Opinion No wonder there’s an exodus from religion By E.J. Dionne Jr. (5-7-2018 Washington Post)

Do you wonder why the proportion of Americans declaring themselves unaffiliated with organized religion has skyrocketed in recent decades?

This trend is especially pronounced among adults under 30, roughly 40  percent of whom claim no connection to a religious congregation or tradition and have joined the ranks of those the pollsters call the “nones.”

To understand how so many now prefer nothing to something when it comes to religion, ponder the news over the past few days.

The same newspapers and broadcasts that were reporting on how President Trump finally admitted that he had indirectly paid a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged affair also offered accounts of what we’ll call Jesuitgate, the controversy over who should be the chaplain of the House of Representatives.

On Thursday, Speaker Paul D. Ryan backed down from his effective dismissal of the Rev. Patrick Conroy, a Jesuit priest, as chaplain. Ryan had said he asked the cleric to quit because he had provided inadequate “pastoral services,” but denied that Conroy was ousted because of a mild prayer for justice he delivered during the debate over the GOP tax cut.

Speaker Ryan says House chaplain can stay in job

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) reversed course on May 3, and agreed to keep the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy on as House chaplain. (Reuters)

That phrase “pastoral services” must inspire a chuckle from your typical millennial agnostic. It makes the work of holy men and women sound like the this-worldly tasks of the accountant, the mechanic or the dentist. (As the grateful son of a dentist, I speak with respect for these extremely useful professions.)

Conroy had initially agreed to Ryan’s request to step aside but withdrew his resignation in a quietly stinging letter. The priest noted that he had never been informed of the shortcomings of his “pastoral services.” If he had, he would “have attempted to correct such ‘faults.’ ”

Conroy also quoted Ryan’s chief of staff, Jonathan Burks, as telling him “something like ‘maybe it’s time we had a chaplain that wasn’t a Catholic.’ ” Ryan’s office vehemently denied this (the Catholic vote is substantial), but the speaker announced he didn’t want to have a “protracted fight” and that Conroy could stay.

Many of us could have told the speaker that it’s a mistake to mess with a Jesuit. But think about it: The House Republican leadership was more inclined to push out a chaplain than to impose accountability on a president who is a proven liar and trashes the rule of law for his own selfish purposes day after day.

This degree of partisan irresponsibility only aggravates the already powerful skepticism among the young about what it means to be religious. In their landmark 2010 book, “American Grace,” the scholars Robert Putnam and David Campbell found that the rise of the nones was driven by the increasing association of organized religion with conservative politics and a lean toward the right in the culture wars.

Revealingly, Putnam and Campbell found that millennials with tolerant and open views on homosexuality were more than twice as likely to be religious nones as their statistically similar peers with conservative or traditionalist views on homosexuality. Many young people came to regard religion, in Putnam and Campbell’s words, as “judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical and too political.”

If you want a particularly exquisite hypocritical moment, consider that on Thursday, the very day when Trump had to admit his lies on the Stormy Daniels payoff, the president held a White House commemoration of the National Day of Prayer. “Prayer is the key that opens [to] us the treasures of God’s mercies and blessings,” he proclaimed, quoting Billy Graham. He tweeted this out as part of a pious 42-second video set to a sentimental soundtrack of peaceful strings. I guess Trump can use some peace and a lot of mercy right now.

What’s maddening about all of this is that religion has a strong case to make for itself — to the young and to everyone else — given its historical role as a prod to personal and social change and the ways in which movements for justice have been inspired through the centuries by the words of Exodus, Micah, Isaiah, Amos and Jesus.

Conroy was getting at this in the most uncontroversial way possible when he spoke in his now-contested prayer of how “our great nation” has created “opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle.” If a chaplain could be rebuked for voicing that simple and undeniable truth, what’s the point of the “religious liberty” that Trump and his GOP allies celebrate?

And when will those who advertise themselves as religion’s friends realize they can do far more damage to faith than all the atheists and agnostics put together?

Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus by Matt Taibbi

Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus by Matt Taibbi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 For me, this book was a modern day horror story. As someone who has lived through 16 presidential election cycles, I could never imagine the events and results that took place, many if not most, with the complicity of the American voter. Taibbi does not present a pretty picture of Donald Trump or many of his supporters. If you are a Trump supporter, this book will not interest you in the least…

From the Taibbi book..

