Reading as a warning light

As I write this post at my bureau in the attic of my Derbyshire home I cannot help but notice that books are all around me. By my right-hand side is a rickety homemade bookcase my late father built for me. Made of spare dark wood and consisting of three levels there it stands struggling to maintain its integrity. On my left, are two sturdier but less impressive Ikea bookcases- both white and full but one is much larger than the other peering over me as I think and write. On the far left, just out of my immediate eyesight but always in the back of my mind is the final bookcase wide and deep although not tall. Again, full to bursting, to the point the cheap mdf is coming off at the back.

Downstairs, sits an old cabinet, I am not sure quite how old, which I received for my 18th birthday. Most people may get driving lessons, or a car, or a big wad of cash. Instead, I desired a gothic cabinet which I have yes you guessed it right filled to the brim with books. In my flat in york, there are merely two giant bookcases, again both full, which are the same design as the biggest Ikea one in my bedroom.

In total, at the age of 31, I have accrued 7 bookcases worth of books and likely I’ll need more in time. Although I do not come from an incredibly well-off background materially, I consider myself extremely fortunate. I was brought up to appreciate and love reading on its own merits. Reading, I was taught, was not merely a tool to deliver something else, be it wisdom or knowledge; although it seems reasonable to suggest stronger wisdom or knowledge can be acquired via reading. Instead, reading was valuable for its own sake. For you to be able to sit down and take yourself away from the world even if just for a few hours.

Precisely because of this the books I read take various forms. I read novels, world histories, political theory (my specialist subject), biographies both fair and unfair, self-righteous autobiographies and even the odd book of poetry can be found hiding away somewhere. Currently, I have on the go The Drinker by Hans Fallada, Ungoverning by Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, and Political Liberalism by John Rawls. I know I still need to diversify my book diet but not unlike my actual diet I tend to get swept away by the rich stuff.

Yet today reading is in trouble. To put it simply 1 in 2 adults don’t read and around 5.8 million UK adults do not possess basic literacy skills. Although we do still read as a nation it is becoming increasingly uncommon to read for pleasure, especially amongst the young. With only 7% of 18-24 year olds saying they read every day for pleasure this is a crisis we must face head-on. This is a crisis which becomes worse the younger you probe- only 1 in 3 children say they enjoy reading and 1 in 10 children don’t own a single book. We must also remember to be wary of self-reported statistics in surveys. Reading after all is seen as a ‘good hobby’ to acquire and maintain thus people are prone to lying about how much and what they have read when asked about it. Thus, the crisis is perhaps even worse than many statistics would suggest.

You may think so what if people don’t read? Surely reading has become old hat and unnecessary in today’s hyper-modern world. Today we not only have social media to give us bite-sized information but we have an array of podcasts and videos to doll out information. Books are long-winded and largely unnecessary giving us access to add-ons we don’t need. In essence, we are only after the protein today, not the chewy fat of unnecessary information.

But I would argue the chewy fat is precisely where the goodness is. Without it we not only struggle to savour what we are learning but this does limit our ability to truly reflect on why we think it. Podcasts and videos may help us shape how we argue but rarely will they challenge what we argue. Bite-sized forms, even in an hour-long discussion, can only take us so far. If we rely upon this form of information to shape and mould us we will produce a population guided by stats and create a shallow unenlightened populace.

Some would argue this is precisely what we are becoming. When speaking to a student union rep she stated that 9 in 10 students now use AI to guide their way through the reading lists. Rather than being horrified at seeing her fellow students use a tool to browse through complex, interesting, and potentially life-changing texts, she seemed rather proud of the efficiency of her classmates. Yet, I cannot be proud. I am scornful of the environment we have created where reading is the outlier and not the norm.

An increasing inability to read long texts is hampering even those close to the top of the educational tree. It is not only in the United Kingdom we see these problems but more widely across the anglophone world where our shared love of the golden arches is not the only thing we today have in common. The inability to process long texts and think through problems leads to diluted ideals which cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny. Instead of creating a new generation of rich thinkers ready to tear apart unnecessary conventions and build new ones we are moulding a generation unable to truly challenge. The seminar room is no longer a place of fierce contestation but one for the most part of quiet acquiescence.

This is not merely a problem for universities but for democracy itself. If we want to increase the quality of our decision making then we need better decision-makers. Some may point to this as merely a tautology but when the wisdom of crowds is under threat so are the values which underpin it. This is not to say AI or social media is to blame for the arrival of someone like Donald Trump, although it has had a hand in it, but if we expect the least from our citizens why should we expect the most from our politicians?

Instead, partly as a byproduct of our broken informational system, we deliver seminars on avoiding information hijacking. We fear fake news and the 24-7 rolling coverage which has slowly turned us into episodic thinkers at best. Yet, these threats, all converging on one another, are part of the broader trend away from genuine reflectiveness. Indeed, even our dating lives are now determined by algorithms and pictures rather than the smoothness of one’s cheesy yet endearing pickup line in a crowded bar beginning the process of courtship.

Time is of the essence. Our lives are busy and we cannot read an entire newspaper or a whole book merely for the sake of it. Perhaps Marx was correct in the ubiquity of capital taking over every aspect of our lives. The increased use of AI, the rise of podcasts and videos and the use of social media all have one thing in common. The lack of time.

But time is necessary for democracy to function. Deliberation, genuine deliberation that is, takes time to include one another and think about the consequences of our argument and the consistency we apply it. It takes time to think about what we think as opposed to what we believe we should think. One of the arguments commonly deployed against sortition is that when would we have the time to commit so much to democracy? Yet, this misses the point entirely. If we do not currently possess sufficient time to think about such questions then what is the point of our democracy? Is it as Rousseau famously castigated merely another method of enslavement for the period in which we do not vote?

In this sense, social media and podcasts are symptoms of the problems, not the true causes. They are manifestations of a deeper structural problem in education and society where a free-for-all and expectations of immediate success have overtaken everything else. Of course, success for its own sake ultimately leads to its eradication or at least deviation from its true purpose. It is not a problem of elite overproduction as Christopher Lasch hypothesised but rather the conditions in which we prune our so-called elite today.

The same reason so many of us are lonelier is largely the same reason why so many of us struggle to get dates, have sex, hate our jobs, and find a lack of meaning in our lives. Meaning has been hollowed out; replaced with the sentimental and illusionary notion of social and economic progress which can only be guaranteed if we give ourselves to it. Reflected in our politics where leaders and parties struggle to tell us who we are beyond the material and what they can do for us. No one has any time to reconfigure who and what we are. Instead, we are merely what we consume i.e., ever smaller yet important distinctions between rich and poor.

Our decline in reading is merely the flashing light at the wheel of the car telling the driver the engine is overheating. I do not suppose if we all start reading again the aforementioned issue will merely resolve itself. Neither will it be sufficient to simply amp down the role of social media with sticking plasters such as age restrictions. Instead, it requires a deeper probing into why we should read? Why we should think? And why does this matter beyond the increased chances of material success if we do.