Reading

On Enlightenment and Discovery

image courtesy, Simon & Schuster Paraphrased and excerpted as usual … Thinking is vitally important, but the modern world does not let us … One of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, (the “consumer” of modern internet streams —mjb) is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for one to “make up one’s own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up their own mind at all. Instead, they inserts a packaged opinion into their mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. They then push a button and “play back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. They have performed acceptably without having had to think. ...

Scratch, scribble, mark and dog ear them!

Avoid long slogs

via PRH NZ Been listening to Joseph Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness in the little cracks of time in the day1 and as always being led to the sad and inevitable conclusion that we always fail to learn from what came before. It was as unreal as everything else—as the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on that account—but as to effectually lifting a little finger—oh, no. ...

Some things that struck me, about how I struggle with my reading.