Discernment: How to Read Wisely
A defense for slow and selective reading in a world that offers everything.
Recently, I spent some time with a two-year-old. It was fascinating to watch him absorb the world. He was so attuned to language, to body language, to intent behind gestures. Adult communication was a smorgasbord of expression. He intuited his need to catch up because otherwise his needs and wants were not going to be met. He was learning furiously, desperately, right up until the point where he conked out for the night.
Mammals take a long time to reach maturity. They have to be nurtured.
In an information economy, it feels like “readiness” or “grown-up-ness” keeps getting prolonged. In the Dark Ages, you were practically middle-aged at sixteen. Today, people in their early thirties are writing articles about “adulting.”
In our information age, information continues to pile up. This makes knowing things harder, in some sense.
Let me explain. Let’s very generously estimate that a human being can read 7,000 books a year. If you’re an Orthodox Jew, you don’t really have to worry. You have the Talmud, the Torah, and rabbinical commentaries, and maybe some contemporary stuff. If you’re a scholar in the Renaissance, you probably have Aristotle and Livy and some others who precede you. Now, though, we have access to cultural content from many eras, cultures. Also, the fact that we’re less chauvinistic means that we’re rightfully trying to be inclusive with our absorption. This makes establishing a Literary Canon hard. Of course, it’s worth asking the question if it’s valuable at all. Regardless, it makes focusing our attention hard. How do we work to not be overwhelmed by choice?
It can and has been argued that a sign of ease in the information age is not knowing information, it’s knowing how to procure information. I would add to that: More and more crucially, mental and emotional well-being will depend on knowing how to sift and value information.
But as the two-year-old showed, we are wired for accumulation. It’s why some people question me when I defend my choice to read as few articles as I can.
Resist, I say! It’s okay to declare — I’m pausing my acquisition for a time. I will return to it at a later date. That is a sign of maturity.
Written by Raghav Rao
Illustration by Sophie Lucido Johnson
Office of Modern Composition is a Chicago-based writing studio that both makes compositions and fosters composers. We offer one-on-one coaching for writers and also take on commissions for things you need to have written. We also offer free events like our in-person and online co-writes.
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