Death By Distraction

An ad runs on television: music plays—some rehash of pseudo-Beatles tunes, presumably someone hitting two piano keys repeatedly; a couple is sitting on the beach reading a book on Kindle, holding the gadget in a very sterile manner; ad ends with assurance that one can read Kindle even if you’re sitting in the sun. The screen will not be affected. I turn to my husband with an obviously ironic look on my face: “Or you could just get an actual, physical book and you wouldn’t have to worry about screens and sun and light issues!’

Are we reading appropriately? Are we reading too fast? Are we bombarded with too much information and we frankly don’t know what to do with it? This seems to be the subject matter of Patrick Kingsley’s article in The Guardian titled “The art of slow reading.” In it, Kingsley points out the usual issues that surround us when it comes to absorbing information: inability to process information, impatience with reading anything for more than one minute, hyperlinking from one article to the next without ever finishing reading any of the articles, etc. This has been an issue for a while now. As a remedy, he suggests that we ought to employ method called “slow reading,” which has been used by many academics. He also tells us that the Internet is the culprit in this case.

As much as I agree with most of Kingsley’s points, I do think that we have a bigger problem than just engaging in speed reading, or no reading at all. Sure, we can take certain precautions so that we don’t fall into the trap of endless web surfing and moving from one article to the next without really retaining any information at all. We can turn off the Internet, or we can set a particular time only for checking our email and/or reading these articles. But what happens when we do that? We will find another manifestation of our restless behavior.

The issue here is that we have become incapable of living in the present. This creates anxiety and acedia, and Internet just happens to be one of the enablers of our restlessness. We are also incapable of being in solitude, being with ourselves just as we are. Engagement in solitude or prayer or contemplation will most likely bring up questions of existential nature and this scares us, tremendously.

Of course, I am not saying anything new in this case. But let us not create exterior methods, such as “slow reading” while our interior life is dying off. “Slow reading” will not change someone’s perception of life or art. The experience of art or beauty rests on our affirmation of being, rather than in formulas on how to read.