are so only because of fashion it seems, while others are neglected gems.
That said, I absolutely agree with the virtue of spending time to really dig into a tough book, to read, reread and wrestle with the content. Not all struggles are worth it, but some really are great.
The conflation of 'popular' with 'classic' is always going to lead to disappointments.
People raved about Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go until I couldn't resist picking it up. The 'twist' was obvious from the get-go, the supposedly profound theme was thinly explored, at best, and I finished it more from a sense of early sunk costs than anything else.
Thanks Mike for this essay, that I particularly enjoyed, as I struggle myself sometimes between the inevitable lure of social media and traditional reading that brings so much more peace of mind.
It also reminded of an essay I published earlier this year on my Substack on the rapid evolution of mediums. If you or your readers are interested, see link below.
I enjoyed your piece and confirm that Fareed Zakaria describes how I feel about my philosophy degree, whose legacy has been to help me see the difference between how to think and what to think.
Thanks Mike for drawing my attention to your piece! Your perspective on deeper reading adds texture to the points that I made in my post. The powerful shaping influence of books that act, "like a therapist inviting less reaction and more reflection", is being replaced with staccato one-line reactions that demonstrate lack of nuance or understanding of the issue at hand. Reading books, in addition to saving our mind, could do much to assuage the raging culture wars. If you read N.S. Lyons and Kingsnorth, you may be interested in my husband's recently released novel Exogenesis (Ignatius Press), which lays bare the choice we face in a world divided between machines or creatures. See https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/exogenesis-bladerunner-meets-the. Sometimes stories move us more than abstract articles, exactly because they invite "less reaction and more reflection."
Excellent post. A couple of what are probably obvious observations about Twitter.
1) I can’t think of any other medium where people feel they need to “take a break” for the benefit of their own sanity.
2) Most of the info I worry about missing out on (if it’s serious enough), I’ll get in Spectator, Times or a decent substack, which are calmer mediums and have additional quality content
>> For a long time it seemed that cultural capital was mostly accumulated by consuming literature, music and art (before that was superseded by having the right beliefs). It still paid social and professional dividends at various times when being excellent at maths or tennis might have just seemed kind of meh.
This is a really important statement because I think it could honestly tl;dr about half of the essay (don't actually do that, though).
We are NOT grazing on the cognitive fast food of social media and Buzzfuck and blog posts with time estimates at the top as an apology for their length for anything like the same motivations as reading a book or even a longer-form post like this.
We are mostly consuming this kind of "information" not as enrichment but to keep up with the instinct to remain apace with The Discourse in the same sense that broad awareness of celebrity gossip, trending music, and broadcast TV was 30 years ago. It's just the rat race element of popular culture in its final form- and I do mean final, because I think the media of delivery have run up against the cognitive maximum for humans; we have arrived at being completely out of attention and cannot possibly consume any faster.
"Reading" social media and other shit is motivated by wanting to stay apace. Reading a book (or similarly "challenging" experiences) is usually motivated by other things.
Pop culture and (please forgive me) FOMO are hijackings of primal brain social instincts to keep up. When I look at how information is presented online, there's very little doubt in my mind that it is largely crafted, and consumed, in alignment with that urge- not curiosity, a will for self improvement, or anything else that prompted you to pick up Dostoevsky.
I started reading when I was 2. It was a tremendously accelerated, high school kids handing me their textbooks to read as a freakshow kind of thing. Fathermouth was obscenely proud of this fact and bragged about it far into my childhood well past any value it had to impress. I was and still usually am an obsessive reader- if something is sufficiently engaging I will sit at it for many hours to get the job done. It had a voracious quality to it- at one point I recall being so bored, having exhausted everything in my room, that I began reading the fold-out pamphlets that used to go in prescription medication bottles in the bathroom.
If I had been that age with that sort of cognitive practice today, with devices being among my first reading sources, Freyja pity me. My mind would have broken on 8-hour Reddit binges and I'd probably have been intellectually useless- a midwit at best (being able to spout quite a lot of verbal content as shallow as a plate), literally cognitively impaired at worst.
I really pity a lot of the developing minds I see around me when I'm in a child-rich environment and am disproportionately happy to see a kid who has no apparent access to a tablet or smartphone.
