Where have the readers gone?

OF LATE WE HAVE BEEN READING and hearing much about the decline in reading abilities and interests among the student population, including even graduates of high schools and, one might add, of institutions of higher learning. We are rightly disturbed by the statistical surveys and results, but we should not be surprised. Whatever their immediate relevance and context, however, these surveys need to be more critically evaluated in terms of what they unequivocally tell us and what they mean. They need to be seen beyond mere symptom and portent if they are to help us to measure the deeper educational problems and the cultural conditions that they mirror. Only when we penetrate these larger problems and conditions will we begin to comprehend what exactly they reveal about American society and character.

Somehow, it seems, we are comfortable with, or resigned to, disquieting reports and statistics that keep reaching us, as we also abjectly accept our difficulties and disappointments, almost perfunctorily awaiting a new batch of reports dealing with, say, teen-age gangs or with the magnitude of mental depression and the rising suicide rate among the younger generation. And so it goes, ad infinitum, from better to worse.

Clearly, we perhaps even secretly enjoy reading about our common malaise and quandaries. And we talk and theorize endlessly about these grave matters, and with the same casualness of television pundits and experts who routinely convey "bad news" to listeners.

Yet, through it all, what is distinctly lacking is a moral awareness of our condition at the brink, so to speak. Whether on television, or in the press, or in popular journals and books, the need to judge our basic orientation generally fails to enter our consideration. We do not question our authorities any more than we do our state of soul; and even when we do, we choose not to delve into our plight for fear of what we might really learn about ourselves, about our society, and about our cultural leadership. The lessons of integrity, or of history, too frequently remain outside the compass of our true concerns, or are too forbidding to contemplate. Insofar as first principles are subject to or reduced to the rapidly shifting and drifting state that defines the life of the community and of the soul, we are content with muddling along, no matter how big the mess in which we wallow.

We live at a time when contemporary publicists and smatterers dominate the scene and dictate opinion and policy--when, too, equalitarian attitudes and dispositions have an imperial sway, and moral and intellectual perspectives are fluid and expedient. Academia provides fewer and fewer shepherds of being worthy of our emulation or allegiance; the gospel of ideology leaves very little space and energy with which to confront problems that our "terrible simplifiers" are invariably responding to according to their special agendas and doctrines. Our professoriate personifies the excesses of breakdown in higher learning. To them we dare not look for leadership since their goals are attuned to a secular indoctrination that ignores, even scorns, a vision of order. Their contempt for the permanent things and for the moral imagination is invariably expressed with a hatred that can scarcely be concealed. Insofar as specialization has turned into deconstruction in the academic disciplines, the consequences of this deformation are more frightening.

As we study the surveys and statistics it would be helpful to keep in mind some of the weekly statistics that, as of this writing, give us a firmer idea of what Americans prefer to satisfy their visual, auditory, and literary tastes. These tastes clearly underline not only the extent of the power of fads, of hype, of buzz, of advertisement, of sham in American life, but also the estimates of millions and millions of homes and individuals that define popular culture and illustrate what Americans enjoy in their leisure time and activity. In "Broadcast Television," the ratings are high for "Everybody Loves Raymond" (CBS); in "Movies," the box office receipts of "The Bourne Supremacy" have a gross of over 150 million; in "Music Albums," "Amerikaz" (artist: Mobb Deep; label: Jive) is fourth on a list of ten; in "Cable Television," "WWE Raw Zone" (network: Spike) is in fourth place; in "Movie Rentals," "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" is high in DVD and in VHS rental revenue; and in "Magazines/National Weeklies," People and Us Weekly attain high grades in advertising pages.

Needless to say, figures change from week to week, but those listed in each category enjoy, typically, a highly profitable status. The questions that arise are: What do these various figures and titles finally disclose about our preferences and appetites? What do they say to us about general intelligence, habits, proclivities, choices--and about the direction in which we are going, if not about the future we are shaping? But even more important is what exactly do they tell us about the standards of discrimination that are registered in the public square and in our private pursuits? How, then, are we to interpret the sundry ramifications and meaning of statistical numbers, particularly in terms of quality, the latter word seldom evoked or considered in depth. Our obsession is with quantification and levels of popularity, not with standards, criteria, values, which we dismiss as "elitist" factors that are resistant to a majoritarian and egalitarian hegemony. Any vision of a new social order, we are consistently being reminded, must be inclusive and not exclusive, so that Bach simply is hardly competitive with "Amerikaz" or "Under My Skin"--and, yes, why a Modern Age means little in the world of Sports Illustrated and Autoweek.

