In Defense of Reading (Books)
I have a problem. It’s not a bad problem to have, considering all the other problems one could be burdened with, but it’s a problem nonetheless.
I have a book problem.
Yes, a book problem. I buy too many books, and finish too few. This isn’t to say that I don’t read, or neglect the books that I buy. I usually get through at least the first hundred pages or so with ease. The problem comes with the fact that once I hit that century mark, I usually find another book to pique my interest, leading me to snap that up and commence reading the first hundred pages of it, and so on. I think you see how this goes.
Last year, during the early part of the summer, my Internet connection became either nonexistent or so unreliable that it may as well be nonexistent. I don’t remember exactly which, but nonexistence seems to be the end result in either case, so it doesn’t quite matter anyway. But, the point I’m getting to is that being without the Internet was bliss.
Why? Well, because I had time to read. I quickly breezed through a number of books - the last three Harry Potter novels, One Minute to Midnight (re: the Cuban Missile Crisis), Brothers (re: JFK & RFK), The Last Campaign (re: RFK’s presidential campaign), The Post-American World (Fareed Zakaria’s look at the “rise of the rest”), maybe a few others whose titles escape me – and in general, the lack of the Internet seemed soothing and beneficial to my intellectual and spiritual peace of mind.
Sure, being without an Internet connection for any length of time is annoying. But, there’s a certain sense of relaxation that sets in when you detach yourself from the world and immerse yourself not in whirring and blinking gizmos and gadgets, but in the beauty of nature, the elegance of the written word, the friendly banter of fellow travelers on the long, often lonely path of life. I suppose we can get plenty of words, plenty of pictures and videos, and plenty of social networking through the miracle of the Internet, but it isn’t quite the same.
I used to read a lot more than I do now. Or, more accurately, I used to be able to read better than I do now. Now my room is littered with half-finished books, from the interesting yet ultimately mindless “thriller” Angels & Demons to the hefty academic analysis of counterterrorism policy by Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent (I highly recommend the latter, not so much the former, but unfortunately I would bet that most anybody who reads this will have not only read, but seen, the former and never heard of the latter). Now, my room is littered with a great many things that probably should be thrown out, filed away, or thrown out.
In a way, I yearn for the old days, when I was still in school. And not college, but before that. I can vaguely remember a time when I could go to class for 7 ½ hours a day, get some homework done, do some reading for fun, play some video games, eat some dinner, and basically have a well-rounded and satisfying existence.
The immediate conclusion one would make is that I’ve gotten older, and so this just isn’t possible anymore. But, I don’t think that’s accurate. I think I’ve fallen in a very innately human trap, faciliated to great effect, by the Internet and the omnipresence of super-connected technology. That is, the trap of trying to do too much, of thinking too much, of planning too much, of worrying too much. And doing too little.
I’ve resisted the apparent trend of forgoing print newspapers, which I find invaluable and much preferable to online newspapers. Sure, I scan the headlines on CNN.com like anybody else, but I find there to be something wrong with the concept of getting through and entire day’s New York Times with nary a page turned or finger stained with newsprint. That just isn’t right.
Before I went to college, and before the Internet really exploded, I was more creative, which I owe in part to not yet being faux-stressed by the coming rush of information overload. The print paper was my way of stopping the madness and being able to leisurely peruse the day’s news, the opinion pages, the culture articles, et cetera. One could strongly argue that this is all possible with the Internet, but let’s be honest – what man has the self-control not to open another tab and search Wikipedia for more details on some random person you just read about in the article you were reading. The next thing you know, there are two dozen tabs open, pointing to an even deeper immersion in pure data than the last, giving you all the pointless info you want to know. If you were writing a by-the-numbers high school essay or have a photographic memory and were going on Jeopardy, perhaps this would be valuable. In most cases, it turns into a waste of time.
My point in all this is simply to expound on the virtues of the slow and steady, tried and true, worn and proven methods to the great and perplexing thing we refer to as “living.” We live in a world of materialism, surrounded by people who value more rather than better, and all the trappings of that world can be all too easy a barrier to actual life. Life, after all, is more than working 100 hours a week to make a lot of money you can’t spend on a family you never see. I suppose perhaps it could be just that, but what kind of a life is that?
I’ve been reading a lot of conservative political philosophy lately, most notably Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, which I highly recommend to anyone with anything close to resembling intellectual curiosity. Anyway, I’ve been consistently struck by how rich intellectual conservatism is, at least compared to the usual political discourse one hears from the mouth of “conservatism” in the public sphere. Where a political (read: Republican) conservative screeches that the President is a “timid” Communist, a true conservative would sigh at such radical talk. One does not have to agree with the president on every issue to at least offer him a measure of respect, and challenge him on intellectual grounds rather than childish name-calling. I would argue that, like the back-and-forth on the President’s handling of the Iran situation, harsh yet ultimately empty rhetoric does nothing but harm one’s stated goals. The political world we live in today is conservative insofar as those in power do everything they can to conserve that status quo, but in almost every other respect, the reality is that politics in the public sphere has embraced a cynical, least-common-denominator, liberal quality to it. Radicalism and ideology trump ideas, common sense, and respect.
What the heck does this have to do with anything I said before about books?
Well, perhaps more people in contemporary America could bother themselves with a good, maybe even difficult, book. Intellectual breadth is not a liberal or conservative quality. It should be a quality of the human species. Slow down and stop being an information sponge – soak in some words and do some thinking. Challenge yourself with a book or serious thought on the other side’s ideas. Not the screamers and the radicals, but the rational and intelligent human beings. You might find they are not as crazy as you first thought. You might find that they are as much human beings as you and your partisans.
You might find the inherent beauty of life, of nature, of the human existence. It can’t be found in anger, rash action, harsh words, mounds of money, or all the materialistic achievements can rack up. At the end of the day, what lasts on through history will be more than all that.
We can strengthen the foundations of society, of culture, of the world we were given – or we can hasten it’s crumbling. Every good patriot should wish to do the first, and opening a good book, and closing an Internet browser, is a solid start.