Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics?
vox.com
Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics?
We live in an age of lexical abundance. More words, more access, more content than at any time in human history. And yet something essential is slipping away. Not reading itself, but the kind of reading that once shaped minds and formed character: slow, immersive, reflective, and richly human. As Harold Bloom noted: “"We read deeply for varied reas... See more
Carl Hendrick • Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us
discovered that if you make people read quickly, they are much less likely to grapple with complex or challenging material.
Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
hope to persuade you that the decline of a print-based epistemology and the accompanying rise of a television-based epistemology has had grave consequences for public life, that we are getting sillier by the minute.
Neil Postman • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
The more we sever ourselves from a literate, print-based world, a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas, for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans, celebrities, and a lust for violence, the more we are destined to implode. As the collapse continues and our suffering mounts, we yearn, like World Wrestling Enter
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