What We Lose When We Stop Reading
The next great divide won’t be about wealth but attention.
Hello Everyone,
The one thing I like most about vacations is that they are the only time I am able to devote serious time to reading. Like everyone else, I go through the last-minute travel scramble, passport, wallet, phone, laptop, charger, earphones. Only then, do I pause at my bookshelf and consider which books to pack.
The Vanishing Reader
I have been reading less and less. We all have. But how much less, and what really is at stake? In 2022, fewer than half of all adults read even a single book - print or digital. This sobering statistic, from the National Endowment for the Arts, points to a cultural shift that is easy to overlook. We not only read less but the type of reading we do has fundamentally changed. As Maryanne Wolf explains, for centuries humans have been hard-wired to engage with reading text, and this long history of literacy has resulted in “our most important intellectual and affective processes: internalised knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective taking and empathy; and the generation of insight.”
We are at an inflection point in how society produces and consumes information for we are no longer readers of literature, but rather consumers of content. Wolf goes on to write that “in this hinge moment between print and digital cultures, society needs to confront what is diminishing in the expert reading circuit, what our children and older students are not developing, and what we can do about it.” Screens, scrolling, and the rapidity of information streams have altered the conditions in which our brains develop, culminating in what has been termed cognitive degradation by neuroscientist Earl Miller.
For example, in one study at Carnegie Mellon University’s human computer interaction lab 136 students were selected to write a test. Some of the students had their phones switched off, while others had them on and received intermittent text messages. The students who received messages performed, on average, 20% worse. This was not only a result of the distractions but of the decline in cognitive functioning when we must refocus on a task after having been distracted.
The Attention Deficit
A rise in distraction and an inability to read with focus has been cited by many, “Jack Chen, a Chinese-literature professor at the University of Virginia, finds his students shutting down when confronted with ideas they don’t understand; they’re less able to persist.” This mirrors my own experience teaching grade 10 and 11 students who are not able to sit through and read a five page text uninterrupted or read with a clear sense of focus. Distracted and fidgety, many students struggle even with grade-level texts, unable to focus, let alone engage deeply.
There is no doubt that the proliferation of online slop in the form of Tik-Tok videos, instagram reels, tweets, combined with dramatically reduced attention spans has contributed to a broader malaise in our reading. Mary Harrington in the New York Times this week made an interesting connection between socio-economic inequality, literacy and the proliferation of online digital content: “The result is a media environment that seems like the cognitive equivalent of the junk food aisle and is every bit as difficult to resist as those colorful, unhealthy packages.”
This, she argues, has the potential to widen existing divides between those who have the time, resources and luxury of being able to engage in deep reading and writing and who can afford to separate themselves from environments where phones, digital devices are restricted. Evidence shows that poor children spend more time on screens each day than rich ones, two hours more per day for those whose families made $35,000 a year compared with those whose incomes exceeded $100,000.
The result, she argues, will be a deepening cognitive split in the population:
“A relatively small group of people will retain, and intentionally develop, the capacity for concentration and long-form reasoning. On the other, a larger general population will be effectively post-literate — with all the consequences this implies for cognitive clarity. What will happen if this becomes fully realised? An electorate that has lost the capacity for long-form thought will be more tribal, less rational, largely uninterested in facts or even matters of historical record, moved more by vibes than cogent argument and open to fantastical ideas and bizarre conspiracy theories.”
An Emotional Gap
Humanity suffers a profound loss when we lose a love, appreciation, time and desire for reading. The first is a loss of empathy, and here I take empathy to mean something much more than the ability to step into another’s perspective.
Empathy, as my former professor Richard Weissbourd has argued, extends to the emotional. Salespeople, politicians, and actors he explains, are often very skilled at taking other perspectives but they may not care about others. Empathy extends this ability to care and feel compassion for the other, and it is this gap of care and compassion that I think precedes a gap in perspective taking and ultimately knowledge. Reading I think has the answer. It allows us to exist and live in a world that is vastly different from our own, it forces an emotional reaction and allows us to channel and express our emotions in a healthy and productive manner, be it in the reaction to a text in the form of sadness, joy, worry, anxiety, or happiness. In reading we are able to expand and widen our circle of moral concern to characters in different worlds, fictional or real. Reading is useful practice as it prepares us to do this in the real world.
Connection to Time
Reading also connects us to a broader sense of time, a time that historian Dr. Aziz Esmail has referred to has time not of the clock, but of historical time. When we read a book, a novel, or a piece of literature we forget that someone living somewhere at one fleeting moment in the entirety of the universe has decided to express themselves on paper.
If I told you that this post was generated by ChatGPT or AI (it is not)! I suspect you might feel some hint of betrayal, that you in some indescribable way have been duped, cheated, swindled of a connection to someone’s real thoughts, emotions, ideas and perspectives and outlook. It is this fragmentation of trust and connection, at a very micro level, but when compounded over the course of millions people and text poses a real danger to this sense of connection.
In a world in which our connection to history is growing more distant and in which our relationship with time and each other is growing more fragmented, this sense of connection grows more urgent. In reading the words of another there emerges a subtle realisation that we share a common universe from which we draw the same anxieties, worries, hopes and fears. Reading sustains and keeps alive the memory of human experience, for better and for worse.
It is a sense of connection and time, beautifully articulated by the writer Octavio Paz, who in his toast made at the Nobel Prize Banquet observed:
“At the close of this century we have discovered that we are part of a vast system (or network of systems) ranging from plants and animals to cells, molecules, atoms and stars. We are a link in “the great chain of being” as the philosophers of antiquity used to call the universe. One of man’s oldest gestures, repeated daily from the beginning of time, is to look up and marvel at the starry sky. This act of contemplation frequently ends in a feeling of fraternal identification with the universe. In the countryside one night, years ago, as I contemplated the stars in the cloudless sky, I heard the metallic sound of the elytra [pair of wings] of a cricket. There was a strange correspondence between the reverberation of the firmament at night and the music of the tiny insect; it was always within reach; time was a pliable substance that weaved an unbroken present.”
Sculpting Solitude
Reading also demands satisfaction with solitude. In a world that forces constant engagement, where everyone has a loudspeaker and there is fierce competition for attention and distraction, the ability to be comfortable alone is a rare quality. Reading allows us to practise this skill. It forces the capacity to sit alone with our innermost thoughts, to filter out the noise and to hear the soft whispers of our soul as we read, imagine and react. Reading sharpens the blade with which we sculpt our inner self.
So should you end up on a flight to or from Dubai, or to Singapore, Thailand, or Italy. Should you find yourself on the skytrain, tube or bus - put down the phone. Resist the urge to crush candies or scroll slightly scandalous reels. Read not just because you are told, read because your soul depends on it. So the next time you pack your air-pods, charger, laptop, stop by your bookshelf, and ask yourself, what book am I taking?
I don’t think there is a grand strategy or a complicated answer to the problem. It is to make space in our homes, lives and time for deep reading.
FK
ps - I was away in Bali and did not realise that there is a temple home to bartering monkeys. We passed on visiting the temple, but I am wondering now if that was a mistake, having not been able to view this spectacular example of evolution in action.
pps:
On My Summer Reading List
Gary Bass, Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
If you made it all the way to the end, congrats, or as my Dad would say “Well done my bwoy!” In all seriousness, thank you for taking the time to read it!
This is a project I have kept going for about two years now and one marks issue #30. Thank you so much for reading. I am very grateful and it means a lot to me. I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback - if you reply to this email I will see it, and respond!
best
FK