“People in this country have had enough of experts.” This was apparently an acceptable rejoinder to the arguments put forth against Brexit by financial experts. As it turns out, the experts were not just being niggardly, little quibblers when they questioned the promises of immigration cuts and 350 million pound EU savings for National Health Service (NHS). This situation was however a rarity; experts are rarely lucky enough to be able to avail of such quick redemption.

Anti-intellectualism 

UK is not the only country to fall prey to deception by politicians. Across the world, in nation after nation, political mavericks are popping up and gaining popularity by flogging simplistic solutions, raising unrealistic expectations and resorting to outright deception. They have such scant respect for the intellect of their audience that they don’t even bother with fudging facts or misinterpreting data anymore. They lie through their teeth, secure in the knowledge that an audience with an average attention span of 8 seconds is unlikely to be able to connect the dots. And they couldn’t be more right. To an electorate that has lost the intellectual stamina to grapple with complexities, the quick solutions on offer are irresistible. If we can ban, fence, wall, bomb our way out of our problems, why grapple with the nuances, the consequences and that most tiresome of all arguments – ‘the long-term’!

And in the longstanding, time-honoured tradition of shooting the messenger, intellectuals and experts are in the line of fire for being party poopers. “Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and of intellect, intellectuals and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical and contemptible.”  I am no expert but if this is really the popular sentiment of the day, it would be safe to predict that mankind is not about to hit upon Utopia anytime soon.

The intellectuals didn’t invent the world or its complexity, they are merely holding up a light to it. Global warming and climate change is a real thing, as is globalization and global interdependence. And no amount of pouting and intellectual-shaming can change it.  If only enough people could see this.

Ignorance is Bliss

There is an eerie similarity between some of the current happenings and a cult classic published in 1953. The novel, Fahrenheit 451, describes a futuristic society where books are outlawed and book-burning is the order of the day. But the author of this classic, Ray Bradbury has often been quoted as saying that censorship is not the central theme of the book.; the real message of Fahrenheit 451 is the dangers of an illiterate society dumbed down by the mass media.

 In the world of Fahrenheit 451, suppression of books can be traced back to the people and not the government. People are not forced to stop reading books; they just lose interest in books over time as the culture around them becomes shallower, more bland and geared towards cheap thrills and instant gratification. Eventually “intellectualism” becomes a mark of shame and books, which promote critical thinking and allow intellect to blossom, are seen as a threat to social harmony. The desire to make everything simplistic and positive results in a self-imposed censorship, as complete and oppressive as anything ever planned by a totalitarian state.

Death of Deep Reading?

Philip Roth is one of those who believes in the death of the novel. The writer is pessimistic about books being able to survive the lure of the screens and thinks that sometime soon, serious readers will become a minority cult. “I think people will be reading them, but it’ll be a small group of people — maybe more people than now read Latin poetry, but somewhere in that range… It’s the print. That’s the problem. It’s the book. It’s the object itself. To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. Today it’s hard to find huge numbers of people, or large numbers of people or significant numbers of people who have those qualities.”

Personally, I find it hard to dispute this doomsday prophesy. Over the years, I have watched countless people lose their grip over reading and slip away into the world of television and internet-surfing. I know of lifelong readers who never pick up a book anymore and have probably lost the ability, at least temporarily, to read long and deep. I have seen newspaper readers make the switch to online news, losing the ability for critical thinking in the process.

Deep Reading as the antidote

Dear Reader, if you have managed to surmount the preceding 700 words and come this far, you are exactly the person the world needs right now.  Enjoy the online bounties but hold onto the printed book and drink deeply of it every day. By all means skim and scan the net for information, but don’t lose the mental endurance or contemplation that is accorded by reading the newspaper from end-to-end.  Proselytize, preach and bestow the good word unto those willing to give heed but especially unto the unwilling ones. If you are a parent or a teacher, brainwash the young ones in your care; don’t stop till you are certain that the impact will last a lifetime.

Deep reading is an antidote to the cult of ignorance that is currently being celebrated as true democracy. And under these adverse conditions, those of us who truly care about books need to stand our ground. Even if book lovers like us end up as just a small minority of freaks, we will still have managed to preserve a precious sliver of human history, probably the best there ever was.