"The country, in other words, was losing it. Our national politics was doomed because voters were no longer debating one another using a commonly accepted set of facts. There was no common narrative, except in the imagination of a daft political and media elite that had long ago lost touch with the general public.

What we had instead was a nation of reality shoppers, all shutting the blinds on the loathsome old common landscape to tinker with their own self tailored and in some cases highly paranoid recipes for salvation and/or revolution.

They voted in large numbers, but they were voting out of loathing, against enemies and against the system in general, not really for anybody. The elections had basically become a forum for organizing the hatreds of the population. "


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Yuge: 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump by G.B. Trudeau

Yuge!: 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump by G. B. Trudeau
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have been a fan of Doonesbury and G.B. Trudeau since the 1970s when the cartoon was first published. If you want to understand the history, politics, and culture of the past 45 years and you don't want to suffer through college courses or books in history, then skim through Doonesbury's cartoon strips. Yuge is a collection of Doonesbury's strips about Donald Trump from the past 30 years. As a caveat, please note that Trump is no fan of Trudeau's work. Trudeau skewers Trump as a businessman, self-professed icon, playboy, reality star, and now pseudo-politician. I enjoyed the book as it was very entertaining and funny.

Trudeau introduced his book with a defense and a warning..."You can't make this stuff up, so why try? Some people feel that Trump is beyond satire, but we professionals know he is satire, pure and uncut, free for all to use and enjoy, and for that we are not ungrateful. For our country, though we can only weep."

Agreed!


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Raw: My 100% Grade A Unfiltered Inside Look at Sports by Colin Cowherd

Raw: My 100% Grade-A, Unfiltered, Inside Look at Sports by Colin Cowherd
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoy Cowherd's sports show on FS 1. He offers perspective, primarily on sports, that I may not have thought about. He also blends in a little history, culture, psychology and politics into his thinking. He's not afraid to name some names – – for example, he said that Bobby Knight treated his ESPN staff the way that he treated some referees. He also has some interesting things to say about other high profile athletes like Aaron Rogers, Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, Pete Carroll and others that the reader may find interesting. Very enjoyable read. Looking forward to future books by Colin.


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Apt Description of Getting Older

"When you hit your 50s life starts comin' up on ya fast,  Gordo Tallman said to me on the occasion of my 49th birthday.  For that time life is pretty much a straight line. Wife looks up to you and the young kids are small enough, and the older kids smart enough, not to weigh you down. But then, just when you start puttin' the pounds an' losing your wind, the kids'er are expectin' you to fulfill your promises and the wife all the sudden sees every single one of your flaws. Your parents, if you still got any, are gettin' old and turning back into kids themselves. For the first time you realize that the sky does have a limit. You comin' to a rise, but when you hit the top there's another life up ahead of you and here you are – – just about spent."

Walter Mosely Known To Evil

Paul Krugman article on "Foxification" of the GOP (NYT)

"Mr. Rubio’s inability to do anything besides repeat canned talking points was startling. Worse, it was funny, which means that it has gone viral. And it reinforced the narrative that he is nothing but an empty suit. But really, isn’t everyone in his party doing pretty much the same thing, if not so conspicuously? The truth is that the whole G.O.P. seems stuck in a time loop, saying and doing the same things over and over. And unlike Bill Murray’s character in the movie “Groundhog Day,” Republicans show no sign of learning anything from experience.


Think about the doctrines every Republican politician now needs to endorse, on pain of excommunication. First, there’s the ritual denunciation of Obamacare as a terrible, very bad, no good, job-killing law. Did I mention that it kills jobs? Strange to say, this line hasn’t changed at all despite the fact that we’ve gained 5.7 million private-sector jobs since January 2014, which is when the Affordable Care Act went into full effect. Then there’s the assertion that taxing the rich has terrible effects on economic growth, and conversely that tax cuts at the top can be counted on to produce an economic miracle. This doctrine was tested more than two decades ago, when Bill Clinton raised tax rates on high incomes; Republicans predicted disaster, but what we got was the economy’s best run since the 1960s. It was tested again when George W. Bush cut taxes on the wealthy; Republicans predicted a “Bush boom,” but actually got a lackluster expansion followed by the worst slump since the Great Depression. And it got tested a third time after President Obama won re-election, and tax rates at the top went up substantially; since then we’ve gained eight million private-sector jobs.

