What I find interesting is some of the commentary here. "This is a pet peeve of mine," "This pisses me off." Why do you care, unless it is your child? If someone chooses to live in ignorance, that's their choice. I think it is unfortunate for them, but it doesn't anger me. And I also don't think this is any great wave of anti-intellectualism. I think it has more to do with laziness than anything else. 100s of TV channels, the web, multiple video game platforms both fixed and portable--it's a lot less tasking to racking up a new high score on Halo (or whatever the current rage is--I don't partake, even with a Wii and PS2 in the house) than it is to read Atlas Shrugged, and far less of a commitment. But again, it's their choice. As for me, I'm constantly reading. I enjoying the early morning hours with my coffee and two newspapers and typically have two books going, one of lighter fare like a James Ellroy or Nelson DeMille novel, and one that is school-related but not assigned, usually either a subject or author touched upon in a class that I want to learn more about. And then there is the assigned class reading.
I don't think movies v. books is even a fair comparison. They're two totally different experiences. Of course a 20 hour reading experience is going to be richer than a 2 hour movie. But, if you made a lot of these books into 10 hour mini-series, they'd probably be on par, maybe even better. And just to add to the list of movies that are as good or better than the books, I think Shawshank Redemption was just slightly better than the short story. Stand By Me was definitely better than The Body. The Devil Wears Prada was better than the book (though the book was decent). The Sex and the City TV show was waaay better than the book (which is only barely readable). I haven't seen Thank You For Smoking, but Christopher Buckley admits that a lot of the funniest stuff in the movie is not in the book, so I have to imagine it's a bit better. And, I haven't read Band of Brothers, but with how great the series was, I can't imagine it being worse than the book; maybe even, but I suspect it's much better. And, just because I know this will be contentious, and sorry for being so off-focus with this, but Lord of the Rings was better as a movie. While books are often better because they give a much deeper, detailed story, the LotR books go too far and drag along. There are some stories that work best as a 2 or 3 hour movie, some as a 10 hour series, some as a 5 season TV show, and some as a book. It's just a question of finding the right medium, and as media become cheaper to produce, we'll see more stories ending up in the right place. A Midsummers Night's Dream works better as a movie than a live play. Rent is better live than on video. But, for how little people read books, I think that most people of my generation (I'm 25) read more than their parents do. Not books, but just the total number of words read in a day is likely much higher because of texting, e-mail, and reading websites. Also, they consume a lot more stories, from a much more diverse set of voices. I love books, but I also love the incredibly high quality that many TV shows have attained, and that if I publish a story on my blog, a few thousand people world wide might read it. And one final thought (whiskey makes me verbose, I'm sorry), teachers who cover Shakespeare in their classes should encourage their students to watch movies that are line-by-line reproductions of the play, rather than read them. They are meant to be watched, not read, and so watching the movie isn't cheating, you just need a faithful reproduction. You can watch the movie 10 times instead of reading the play once and have a far deeper understanding of the story and the language used (just keep the text on hand for when Kenneth Branagh talks too fast to comprehend).
I only read for information and enjoyment, I've tried getting into literature but it just doesn't do it for me. The result is that I have brand new copies of The Great Gatsby, The Picture of Dorian Gray, etc sitting unopened while Naked Economics, Collapse, Chaos, Ender's Game, and Fight Club all look weather-beaten. From my point of view reading books is going the way of the dodo bird, much like the oral tradition did when the written word became readily available. Is it a good thing? Who knows, but I do know that I haven't picked up an encyclopedia in five years thanks to wiki. Hell if I had my way colleges would get rid of all these crap liberal arts degrees like women's studies, art, and interior design. If an alien civilization ever finds us they aren't going to care about our understanding of Kafka, they'll care about math, physics, and engineering. * This message brought to you by an angry Math major writing a term paper on postmodern vs modern authors.
It should. These people vote and they interact with us on a daily basis. Our lives are all made easier by intellectuals, and if we're not evolving, we're taking for granted everything that's been given to us. In one way, we're competitors, but I think in a much more wider aspect we're collaborators.
I tend to agree. Though, I recognize that being uneducated has some negative externalities, I don't care if any individual person doesn't read. I think what probably irritates people is the glorification of ignorance. I want to live in a society that glorifies intelligent discourse because that means I will have more interactions with intelligent, informed people, as opposed to spending half an hour listening to someone explain why they're voting for mother fucking Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore. I don't care if someone is ignorant, I just don't want them spreading it.
Don't forget entitled. We're all just a bunch entitled entitlement-whores who feel entitled to everything. That's my favorite. Also, does anyone have any actual numbers on this stuff? Anything beyond guesstimates and limited personal observation would be good, really. As much as I enjoy looking all the percentages and fractions that people are pulling out of their asses, without any actual proof, this is a circle jerk.
