When I see what people post on social, mainstream, and alternative media (and, yes, I don't catch it all, but I do try to get a glimpse), I wonder what most of them have ever read. More to the point, quite often I wonder if they read anything at all (including the news feeds that they are merely copying and re-feeding). I mean, who really reads anymore?
Yes, I've always been an avid reader, but I never got into reading as much as when I tried to put together an academic paper on the subject. I tried to take a look at how the process worked and what the notion of "reading" even meant. After all, there are lots of people who can decipher and decode the marks on paper or on the screen, who can read aloud to let you know their decoding is correct, but who haven't the slightest idea what those sounds are saying. Yes, a lot of folks can make all the right sounds corresponding to the letters on the page, but like a parrot, they have no idea what those words are saying.
The skill can be learned. The skill can be taught. But, I can't shake off the feeling that neither learning or teaching is taking -- or has taken -- place. Yes, I can sob and moan about not having a lot of reading friends, but the more I look around me, the more I realize that too many people have too little idea what most authors are saying. It got so bad once that I thought I should start compiling a list of the "most misquoted writers of all time". The list got too long too fast and I gave up the project. I became overwhelmed. I had difficulty coming to terms with the fact that a lot of "authority" was being thrown my way, but little of what was maintained as "authority" found reflection in the texts.
A first example: Adam Smith's "invisible hand". I not only studied business once in my life, I taught it at the graduate level for 15 years. (That's not a brag, by the way, it's just a fact ... truth be told, I don't believe to this day that "business" is an academic field of study, but I played the game long enough to at least make this statement.) Though I was teaching a graduate-level course, not one of my students had ever read Adam Smith: neither his Theory of Moral Sentiments (in my not-so-humble opinion, a pre-requisite for understanding his more famous work) nor his Wealth of Nations. Some folks are aware he wrote the latter, most have no idea he wrote the former, but in any regard, we're confronted with Adam Smith's "invisible hand" at every turn in almost every economic discussion we have, be it formal, academic or in the pub. This all-so-important-and-critical phrase appears once -- yes, just once -- in the Wealth of Nations. In and of itself, that means nothing. However, when we consider that (a) it appears just once, and only once; (b) that it is not a topic of discussion or analysis itself but merely a passing example of another point he is trying to make; and (c) the text in which it appears (that is, the treatise on the Wealth of Nations) consists of five books in two volumes encompassing well over 1,000 pages, well, I have to ask myself, just how important this notion must have been to Mr. Smith himself. On the other hand, it appears to be the only clause that Milton Friedman ever understood in the whole text. If you don't believe me, try reading his Capitalism and Freedom and you can see what I mean. Self-interest plays a huge role, but whereas Smith alleged enlightened, Friedman's is wholely endarkened.
It makes you wonder ... well, it makes me wonder, at any rate. I know it takes time and effort to read, and even more to comprehend. It takes the most effort to engage and think through what you've read as well, and for that we apparently have no time left at all.
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