Even a brief visit to a city library these days can be a revealing experience for one who is troubled by the current state of reading among the young. One will be immediately struck by the reading rooms aimed at accommodating readers in pursuit of knowledge or in the preparation of a particular writing exercise. Readers, however, are not to be seen in much evidence at the tables expressly provided for them. No less empty are the aisles between the book stacks where one would expect to see readers selecting books to peruse. To witness a tomb-like emptiness, interrupted here and there by a stray reader, produces an almost eerie reaction. Where is one to be seen reading a book seriously and diligently? Where have the readers gone? And when one tries to fathom the meaning of this scene, and begins to look around the reading and book areas for a possible answer to the question, one concludes that readers in this library have other things to do, that the object of their absorption is not directed to a book lying before them on a table, but to a computer among many computers located in a strategic area of the reading room.

Here, one does not hear the turning of pages but mechanical clicking sounds punctuating the silence of the library, the talk kept to a minimum no doubt so as not to neglect even one iota of what appears on the computer screen, the information being furnished with electronic punctuality. This scene becomes more arresting when one also sees young people eagerly waiting their turn to use an available computer, clicking and logging in for divers information. Interestingly, the card catalogue is nowhere and no more in sight, still another casualty of the Age of the Computer. No other scene in a library perhaps better instances what is happening to the book and to the logos, once sacred entities now being steadily disposed of in the dustbin of history.

Today the computer defines the common identity of its users: it is their master and fate, it is what brings them together almost ritualistically in the "library" (or, to be more precise, "Information Center")--in the avid search for information rather than for knowledge. "Gadgetry above humane learning," as Russell Kirk expresses it, not wrestling with words and meaning, and reflecting on great issues and ideas, is what draws visitors to the library these days; even some of the books being singled out for attention by a few ambitious librarians are, one discovers, non-books, of the sort that appear regularly on best-seller lists. A library is no longer a sacred edifice but the place to go for instant information that satisfies what George Orwell called "the grammaphone mind." Where, indeed, have the readers gone?

A national study showing teenagers' sexual activity tied to an increased risk of drugs and drinks was most recently released by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. The survey showed that 11.5 million teenagers had friends who viewed Internet pornography and downloaded it, and that a teenager with a majority of friends who did so was "three times more likely to smoke, drink, or use illegal drugs than a teen who has no such friends." Mr. Joseph A. Califano, Jr., the Center's chairman and president, was to observe at a news conference that the findings have consistently shown that there has been "tremendous parental denial" about teenagers and drug use. The survey also suggested that as teenagers grew older and were less likely to take part in family dinners, they were also more likely to be substance abusers or engage in sexual activity.

What this same study should additionally indicate is that the teenagers involved in the activities being surveyed are also less likely to have the necessary time, energy, interest, and self-discipline to be book readers, or simply readers. A teen-ager who absents himself from a family dinner is very apt not to visit a local library and pick up a book to read. Choosing between viewing Internet pornography and reading a Shakespearean play, or a Charles Dickens novel, is simply not a choice but a common choice and habit. The disparity between interest in sexual activity among teenagers and in literary curiosity is obviously a pronounced one when one reflects on the results of this survey and the orientation that it emphasizes. Any perceived close correlation between drug and alcohol use and sexual activity can hardly bode well for intelligent reading and reflection.

A reasonable examination of the Center's survey and of the box office receipts for movie attendance, rentals, and choices, and also of the ratings of programs featured on Broadcast Television, leads to the conclusion that reading is at a disadvantage, to say the least. How can a serious book or article contend with an activity that is titillating, exciting, emotionally and physically satisfying? Perhaps we no longer need statistical surveys to answer this question. The prevailing socio-cultural Zeitgeist, ever permissive and expansive, requires little or no factual documentation to estimate its consequences or basic orientation. The majoritarian ethos leaves little room for literature and thought on a higher level. Ideology extends its tentacles into every area of our society, targeting what Henry James once called the "high items of civilization," pandering to vulgar taste, and shaping character and culture along quantitative lines.

