In today’s modern world, I am an oddity. I say this because I gain most, nearly all, of my information from reading. I rarely watch videos. This is a deliberate choice. I have found over the years that I can get more out of an article, essay, pamphlet or book in less time than it would take to equal that by watching a video. Most videos, in my opinion, are at least 50% longer than they need to be due to the inevitable advertising, hemming, hawing, and general waste of time over virtually nothing at all. Training and teaching videos which get right to the point and stay on track may be different, but a very large part of what is produced and disseminated today is “stuff” for which I have no time.

Many people today probably don’t understand that and, as time goes on, less and less time is spent on readership and critical thinking about the language and wording of the text, which is rationally and logically based. Videos provide an artificial boost emotionally because the viewer can literally see and hear the facial expressions and hear the tonal inflections of the speakers, which written words are not able to do without an active imagination. Images provided add to the “heat of the moment”, in whatever the video is attempting to convey. The immediate effect of this is that attention spans are shrinking. It is becoming harder and harder for people to focus on any one thing or topic, such as a book or full length article, for extended or long periods of time.

I recently found an article on Forum Geopolitica which confirmed this phenomenon. The article itself is long, long, long, but grabbed my attention from the beginning and I read it through to the end. It might have taken me half an hour, but, as far as I am concerned, was well worth the time and I have a much better understanding of the topic than I would have if I had not read it. The quotes below are taken from it.

“[W]e are experiencing a process of de-literacy, a relapse into a new illiteracy. The ability to understand complex texts is being lost on the way to an “age of idiocy”.[93] The loss of written culture in turn leads to a crisis of tradition: this opens the door to the recoding of history, a reframing in the service of ruling propaganda, and the implementation of historical lies…”

“…When writing loses its significance as a tool of communication, historical experiences are lost – which condemns us to repeat them. If the word tends to become obsolete, the analytical power of written symbols is also lost. Visual media become the dominant matrix of truth, as they are much more effective at undermining reason and appealing directly to emotions.[95]…”

Visual media become the dominant matrix of truth… Isn’t that exactly what has happened across much of the world today? It’s not too far-fetched to think that, books might themselves become oddities, accessible only in museums as quaint artifacts of ancient history. The goon squads of Fahrenheit 451 might become obsolete because no one ever reads anything, thus depriving writers of a viable market.

Book? What’s a book?

My father, whom I learned to understand too late, said that there was only one thing which needed to be taught to anyone, namely, how to read AND understand what had been read. If a person can read anything and understand it, there are no limits to what he might achieve. Everything can be learned–everything–including complex and advanced subjects, IF understanding comes with the reading. Abstract philosophical and religious concepts, theories, sciences, mathematics, all the way to mundane, everyday subjects–all these can be learned simply by knowing how to read and to understand what has been read.

When I was young, I read anything I could get my hands on, mostly fiction, but I also spent a lot of time studying encyclopedias, fascinated by geographic maps and history. Gradually, my tastes changed and now I hardly ever read a novel, concentrating on non-fiction works of all stripes and persuasions, constantly honing my beliefs and (hopefully) becoming a better thinker for my efforts.

While reading the above-cited article, it struck me that modern society might be reverting back to a time where only a few, the learned few, could address issues intelligently and the masses of men simply lived as they had for centuries with no hope of ever escaping the pit of extreme ignorance. The vision that came to me was of monks in a monastery, toiling a lifetime away to produce knowledge, while nearly everyone around them was in survival mode, simply trying to stay alive. Of course, the argument can be made that education was strictly limited to the intelligentsia and that the common people and even their nobles had no means of accessing that until Gutenberg’s press came along, which may be true, but it still does not detract from my point. The fact is that knowledge and information are easier to gain today than ever before in history, yet the ability to retain those for longer than the immediate usage is rapidly being degraded. If the medieval, Dark Ages were a pit of ignorance, then what would today’s society be called? Age of idiocy seems to be about right.

In a world where video and audio are increasingly dominant, it becomes more difficult to determine what is actually true, especially now that AI can be used to manipulate photos and sounds, even words, to achieve the ends desired. How do I know that video I just watched is completely accurate? Has it been worked over to portray something different than what is seen and heard? I have no way of being sure without relying on someone else’s judgment and say-so. It is nearly impossible to do this with the written and published word which cannot be changed without leaving a record.

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All that aside, curling up with a good book, whether on a couch beside a roaring fireplace or not, is far more satisfying than watching it (or its adaptation and interpretation) on a screen. The “seeing” of Buck in Call of the Wild, Sherlock Holmes, Beau Geste, the Chronicles of Narnia, Aku-Aku, or the Gulag Archipelago, in one’s own mind far surpasses the experience of seeing them according to someone else’s imagination.

But, then, I may just be speaking as an old fogie who refuses to keep up with the times and wants to revert back to his own Age of Innocence.