Oh, and there’s also the spectacular failure of the Kansas experiment, where huge tax cuts have created a budget crisis without delivering any hint of the promised economic miracle."

Top 12 Books I Read in 2015

 Normally I read much more nonfiction books than fiction. The percentage is definitely moving to fiction as my reading tastes and interests are changing as I get older.

In no particular order, the 12 Best Books I Read in 2015. The first six books on my list are non-fiction, the last six, fiction. I would have included Trigger Mortis, which is the latest James Bond book by Anthony Horowitz but I listed two of his other books that I found a bit more entertaining in my Top 12 list.

1. The Guns at  Last Night: The War in Western Europe 1944-45 by Rick Atkinson.
2. In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria.
3. Dead Wake; The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
4. God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican by Gerald Posner
5. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
6. Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright
7. Live By Night by Dennis Lehane
8. The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
9. Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
10. All The Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer
11. The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercranz
12. And Sometimes I Wonder About You by Walter Mosley

Paul Krugman: The Farce Awakens

What the hell is wrong with this country? The hysteria after the Paris terror attacks have brought out the worst in many of our citizens and certainly among the leading candidates in the Republican party. I could not agree more with Mr. Krugman's article shown in its entirety below...

Erick Erickson, the editor in chief of the website RedState.com, is a serious power in right-wing circles. Speechifying at RedState’s annual gathering is a rite of passage for aspiring Republican politicians, and Mr. Erickson made headlines this year when he disinvited Donald Trump from the festivities.

So it’s worth paying attention to what Mr. Erickson says. And as you might guess, he doesn’t think highly of President Obama’s antiterrorism policies.

Still, his response to the attack in Paris was a bit startling. The French themselves are making a point of staying calm, indeed of going out to cafes to show that they refuse to be intimidated. But Mr. Erickson declared on his website that he won’t be going to see the new “Star Wars” movie on opening day, because “there are no metal detectors at American theaters.”

It’s a bizarre reaction — but when you think about it, it’s part of a larger pattern. These days, panic attacks after something bad happens are the rule rather than the exception, at least on one side of the political divide.

Consider first the reaction to the Paris attacks. Lightsabers aside, are Mr. Erickson’s fears any sillier than those of the dozens of governors — almost all Republicans — who want to ban Syrian refugees from their states?

Mr. Obama certainly thinks they’re being ridiculous; he mocked politicians who claim that they’re so tough that they could stare down America’s enemies, but are “scared of widows and orphans.” (He was probably talking in particular about Chris Christie, who has said that he even wants to ban young children.) Again, the contrast with France, where President François Hollande has reaffirmed the nation’s willingness to take in refugees, is striking.

And it’s pretty hard to find anyone on that side of the aisle, even among seemingly respectable voices, showing the slightest hint of perspective. Jeb Bush, the erstwhile establishment candidate, wants to clamp down on accepting refugees unless “you can prove you’re a Christian.” The historian Niall Ferguson, a right-wing favorite, says the Paris attacks were exactly like the sack of Rome by the Goths. Hmm: Were ancient Romans back in the cafes a few days later?

But we shouldn’t really be surprised, because we’ve seen this movie before (unless we were too scared to go to the theater). Remember the great Ebola scare of 2014? The threat of a pandemic, like the threat of a terrorist attack, was real. But it was greatly exaggerated, thanks in large part to hype from the same people now hyping the terrorist danger.

What’s more, the supposed “solutions” were similar, too, in their combination of cruelty and stupidity. Does anyone remember Mr. Trump declaring that “the plague will start and spread” in America unless we immediately stopped all plane flights from infected countries? Or the fact that Mitt Romney took a similar position? As it turned out, public health officials knew what they were doing, and Ebola quickly came under control — but it’s unlikely that anyone on the right learned from the experience.

What explains the modern right’s propensity for panic? Part of it, no doubt, is the familiar point that many bullies are also cowards. But I think it’s also linked to the apocalyptic mind-set that has developed among Republicans during the Obama years.

Think about it. From the day Mr. Obama took office, his political foes have warned about imminent catastrophe. Fiscal crisis! Hyperinflation! Economic collapse, brought on by the scourge of health insurance! And nobody on the right dares point out the failure of the promised disasters to materialize, or suggest a more nuanced approach.

