Are You Too Dumb To Read?
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Maybe you just don’t have the time or the inclination. Everything is available as a video or podcast anyway, you reason. Are you too dumb to read? Or just too lazy? Consuming information via videos also means, in the main, that you have no reference for the source material underpinning what is claimed by the speakers in the video. Most YouTube videos do not include this reference material. This is just another way we are all being dumbed down by the convenience of technology. It is one of the reasons why we are having to deal with Donald Trump because dumb Americans voted him back in despite the plethora of evidence against him.
“Something alarming is happening with reading in America. Leisure reading by some accounts has declined by about 50 percent this century. Literacy scores are declining for fourth and eighth graders at alarming rates. And even college students today are complaining to teachers that they can’t read entire books. The book itself, that ancient piece of technology for storing ideas passed down across decades, is fading in curricula across the country, replaced by film and TV and YouTube.”
- (https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/plain-english-with-derek-thompson/2025/02/28/the-end-of-reading)
Watching Stuff Instead Of Reading & Researching?
I studied history for a number of years and this academic pursuit is all about tracking down the source material. Not just taking claims at face value, whether they be written in old books or etched onto stone. Checking out the primary sources wherever possible and if there aren’t any, then, reserving judgement as to the authenticity of the document or textual claims. Today, the same need exists for claims made on social media or online. You are best served by tracing back the references for any claims made by talking heads, whatever medium they deign to use. Don’t believe anything until you have checked out the sources.
The Dumbed Down World Of Digital
I watch a lot of videos too and enjoy the immediacy of them. However, this medium cannot replace reading, if truth is important to you. The written word and text are not perfect when it comes to veracity, but, most often, provide more credibility via source material than most videos. The rise of Trump is no accident and his promotion of a post-truth world is no coincidence. Technology has dumbed down the world. People have been seduced by style over content. Lots of pretty pixels and movie like sound have swayed folk. It is a misnomer that digital technology has made us smarter – it is the reverse.
Staring Into Screens All Day
Most of us spend many hours a day staring into screens of all shapes and sizes. We view a seemingly endless flow of images with accompanying narratives. We carry around devices with us that constantly demand our attention. These things are not making us smarter, rather they are making us busier in dealing with the demands of a digital age. Your mobile smart phone is not necessarily making things easier, as promised, instead it is driving your life. 95% of the communication coming from this device is not actually essential, although the definition of essential has been stretched massively by the digital age.
Dumb & Getting Dumber
Computers began their take over of our lives demanding that we use text to operate them. Text was king for the first decade or two. Now, however, video is taking over, as is voice operated applications and the mighty AI. All of these things are not making us smarter they are dumbing us down through the lack of use of our own brains. Technology is not some divine force for the betterment of humanity it is merely a saleable commodity employed by a coterie of corporations chasing trillions of dollars in revenue. If you look at the oligarchs running these monopolistic behemoths they are not saintly or enlightened beings. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and co – these are obviously not altruistic dudes with big hearts. Humanity is in the grip of a really unhealthy obsession with digital technology. Not only are we being ripped off financially, our very humanity is under threat from the divisive nature of social media and the algorithms designed to keep us glued to our screens. Surveillance capitalism has created the digital architecture to control us. Digital tech is damaging the brains and bodies of our children and our social cohesion as adults. It is an emergency situation but governments have been bought off and neutered. There is bugger all regulation in this sector, which has taken over all of our lives.
Big Tech & Trump
Donald Trump benefitted from Big Tech jumping aboard his bid for the presidency. Elon Musk famously spent hundreds of millions of dollars getting Trump re-elected. He was giving away cheques for a million dollars for Republican registered voters, basically bribing the American public in a lottery style promotion. Big Tech joined Trump because the Biden/Harris administration had been coming after their unregulated sector. This is a big reason why Trump won. The digital oligarchs didn’t want their money making factories threatened in anyway. Elon Musk has over 200 million followers on X. The power and influence of these billionaires in the tech sector is massive. Americans are in thrall to digital tech and it rules their lives, as it does with most of us around the world these days. Are you too dumb to read? Most folk don’t read stuff unless they have to or really want to. Too busy watching digital entertainment on their screens.
Parts Of Your Brain Are Becoming Obsolete
Use it or you will lose it! This line is very applicable to reading. If you don’t regularly use skills you lose the ability to utilise them. They do not just idly sit by awaiting on you. Reading is no different. Stop and think about it. You are being fed visual content 24/7 if you want it. You rarely question what goes into that content. You are like a cow or a sheep being fed stuff to keep you docile. You are such a digital consumer that you hardly ever peel back the digital curtain to see what is really there and who put it there and why. You are becoming more unquestioning day by day. Light and sound fill your senses. You are entertained with mindless sport, drama, games, and whatever else on your screens. You start to lose the ability to dig any deeper or to think about stuff. You are just a dumb human there to pay your subscriptions for your many digital services. To fill the vast digital accounts of Amazon, Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Starlink, PayPal and all the myriad rest of them. Online gambling thrills your day or week with a bit of a flutter. This dystopian life is the lifestyle of many of us already. You watch movies about superheroes that don’t exist or violent gun fests in technicolour and surround sound. Diets of watching sports on screens are interspersed with periods of meaningless work, also largely completed in front of screens.
“Oligarchies have been around for a very long time in modern terms. The word itself comes from the ancient Greeks, like many of our words for social structures and types of government. What can we do about the oligarchs? Oligarchy versus democracy was first billed as a clash of governing systems some 3 millennia ago in Athens. The original Greek oligarchies were based on class and wealth, as the two most often went hand in hand. Democracy came about as a means to break the grip of noble families on governing Athens, the city state. This new expansionary form of government spread to other Greek city states.”
Does Elon Musk Care About Your Wellbeing?
Do you think that Elon Musk cares about you as a human being outside of your ability to pay for stuff? Do any of these insanely super wealthy men have any real empathy for the lives of ordinary folk? If they did why would they align themselves with a fascist dictator like Trump. A society that allows individuals to become that rich whilst exploiting millions of poor people is not a healthy society. There is something fundamentally wrong with American culture and its placement of economic concerns above all others in the human panoply.
Are you too dumb to read? Too dumb to read the signs? The answer to your life and its meaning des not reside inside your phone. Digital tech is not going make it all better. Your phone is what is controlling you. It is how all those giant corporations reach you and steal your data for their profit. In the George Orwell story 1984 I always thought that the idea of a screen with Big Brother’s image on it was a bit sketchy but now the reality is that we actually carry these screens around with us. Musk has 200 million followers on X. We are already there.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©MidasWord
