The End of Reading?

I’m reading a book relating to my history. It’s 500+ pages long, demands at least a freshman-college reading vocabulary and proceeds with an assumption that the reader already has a basic grasp of the people and culture being elaborated upon. In other words, it’s tough going: I find I need to reread passages, compare what’s being said to what others have said, and I have to manage distractions if I’m to concentrate and comprehend.

Reading and writing fluency brought us out of the dark ages. It opened the door to a civilization in which new ideas could be shared; invention, innovation, social sciences, health science, and the philosophies and theologies were all opened to the literate public. It wasn’t always pretty, mind you, since literacy is on a more/less, not a yes/no axis. Literacy that allows individuals to engage in complex issues like mathematics, physics, chemistry, as well as theology, philosophy, and related social disciplines results from hard work and disciplined engagement.

You’d think that general literacy would be both cumulative and progressive, but that’s not a given. Various studies have concluded that literacy in the USA, for instance, has been waning in recent generations, and that when artificial intelligence reaches its inevitable maturity, it will no longer be knowledge supported by literacy that will guide our decisions and opinions. Picking and choosing among expedient, quick, undemanding alternatives will replace judgments made in the light of human compassion, empathy, love, the qualities that make the human experience of living worthwhile.

I’ve been struck by research into the pleasure/reward science that demonstrates how stimulation of the pleasure circuits in the brain so easily becomes super addictive in very little time. Rats were given a pleasure stimulus via electrodes every time they pressed a lever. Pressing that lever repeatedly displaced everything else: sex, drink, food. Had they not been removed from the experiment, the rats would have starved to death. Similar experiments with human volunteers have produced similar results.

We have a foretaste of AI as a “Skinner Box” in the social media’s ability to keep us scrolling, chasing that pleasure reward that can only be found by endlessly flipping through posts. Like the experimental rat, what is missed—while the focus is on chasing pleasure—can be critical. No young person is likely to read and study A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking if it competes for time with the effortless browsing on Tik-Tok.

The internet is full of ads for software that turns text into speech, so that reading is no longer necessary; you can listen to the text being read aloud while you cook dinner, drive to work, assemble whatzits in a factory. But understanding the text requires the same level of literacy whether it’s read by you, or to you. That plus the obvious problem of no opportunity to underline, reread, check with references renders the text to speech idea absurd… while adding another chapter to the decline-of-literacy story.

Mennonite Preacher Anslo and Wife - Rembrandt van Rijn

To read T.D. Regehr’s Mennonites in Canada: 1939-1970 cover to cover will require about 15 hours of concentrated reading. (I read material like this at about 250 words-per-minute on average.) I’ve already learned something about my heritage after reading the first 30 pages; could I have done without these few epiphanies? Of course. We have choices galore, and I could possibly have chosen to read, read, read about astronomy. Or I could have spent the 15 hours watching sports and sports commentary on streaming  TV or feeding toonie after toonie into the VLT at the local bar. Not much literacy required there.

NAICA

gg.epp41@gmail.com

Our Gold and Silver Days

 

AI generated image

Celtic Thunder does a deeply nostalgic song whose chorus goes something like: “Sing me the songs of our gold and silver days, days filled with innocence and light. Not a penny to our name, we were happy just the same, in our gold and silver days.” (2024 5 Million Community Video Final 720P (Horizontal)).

The “good old days” sensibility can be illustrated in any number of ways. An illogical argument that a dollar could buy so much more “then,” than it does “now” seems like a “good old thing,” for instance… if we neglect inflation.

It may well be a non-negotiable characteristic of being human, namely that we end up comparing our present to our past unfavourably. Aging provides an obvious case in point. We pick out certain features of our past and give them a “gold and silver” sheen, then compare them to the worst of our present.

There are those among us who understand the difference between an objective understanding of the past and nostalgia. We call them historians, and their work allows them to see the earth and all life on it engaged in a constantly evolving process. Unfortunately, most of us are too bound up in the frenzy of daily life to allow for that kind of attention to the “hows and whys” of our being and doing. So our analyses of what’s good and what’s bad in the world are simple, subjective.

And so we come to the downside of a “gold and silver” assessment of the past, evidenced in how easily we conclude that “it’s getting worse and worse,” and someone, or some ones, are to blame. And the obvious targets must be the institutions we can name: World Health Organization, NATO, the Liberal, Democratic or Conservative Party, the Muslim religion, Carney, the pope or the ones we can’t name like the Deep State, Antifa, the  Woke, or whatever new conspiracy theory is floated on social media.