Given this context, it’s only natural that the right would seize on a terrorist attack in France as proof that Mr. Obama has left America undefended and vulnerable. Ted Cruz, who has a real chance of becoming the Republican nominee, goes so far as to declare that the president “does not wish to defend this country.”

The context also explains why Beltway insiders were so foolish when they imagined that the Paris attacks would deflate Donald Trump’s candidacy, that Republican voters would turn to establishment candidates who are serious about national security.

Who, exactly, are these serious candidates? And why would the establishment, which has spent years encouraging the base to indulge its fears and reject nuance, now expect that base to understand the difference between tough talk and actual effectiveness?

Sure enough, polling since the Paris attack suggests that Mr. Trump has actually gained ground. The point is that at this point panic is what the right is all about, and the Republican nomination will go to whoever can most effectively channel that panic. Will the same hold true in the general election? Stay tuned.

The Republicans’ Incompetence Caucus by David Brooks

I am publishing David Brooks's article in its entirety. The italics below are mine. This article should be read by every intelligent voter and citizen in this country as it's dead on correct.

"The House Republican caucus is close to ungovernable these days. How did this situation come about?

This was not just the work of the Freedom Caucus or Ted Cruz or one month’s activity. The Republican Party’s capacity for effective self-governance degraded slowly, over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals. Basically, the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own.

By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love.

All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party. Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced. Public figures are prisoners of their own prose styles, and Republicans from Newt Gingrich through Ben Carson have become addicted to a crisis mentality. Civilization was always on the brink of collapse. Every setback, like the passage of Obamacare, became the ruination of the republic. Comparisons to Nazi Germany became a staple.

This produced a radical mind-set. Conservatives started talking about the Reagan “revolution,” the Gingrich “revolution.” Among people too ill educated to understand the different spheres, political practitioners adopted the mental habits of the entrepreneur. Everything had to be transformational and disruptive. Hierarchy and authority were equated with injustice. Self-expression became more valued than self-restraint and coalition building. A contempt for politics infested the Republican mind.

Politics is the process of making decisions amid diverse opinions. It involves conversation, calm deliberation, self-discipline, the capacity to listen to other points of view and balance valid but competing ideas and interests.

But this new Republican faction regards the messy business of politics as soiled and impure. Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are regarded as aliens. Political identity became a sort of ethnic identity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal.

A weird contradictory mentality replaced traditional conservatism. Republican radicals have contempt for politics, but they still believe that transformational political change can rescue the nation. Republicans developed a contempt for Washington and government, but they elected leaders who made the most lavish promises imaginable. Government would be reduced by a quarter! Shutdowns would happen! The nation would be saved by transformational change! As Steven Bilakovics writes in his book “Democracy Without Politics,” “even as we expect ever less of democracy we apparently expect ever more from democracy.”

This anti-political political ethos produced elected leaders of jaw-dropping incompetence. Running a government is a craft, like carpentry. But the new Republican officials did not believe in government and so did not respect its traditions, its disciplines and its craftsmanship. They do not accept the hierarchical structures of authority inherent in political activity.

In his masterwork, “Politics as a Vocation,” Max Weber argues that the pre-eminent qualities for a politician are passion, a feeling of responsibility and a sense of proportion. A politician needs warm passion to impel action but a cool sense of responsibility and proportion to make careful decisions in a complex landscape.

If a politician lacks the quality of detachment — the ability to let the difficult facts of reality work their way into the mind — then, Weber argues, the politician ends up striving for the “boastful but entirely empty gesture.” His work “leads nowhere and is senseless.”

Welcome to Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and the Freedom Caucus.

Really, have we ever seen bumbling on this scale, people at once so cynical and so naïve, so willfully ignorant in using levers of power to produce some tangible if incremental good? These insurgents can’t even acknowledge democracy’s legitimacy — if you can’t persuade a majority of your colleagues, maybe you should accept their position. You might be wrong!

People who don’t accept democracy will be bad at conversation. They won’t respect tradition, institutions or precedent. These figures are masters at destruction but incompetent at construction.

These insurgents are incompetent at governing and unwilling to be governed. But they are not a spontaneous growth. It took a thousand small betrayals of conservatism to get to the dysfunction we see all around."

Hypocrisy of the Thumpers

Trump-ward, Christian Soldiers?

