I work in a library and I fear you are right. The kind of reading most people do (at least at my library) is just a hair's breath better than watching telly.
Books should be outlawed to prevent being educated beyond intelligence ending in embarrassing podcaster failures.
It all started with Cliffs Notes. After that everybody got lazy and it all turned to click bait.
How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler & Charles Van Dorn, revised 1972 isn't all that bad of a reference. Some might find the suggestion that they don't know how to read a book insulting.
The comment about contempory the number of writers and authors born 1980s having any literary influence on that generation with a despairingly desperate desire to change the world can name few.
As for the po white boy having the Protestant work ethic where hard work has its own reward not getting nickel for every page in a book he has read just might be a reason to live another day. That's something to sort out for each.
I've come to learn some important things about America's past that I never knew, for example it remained thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, and scientifically decentralized system with variability in each of those spheres and more, straight through the 1930s and then phased our of that after WW2, with the big leaps being taken toward centralization happening in the latter 1970s and early 1980s. But much had been done by then, media (all kinds) and education were among the first movers (maybe necessarily so for the rest to happen?), for example, I've come across simply irrefutable evidence that the USA didnt enter into a so called "knowledge economy" in the 70s/80/90s, whereas before we were "non knowledge economy" (lol, I didnt know what to right there), the USA was a scientifically and technically advanced economy and society, the higher education system was constructed after WW2 from the consolidation and expansion of the Old Republic's variegated and diversified system of systems.
When they report 1930s education levels they exclude so many schools, lol, it may be that MOST scientists and engineers went to places that arent included. I saw other things too, Industry, Government, Banking/Finance, and more were all quite integrated nationally but also all set up to be decentralized and while being integrated, they still retained a limited but still substantial space for policy variability; that along with the fact that our two parties used to be decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties all came together to generate -- maybe not everywhere but in many cases, at least -- vibrant communities.
But then we deeply centralized and deeply de-democratized and not only eliminated policy variability but also indoctrinated many people into believing that any variability at is crazy. For hundreds if years (and not just in the USA either!) many plans in many places would emerge about many things, and in many of them would work. And theres other things, the centralization and homogenous of the Academe has eliminated so many things, we no longer have some thing for most people, and thats not so called liberals fault, so called conservatives did it first before them. There are many smart people who would interested in reading intellectual things, but almost all choices have been eliminated, and not through natural outcomes, its contrived. But all the aforementioned centralization go together, our deeply centralized system has darn near the whole species on lockdown
Hello Mr. Pohl, I've been *reading* your gripping book, The Years of Silence.
I work in a library and I fear you are right. The kind of reading most people do (at least at my library) is just a hair's breath better than watching telly.
Dear Men of Leisure:
Books should be outlawed to prevent being educated beyond intelligence ending in embarrassing podcaster failures.
It all started with Cliffs Notes. After that everybody got lazy and it all turned to click bait.
How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler & Charles Van Dorn, revised 1972 isn't all that bad of a reference. Some might find the suggestion that they don't know how to read a book insulting.
The comment about contempory the number of writers and authors born 1980s having any literary influence on that generation with a despairingly desperate desire to change the world can name few.
As for the po white boy having the Protestant work ethic where hard work has its own reward not getting nickel for every page in a book he has read just might be a reason to live another day. That's something to sort out for each.
I've come to learn some important things about America's past that I never knew, for example it remained thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, and scientifically decentralized system with variability in each of those spheres and more, straight through the 1930s and then phased our of that after WW2, with the big leaps being taken toward centralization happening in the latter 1970s and early 1980s. But much had been done by then, media (all kinds) and education were among the first movers (maybe necessarily so for the rest to happen?), for example, I've come across simply irrefutable evidence that the USA didnt enter into a so called "knowledge economy" in the 70s/80/90s, whereas before we were "non knowledge economy" (lol, I didnt know what to right there), the USA was a scientifically and technically advanced economy and society, the higher education system was constructed after WW2 from the consolidation and expansion of the Old Republic's variegated and diversified system of systems.
When they report 1930s education levels they exclude so many schools, lol, it may be that MOST scientists and engineers went to places that arent included. I saw other things too, Industry, Government, Banking/Finance, and more were all quite integrated nationally but also all set up to be decentralized and while being integrated, they still retained a limited but still substantial space for policy variability; that along with the fact that our two parties used to be decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties all came together to generate -- maybe not everywhere but in many cases, at least -- vibrant communities.
But then we deeply centralized and deeply de-democratized and not only eliminated policy variability but also indoctrinated many people into believing that any variability at is crazy. For hundreds if years (and not just in the USA either!) many plans in many places would emerge about many things, and in many of them would work. And theres other things, the centralization and homogenous of the Academe has eliminated so many things, we no longer have some thing for most people, and thats not so called liberals fault, so called conservatives did it first before them. There are many smart people who would interested in reading intellectual things, but almost all choices have been eliminated, and not through natural outcomes, its contrived. But all the aforementioned centralization go together, our deeply centralized system has darn near the whole species on lockdown
Why don’t you monetize your Substack, fool?
You’re an interesting writer and I would be happy too support you.