Reading Ourselves Stupid

In class we briefly discussed the idea of reading "paralyzing the mind". Schopenhauer argues that when you read, your own mind basically takes a nap and lets the author do the thinking for you. I was skeptical of this argument at first, but I came to agree with him.

It happens all the time in classrooms. You hear a lecture by a teacher who projects their views onto you. And even though you may question a teacher's opinion, rarely will you question the facts that they tell you. You could look at a piece from your art history textbook, pick out all the important visual aspects, study the time period it came out of and formulate your own interpretations about the piece. But that would take a lot of effort and a lot of time. Instead, it is much easier to let your teacher and art historians do the thinking for you, so you listen to lectures and read about the piece instead of trying to interpret it yourself.

I think this is what Schopenhauer is getting at with his argument. He says that if someone spends all of their time reading, not thinking or making, that they will "read themselves stupid", meaning they will no longer be able to form their own thoughts or opinions. I can tell that this is true, at least with myself, over time. The more I read about art history for example, the harder I find it to interpret pieces I see in museums. I often catch myself (and others) glancing at the piece and then going straight to reading the plaque on the wall, which gives us someone else's interpretation or the artist's statement. It's become easier to read about the piece than to rely on visual clues and our own thoughts about it.

I think Schopenhauer's argument is applicable to fiction reading too. The more we read, the more difficult it is for us to think up our own stories. If you've ever asked a little kid to tell you a story, you know that it comes very natural to them. They can go on forever, inventing new plot twists as they go along. But when little kids ask us to tell them a story, we find it more difficult. Adults' stories are more structured and have a plot very similar to that of a Disney movie. Why does that trend occur? I think it is because over time, as we read more stories and see more movies, our own imagination suffers because we become accustomed to letting others do the thinking for us. Whether fiction or non-fiction, I think Schopenhauer is definitely onto something when he says that people can "read themselves stupid."