How ‘fast food culture’ influenced the way I read books.
A couple of months back I realized that I wasn’t reading enough books. Though the feeling wasn’t pleasant but I conveniently blamed it to a low phase in my life and I decided to start reading again. I started with a book Speculative Everything, half way through, I stopped reading it. And even worse, I could not recall what I read.
I thought there was something wrong with me.
As always, Google was my first resort to find out the problem. After reading an article Why can’t we read anymore? by Hugh McGuire I was convinced that dopamine was the culprit, it resulted in low attention span. It made total sense in my world, this behavior was everywhere around me. Whenever I got free time I wanted to see something and my phone always came to my rescue. While waiting for the signal to turn red, I would see everyone looking at their mobile phones, including me. I decided to do what Hugh did in a hope to change my reading habits. I stopped all kinds of notifications on my phone (Emails, WhatsApp) and even removed Facebook, Skype, Messenger, Twitter, apps from it. Reduced picking up my phone at the signal.
With these changes I hoped I will start enjoy reading and with this hope I picked up Shiddartha. Although I finished the book, but again, I could not recall half of it and didn’t enjoy this brilliant book. I was perplexed and furious at myself.
I wanted to find the problem hoping intellect would help me enjoy reading, because Google did not seem to have an answer to what was wrong with me, I started introspecting. After a couple of hours of introspection, I figured what seemed to be wrong with me and there it was….
I was not imagining!
Yes! I was not imagining. Earlier whenever I used to read, I used to create an image of ideas, characters, concepts …everything! I have often read books by authors describing landscapes of their respective countries but I never faced a challenge with creating an image in my mind. This image would construct as I read the book, which made reading enjoyable and the book stayed with me. Now, with the lack of imagination, the book did not stay with me.
I thought it was primarily due to visual overload in my environment, specially via digital media. There was always a visual, for any concept or idea, created by someone else. My brain did not have to put effort to create images. Everything was created by someone else, which seemed better than my thought (images in my mind), and I consumed it happily.
Everyday in the digital world I was consuming the bite size information like the way I consume fast food, to quickly satisfy my senses. Bite size information gave me a quick dose of dopamine, I was happy with the (information) drug and I quickly moved on for my next dose.
My brain did not feel the need to chew/digest on the information. The information was always created by someone else was served on a plate which was easy for me to digest. The moment I got some free time I was desperate to fill it with more information. My ability to cherish the break, pause, reduced.
There was no need for a pause — a pause to imagine, a pause to think, a pause to introspect, a pause to take the journey with the writer, a pause to cherish!
It seemed that the behavioral change which admires and desires for these quick bites, in form of food, information, advertisements, ideas, etc., had an impact on my imagination and creativity, which to me seemed much scarier than the fact that I was not enjoying reading anymore.
