Piskorski: Counts not reading

The problem of not reading has many dimensions. And no 1 is completely free of him. He besides struggles with him in a way, though he tries to fight.

The question is not a trivial matter. It disturbs us to see the reality and to see the conclusion, and it frequently creates conflicts and misunderstandings. In the folk dimension, our non-reading shows statistics, even though the yearly investigation conducted by the National Library. The last, concerning the years 2021-2022, shows that only 38% of Poles declare reading at least 1 book a year.

We do not know how credible these declarations are – after all, frequently the respondents want to look better in the eyes of the pollster. We besides do not know what they may have read, although, judging by the expenditures of peculiar types of literature, we can guess that they were not any sophisticated work or technological or even popular technological analysis. Printed newspapers read mainly people in the 60+ age group, or pensioners. Young people are limited to social media. Their ability to concentrate shrunk for a fewer minutes, which illustrates TikTok's triumph over YouTube.

On popular websites, readers are increasingly encouraged to know that reading the text will take only 2 minutes. The statistic of their visits show clearly: 1 must briefly, passwordly, without overloading the viewer's eyes and mind. Do you inactive wonder at the results of the unreading people's choices? Can a rational choice be made by individual who not only indulges in blissful non-reading, but besides suffers from monstrous functional illiteracy, and whose lexical resource is limited to unexplored emoticons in communicators and social media?

However, not reading has another equally depressing dimension. The unreaders are those who write, from whom we might anticipate them to be to us, straying in the thick of the world, lanterns, and guides. I am not referring to a political class whose level is long closer to the level of the unreading people (or to the manifestation of the democratic character of not reading in which the unreaders represent specified as them?), but to experts, analysts and commentators.

I do not mention journalists, due to the fact that the vast majority of them not reading has made their life a model long ago. So we have experts from everything in mainstream media who have not reached for the widely available positions on the problem they are discussing. Yes, there are times erstwhile 1 of them has any intuition, but the theoretical and factographic sub-building is lacking. Therefore, we read and see people who share their sentiments and sentiments with us, who look at the planet through the prism of whom they like and who they cannot endure.

However, dear Readers have a legitimate right to believe that they do not belong to any of the above groups. This does not mean that the problem of not reading, in a somewhat different dimension, besides does not apply to the narrow circles of intellectual counter-relationship, which seeks to present alternate viewpoints in tiny spaces of free speech, which we inactive have in the era of omnipresent censorship. How many times have we found ourselves commenting on texts and speeches we have not heard personally? That we give a devastating criticism to any author simply due to the fact that another author does not like it, or that there is simply a fixed stereotype that makes it impossible for individual to scope for books or articles? Yeah, this condition is besides large in circles we wouldn't have suspected. There are texts and statements about books or articles that no 1 has read. No 1 refers to their content. The author is by definition “bad”, “not ours”, so why waste time reading his sweats? We already know everything. This is besides 1 of the varieties of not reading.

I realize that reading is time consuming, sometimes difficult, and boring. We don't always have time and desire for it, sometimes we have adequate of someone's opinion, a relationship. The problem arises erstwhile this opinion or review is written by individual who is besides immersed in not reading. Meanwhile, silence should be an inherent companion of not reading. To refrain from commenting on ideas, concepts, viewpoints that we just don't know. due to the fact that we didn't have time, or their author is on our index. In short: reading and rational discussion, or not reading and silence. How much better and wiser it would be for us to live in these hard times.

Mateusz Piskorski

Think Poland, No. 3-4 (15-22.01.2023)