Reading Is a Vice

In Fahrenheit 451, books are destroyed to keep people distracted, shallow, and easy to manage, which is not far from today’s social media obsession where endless scrolling replaces actual thinking. What Bradbury imagined as a forbidden act has become a voluntary one, since reading now competes with algorithms engineered to reward outrage, conformity, and brain rot.

The sad reality is that modern governments do not need to ban books; instead: a population glued to feeds has already done the work for them.

There perhaps is something in here, although the column itself is rather glib. My reading life started first with comics, then I found Tolkien and at some point I found the cool intellectual writers of the past like Camus, Sartre, Bukowski, Salinger, Genet, Burroughs etc. I found my own world in the written text, a place where I could be alone removed from the expectations of the society and my peers. I think I could not find a community amongst other kids so I found it amongst characters in novels.

I assume kids like I used to be still wield their library card like a stiletto in their lone war against the world, but surely this is not and cannot be the pnly pathway to reading and to the world of literature. Perhaps one should search a model for luring kids to read somewhere else than in us drama kids.

This reads like a misanthropic appeal for the Humanities. An advertisement for reading that presents it as something not different from (anti)social media.

And I’m beginning to sense an almost ‘divorced mother at daughter’s bridal shower’ sort of pensive pessimism in The Atlantic.

I like Tim Snyder's take on this.

Communication technology is critical for everything else, it changes how society functions, what forms of government and country sizes are viable, what people can think of.

Every time there has been progress in communication technology - there was disruption, wars, millions of deaths.

It happened when handwritten books enabled organized religions.

It happened when printed books enabled reformation.

It happened when radio enabled totalitarian systems in early 20th century (both Hitler and Stalin gave away state-funded radio receivers to people).

It happens now with social media.

Previous forms of government aren't sustainable till we adapt our laws and governments to the new communication technology (like BBC and media laws were democracies' response to totalitarian radios and tvs).

It isn't a vice, it is a means of finding out information. The internet is now so heavily corralled we need alternative outlets.