I sort of assume it's because most of us are at least vaguely concerned with the state of society. Out of selfishness if nothing else. And that we assume that a better-read society tends to lead to a better society. Maybe not 100% of the time, but more often than not, well-informed people exposed to many perspectives make better decisions than ignorant people. And reading tends to be correlated with the first group. Even as someone fairly suspicious of the whole "It's all going to hell!" thing, I find the concern fairly reasonable.
Call it parenting styles. I firmly believe that my children will be outside, running around the yard playing with their friends and then when it's time to come inside they're use their imagination to entertain themselves, be it reading, writing or making giant models out of Lego. All TV and books do is force the information into their little brains; when Jeff goes to slay the mighty and terrible dragon, there is no picturing the knight, no internal character development or internal thought on what the world around the character is like. TV forces children to see a narrow tunnel of a story, it forces them become an observer of the world that the plot revolves around; books make you an active participant of that world and force you to think of every little nuance that can affect a characters life and development. This all boils down to my kids having a better imagination than all those other brats. Like everything involved with the human body, imagination is something that needs to be exercised and pushed; without that use, it leads to atrophy and eventually the kids become just another cog in the machine. I've noticed that of all my friends who do or do not read; the ones who do are always the most creative, their wittier, more fun to be around and are generally happier*. Fine, the kids don't need to read. Hell, if my friends kids never pick up a book in their lives, that is completely their prerogative. I can guarantee that mine will and I can guarantee that they'll lead a life with a better imagination and hopefully, will lead better lives because of that. *Sure, not exactly scientific or anything and I really have no proof to back myself up but it's just a personal observation.
As someone said before, I'm not convinced this is new to this generation. Doesn't every generation seem to think the next one is full of lazy idiots who are going to run the world into the ground? And I don't think you have to read in order to be a productive member of society. I have a bunch of friends who never read, and they're doing quite well. Sure, they would be a little smarter and more knowledgeable if they read more, but so what? Contrary to what has been said so far, you're not doomed to be a ditch digger if you don't read. Off the top of my head, one friend of mine who rarely reads is a firefighter and a damn good photographer; that's better than me, and I read a fair bit. I think reading is important and I would love to see kids doing it more (which is why I'm pro Twilight). But, I'm not convinced there's there's an army of retarded people being raised in our schools who will never be able to amount to anything.
Being smart is hard, being stupid literally requires no effort. Fuck, you're BORN ignorant. I think one of the reasons reading is less popular is through advertising, news and the Internet, we are bombarded with information in tiny bits, thus reading an average novel seems like an insurmountable task. We have just been accustomed to receiving information at a breakneck pace, which has destroyed the initiative to patiently read and comprehend. I believe we are FAR more informed than we were 25 years ago, but the information we're presented with is less valuable, and has less impact on our actual lives. For example, I can tell you a lot about the personal lives of famous people, but not of elected officials or of favorite authors. We have less and less REAL knowledge of useful shit. So we are presented with tons of information, that is not complex, often against our will (do you read a billboard willfully?) and it has very little value, but it took very little effort to acquire. Besides all of that, where are the perceived benefits for reading a lot? For a kid in school, you can spend your time in the library or the weight room, and the guys doing the sweating and grunting were getting most of the pussy and accolades. In other words, they don't have pep rallies for the Chess Club. Also, books are very persuasive. They can be very unsettling to a prejudiced person. By that I mean, I read things like Sperm Wars, or Guns, Germs and Steel with an open enough mind to lend credibility to the author. I trusted the author knew more about the subject than I did. I strongly recommend both of those books, they changed the way I look at the world, in such a fashion that required no further work on my part. I read them, I believed them, and I incorporated their content into my personal perspective. On the other hand, if I, not knowing anything else about the author, read a book by Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, I can't truly say the same thing wouldn't happen. Think about it, if you saw a picture or read an article about how bad smoking was for your lungs, you'd be grossed out, but you'd still smoke. If you read a 400 page text about it specifically, you are far more informed, but more powerfully persuaded. To a lot of my friends who don't read, they don't bother because they have video games, the internet or other things to do with their time. It seems like they are also afraid of having their bubble burst and having a book force them to doubt pillars of their existence. Ignorance is bliss, remember?
