From the moleskine:
Maria of the YouTube channel Strange Lucidity made a video about the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. People haven’t actually stopped reading; it’s just we’re reading more on screens than from books. And our brains read them differently. Really important point. From that book, Hari says:
“The more novels you read, the better you were at reading other people’s emotions. It was a huge effect. This wasn’t just a sign that you were better educated because reading non fiction books, by contrast, had no effect on your empathy.”
I’m not sure I entirely agree with this latter half of the whole, but there is a valid point to be made here. (I think it depends on the nonfiction you read, honestly.) this next part though…
“I asked Raymond – why? Reading, he told me, creates a ‘unique form of consciousness’… While we’re reading, we’re directing attention towards the word on the page and, at the same time, enormous amounts of attention is going inwards as we imagine and mentally simulate.”
I really love this additional part: when parents read storybooks to their kids, those kids end up better at reading emotions, too.
When it comes to the message of a medium of a printed book, though, I gotta copy this whole part down:
“What, I wondered, is the message buried in the medium of the printed book? Before the words convey their first meaning, the medium of the book tells us several things. Firstly, life is complex, and if you want to understand it, you have to set aside a fair bit of time to think deeply about it. You need to slow down. Secondly, there is a value in leaving behind your other concerns and narrowing down your attention to one thing, sentence after sentence, page after page. Thirdly, it is worth thinking deeply about how other people live and how their mind works. They have complex inner lives just like you.”
Oh and one more thing about social media: “We internalize the texture of the voices we’re exposed to. When you expose yourself to complex stories about the inner lives of other people over long periods of time, that will re-pattern your consciousness . You too will become more perceptive, open, and empathetic. If, by contrast, you expose yourself for hours of a day to the disconnected fragments of shrieking and fury that dominate social media, your thoughts will start to be shaped like that. Your internal voices will become cruder, louder, less able to hear more tender and gentle thoughts.” Or I might add, even common sense!
This term ‘cruel optimism’ is really important. We’re constantly being sold individualistic ‘solutions’ that are meant to keep us feeling bad about ourselves, essentially.
It’s funny that I stopped handwriting notes because toting them up later felt like “duplicate work.” That’s a toxic mindset, because revisiting great durable ideas is not “duplicate” effort. Writing down the words gives us a chance to try and marry the message in the words to some latent part of our consciousness that is not always quite fully ready to accept it.
And I transcribe quotes from a phone (or laptop) screen back to a more physical and tangible medium for the sake of intentionally slowing myself down, even when my fragile nerves make it uncomfortable. Most ideas worth exploring should make us uncomfortable, not just at first, but the deeper we delve into them, as well. It’s terrifying how this decline in reading books has regressed our society so far in just a few short years.
I need to read this book. What a perfect lead in to my Joan Didion reading for today.
“In Bed” is my first Didion essay I’m reading today (of the final seven in The White Album), appropriate as I read in bed often, just as I am now. Joan dealt with chronic migraines the way I deal with crippling fatigue. I’m already weary after just a page of notes on a particularly relevant video about reading books vs on screens.
