“I am proud that I don’t read books!”
Not reading books is different than to hate reading books
Kanye West, an American rapper and celebrity, said in an interview on the occasion of the release of his book, “I am not a book lover” and “I am proud that I don’t read books.” In the same days, Sam Bankman Farid, a former prodigy of the technology world, also told a reporter, “I think if you write a book, you’re screwed. You can say everything in a six-paragraph blog post.” Again, we can give examples of the annoying comments of these book-hating celebrities. What do these words mean? What results will such positions bring in the future? And why is reading still considered a virtue?
Last fall, when Kanye West fell out of the public eye, my friends and I often marveled at the latest shocking statements he made and passed around clips of his previous statements, which, compared to these new statements, were highly offensive. And they were suspicious. An example of such words was, “I am not a fan of books.” He said this in an interview during the publication of his book titled Thank You and Please. He further said, “I am proud that I don’t read books”. I think this is one of the most disturbing words he has ever said. West’s anti-Semitic and offensive words drew international criticism, which was a rightful reaction, but his anti-biblical stance is troubling in that it reveals both things about his personality and the self-righteous nature of today’s culture.
Throughout history, we have never had access to this volume of views, thoughts, and information. Much of it has fleeting appeal but is ultimately irrelevant and should not be confused with expertise, let alone wisdom. The public knows this and talks about it. Today, on the one hand, you can easily find out about anything and inform others, and on the other hand, success in one field can easily become a pseudo-reference in a thousand and one other fields. These two factors have given and mixed with the traditional tendency of Americans towards anti-intellectualism and celebrityism. If the decline of the humanities continues for a decade, we will be left with a superficial culture in which even the elite will consider the precious treasures of our best thinking to be worthless.
If anyone outdid Kanye West in the classy self-destruction that characterized the final days of 2022, it’s none other than former tech prodigy Sam Bankman Fried. 3-year-old Farid Bankman, in his self-introduction of September published on Sequoia Capital’s website, rushes to all kinds of literature and tells the reporter why he “never” reads books. He says,
“I am very pessimistic about books. I don’t want to say that no book is worth reading, but I don’t think it’s far from that. In my opinion, if you write a book, it means that you have messed up, you can say everything in a six-paragraph blog post.”
It’s a disturbing statement, and it’s just as rooted in ignorance and arrogance as West’s words, but it’s more disturbing because Bankmanfried is not a singer whose first album is called “College Dropout”. A seemingly serious man admired in the circles of power, both as a financially savvy and (for his much-publicized charity work and his public association with the “Effective Philanthropy” movement) 4 as a moral genius. The title of that self-introduction was: “Sam Bankmanfarid has a savior complex.” Maybe you should have too.”
It has been said for a long time, “Don’t play until three”. Unfortunately, I want to give a third example of a prominent bibliophile. In an article about the scandal in New York magazine, Sean McElwee, founder of the “Data for Progress” think tank, said, “According to [McElwee], books are stupid and only tell you what people want you to know.” I confess I have no idea what this means at all, let alone why it seems so profound to McCullough. McCullough, who is himself an effective philanthropist, met with Fried Bankman (who in 2020 spent about 40 million dollars on democratic movements and promised to donate an astonishing 1 billion dollars before 2024) and shortly after one of Them became his trusted adviser and, as David Friedlander writes, “taught him the best way to channel a river of cash.” “It’s cool to be a consultant to one of the richest people in the world before the age of 30,” McCullough told his colleagues.
“Cool” is one of the ways to describe the financial and political interventions of these young and confident men. Other terms such as “deep in ignorance,” “incompetent and malicious,” and “morally bankrupt” also come to mind. McCullough was scandalized shortly after his start, notably for fabricating erroneous polling data and even allegedly pressuring at least one staffer to break campaign contributions laws and participate in a sham donor scheme (a federal crime that Bankman Fried has also been charged with). All this happened at a time when Farid Bankman’s cryptocurrency scam was failing 6, and during this process, tens of billions of people’s money had perished.
It is one thing for someone not to read a book or not to read as much as he wants, and to dislike reading a book is another thing. The fact that someone strongly rejects reading shows a much more fundamental weakness in his character. As Kanye West said one day during a live performance (in a prophetic tone)
“I take my quotes from movies because I don’t read books, or for example… from real life and things like that, because one has to live real; talk to real people; get information; ask people questions; That sentence was something like ‘die like superheroes, otherwise you will live and become a slave’.”
It seems very smart to get your information from Benkman Farid’s six-paragraph ideal blog posts or from West’s favorite medium of movies and talking to people, but in reality, it’s about as stupid as someone deciding just to eat fast food.
Many books should not have been published, and writing is an exhausting process that is full of failures. But when a book achieves even partial success, it shows a level of concentration and editing (mastery of the topic and context, in addition to a lot of patience and a lot of revision) that nothing can match. Writing a book is an incredibly unbalanced process: a book that can be read in a few hours takes years to come to fruition. Its virtue is exactly that. The rare patience that the book requires from the reader (the few slow hours spent in deep concentration) is also a virtue. A reasonable question can be asked: Where exactly are these bibliophilic men in such a hurry? Even jokingly, you can give a logical answer to prison or anonymity and oblivion.
Towards the end of the novel Anna Karenina, Anna and her lover, Vronsky, are in self-imposed social exile in Italy, where they are met with a rhetorical lecture about the destructive superficiality of the “free-thinking” young men (or should we say, primitive rioters) who proliferated in those days and in “ Thoughts of denial were drowning.
Gulenishchev, Vronsky’s friend, says,
“The ancients were free-thinking men who were loaded with the ideas of religion, law, and morality, and only reached free-thinking through conflict and conflict. But today, a new type of free-thinkers has emerged who have grown up and the principles of morality and religion and the existence of authority have not even reached their ears.”
According to Tolstoy, the problem is that such young and ambitious men try to “learn by themselves because they are not idiots” and thus.
“instead of the classic works and the writings of theologians and tragedies and chronicles and the works of philosophers and all the intellectual works that come their way… They go to magazines.
This excerpt from Anna Karenina was sent to me by one of my X followers when I complained on the social network that even the most daring and talented young men of our time (they always have to be men, apparently) have a contemptuous view of conventional ways of learning. And although these young people, unlike the young people of Tolstoy’s time, believe that even if you bother to read a magazine, you are still screwed, they have one thing in common with the former freethinkers: a proud refusal to believe that the past has anything to offer them. These technology-soaked autodidacts (even West fell victim to the culture of finding a way out of all human mysteries through “engineering”), as opposed to the freethinkers who provoked Golnishchev’s criticism, now opt for a worldview in which, as Golnishchev puts it, “the ancient rites even They are not even worth discussing.”
Although the three dishonorable men I described here are extreme examples, it may not be an exaggeration to say that we are alienated and far away from the true wisdom and humility of a scholar who curbs ideological concepts like invincibility. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two of these three self-satisfied readers are in favor of the effective friendship movement. Also, effective friendship, when it exceeds the limit, becomes a kind of meaningless and calculating intellectual masturbation that does not even reach the level of a good novel.
When I was in my twenties and writing my first book (I know, I screwed up), I came across a quote that I can’t find the source of, but it went something like this: “You can fill a book with what I know, but you can fill a library with what I don’t know.” It is an interesting illustration and perhaps the most basic and practical justification for deep reading. Although correlation and causation are different, I believe that if we apply a simple test, we can prevent a lot of future trouble: anyone who offers insight and, at the same time, proudly proclaims that he hates reading shuts his eyes. Reject and set aside.