Advanced apologies for yet another factless, opinion post, but this topic fascinates me. I think kids/people are without question reading and writing more now today than ever before, and I don't think stats are needed to back that up, based solely on the medium we are currently using to communicate. Does anyone's computer have 100% voice interface? 50%? Isn't Amazon one of the biggest sites in the world? The idiots who brag about not reading aren't talking to each other online. Granted, they are the ones who mis-use/rape the grammar/syntax rules we here hold dear, but are there any remotely popular websites that don't use proper sentence structure? A couple years ago I ventured onto that Perez Hilton fellow's site, and while the pictures/layout hurt my eyes, the bits I read were more than legible. Are books specifically being read less for leisure? Dunno, could be. The book stores seem busy most times I go. None of my friends read as many books as I do per year, but they do read them. My sister and her husband are a couple of the smartest, most successful people I know in my age range, and the last book I heard of either of them reading was The Secret. A while back, Philalawyer had a great post about how the internet is changing writing, and I believe one of his points was regarding the specialization of books. I think this could apply to readers, as well. Meaning the majority of people won't read anything that isn't on their computer screen until they get so into a subject that short bits of commentary won't satiate their interest. Like I say, it's interesting, and fuck if I know, but I definitely think that, overall, we're definitely progressing in knowledge and connected-ness, and this purrdy picture box with words is the biggest reason why. Oh, and for those saying this is the first generation to proudly be anti-intellectual...that's a bold claim when you consider the farther you go back in history, the more difficult it was for new ideas to be accepted.
It's come to this: http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/and-the-award-for-best-book-trailer-goes-to/ I thought that was pretty cool, and though I don't need a video trailer to interest me in a book, I think it'll get some of the visually inclined people to jumpstart their imagination.
Reading requires too much work. It won't be long before everybody is like the floating La-Z-Boy fatasses in WALL-E. The newspaper is dying, because people to throw facts into the wind and get their news from respectable two-faced liars and non-reporters like Perez Hilton and Matt Fucking Drudge. Everybody should subscribe to the newspaper. It's a start to getting poeple to actually use their brains when they get their information. Nowadays, we have people that are too lazy to talk, so they type messages back and forth, taking three times the length without expressing emotion. High-five.
Can't imbed this video (darn you College Humor!) but it's pretty spot on with this thread: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI0Zry_R4RQ&feature=PlayList&p=CADDB8A2413E27B3&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=22" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI0Zry_R ... 1&index=22</a>
I would imagine the majority of the voting this bloc does is more in the way of American Idol than American politics. I agree, we are collaborators, but we can't all be the architect. Somebody needs to dig the ditch, mix the cement, etc., but improving one's self is still a personal choice.
That's ego, I think, to say that that any subsequent generation is the "worst" or "least" or "most" of anything. The older someone gets, and the less time they have left, the more certain they need to be that the principles they've lived by were worthwhile. Things were done a certain way because it was the best way, plain and simple. When they see a shift in trends or ideas, it threatens that lovely little mental fortress they've built for themselves. The primacy of their mindset is questioned. It's destabilizing. The result is a typical and tired admonition of change. They go after things like literature, music, film, fashion and leisure habits, and build flimsy connections between a generation's modes of expression and the degeneration of its intellectual capacity. It's their way of saying, "Whatever. I don't care if I don't see what happens next. These people are the worst. It's all going down the toilet anyway. We were the last good ones." It's nothing new and it's never going to stop, because humans are pathetic that way. You'd think we'd have learned our lesson after the whole Sixties debacle. That should have made it quite clear that a generation's attitude in youth won't reflect its values in old age. Quite laughably to the contrary, in fact. But here we are. Really, no one needs to worry. I'm sure that, in due time, books or no books, we'll all turn out as cynical and judgmental and close-minded and self-assured and smarmy as that cocksucker Mark Bauerlein, and we'll give our kids the same pile of horseshit that people gave us, and things will stay pretty much the same. Why? Because...
Of course it's a personal choice. Why would we be mad if they were illiterate? That's why we're pissed. You have the advantage of more resources than 99% of humans and choose to shit on it. I'm not saying every person has to be splitting the atom, but you're doing humanity a disservice by taking ignorance over information. Unfortunately, you don't have to read to vote, aka fans of Sarah Palin.
I can understand the sentiment, but for me it's a mostly professional reason. A part of what I do is oversee the complaints for my business, including co-ordinating the internal and external dispute resolution schemes. These schemes are government mandated, free to consumers and funded by business. I would estimate that 90% of the complaints I have to deal with are because people can't be bothered reading their contracts or the correspondence we send them. This takes up a large chunk of my time, and we have to pay for the whole process. Our documents can't be made any more simple, which isn't the point as the consumers readily admit that they haven't even bothered trying to read them (the primary document is three pages in 11 point Arial font). We're not alone, either. I sit on a national board with others in my industry, and hear the same stories, verbatim, from them.
I'll admit I have no solid facts to back this up, but I feel like a lot of people don't read because no one read to them as a child. I had a bedtime story every night for years, and now I love books. It's the same with my sister. I also don't know a lot of people who DON'T read. Almost everyone around me is reading one thing or another, so I don't know where this stigma comes from about the generation. I mean, unless we are talking about the generation of people who are teenagers now (I'm in my 20s.)