Once the beacon for many in almost every sense of the term, the United States has in the span of a generation slid backward to become an international laughing stock. Once perceived as bold, clever, and imaginative, we are now viewed as grossly ignorant, shockingly obtuse. We’ve become – in a word – idiots.
How did we regress so fast from superior to stupid?
We lost the ability to think.
It happened in a rather insidious way. Despite the fact that most of us can read, we never really learned how to read. We can sound out the words and glean the simple meaning of a text but too few of us are able to read in a way that challenges us to understand ideas, to understand something new, something we didn’t know before. To learn. To become enlightened.
Stupidity got the better of us because we got caught up in trying to absorb a deluge of information – more and more of it (it never stops), as fast as we can. To compete for our attention, media outlets and content creators shape it for us into deceptively simple packets. In addition to the glut of facts and information available from multiple channels, we also have opinions, views, and positions neatly packaged for us to easily adopt.
This packaged material is ostensibly presented as information to allow the viewer or reader to make up their own mind, to form their own opinion. But without the skills that a strong ability to read provides, this has become a robotic occurrence. Opinions are passively adopted; no real thought has gone into them. Ideas – think conspiracy theories – develop based on ill-considered information; actions, like many recent political protests, result from the inability to understand a complex issue.
Adopting these convenient packets in this way is a passive act, with a false sense of thinking lurking behind it. Snippets of information may be remembered up to a point and regurgitated if prompted, but no real thought has gone into them. Instead, the reader or viewer has only found alignment with the information; their prior “understanding” – a preconception, a preexisting opinion, a cherished belief – was reinforced by what they saw, heard, or read. The packet was effortlessly added to their repertoire without any genuine thought going into it.
The ability to read in an active way offers the skills to overcome this, whether that packet is viewed, heard, or read. As a receiver of information, regardless of format, the goal should be to receive as much of the communication provided as possible. The skills developed from active reading are the best means for doing that. How active you are in reading determines how much of the communication you receive and how much you understand. Anything less is passive to the point of inertia: you are God’s perfect couch potato.
Active reading demands the desire to understand. You can read to gain information, but the goal must be to understand what the writer has to say. Accumulation of information alone doesn’t increase understanding. At best, you may only share the same understanding as the writer, which may amount to nothing more than to adopt the writer’s opinion, accept the belief, buy the product.
However, if you actively apply yourself to what you’re reading, it becomes possible not just to understand enough but to understand fully what the writer meant to impart. This requires skill in reading, tools which, when applied, train the mind to actively (critically and analytically) think.
This doesn’t apply to every word you read, of course. The distinction between what provides information or basic entertainment and what demands attention – that is, the level of active reading necessary to achieve maximum understanding – should be obvious. You will be equal in understanding with the writer at the start or recognize the opportunity to increase your understanding and adjust accordingly. When faced with more demanding material, you will exert yourself to actively read for better understanding, which exercises and strengthens your ability to think. You learn.
Acquiring information, collecting facts is one form of learning. So is understanding something you didn’t understand before. The first is only what you can remember; the second is what you can explain. Reading actively – reading well – provides edification; it empowers thinking. And thinking offers the promise of enlightenment.
Reading well isn’t possible without the application of thinking. In order to read what deserves to be read well, you will not only need to actively think (scrutinize and question, ponder and digest) but also draw on other related skills: the ability to observe, remember, imagine, and reflect. Taking on the effort to read well, learning the tools and applying them to what you read, offers vast opportunities to learn. It can help open an external world previously unknown to you and the internal world known only to yourself. It provides you with the firm foundation for thinking necessary to educate yourself over a lifetime.
You don’t have to be an idiot anymore.