Let me get this straight. If I want the admiration and blessings of the most flamboyant, judgmental Christians in America, I should marry three times, do a queasy-making amount of sexual boasting, verbally degrade women, talk trash about pretty much everyone else while I’m at it, encourage gamblers to hemorrhage their savings in casinos bearing my name and crow incessantly about how much money I’ve amassed?

Seems to work for Donald Trump.

Polls show him to be the preferred candidate among not just all Republican voters but also the party’s vocal evangelical subset.

He’s more beloved than Mike Huckabee, a former evangelical pastor, or Ted Cruz, an evangelical pastor’s son, or Scott Walker, who said during the recent Republican debate: “It’s only by the blood of Jesus Christ that I’ve been redeemed.”

When Trump mentions blood, it’s less biblical, as Megyn Kelly can well attest.

No matter. The holy rollers are smiling upon the high roller. And they’re proving, yet again, how selective and incoherent the religiosity of many in the party’s God squad is.

Usually the disconnect involves stern moralizing, especially on matters sexual, by showily devout public figures who are then exposed as adulterers or (gasp!) closet homosexuals. I’d list all the names, starting with Josh Duggar and working backward, but my column doesn’t sprawl over an entire page of the newspaper.

Frank Bruni NYT 8-26-15

Too Much Prayer in Politics: Republicans, the Religious Right and Evolution NYT 2-15-14 by Frank Bruni

GOD had a busy week. Alabama alone was a heavy lift, what with all those God invocations by state leaders trying to cast out the demon of gay marriage, then London called as well. Scott Walker was on a trip there, and he tugged God into the picture when he was asked about evolution and declined to answer, as if embracing it would be a heathen outrage. 

In a subsequent tweet, Walker insisted that there wasn’t any conflict between “faith & science,” which, he wrote, “go hand in hand.”

That’s debatable. This isn’t: Faith and government shouldn’t be as cozy as they are in this country. Politicians in general, and Republicans in particular, shouldn’t genuflect as slavishly as they do, not in public. They’re vying to be senators and presidents. They’re not auditioning to be ministers and missionaries.

We should listen hard to what’s being said in Alabama, where opponents of gay marriage aren’t merely asserting that it runs counter to what Alabamians want. They’re declaring that it perverts God’s will, which was the position that some racists took about integration.

New & Upcoming Books I'm Looking Forward to Reading.

1. That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman

2. Steven Jobs by Walter Isaacson

3. Tension City by Jim Lehrer (book about Presidential debates)

4. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

5. The Detachment by Barry Eisler (return of John Rain!)

6. Arguably by Christopher Hitchens (essays)

7. Other People's Money by Justin Cartwright

I may skim through Joe McGinnis's book about Sarah Palin but I've heard enough from TV plus I read Doonesbury who published excerpts of it. Pat Buchanan has a book coming out as well as "new rules" from Bill Maher.

SAT reading scores drop to lowest point in decades

Why? I would guess there are too many distractions. You can't say it's a money issue. Library books are free.

1. Video games

2. Television

3. Twitter

4. Poor attention span

5. Text messaging

6. Parents don't read either.

7. Netflix (why read the book?)

8. Youtube

Reader Related Riffs

1. Kindle prices.  Prices between a Kindle book and a new hard cover are about the same in many cases. Hey Amazon, the primary reason that I bought a Kindle was so I could buy a new book for $9.99! If the price margins don't favor the Kindle reader, some will reconsider going to the local bookstore and that may not be a bad thing.

2. Reality world stars writing books. Are you kidding me? These people can write??

3. Books authored by Palin family members. See comment #2

4. Newspaper content. I bought a Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer that was full of ads but short on content and articles. There is no difference between a daily edition ($.75) and Sunday edition ($1.75) in terms of content.

5. Cartoons. With the exception of Dilbert and Doonesbury (and one or two others) they are not funny or worth reading.

6. Historical Revisionism in textbooks. I am all in favor of updating history based on new facts. I am not in favor of revising or teaching an interpretation of history based on the delusions of a political group, author or political candidate.

7. Textbooks on creationism vs evolution. See comment #6. Our education system does not provide an adequate training on math and science. The Scopes trial was decided over 80 years ago. Let's move forward for the sake of our kids and our country.

