We are told that reading is good per se and children should be given every encouragement to do so but is this so? Reading can all too often dull the mind, easily leading to geekiness, introversion, passivity and - somewhat paradoxically - imaginatioon deficit and stupidity.
In a recent debate the great Burchill no less laid into Jamie Oliver and the most damning thing she could think to say about him was that he boasted that he had never read a book. According to Burchill this is the unfogiveable sin, Oliver is 'boring' and she wouldn't want to be stuck in a lift with him. Well I have watched Jamie on Naked Chef and he is anything but; very articulate actually and with a street smarts that most bookworms would gladly trade for their dusty tomes.
Not reading, claims Burchill in her autobiography I Told You I Was Right, "can screw you over in a major way". Perhaps this is why she hates Richard Branson - a self confessed academic duffer and dyslexic? On the Today prog Miss Julie claimed that dyslexia was just stupidity and an affliction of the middle classes. More likely it is a product of the stupid educational system that chooses perversely to teach children to read by pictures and guess work rather than the tried and tested phonics.
Whatever the case, book learning is no substitute for the school of expereince and university of life. It leads to unoriginality of thought, hagiography, worship of received wisdom, intellectual and moral sclerosis.
The written word has caused revolutions. Thanks to Marx millions of people have been slaughtered on the altar of a perverse and poisonous creed. Intellectuals on the whole are a nasty unpleasant lot. If you don't beleive this read a book by Paul Johnson, Intellectuals on the subject and see the damage they have done.
Reading can lead to intellectual laziness, a sort of letting other people do your thinking for you. The world is drowning in words, the printed matter is at critical mass but it doesn't solve anything. Our politicians lead us by the nose. Perhaps the educational book centred learning has actually set us up for intellectual and political slavery? Without books there would be no socialism. Put all the books written about socialism next to those on capitalism and you will see I am correct. The more you have to lie to convince people that one and one is three the more books you need to write. The obvious hardly needs stating. As a book seller said to me when I complained that all the books seemed to be written by lefties: "well perhaps conservatives don't feel the need to write books" End of.
Contradictory here? No. I have read lots of books but I am beginning to see I would be a lot more advanced in so many other areas not least financial if I had not spent so much time with my nose in books.
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Nico, it's not the reading of books that's the problem. As with all things in life, its the spirit in which it is done. How do you translate what you read, do you sift and think about it, do you have your own mind?
Books are just like listening to a person talk or reading on the internet. Or like watching TV! It's the sharing of ideas and information. The problem is, we are not taught to think for ourselves. We are always pressured to accept ideas since we are young. We are always told what to think and we are not taught to think, so we get lazy and don't filter and sift information through our common sense, our own spirits.
I would rather read a book than watch the stupid TV, it's a better exercise for your brain (and I'm female, so I need all the brain exercise I can get). I would rather read a news website than watch the news on TV. And I would much rather be out and about, doing practical hands-on things and learning from interacting with people than home alone reading a book, but there is a balance in everything. I once thought TV was satanic, and I suppose for some it can be, because they give it the power to be and they aren't individuals and are easily influenced and hypnotized.
Not that I have read that much about Karl Marx, but from the little I have read, he was a man of his time and his place. He saw suffering and thought about ways to end it. It is what people do with ideas that is good or evil, not necessarily the ideas themselves. People who want power and have big egos sometimes use the ideas and knowledge of others for base gain. Einstein unlocked the power of the hydrogen bomb ... it is not knowledge or ideas so much that is the enemy, it's what is done with them by others. Look at what they did to the simple words of Jesus. To some, reading those words brings a whole new Life. To others, an opportunity to exploit.
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