I will, in cases of frustration (or hell, whenever I really feel like it.) Remember that this thread did not start out in GD. If the occasional “adult word” turns people away from my argument, well sir, that’s their problem for being vaporish.
Besides which, I believe (I’m not going to go back through chapter and verse of this thread) I only used profanity in what, two posts? The rest have been cleanly argued, with nary a “fuckstick.”
While from one perspective the decrease in reading for pleasure is lamentable, from another it is just a natural increase in efficiency. To take the example given earlier of the victorians memorizing long passages and doing long division in their head, today doing either would be a waste of time since a matchbook sized memory stick (1 gb) can hold 5,000 books and a graphing calculator can do arithmetic (and even algebra) far faster and more accurately than a human.
Similarly, the decline of morse code might be seen as lamentable in some circles (HAM radio operators) but from another perspective the loss is just the natural progression to more efficient means of communication.
With regard to literary novels read for pleasure, a novel might be seen to have two purposes: to entertain, and to edify. Since other areas have seen great increases in efficiency due to specialization, it shouldn’t be suprising that the same effect occurs with novels. Rather than reading a novel which accomplishes both objectives at an adequate level, in the same time period you could play a video game (which is very entertaining but has little edification value) and read an informative book or collection of philosophical essays (which is very edifying but not as entertaining as reading a novel). Novels are losing out to other media because it is now possible to get entertainment and information in far more concentrated forms than are available in traditional literature.
Looking at the issue in this light, when people say that they “don’t have the time” to read, they don’t mean that they literally couldn’t make time for reading, but rather that the opportunity cost of reading is too high; that is, the time they would spend reading would cut down on the time available for more ‘entertainment dense’ or ‘edification dense’ activities.
Of course, the amount of entertainment or edification involved in an activity varies greatly among individuals. I stopped playing piano because I didn’t think the time commitment involved justified the enjoyment I got from it, but I have a friend who practices for hours a day. Is my friend stupid for playing piano when he could just buy cds of the songs, or am I uncultured for not playing piano? Neither; he simply gets more enjoyment out of the activity, and so the time used is worth it for him. We shouldn’t be so quick to attach universal value to our subjective tastes.
Another example: I have read the first half of Foucault’s Pendulum about three times, because I only read it on airplanes, and on each trip I can only get about halfway through. The next time I fly, however, I’ve forgotten what I’ve read, and so I can’t just pick it up in the middle. You may wonder why I don’t just read the rest at home, and the answer is that the time commitment once again just isn’t worth it. It’s a great book, but in terms of entertainment value it can’t compare to video games or the internet, and in terms of stimulating thought I’ve found that Umberto Eco’s essays (as just one example) are far more thought provoking. And so, because it excels at neither, Foucault’s Pendulum languishes in my suitcase until the next flight.
Well said, Pyry.
Speaking of vulgar language:
Well, I never!
Something that doesn’t actually exist, or never actually happened, cannot be lamentable.
So far, no evidence of any kind has been presented to establish that there has been a decline in literacy or in the frequency of reading for pleasure.
This may be true, but how do we know all these people actually read those literary classics after purchasing them? I mean, they might read a few pages, but to be honest, the works of Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Faulkner et al. can be a bit…tedious when you grew up reading TV Guide, Cosmo, cheap romance novels or Dean Koontz.
Not saying you’re wrong, but i have always wondered about this.
If there isn’t any decline in reading for pleasure, that’s great. However, even if there is a decline it doesn’t necessarily mean that there is any increase in “empty-headedness”, since people may have shifted to other sources of mental excercise.