My Confession

I picked the wrong time to start this blog.

Not because I don't read. I do read. But not very deeply. My reading diet is varied. I probably read business 40 -50 emails daily. I skim the Inquirer daily on my Kindle. I read the delivered local newspapers.  There are about a dozen blogs I religiously read every day. I read, edit and review as many as a dozen or more business documents (policies, procedures etc.) Even as I sit down to watch a sporting event on TV, I read the scroll at the bottom of the screen.

What I don't read well are books. There is just too many distractions for my time and attention. I have picked up a startling number of books that I have not finished or have skimmed through looking for specific information.

What bothers me is that very few books keep my attention. Most times I guess it's my fault but there are so few compelling and original stories, thinking, research and ideas.

I just may be in a slump. Hopefully I can regain my interest in just reading for entertainment and knowledge....

Reading at Midlife

The older I get, the harder it is for me to find a good book, particularly those that are business or career related. At 56, most of the fitness books aren't right for me either. They are geared to a younger generation, who still have the stamina, energy and motivation to perform exercises that would put me into an emergency ward or traction.

Self help books are hard to find for midlife men. There seems to be plenty of books for midlife women to survive menopause, or the loss of their youth and looks.

Readers my age can find a large number of books that offer advice on retirement and financial management for senior citizens.

I think there is a market for books, particularly novels, to readers with some gray in their hair and a lot of candles on their birthday cakes.

Newspapers: Dying on Write Support

I can remember when it took me a half hour or so to read the local papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer or Courier Post. Each paper used to be four or five columnists that I always wanted to read. Not anymore! I’m not sure I can name more than one or two columnists in either paper.

And geez, the sports coverage is so anemic...

The content has thinned out considerably, like Valerie Bertinelli on Jenny Craig. There’s no heft even in Sunday editions!

The New York Times, Wall St Journal and the Washington Post still publish decent newspapers though I read their content almost exclusively online. I can’t remember the last time I bought a USA Today.

Newspapers have lost the battle with cable news shows, online news websites and blogs for subscribers and viewers. Newspapers present stale news. Cable shows and the Internet promote immediate access and continual updates.

Newspapers used to do a very good job of investigative reporting but with limited staff, resources and will, haven’t done much of that lately.

Literacy Debate: Online RU Really Reading

Very interesting and thought provoking New York Times article by Motoko Rich.

There is a generational divide on how we get information and read for knowledge and pleasure. Is the Internet responsible for declining literacy?

As an avid book and web reader, I never differentiated that content from books constituted reading and from the web represented something less. I spend much more time reading from websites and blogs than I do from books, magazines or newspapers. I think I'm discriminating enough to know what content is crap and what represents useful content on the Internet.

“What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation,” he wrote, confessing that he now found it difficult to read long books."

The above quote came from Nicholas Carr, an author. I never gave that idea much thought before regarding my reading habits but it may be true. I have less patience in struggling with long books or complicated content. I had attributed my lack of patience with my age and declining intellectual and mental stamina if a book did not grab me.

However internet content is ideal for skimming. It may even be fast food for the brain...

Have Elections in September to Jump Start Economy

The following article published in the Camden Courier Post today is:

• interesting
• provocative
• entertaining
• literate
• convincing

And written by me:)

Reading: It Does a Mind Good

Reading is to the mind what eating is to the body. For the benefit to both body and mind, it’s important to maintain a good and healthy diet. When feeding the body and mind, it’s important to maintain a balanced diet and not rely on “junk.”

Good eating habits foster good health and energy. Good reading habits foster knowledge, ideas and truth.

When it comes to books, a main staple of the mental diet, one should seek balance. I read books on various non-fiction subjects including politics, current events, business, philosophy, sports, religion and psychology. I also add a touch of fiction and literature to my plate.

There are some people who may feel they need to read only one book. For them, this book holds all the answers they need for life. I prefer to indulge in different tastes or perspectives. One needs to try different recipes (or perspectives).

Just as some foods need to be savored slowly for enjoyment, so do some books. However one will often find books that are like fast food, temporarily satisfying but not really good for you.

Ultimately, we need to avoid poison in our physical or mental diet. Poison is branded on the box or container. We know to avoid it. However there are books that are poison to the mind. Based on lies and deceit, they may create prejudice, hate and lead those who buy into it to poor decisions.