Transcript

Hi folks, welcome to my latest video rant where I shake my fist at the clouds and complain about the robots.

Not because you want me to, but because I need to get it off my chest.

Now we all love a great story and in fact the human mind needs great stories.

We need to use our imagination to enjoy stories so that we as a human race keep producing people who can write great stories.

And great stories are being written and enjoyed every day.

But now many of the great stories we enjoy are the product of a team of people.

And many of these people have it as their job to do all the imagining for you.

And look, there's nothing wrong with video and film.

I love movies.

I love good TV shows.

But with video, both TV and film, a writer only writes the skeleton of the story and mostly just the dialogue, and the rest is filled in by someone else, directors and visual designers.

And again, there's nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with taking advantage of the technology to enhance the experience of the story in a video medium.

But if you never read a book, then you are always letting other people do all the imagination for you.

You never have to do the imaginative work yourself.

And so what you lose in that process is the same thing you would lose if you let a machine exercise for you.

Riding in a car is great to get where you're going fast, but if you never walk, you won't get any exercise, and your body needs exercise.

Well, your mind needs exercise too.

It needs exercise to stay productive and not become soft through lack of use.

And the way you exercise your mind is through the imagination.

And if all your entertainment leaves nothing to the imagination, then you are never exercising your mind.

So how do you exercise your mind?

By reading books.

And it's not just using your imagination either.

There's also something about visualizing the words on a page that helps the brain develop and exercise language and logic.

And I'm afraid that we are at risk of losing language itself.

Or maybe, as some people have already said, we're in danger of going into a new dark age when most people are functionally illiterate and only communicate through symbols like hieroglyphics.

I'm thinking emojis.

The rapid evolution of language is actually exacerbating the decline in reading.

And the English language is becoming something oversimplified.

And we're losing the way words have a range of meaning.

We're losing the nuance of words.

We're losing the way that words can mean several things.

And you should see the remake of the movie Fahrenheit 451, where they really do a good job of sort of weaving social media and the use of symbols and emojis into the story of a world where reading is outlawed.

See, people don't read books anymore because they don't know what the words mean.

And we already need to translate Shakespeare if most people are ever going to read it.

And this is a vicious cycle.

We are losing the language, and then people stop reading, and because people stop reading, we lose more of the language.

And I'm also worried that the distinction in our culture between the haves and the have-nots will be made worse by the fact that the group of people who are only semi-literate is growing, and the group of people who can read and understand nuance is shrinking.

People who only read on the internet, or who only read fiction, or who only read graphic novels, or who only read for entertainment, or who only read documents of limited length, those people are losing the ability to read for depth, and for substance, and for learning.

And I think the disappearance of instruction manuals is a symptom of this.

You know, at some point Apple stopped including manuals with their products, and I was frustrated by that.

And everyone else said, I never read the manual anyway.

Well, welcome to the new world where there are no manuals.

And the worst part of it is we're losing the wisdom and the perspective of the past, the wisdom of those who came before us.

So I know I can't fix the world with this video and I'm going to ride it out.

I've got enough books on my shelf to read for the rest of my life.

I've already read most of these, but there's a few I haven't read.

But if you want to be more than just semi-literate, if you want more than the polarized hyper-political content that lacks nuance, make time in your life to read books.

Force yourself to get back to the ability to focus and have patience and enjoy the quiet and really get into a text and understand it and engage with it.

Or don't. I mean, if the toxic waste dump that is the internet is good enough for you, fine.

But soon, the internet will have more fake news on it than real news, if it doesn't already.

And soon, there will be more robot-generated content on the internet than human-generated content.

More stuff is just put up there as a vehicle for the commercials to sell you crap.

And if you're okay with that, then by all means, don't read books.

But if you want more out of life, You know where to find it.

It's in books.

Finally, in my experience, God speaks to you when you read, and not just the Bible, but anything that makes you think deep thoughts.

You're not exercising your mind if you only get your stories on screens.

Pick up a book.

where you get to decide what the sets look like.

You get to decide what color the costumes are.

You get to decide what the main characters look like and what they sound like when they talk.

Pick up a book, exercise your mind and don't let your brain get flabby.

Hey, thanks for watching.

Well, you know the drill.

Subscribe, notifications, blah, blah, blah.

But if you liked this video, please share it.

And if you want more, consider getting one or more of my books.

Or better yet, join me and the original church community on Locals.com.

There you can comment and interact with the rest of us.

I hope to see you there.