“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”–Arthur Schopenhauer from his essay 'On Books and Writing'
Tuesday, 21 January 2025
“The art of *not* reading is a very important one."
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Even more true today than it was in his time, with the power of the internet and the massive amount of information (or misinformation) out there. Maybe AI will end up being useful in that regard, being able to trawl through massive amounts of data to just pick out what's most relevant to us, and truthful. In our evolutionary past we were generally stuck in the same place with not much changing day to day, so we are predisposed to grabbing onto any new event or information that comes our way. That served us well back then, but works against us now. Selective focus is required not to be pulled in too many directions. At the same time we can't retreat into the ivory tower and ignore what's happening around us. Therein lies the challenge.
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