On January 20, 2025, a convicted felon became the 47th President of the United States. I’ve seen many shake their head in disbelief, wondering how we got here. I look back to the mid 1800s and partially lay the blame on the telegraph.
In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote:
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate… We are eager to tunnel under the atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that of Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”
I wonder what Thoreau would have thought about Jack Dorsey’s inaugural tweet, “just setting up my twttr” ?
Decontextualized information, which I will shorten to the more colloquial, bullshit, is how we got here. Now we must rebel and reading is rebellion. Reading books, with actual context, and ruminating on the author’s meaning is an attack against the status quo and a much needed detour when the entire world seems to be hellbent on careening into a wall of idiocy.
We Are What We Meme
In his book-length argument that characterized television as the death knell for reasoned discourse in the United States, Dr. Neil Postman wrote:
“We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant. Therein is our problem, for television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.”
His book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” was written in 1985. In 2025, replace the word television with social media and the reasons for the devolution of our culture become clear. The ease with which “information” can be shared leaps exponentially beyond what Morse could have imagined in 1844 when he sent his first electric missive, “What hath God wrought?”. What, indeed.
The problem with information is that most of it is bullshit without proper context. Just because you can share it faster than your emotional intelligence can process it, doesn’t mean you truly understand what you have shared. There is still no such shortcut for wisdom. Reading books is an act of rebellion.
Propaganda Doesn’t Exist
How delighted would be all the kings, czars and führers of the past (and commisars of the present) to know that censorship is not a necessity when all political discourse takes the form of a jest.
-Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Propaganda no longer exists as a singular category. You can’t seek out propaganda. If the information you are exposed to is algorithmically chosen, the entire medium is propaganda.
Disinformation and anger get the clicks. Spreading it as truth or debunking keeps you engaged. They are two sides of the same coin. You’re either waiting to see someone smash that like button or waiting to verbally trash any philistine who has the audacity to disagree. It doesn’t really matter which, as long as you stay on the platform to see the next algorithmic slice of anger slide into your feed. Reading books is an act of rebellion.
Reading Books is an Act of Rebellion
Books are algorithm proof. You can’t de-platform a book. A book comes with built-in context and you are free to examine it. A book can’t fit on a meme and there are well beyond 140 or even 280 characters.
As a nation, I believe one of the best ways to slow the entropy of anti-intellectualism is to read books. While pleasure reading has its place, also read history, philosophy, memoirs, and essays. Read deeply and absorb the message. Take notes and critically think about what the author is saying, then contextualize what you read into your own life experience. Write about it. Don’t waste your intellect drifting through the algorithmic tides of information. Reading is rebellion.