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June 17 - June 18, 2021
Kurt Vonnegut compared the role of the artist in society to that of the canary in the mines: both alert us to the presence of danger. The reading brain is the canary in our minds.
plasticity also underlies why the reading-brain circuit is inherently malleable (read changeable) and influenced by key environmental factors: specifically, what it reads (both the particular writing system and the content), how it reads (the particular medium, such as print or screen, and its effects on the way we read), and how it is formed (methods of instruction).
wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off. . . . But by a singular and moreover providential law . . . (a law which perhaps signifies that we are unable to receive the truth from anyone else but must create it ourselves), that which is the endpoint of their wisdom appears to us as but the beginning of our own. —Marcel Proust, On Reading
harsh implications for our present and future society: the less we know, the fewer possibilities we have for drawing analogies, for increasing our inferential and analytical powers, and for expanding and applying our general knowledge.
From start to finish, the basic neurological principle—“Use it or lose it”—is true for each deep-reading process.
Only if we continuously work to develop and use our complex analogical and inferential skills will the neural networks underlying them sustain our capacity to be thoughtful, critical analysts of knowledge, rather than passive consumers of information.
in a culture that rewards immediacy, ease, and efficiency, the demanding time and effort involved in developing all the aspects of critical thought make it an increasingly embattled entity.
there is a final moment in the reading act when an arms-wide expanse in the reader’s mind opens up and all our cognitive and affective processes become the stuff of pure attention and reflection. Cognitively and physiologically, this pause is not a quiet or static time.
We do not see or hear with the same quality of attention, because we see and hear too much, become habituated, and then seek still more.
Katherine Hayles characterized hyperattention10 as a phenomenon caused by (and then adding to the need for) rapid task switching, high levels of stimulation, and a low-level threshold of boredom.
quoted a speech by Barack Obama to students at Hampton University in which he worried that for many of our young, information has become “a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment,20 rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”
What do we do with the cognitive overload from multiple gigabytes of information from multiple devices? First, we simplify. Second, we process the information as rapidly as possible; more precisely, we read more in briefer bursts. Third, we triage. We stealthily begin the insidious trade-off between our need to know with our need to save and gain time.
comparing the reading of books on screens to staying in sterile hotel rooms, he poignantly states, “Books are home—real, physical things you can love and cherish.”
The Shallows, Nicholas Carr reminds us of a concern34 raised by Stanley Kubrick that in a digital culture we should not be worrying so much about whether the computer will become like us, but whether we will become like it.
glum estimates that indicate that the average memory span of many adults has diminished by more than 50 percent over the last decade.
The writer deserves my attention to detail;
When language and thought atrophy, when complexity wanes and everything becomes more and more the same, we run great risks in society politic—whether from extremists in a religion or a political organization or, less obviously, from advertisers.
language homogenization: from the narrowing of an author’s word choices to briefer manuscripts to a more constrained use of syntactic complexity and figurative language, both of which require background knowledge that can no longer be assumed.
The issue, therefore, is never just about how many words we consume or even how we read in the digital culture. It is about the significant effects of how much we read upon how we read and the effects of both upon what we read and remember. It does not end, however, with what we read, but rather continues on, as what we read further changes the next link in the chain, how things are written.
TL; DR (Too long; didn’t read). The critical relationship between the quality of reading and the quality of thought is influenced heavily by changes in attention and what I have called, more intuitively than scientifically, cognitive patience.
Separating truth from fiction takes time, information literacy, and an open mind, all of which seem in short supply in a distracted, polarized culture.
Memory and experience press themselves into each reading so that each encounter informs the next.”
Every medium has its strengths and weaknesses; every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others. Although . . . the Internet may develop impressive visual intelligence, the cost seems to be deep processing: mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection. —Patricia Greenfield
“Humans will work just as hard to obtain8 a novel experience as we will to get a meal or a mate. . . . In multitasking, we unknowingly enter an addiction loop as the brain’s novelty centers become rewarded for processing shiny new stimuli, to the detriment of our prefrontal cortex, which wants to stay on task and gain the rewards of sustained effort and attention. We need to train ourselves to go for the long reward, and forgo the short one.”
less time to process and perceive means less time to connect the incoming information to one’s background knowledge and thus less likelihood that the rest of the deep-reading processes will be deployed. Or Developed.
development of a truly biliterate brain with the capacity to allocate time and attention to deep-reading skills regardless of medium. Deep-reading skills not only provide critical antidotes to the negative effects of digital culture, like the diffusion of attention and the attrition of empathy, but also complement positive digital influences.
arcia/tl (attend, remember, connect, infer, analyze/then LEAP!)
Reading is an act of contemplation . . . an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction. . . .
The Nicomachean Ethics3 Aristotle wrote that a good society has three lives: the life of knowledge and productivity; the life of entertainment within the Greeks’ special understanding of leisure4; and finally, the life of contemplation.5 So, too, the “good reader.”
meditative dimension in human beings is threatened—by an overwhelming emphasis on materialism and consumerism, by a fractured relationship with time.
a flotsam of distractions and information that will never become knowledge; and the increasingly manipulated and superficial uses of knowledge that will never become wisdom.
S. Eliot wrote in “Choruses from ‘The Rock,’” “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?11 Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
attend with consciousness and intention. You read quickly (festina), till you are conscious (lente) of the thoughts to comprehend, the beauty to appreciate, the questions to remember, and, when fortunate, the insights to unfold.
the power of some needs the folly of the others.
