States of Mind

Last week, I began reading the Winter Edition of Lapham's Quarterly called States of Mind.  As is the case for most of these wonderful editions, it has immediately fired all kinds of thoughts.

Last summer, I titled a post, Reading and Thinking.  In it I touched on a few of the things I had recently learned by reading, and made some other comments as I am wont to do.  After reading a few of the essays in States of Mind, the preamble by Lewis Lapham, an excerpt from Diane Ackerman's An Alchemy of Mind, and one from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, it strikes me as unfortunate, perhaps even, if I may be so sanguine to say, disconcerting, that the concept and execution of "reading" has changed so dramatically in the past few decades.

First, of course, we read less than previous generations, especially those that grew up without the great distractions of television and the internet.  The printed word was king for 600 years, breaking open the shackles that had hid the knowledge of the ages from the everyday man, providing a medium and a market for new ideas, exposing the hypocrisy of rules and taboos that were created by those seeking to maintain their power and control over the masses, and freeing the mind of so many who before were constrained by only what they could experience.  More than anything before, Gutenberg's press provided the imagination with an infinite source for creating new states of mind.

But more than that, why we read seems to have changed as well.  Where in the past, one went to the library, book store, or magazine rack to learn as well as for entertainment, to increase one's knowledge or to escape, if even for a little while, into a world created by the author's imagination, now we seem to read as much to confirm our opinions as to seek new information.  And, perhaps unbeknownst to us, our go to place for reading, the various sources of social media on the internet, have been programmed to direct us to opinions, sites and news that reflect our past clicks.

It is as if, when walking through the doors of a library or into a bookstore, your library card, or debit card were scanned for past borrows and purchases, and only those sections were now open for you to browse. As if, once a science fiction book borrowed or purchased, that is all you would be offered again.

What was conceived as a way to ease one's navigating the internet, cookies which track your previous queries and algorithms which predict where you might want to go based on where you already went, is now more often used to tempt you with the goods and services that someone with your profile might like, or to direct you to sites which share your previously espoused opinion, or present you with news that might influence and confirm how you might vote.

In short, where reading was once a personal experience, limited by one's own desire for entertainment or willingness to seek new sources of information, internet reading via social media vehicles is too often controlled by the unseen forces of a technology without a value system, or an advertiser in search of a sale, or an opinion manipulator with goals both insidious and unnamed.

I have always thought of reading as a way to improve oneself, promote self reflection, increase empathy, perhaps even make one a better human.  To create a state of mind that is free from the restrictions that make us turn towards destructive behaviors, individually or as a group.

When I engage in discussions with people, especially my dear wife Nora, about the obvious problems we see with the present direction of our leadership, I generally try to assuage her fears with the pendulum analogy.  Great progress and change is challenging, and threatening.  It should be no surprise that after 8 years of the first African American President, one with visions of real equality, racial, gender, marriage, etc, after 8 years of agreement that climate change is a real threat and that our nation needs to move away from fossil fuels, after 8 years of slow, steady growth after the near depression of 2008-10, after 8 years of the hard truth about the inequalities in our judicial and penal systems, in our boardrooms, and in our spending priorities, it is natural for the pendulum to swing back a bit.  

I tell her that our state of mind, while alarmed, must also be hopeful that the pendulum will soon slow in its current backwards path, and begin to swing back in a direction that reflects true Christian values if that is your choice, loving thy neighbor as thyself, turning the other cheek, helping the least among us, etc, or reflects the goals of a generation who believed in the message and visions of Kennedy and King.

In the meantime, I encourage those who might "read" this post to reconnect with your relationship with reading if you recall a pleasant one when young.  And, for those for whom that relationship did not flourish, consider trying again.

Create your own state of mind before one is created for you.