When I was a kid, I liked to read. My mother used to get me books, and the first books I remember reading were the Hardy Boys. I got to the point that I could read a Hardy Boys book in about 45 minutes by the time I was in the second grade.
I loved reading so much that the school librarian began paying me with Oreos to place returned library books to the shelf for her. I became a voracious reader, often reading an author’s entire contribution to the library in a few days.
Soon after that, Boys’ Life magazine published the Heinlein story Between Planets. I remember enjoying the story so much that it turned me on to SciFi. Star Wars came out, followed by fan fiction novels like Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which in my mind is a better story than any of the Star Wars sequels by Disney.
I soon had read every Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov book in the library. I moved on to novels like Silent Ship, Silent Sea, the Guadalcanal Diary and more. So many I can’t even remember them all.
The came the Mack Bolan books, the Penetrator, and many other pulp fiction novels of the late 70s and early 80s.
This shaped my childhood, my view of the world, and an intense love of my country. It also made me who I am. By the time I was 12 years old, I was maxing out reading tests. I was reading at the level of a college senior, 300 words per minute with 85% comprehension. Reading fiction became a way to energize the brain and make complex thought not only possible, but enjoyable.
Now contrast that with what kids are being fed today. Pushed away from reading books into reading trash on social media. A constant stream of tranny, communist propaganda.
It’s no wonder that we have lost a nation. Our nation, brain dead and on life support, is soon to see its plug pulled. The artificial life support of endless fiat cash is becoming toxic to the very systems it is supposed to keep running. The land that I grew up in is gone.
Can we change it? Is there enough there that it can be saved? I don’t think that there is. We are entering a dark age where people no longer read, no longer think, and knowledge is of little value. We value the athlete more than the scientist. Most people, including scientists, don’t even know what science or the scientific method is.
It saddens me to see our nation dying, one idiot at a time.
7 Comments
Jonathan · September 7, 2022 at 8:21 am
I’d like to disagree with you, but I can’t.
I do believe that there are parts of the country still pursuing these values and I foresee a widening conflict, as well as significant chunks of the country being effectively outside federal (or liberal) control.
For example, my state passed a ban on private firearm sales last year – every county sheriff and the state police have said they won’t enforce it because they believe it’s illegal or they have other priorities.
Society not valuing information reminds me of a cheesy tv series from my youth that featured the “Users” (shown mostly as librarians) trying to save information from the “Wipers” (partying ignorant barbarians).
Rob · September 7, 2022 at 11:05 am
We’re into the TikTok generation now… The average attention span seems to be only seconds long. Groups of young people sit together, not interacting with each other, but scrolling on their phones…scrolling…scrolling… I wouldn’t be surprised if they send a message to someone nearby instead of looking up and speaking.
Interesting that TikTok, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, is banned in China. They have their own sanitized version called Douyin. There’s way too much degeneracy (promoted) on TikTok for the Chinese government to allow it in China. TikTok is designed by the Chinese to destroy U.S. society and morals.
Anonymous · September 7, 2022 at 11:26 am
My daughter was talking about some subject a bit ago and it occurred to me what was missing. She had been taught s bunch of trivia and had it called “education”. Yes, she knew quite a few facts, but in the real world they had little importance or negative importance when applied to real circumstances.
Giovanni · September 7, 2022 at 12:06 pm
More than once I’ve asked a bookstore manager or librarian how much they would charge to lock me in and make me read my way out.
Anon E. Mouse · September 7, 2022 at 4:10 pm
The trouble with literacy is that it works both ways. Well managed, it can help inspire and enlighten, poorly managed, or evilly managed, it can do quite the opposite. Children (and adults too but especially children) generally are quite trusting of information they gather from authorities. Maybe in the history of Europeans this impressionability and trustingness was a strength, but today it is a vulnerability.
I like and respect many librarians and writers, but when thinking about reading, its folly to consider it a universal or natural Good. We’ve all seen, have we not, all these ‘Woke’ school and public librarians ? My own highschool nowadays makes all the kids read the Handmaid’s Tale. A child today with a love of reading will be lead to a very different worldview than he might have been fifty years ago.
Not to say that TikTok isn’t a problem, just that there’s a lot of problems going around these days.
Mike Hendrix · September 7, 2022 at 10:42 pm
Your path through life sounds one hell of a lot like mine, DM. Remind me sometime to tell you the story about my beloved mother-in-law and Heinlein; it’s mind-blowing, you’ll love it.
shreck · September 15, 2022 at 6:39 pm
My mom got me started on the Hardy Boys, my dad on Heinlien. Also, my dad tricked me, he told me all the books on the bottom shelf of the bookcase were easy enough for me to read, the rest of the books would be too hard. Challenge accepted. And the first book report I did was on Guadalcanal Diary.
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