The leveling process, what Tocqueville termed "a tyranny of mediocrity," thus continues to point the way to a dangerous degree of mindlessness. Deconstructionists can be seen busily at work as they regulate and collectivize human activity, thought, and language. Breaking down the walls of tradition is one of their main "therapeutic" goals as they seek to fashion the New Man and New Woman appropriate for a New Millennium. Any trace of a Eurocentric legacy or of an inherited British culture in the context of English law, custom, language, and literature is wantonly being erased so as to accommodate schemes that proscribe moral virtues, loyalties, and time-tested verities. The question raised here, Where Have the Readers Gone?, needs then to be addressed in the light of a reigning spirit of impiety. That is why this question is crucial, and why it must be approached in connection with the total situation of our society and culture as it has been developing since the end of World War II. Bravely and prophetically it was Richard M. Weaver who discerned its moral insolvency to the consternation of pseudoliberal antagonists whose successors are the gnostic potentates who, like Conrad's "emissaries of evils," have now come to stay and rule in our father's house.

To ask, then, "Where have the readers gone?," is also to ask other related questions: "Where has our sacred patrimony fled?" "Where has the flight from God now taken us?" Intellectually, morally, and historically, these are questions that must be tackled if we are to understand what the confusion of all principles has generated.

Many books are today being published and often celebrated for their wonderful "insight" into our condition. These books are duly enumerated in the lists of Best Sellers and acclaimed not for their wisdom but for their special role in the "information explosion."

The all-too-evident decline in reading inevitably thus goes hand-in-hand with what is happening in the educational realm. The teaching of literature, reading, and writing is consonant with the power and influence of "the devil of Educationism that possesses us," as Flannery O'Connor phrased it back in 1963. This "devil" can now also be identified in the encompassing form of a "post-modernist multiculturalism," which Professor Claes Ryn critiques in his book A Common Ground (2003) when he writes: "Multiculturalism of this kind drowns in a welter of differences and change, incapable of distinguishing between fruitful and destructive diversity, between legitimate self-assertion, between personal creativity and mere idiosyncrasy."

In this state and outlook the moral sense and the historical sense become meaningless. What we see in the entire process of the decline adumbrated here is a close connection to the decadence that afflicts both our educational super-structures and our socio-cultural institutions. Until we become aware of the profound connections between the social, the educational, the philosophical, the economic, and the religious problem, we shall not be able to distinguish the entailing consequences of "the popular receptiveness to multicultural conditioning," to employ Paul Gottfried's terminology. A technologico-Benthamite civilization resents or scorns the questions being raised here. Our present-day ideologues, as teachers of deception and illusion, automatically dismiss any question that requires moral and critical judgment. An illiterate, desensitized citizenry is a biproduct of a doctrinal system opposed to the disciplines of adjudication.

Serious questions need to be asked, need to be considered evaluatively, and need to go beyond the instant analyses that dominate discourse in the public square. If we are to escape the pitfalls of superficial thinking, faulty judgment, and makeshift solutions, we must take the time to reflect on the questions being raised here. The electronic media and crass journalism have habituated us to avoid posing difficult questions and, in effect, to avoid intelligent, reflective thinking that recognizes the importance of the consequences of our actions. The faculty of discrimination must somehow be saved from public relations experts and the teams of problem-solvers and utopists who infest the cultural scene at every level and who determine philosophy and policy. The results of their intervention and of our trust in the orthodoxy of enlightenment now come back to haunt us.

At one time, it will be recalled, we were obsessed with the reasons "why Johnny can't read," a problem that educators and mandarin administrators relentlessly explored--and failed to solve. Now we have reached a nadir, when readers are disappearing at an alarming rate. If the past in any way discloses the manner in which language and learning were addressed by educationists and their platoons of advisors, then we had better be prepared to expect the worst in the future. Perhaps, then, we should even begin to think about closing all educational institutions--and begin anew.