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I have exactly the same experience, and in fact, I'm slowly starting to lose interest in the 'nerdy' books too. However, I don't necessarily think the problem
by tpoacher 2y ago
I have exactly the same experience, and in fact, I'm slowly starting to lose interest in the 'nerdy' books too.
However, I don't necessarily think the problem is books. I think the problem is 'time', and how reading has evolved in my life to be less about "the enjoyment of the action of reading" into "the necessity of acquiring the information" (even if that 'necessity' is intended for 'leisure' / 'pleasure').
It's as if the modern world has conditioned us all to skim-read, prioritise, and optimise information-to-words ratio. I wouldn't "mind" sitting down with an unknown book and giving it a good-old college try, in principle, but in practice, any book I read now competes with some other book in my backlog, which I'm also not ever going to read because that too competes with another book in my backlog, and I simply don't have the time, because I should be reading more stuff for work etc instead.
I remember I told a friend of mine once, that I was practicing speed-reading, and that I was getting good at it, and reading books faster as a result. I remember the look of horror on his face, he thought it was a terrible idea. The whole point of a book is to read it slowly, he said. There was this idea that, if you speed read it, even if you do in fact read everything in it, you've still only just looked at the all content, but you haven't really experienced or savoured the book, or allowed yourself to get lost in it. And he's right, I think, and his words do still echo and haunt me a tiny bit to this day. I do remember what that feeling of getting lost in a good book was like, and I really miss it. But I don't know how to get it back. Certainly not between breaks while reading reports at work.
- aaronbaugher 2y agoThat's where I'm at. Not just with books, but with movies and games, it just feels like too much time to commit to a single leisure activity. And I'm not a workaholic or super busy otherwise, so I could make the time to enjoy a book. It's just a mindset I didn't used to have, that says I shouldn't just read a book and enjoy it, but should be taking notes and learning something while I do, or listening to the audiobook so I can do some other tasks at the same time. I'm not sure how that happened, but it feels like it happened to a lot of us.
- wantless 2y agoI have begun to recognize a sense of restlessness in myself that prompts me to optimize for information, as you have said, and I think I can begin to name it: anxiety due to withdrawal. It is illuminating to have once been a smoker because the feeling is quite similar. That our tastes have changed is due at least in part to the addiction of information. And a solution, at least in part, is to accept the pain of withdrawal. It can be exceedingly difficult to distinguish good habits from bad where they involve the necessities and pleasures of life, such as food and information. Bad habits tend to comfort us in the moment but weaken us over time; good habits tend toward opposite. When I am honest with myself, I recognize the majority of my information seeking as quelling some anxious feeling rather than building true knowledge or wisdom, and the majority of the information I sought to be naught but empty distractions in the long term. And I also recognize my backlogs as a series of deaths that I have not accepted: I retain them to grasp onto the passing potentiality of my youth; I hold fast to the mirage of different lives.
- tpoacher 2y agoInteresting insight. I'd heard people talking about 'information addiction' before, but I'd never considered it quite how you just described it. But you're right, makes perfect sense.