Open-minded, People

On occasion we hear someone say something along the lines of “If only more people were open-minded!”

I have said something along those lines occasionally myself.

It is common to equate open-mindedness with intelligence.
Though intelligence can come in many forms (for more on this, see the work of fellow Pennsylvanian Howard Gardner), it is usually associated with logical and linguistic intelligences because that is what most academic institutions bias toward and measure. Those, however, who are strong logically and linguistically are not necessarily the most open-minded. Agree so far?

Another thing we’ll hear people say every once in a while… “People don’t read anymore!”

Usually what is meant is that “People don’t read the books I am reading and that is frustrating because then I can’t easily presume that others will be able to talk about the books I am interested in discussing with them.” That feels sad.

Also assumed is that there was a time when people DID read more often. Depending on what people we are referring to and how we define the word “often” — it might be accurate to agree. People did used to read more often.

Certain people did read certain books more often in the past. I won’t dive deep into the statistics (though this essay in the New Yorker does), but it appears that television and the internet are definite competitors for time that was spent previously (according to survey data) reading books. Did you need to know the data to learn that the Internet and TV are distracting?

The world’s population in absolute numbers has increased by the billions over the course of the last hundred years. Literacy as a percentage has also increased significantly over the past century. So by that count, we actually have MORE readers globally than we ever did before.

You’ll notice, if you clicked the link to the New Yorker article, that most of the studies are focused on Americans. Perhaps if the studies were focused on East Asia (whose adult literacy rate has skyrocketed in the past 50+ years), then the data would tell a very different story. Perhaps if the definition of “literacy” were inclusive of anything we read (including but not limited to books, advertisements, essays and articles in print or online, snail mail and email, nutrition information on cereal boxes), we would get a different picture. Opening our minds wider still, perhaps if we defined literacy as “the skills necessary to live and work in society” (as is done here), then we would no longer bemoan the decline in the reading of books for mere pleasure.

There are many stories to tell, and the claim that ‘people don’t read anymore’ is only one of those stories. It’s a story we ought to question further.

One question is (to look at it from still another angle), how did the habit of reading books for leisure start and how do things look in relation to that now? In general, it is agreed that the “invention” of the novel in the 19th century (that is, the 1800’s) was related to a larger trend of there being an increase in upper middle class women having more free time to use as they pleased, and novels were one technology fitting that need. Since that time, more women have entered the workforce both as a response to a desire for women to have equal say in larger economic and geopolitical decision-making processes and as a response to the facts of increasing costs of living (which are debatably necessary) and wage stagnation (which is not). Women were the primary leisure readers then, hundreds of years ago, and they still are. With more women working though, less women today are reading for pleasure. Question answered.

Another question, Is reading books for fun something that’s relevant for living and working in society today? Depends on what you define life to be. If you have attained a certain financial security and lack a certain existential anxiety, such that you are able to relax in a chair and read a book “just for fun” — then that’s living! If you choose to read a book that gives you a thrill or teaches you about a world you don’t have access to (like the life of a kid growing up in Gowanus Brooklyn in the 1970s, as I’m reading about now), then that’s relevant. If you don’t have time and don’t enjoy reading, and your job doesn’t require you to talk about or read long-form novels, then it’s understandable we might define “literacy” in a broader way now. Because reading books for fun is not relevant for everybody living and working in society today.

One very important (and increasingly recognized) set of skills from a literacy standpoint that older generations should be concerned about teaching themselves and their younger generations is what a Sydney-based strategy firm called “enterprise skills” of which, the Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe acknowledged, jobs of the future will demand 70% more than jobs of the past (as you’ll see if you clicked that particular link above where I was talking about opening our minds about definitions of literacy). We’re talking about transferable skills that help people be “enterprising so they can navigate complex careers across a range of industries and professions. [These transferable ‘enterprise skills’] include problem solving, financial literacy, digital literacy, teamwork, creativity and communications.”

That is why — although I grew up a book nerd, studied literature and history in undergrad and started investigating late Roman /early European cultural history in grad school, then taught high schoolers in NYC math, reading, and writing skills to improve their test scores — nowadays, I serve primarily as an instructor (both one-on-one and in groups) of career skills, including creative problem solving, communications, and how to build a network of people around you who can support your long-term journey. I teach career skills because that’s what by most measures the world needs.

What’s funny though is that today among working professionals in tech, in general the primary threat to future success is not technological advancement or fluency in communication. Most of the best of them are super curious (they love learning), are focused and organized (they’ve read all the best self-help books), have prestigious degrees and are working at companies that are carrying the stock market forward (successful academically and economically) … and yet, the threat to their future success is not an improvement of “enterprise skills”. The threat for them is burnout. It becomes, when you have succeeded thus far in your life by operating a certain way, d*mn near impossible to stop, switch, and operate differently. The reward centers in your brain have carved a path too deep toward productivity and toward “success” (as the dominant political-economic status quo has defined it).

Addiction to work is insidious, and too few are trained to help those who are (addicted) to recover (fully). We’re talking about super-intelligent, highly literate, very successful professional people who have forgotten how to have fun (on the regular), much less read a book for leisure. These bad habits are destroying people’s lives.

Social media / smartphone addiction is partly to blame. Add that to the distractions of television and the internet more generally (distractions from book-reading, that is).

We might imagine a Rehab Center where all electronic devices are forbidden, and all those in recovery are forced to read Jane Austen novels instead (or Charles Dickens). Wouldn’t that be funny?

OR, opening our minds still wider, perhaps that is exactly what we are seeing happen already, thought it’s not yet institutionalized: Self-imposed rehab through the acquisition of opportunities that give one a greater connection to other people and to the land. Another sort of literacy altogether! Tech professionals taking sabbaticals to travel the world (pre-COVID) or using resources to purchase a farm or invest in a hobby like surfing, kayaking, or rock-climbing or resting as resistance #self-care. Tech professionals reading books about “doing nothing” or “eliminating distraction” or “atomic habits” in order to increase attention spans and achieve not only those goals encouraged by societal pressure or well-intentioned bosses, but goals of their choosing. Ambitious professionals realizing that the greatest risk to their future well-being is … their own ambition. Time to rest and recover.

Once upon a time, before 1820 in Europe/America (and yet also perhaps even in parts of the world today), there were those who didn’t read books and didn’t need to… They knew how to have fun already. They celebrated life with end of year carnivals, and they took time between chopping wood or harvesting wheat to talk with their families and neighbors. They weren’t worried about “the world” measuring their life as successful in relation to productivity, etc. They were focused casually and intently on finding meaning in a life enjoyed while it’s lived. They read the signs given in the skies about the coming weather, and they adjusted plans accordingly. They read the expressions in friend’s faces and understood to an extent what was left unsaid. They read the room when at a party and knew that now was not the time to talk about “work” or to talk about books. Now was the time for dancing! They knew how to have fun.

Having fun today for us can come in infinite shapes and sizes. Each of you reading know intuitively if not explicitly what I mean.

That said, there are risks: Sometimes games, designed by those critically informed by behavioral psychology, incentivize us to play too long! Sometimes books, written by those ignorant of changing times, are so long they become boring. Sometimes we are simply not taking ownership for the power we have to choose when and how we have fun! It takes balance.

If you’re having trouble respecting how others might have fun, and you’re wishing you had the drive and determination to read through the entirety of a novel but instead you find yourself just wanting to doodle, maybe open your mind and try something different. Looked at another way, maybe doodling around with a neighbor is what your mind wanted you to do all along.

Have fun, people! Open your mind.