2024 Co-Vice Captain of the School, Ryan Mooney, reflects on the importance of reading books.
A popular online meme depicts George Orwell reacting with horror as he reads a book titled “2024”.
Although not as famous as Orwell, Neil Postman deserves a similar meme. His book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, warned us about a future in which the inundation of “entertainment” would undermine not only the prevalence of deep and detailed thought and discourse, but even our very ability to do it.
What links the two memes is that Postman wrote his book in 1985, in the pre-internet age. The future he foresaw was based merely on the expansion of the pervasive influence of television. As it turned out, the World Wide Web has brought us to a version of Postman’s future, but a version on steroids.
Marshall McLuhan, the renowned media theorist, famously asserted that “the medium is the message,” because the form through which we receive information shapes our perception of the world. And that was in the 1960s. The profound acceleration of that trend after the advent of the internet compels us to reflect on the importance of reading books in an age in which screens dominate our daily lives.
In a world saturated by the immediacy of social media and the ceaseless stream of notifications, the reading of books becomes a radical and necessary retreat to sanity. Books demand our sustained attention and contemplation. These qualities are increasingly rare in an era defined by distraction. Unlike digital content, which is usually consumed in superficial bursts, books invite us to slow down, to ponder, and to connect with ideas that transcend the fleeting moment. This depth of engagement is crucial not only for personal enrichment but also for maintaining a culture of critical thinking, a culture that Postman feared was in decline even in 1985.
In books we discover a unique ability to foster empathy and understanding. Postman lamented the erosion of public discourse and the rise of a culture more interested in entertaining “sound bites” than in meaningful dialogue. Books remain one of the last bastions of genuine human connection in a world increasingly mediated by screens. Books allow us to step into the lives of others, to see the world from perspectives very different from our own. This act of imaginative empathy is essential in a time of deepening social divides and verisimilitude, where algorithms just reinforce our biases, rather than challenge them.
If McLuhan was right that the medium shapes our perspectives, then we should all consider the cognitive impact of our information choices. Reading books requires a kind of mental discipline that is radically different from the passivity of scrolling digital feeds. It cultivates a capacity for sustained attention, critical analysis, and complex reasoning. These are not just academic skills, but tools for navigating a complex world. In contrast, the fragmented nature of digital content “glancing” can foster a kind of mental impatience and a reluctance to engage deeply with ideas that require more than a few moments of consideration. In this sense, books are not merely repositories of knowledge but also instruments for cultivating the kinds of intellects that used to be considered necessary for participating in a democracy.
To regularly read books in 2024 is to push back against a culture of normalised attention-deficit-disorder and to reclaim our agency as thoughtful, reflective people. It has become not merely an intellectual exercise but a cultural imperative. It is a call to engage deeply, think critically, and connect authentically in a world that constantly encourages us to do the opposite.
Ryan Mooney
2024 Co-Vice Captain of the School
