First we are illiterate and now reading is a vice. The Atlantic is wild. (I didn’t click through on this one, admittedly. I plan to read it tomorrow.)
Macleod7373 on
I love The Atlantic but Adam Kirsch must have been having a bad day. Reading is thinking – and when coupled with writing creates a powerful mind. We’ve known this for a long time, I just don’t know what he’s on about.
brrbles on
Top tier Atlantic upper-middle-class dumb guy bait.
Mission-Art-2383 on
so i read this and i feel like i guess the takeaway is “say anything to make reading cool again!”
but as a thought piece.. i would give this a C+ for a high school student roughly
“Being a reader means cultivating a relationship with the world that, by most standards, can seem pointless and counterproductive. Reading is not profitable; it doesn’t teach you any transferable skills or offer any networking opportunities. On the contrary, it is an antisocial activity in the most concrete sense: To do it you have to be alone, or else pretend you’re alone by tuning out other people. Reading teaches you to be more interested in what’s going on inside your head than in the real world.”
this statement is basically that art is useless if it doesn’t teach us something like how to sew or something, while also missing that most people today are not just out there engaging with the world, but are disassociated on tiktok or their phone. most human activity is pointless today, we are not very utilitarian when we binge watch netflix and doom scroll.
reading to me seems more about cultivating longer attention spans and not getting caught in digital loops. but i dunno, just seems worth mentioning in this context. but it makes the average person seem anti intellectual and like deeply engaged with the real and utilitarian world, and i just don’t see that being true today. short sighted and not thoughtful is my takeaway
6 Comments
Reading is an escape from vice.
First we are illiterate and now reading is a vice. The Atlantic is wild. (I didn’t click through on this one, admittedly. I plan to read it tomorrow.)
I love The Atlantic but Adam Kirsch must have been having a bad day. Reading is thinking – and when coupled with writing creates a powerful mind. We’ve known this for a long time, I just don’t know what he’s on about.
Top tier Atlantic upper-middle-class dumb guy bait.
so i read this and i feel like i guess the takeaway is “say anything to make reading cool again!”
but as a thought piece.. i would give this a C+ for a high school student roughly
“Being a reader means cultivating a relationship with the world that, by most standards, can seem pointless and counterproductive. Reading is not profitable; it doesn’t teach you any transferable skills or offer any networking opportunities. On the contrary, it is an antisocial activity in the most concrete sense: To do it you have to be alone, or else pretend you’re alone by tuning out other people. Reading teaches you to be more interested in what’s going on inside your head than in the real world.”
this statement is basically that art is useless if it doesn’t teach us something like how to sew or something, while also missing that most people today are not just out there engaging with the world, but are disassociated on tiktok or their phone. most human activity is pointless today, we are not very utilitarian when we binge watch netflix and doom scroll.
reading to me seems more about cultivating longer attention spans and not getting caught in digital loops. but i dunno, just seems worth mentioning in this context. but it makes the average person seem anti intellectual and like deeply engaged with the real and utilitarian world, and i just don’t see that being true today. short sighted and not thoughtful is my takeaway
I have not found a book that I enjoy in so long