Gold star about to be awarded for this comment.
Fuck your precious metal trinkets, imperialist
I often struggle with the temptation to force my eldest daughter to read The Wind in the Willows or The Hobbit or something. At 8 years she reads constantly, but primarily modern drama diary books for girls. I worry a bit about the quality, but then part of me thinks that if she reads enough that a trip to the library for refills is necessary every week it can’t be too bad.
Reading more challenging books like that together goes a very long way, if you can swing that in your relationship, because it allows for discussion/clarification/context/interaction that will make them more engaging.
Reading together, aloud, is abandoned far too early in childhood. My husband and I still do it as a bedtime ritual almost nightly.
Yea I might try reading aloud to her along with her sisters again. Her complaint with the books isn’t that they are hard but that they are boring, which... grow some taste? I don’t know, girls’ preferences are a mystery to me :)
I had better taste in books when I was your daughter's age than when I was a teen, but I outgrew the "chick lit" phase pretty quickly as it was mainly rooted in a desire to fit in than because they were actually any good.
But children are the new teenagers, so here we are.
She'll probably come around to the good stuff later.
But at least throw the Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary books at her, even if only to read herself, or she'll grow up to be a psychopath.
Oh yea she has those down already. Even I remember reading those as a sprog.
Great article! I love the idea of monitoring how often our attention is hijacked. The first step to change is the awareness of the problem.
I first read Infinite Jest (one of my all-time favorite books--and yes, I agonized with Gately over his gunshot wound and his heroic decision to forgo painkillers) when I was a high school English teacher and routinely putting in 65-hour weeks. I decided to read the book over one month, giving it the attention it deserved. I don’t know what my excuse is these days, when I have so much more free time, for avoiding the more challenging great books that are out there. You are inspiring me to pick up Bleak House again!
I'm in awe at anyone who can read IJ in a month !
Bleak House is a keeper too.
I would say in your defense that many of the “great books” really aren’t all that great. Too many classics are so only because of fashion it seems, while others are neglected gems.
That said, I absolutely agree with the virtue of spending time to really dig into a tough book, to read, reread and wrestle with the content. Not all struggles are worth it, but some really are great.
The conflation of 'popular' with 'classic' is always going to lead to disappointments.
People raved about Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go until I couldn't resist picking it up. The 'twist' was obvious from the get-go, the supposedly profound theme was thinly explored, at best, and I finished it more from a sense of early sunk costs than anything else.
The next time someone complains that I wrote a wall of text that exceeds all reason, I am linking this wonderful essay.
tl;dr
Embarrassingly nice comment to receive - thanks.
Thanks Mike for this essay, that I particularly enjoyed, as I struggle myself sometimes between the inevitable lure of social media and traditional reading that brings so much more peace of mind.
It also reminded of an essay I published earlier this year on my Substack on the rapid evolution of mediums. If you or your readers are interested, see link below.
https://thenomadhistorian.substack.com/p/the-downward-spiral-of-public-discourse
I enjoyed your piece and confirm that Fareed Zakaria describes how I feel about my philosophy degree, whose legacy has been to help me see the difference between how to think and what to think.
Thanks Mike for drawing my attention to your piece! Your perspective on deeper reading adds texture to the points that I made in my post. The powerful shaping influence of books that act, "like a therapist inviting less reaction and more reflection", is being replaced with staccato one-line reactions that demonstrate lack of nuance or understanding of the issue at hand. Reading books, in addition to saving our mind, could do much to assuage the raging culture wars. If you read N.S. Lyons and Kingsnorth, you may be interested in my husband's recently released novel Exogenesis (Ignatius Press), which lays bare the choice we face in a world divided between machines or creatures. See https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/exogenesis-bladerunner-meets-the. Sometimes stories move us more than abstract articles, exactly because they invite "less reaction and more reflection."
Excellent post. A couple of what are probably obvious observations about Twitter.
1) I can’t think of any other medium where people feel they need to “take a break” for the benefit of their own sanity.
2) Most of the info I worry about missing out on (if it’s serious enough), I’ll get in Spectator, Times or a decent substack, which are calmer mediums and have additional quality content