The Reader’s Manifesto

How do we pull ourselves out of the partisan morass, rediscover our ability to think for ourselves and find common ground with those we may disagree with?

The answer: we read.

Reading across a genres, subjects, and perspectives has the power to pop the filter bubbles that many of us increasingly find ourselves in, both online and off. It’s how we develop a healthy intellectual humility, where no single ideology or belief system monopolises truth.

what we desperately need is to rediscover the lost art of deep reading — the type of engaged, focused reading that challenges us with complex ideas, transports us into others’ experiences and perspectives and demands our full intellectual engagement and concentration.

Rather than opening our minds, the limitless buffet of online content narrowed them.

We are a society rich in information, but poor in wisdom.

Sit down with a book, magazine, or long-form article, block out distractions, and dedicate our minds to better ideas.

It’s an act of rebellious empathy.

The designers of social algorithms, attempting to maximise user engagement, quickly learned that emotional triggers generate more clicks and views than nuanced arguments.

Step back from the online cacophony and immerse ourselves in content longer than 280 characters or a seven-second TikTok video.

Anyone with a smartphone can become a content publisher, and any clear lines between journalism, opinion, entertainment, propaganda and outright fiction have become almost hopelessly blurred.