Reading and Thought by Dwight MacDonald - Article Example

According to Dwight MacDonald in "Reading and Thought," what is the nature of the "printed matterthat inundates us daily," and what connection does this kind of reading have with thought? What do you think about the position he takes here? Be sure to support your argument with specific examples based on your observations and experiences, as well as on your reading, especially the supplemental essays. Macdonald in his article Reading and Thought brings to light some important drawbacks of this technologically advanced age. The abundance of knowledge available and the ease of access to attain that knowledge but no time to give much importance to the content that is present. He has made a stark contrast between the people in the sixteenth century with the modern day person and highlighted the negative impacts of the habits of a fast paced life. He has used Henry Luce’s journalistic empire as an example to coherently put his point forward to the reader through the examples aforementioned in this paragraph. However, I disagree with Macdonald. Macdonald in his criticism does not look upon the technological advancements and the research and development going on in this world. Modern day technology has made accessibility to information so much easier with the development of tablets, smartphones and laptops. Macdonald considers the internet as a collection of the world untouched literary work. What Macdonald fails to understand is that while the people in the sixteenth century had more time to dwell on the literature they lacked the quantity of literature. There wasn’t information about everything available as in today’s world rather a lot of time was spent on finding relative literature. In comparison, finding topic specific information is extremely efficient and can be accessed immediately. Macdonald starts of his article by underlining how Henry Luce had come to cash on the human natural weakness of being ‘well informed’ and made a journalistic empire for himself. Henry Luce the owner of the ‘Time’magazine coined the term ‘functional curiosity’ and he believes that it is because of this his magazine’s circulation has risen to more than two million people since its inception in 1925. The word ‘functional curiosity can be defined as one of the basic human thirst for obtaining knowledge by searching and looking, it is the kind of hungry and intense thirst for knowledge about what is happening everywhere which is not related for amusement purposes but has a solid belief that everything happening anywhere in the world ultimately affects the life of everyone now. Functional curiosity is directly proportional to the number of educated people, as the number of educated individuals grow functional curiosity increases. This to an extent is relatively true because with amount of cross cultural events happening all around the world, technology has made distances seem small. The concept of nationalism has now expanded to the concept of globalism. With the increasing role of Non Profit Organizations and the United Nations, functional curiosity has become an integral part of our lives. Also, it is important to be well informed about the happenings in the world because if in case an epidemic breaks in one part of the world, it is important to locate its origins and identify its characteristics and come up with effective short term solutions to curb the problem. This aspect of functional curiosity has not been dealt with in this article by Macdonald. Macdonald takes a very contradictory stance towards Henry Luce’s ideology and explains that this curiosity which comes naturally to the person doesn’t serve him any good as knowing about everything in the world isn’t necessarily going to make him make more money, or take some political action or any other action that could help him fulfill his aims and goals and pursue his interests. This is another fact that can be totally disagreed with as the more the knowledge a person has, the more bigger thought process a person has and he is more aware about all the organizations or platforms present that help him pursue his interests and contribute towards the society. Knowledge about the world, knowledge about anything empowers a person, boosts the person’s confidence and gives him a better sense of direction which eventually leads him to making more money and making a place in the competitive world. Being extra knowledgeable in some field gives a person more edge over others. Macdonald further reiterates his point by mentioning an advertising campaign in the times magazine which states that reading the magazine would make an individual more interesting. Macdonald believes that this practice of reading gives people nothing but making them better readers and all they read are a bunch of useless words of no good use to them as they are irrelevant to them with regards to their personal interests. He then makes a comparison between a people from the sixteenth century who is given the copy of the Time magazine or the New York Time he would take his time to go over each and everything written in the magazine and take the time to ponder about what is written and actually relate to what the person is reading. Where as in the present world with the overabundance of knowledge, newsstands filled with magazines of all kinds, the internet flooded with websites, blogs etc functional curiosity makes a person compelled to skim over everything that is happening over the world so as to fulfill their desire to know. However, in the end the gain is almost null as the person hasn’t really gained much out of it, he might have even forgotten more than half of what he read and would hardly feel anything about what is being read except for the contentment of having touched upon all the aspects written in the articles or reading materials. Macdonald has somewhat tried to put across the short comings of the present world but he hasn’t fully been able to put his point across as definitive because many of his statements are either vague or contradictory to what is saying. He believes that the habit of skimming over reading material is making people coarse, shallow, indifferent and unoriginal. His point does somewhat stands when he says the class of readers has led to the development of the class of writers who write content that can be easily read and then buried under the next day’s updates but however it can be disagreed that quality fiction, poetry and prose have almost become extinct. There are still people who dwell in writing excellent written material, the only difference being that in the past there was little literature and written content so a better written writer was much praised such as in the times of Shakespeare there weren’t many writers who could write like he did because language was evolving at the time and this gave him an edge and he is still praised till date. But however, in the present date language has become definite and all a person needs is to write. Because of the excessive amount of literature present the competition has increased and thus, not everyone can have access to everything. Moreover, because of this competition something new and great is published every day leaving behind the previous work of genius. Thus, in this world of constant evolution the amount of praise might have decreased but people’s ability to take in more knowledge has also increased which is a good thing because that is the main reason behind the constant evolutionary processes taking place all around us and the reason for all the technological advancements happening around us all the time. Read More