Substack is full of booklovers and “classical education” fans. They insist that reading more books is the solution to all problems. We have forgotten how to think in complex ways because we no longer read Melville and Milton and Cicero.
Exactly backwards.
We read and write INFINITELY more than ever before. The web is text. We talk to each other with text, not tongues. Most jobs are text. If reading and writing were the foundations of good thinking, we’d be the best thinkers in history.
Medieval peasants were mostly illiterate. They spent their time dealing in flexible and constantly negotiated ways with other people, and using tools to till the soil, cook, draw water, make and fix tools.
Complex thinking arises from using your hands. Complex thinking happens when you are involved in a complex network of relationships with people, animals and things. The real world doesn’t lie, doesn’t have any official doctrine.
Doctrine is TEXT.
Before 1980 most Americans were using hands and muscles and eyes and ears in factories or kitchens or playgrounds. We listened to radio and TV and movies for entertainment. We read picture magazines like Life and Look. Some of us read books.
After 1980 the hand skills moved to China. At the same time the old visual entertainments lost their quality and value. Hollywood stopped making complex entertainment and switched to copypasting official doctrine in exactly required words and phrases.
Some people are still doing peasant work. Farmers, phone techs, plumbers, taxi drivers, store clerks. They use a fixed set of tools to handle infinitely varied problems and customers. Every situation is new, demanding new solutions. These folks are still complex and creative thinkers.
The rest of us are monastic scribes, faithfully copying the Authorized Scripture and illuminating it with Authorized AI images in officially controlled ways.
Polistra's Mill 