I Can’t Read Anymore.

Becoming illiterate at an alarming pace.

I find it difficult to read. My eyes are fine. I haven’t suffered any sort of brain injury or started taking new medications. I just can’t seem to get invested in a novel the way I used to without much more effort than should be necessary.

My parents were big readers and reading was heavily encouraged for us. Regular trips to the library and bookstores were a highlight of my childhood. It was easily my favorite activity growing up.

I loved reading. I also loved the trappings of the places that housed books. Bookstores and libraries used to feel like they were a special place set apart from the regular world. My local library now doubles as a shelter for our zip codes loudest homeless people. Bookstores are now just Starbucks franchises that have a Colleen Hoover section.

It wasn’t always this way though. Not too long ago these places were still respected. There was something enjoyable about walking through the aisles and discovering new and interesting things. Something about the books flanking you physically added to the experience. While the internet can of course provide an infinitely larger amount of books and all other types of data, it can’t replicate the feeling of entering a physical space dedicated to physical books. Pulling something off the shelf. Feeling the weight. The smell of the paper. It’s something I always loved. Until I didn’t any more.

I read widely throughout childhood and into my twenties. While the pace slowed due to my life becoming more hectic with adulthood, I still carved out time to maintain that habit. Even if my time spent reading was reduced I felt that I still benefitted from it greatly.

Then I got a smartphone. I was late to that party by most accounts, but in late 2012 I got an iPhone and my relationship with books and reading shifted dramatically. I started watching a lot of video content, got sucked into rabbit holes and endless social media nonsense. I didn’t notice it at the time but I almost immediately stopped reading altogether. A lifelong habit had ended without it even occurring to me.

The idea of this Substack is largely to observe and report on the gradual loss of our dignity and humanity. While the list of ways in which this is happening is endless, this one small thing stands out to me as a very fundamentally important moment that took me years to even realize had happened.

I found reading rich and rewarding. I look back on my favorite books with a kind of reverence. I remember distinct passages and characters vividly from books I read two decades ago. I can barely manage to make myself pick up a book now.

I have time. I have the ability. I even have an urge to return to that practice of constantly working my way through something that interested me. So why does the screeching nonsense from my phone have more pull?

I know that the apps and services we use are designed to suck us into the ecosystem. Engineered meticulously to draw and keep our attention. Keep us strung out on micro dopamine hits to extract more data for ad revenue or metadata sales. I am disgusted by this. I also go right along with it. There will be more posts to come on the insidious way these things were designed.

I used to like to include classics in my reading lists. I would read all sorts of books but felt almost duty bound to familiarize myself with the western canon in some way. I think I also vainly wanted to be seen as the type of person who reads classics.

I picked up Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment a year ago, got about a chapter in and then set it down for six months. I tried again and made slightly more progress before once again setting it down.

The interesting thing is that in the six months I spent not reading this book, I had a more vivid memory of the one chapter I had read than of any of the trash I had been consuming in its place.

That one chapter had more resonance than six months worth of nodding at the latest op-ed written to tell me things I already believe and then congratulate me for being smart enough to believe them.

That one chapter stood out and was memorable. I can’t say the same for that list of the Fifty Greatest Lists ever made, which it turns out wasn’t really a list but actually an unnecessary slide show generated by a bot that pulled it from other, better lists.

One chapter six months ago was certainly more rewarding than the hour I spent rolling my eyes at the comment section of a YouTube video essay about a podcast I don’t even like.

If it had that kind of resonance, I really should continue. So I made it a goal to finish that book no matter how strongly I preferred distracting myself with garbage.

I have since picked Crime and Punishment back up and I am now more than halfway through. I will finish it and begin working on something else afterwards.

I need to get back in the habit of reading. I need even more to get away from the madness that is screen addiction. It may be the lamest of all addictions. At least junkies get to be high. My addiction just lets me roll my eyes a lot and feel superior or check out mentally while contributing nothing, learning nothing and remembering nothing.

I feel like the lab rat in one of those experiments where they give it a choice between cocaine infused water or a rewarding social life.

Time to start rejecting the digital cocaine and reclaiming our own minds. The ghouls sustaining this economy of attention are laying traps at all times and in all corners. To take back your attention and devote it to worthy things is to take back your mind and your humanity. I’ll let you know when I finish the book.