• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

I have mixed feelings about Niall Ferguson. I respect the fact-based historian’s discipline he brings to his writing and interviews relative to the more theoretical approach of political scientists, but I generally gird myself against the conservatism of his positions. However, his recent piece in The Free Press, “Without Books We Will Be Barbarians,” was masterful.

America is in a reading crisis. As Ferguson recounts, reading in America has undergone a massive drop over the past 20 years. According to a recent study by the University of Florida and University College London, daily pleasure reading fell from 28% to 16%   Fifty-two percent of Americans hadn’t read a book in a year. Average adult literacy scores for literacy are down 12.4% over the past 10 years. And, 30% of American adults “read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child,” he writes. But it’s not better with children. Daily pleasure reading by 13-year-old Americans is down 50% over the past 20 years.

For whys, we can look to many causes: the Internet; mobile devices; social media; gaming; declines and changes in education; shorter attention spans; podcasts.

Ferguson reminds us that writing, reading and literature have been core pillars in building societies and states, from cuneiform in ancient Mesopotamia for keeping accounts, cataloging, and trading in agricultural produce, to fixing laws and conduct with the Code of Hammurabi. Reading and writing was democratized for many by the Protestant Reformation, making it accessible to all, not just rulers, priests and scribes. And the birth of the printing press massively accelerated the availability of the written word -- and reading -- to all.

A population's ability to read matters. The written word fixes facts, stories and histories in time. It invites both collective and individual analysis, fact-based argument and critical thinking. It enables both individuality and commonality, creating common grounding and shared perspectives. Without that, cries of “fake news,” famous in Nazi times, famous today, can be promulgated without challenge.

Ferguson calls out the acceptance among some today of narratives painting Hitler as a hero and Churchill as a villain. He points out that literate societies use writing and reading to rationally anchor, respect and learn from the past and history, enabling philosophical and scientific thought and reasoning among its people. Non-literate societies prefer book burning and centrally managed propaganda to  reaffirm their “truths” and squelch dissent and individuality.

Critically, he makes the point that listening isn’t reading. Yes, podcasts and audio books can be important ways to be entertained and informed, but listening does not engage the brain, the imagination or create memories in the same ways reading does.

This concept was a core tenet of communication theorist Marshall McLuhan’s ground-breaking work in the 1960s and 1970s, famous for his pronouncement that “the medium is the message,” and his distinction between “hot” and “cool” media depending on the level of audience involvement required in its consumption and enjoyment 

The same goes for AI-driven summarization. The quick summary Chat GPT provides might help you respond to your boss’s or client’s question at lightning speed, but don’t confuse that with making you smarter or truly informed, which reading the materials directly would have done.

Ferguson paints a scary future for a post-literate society, something akin to the serfdom of the illiterate masses in Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” or peasantry in ancient Egypt. At the very least, it is making us a less informed electorate, far less able to debate issues and policies to keep our politicians and elections from devolving into partisan avatars or memes.

What about you? Do you read for pleasure every day?