Mind you, The Calgary Stampede is now on, a reenactment of a bygone age complete with costuming. For some, there’s pleasure in the spectacle of men and women doing competitively what were work-a-day activities in “the good old days.” None of the spectacles there are reminiscent of my olden days, and I’m more bound to see the entire show as a celebration of conquest, most like the spectacle of the Roman gladiatorial arena. It could be argued that this is not dissimilar to Professional Sports, where the zero-sum, victor vs. vanquished event whets something desirable in us. Seems it’s normal in human nature to live in the competitive world vicariously, if not literally.[i]

I guess this is a plea to all of us to balance our nostalgia with our knowledge of history, of the world, of our communities and of ourselves.

The most ubiquitous of words found in nostalgia might be home. I learned in an Art Aesthetics class long ago why it is that landscapes with high mountains and dark clouds, with a lighted cottage with smoke drifting up lazily find such appeal. Home is about safety, comfort, predictability and love. So nostalgically wished for in eras of rapid social change.  

 

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[i][i] Vicariously means “experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another.” – Merriam-Webster.  Sports watching allows an observer to celebrate a victory to which he made no contribution. 

Have we elected a liberal Liberal?

 

Mark Carney continues to enjoy majority approval in the Canadian public. He’s got a great smile and projects an amiable presence. His governorship of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England probably taught him that people respond well to even arbitrary decisiveness if it comes with a demeanour that projects wisdom and good will. Doctors and nurses pass or fail on bedside manner more than on their credentials, I’m told.

Our Prime Minister heads a Liberal government, but I’ve become less certain that he thinks and acts liberally by the common definitions of that word. Liberal Arts Education for instance, aspires to produce citizens who are broadly knowledgeable, tolerant of differences, competent readers, dialoguers, and community minded (as opposed to the current drive to make education more focused on specific, employment areas of engagement… Science, technology, engineering and mathematics: STEM.) Not surprising given the breakneck pace at which technology is advancing.

Here are a few of the areas in which Carney’s choices make me wonder about his liberality:

1.      His stated support for the US actions in Iran,

2.      His push to double Canada’s military capability,

3.      His appeasement of Alberta separatism by adding another pipeline,

4.      His reduction of environmental assessments in favour of industrial expediency,

5.      His costly drive to make Canada an AI leader.

I can’t predict whether Carney’s decidedly financial/industrial focus will improve life in Canada. To me, it feels like Canada is currently operating as a corporation with Carney as CEO. And I think back to great Liberal prime ministers like Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau who focused more on peace making and individual human rights and citizen welfare than we’re seeing today. And I look back at a Conservative prime minister in William Lyon Mackenzie King, who made it possible for over 20,000 refugees from Soviet tyranny to resettle in Canada.  

Being a pacifist, I obviously am appalled that we’re escalating our debt to have a dozen submarines, thirty or so jet fighters, at a cost that would build thousands of homes. The most we can do in this area, China, Russia, the USA could turn to rubble in a weekend. The USA’s “Peace through Strength” ideal has proven so often to fail: Vietnam, Afghanistan and now Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. Peace through friendship, dialogue and justice is the true liberal outlook.

We are a democracy. One citizen, one vote is a consequence of the liberalization of governance and, as far as I know, the best defense against tyranny. Unfortunately our contribution to our democracy too often ends at the voting booth, where we choose parties, not people mostly. I’m going to write to Carney stating my concerns about the five points. My letter will go into a big basket where with AI’s help, it will be sorted as relevant or irrelevant and via AI again, a letter will be generated to thank me for my concerns and that the Prime Minister takes my concerns very seriously. But I’ll send it anyway. A million such protests would make a difference. 

AFTERWORD: Estimated cost of 12 submarines, $24,000,000,000 (24 billion) to purchase and an equal amount to operate for their lifetime. Gripen jets have been sold for $90,000,000 (90 million each flyaway cost) so total purchase package equals $26,550,000,000 which at ca. $300,000 per home building cost, would build 88,500 homes. The per capita cost to Canadians is $663.75 for an investment that brings no profit, but requires immense cost in maintenance and operating after purchase. Not to mention interest on the borrowed billions. 

NAICA     gg.epp41@gmail.com