Read This Blog

It's likely you recognize the arrangement of shapes here as letters and that a certain sequence of letters and spaces makes words and that these words come together to perhaps lead you to some cognitive processes that present things to you that correspond ephemerally in your mind and possibly to some thing in space.

That's a fine arrangement.

Crocodile

So here I've made you think of a crocodile.

Orange

Here orange.

A 747

A corpse,

A sky.

Morose

That, at a basic level, is literacy. You recognize these particularly arranged squiggles and spaces as some type of cognitive abstraction, sometimes expressed in sound, sometimes not. But whether uttered vocally, the squiggles and spaces are not strange to you. The shapes are not nothing; they are words.

You translate.

But translating symbols into thoughts or sounds that correspond to concepts or objects is not reading. It is translating symbols into thoughts or sounds that correspond to concepts. It's impressive certainly; it is this:


We and the parrot see cognitive abstractions. Well, that parrot doesn't, he's expired and gone to meet his maker. He's a stiff- bereft of life. Nonetheless, good Parrot, two green blocks. I hope you are duly impressed with that. Two green blocks is something the parrot, and we, must create in light of experience. The ability to construct the idea of two green blocks is amazing- and it's a birdbrain doing it. So when I say literacy is not reading, that reading is more than literacy, don't think that I am unimpressed with literacy. Literacy good.

The ability to deliver an output from stored data is handy and impressive, but it is not reading, and here, in this corner of the internets, we are concerned with reading because confusing the input of a stimulus followed by the output of data with reading is a bit of a trap.

When I order {m i c h i g a n } together in what we would consider the proper arrangement for the word Michigan, we could say that I, in a way, transmitted the word to you. In a way, you have passively received the word as I have laid it out. With that there may be the temptation to see the concept of Michigan corresponding to that word as fed to you along with it; the word carries with it its meaning that you receive.

Don't do that.

There is no Michigan apart from that which is actively created by you, dear reader, and to think otherwise is to acquiesce to a noxious monster. I suppose, if subjugation to a monster is fine with you and you choose it, there is little I can do about that. However I would hate to be seen as participating in that, so it may be necessary to offer some guidelines or points for clarification.

To that end, be aware that reading is difficult, mastered with practice, and requires active and critical awareness of one's participation. It is not the consumption of an idea, but its creation. You are doing less than is required of reading if you read passively, as if you were the receptive object of my activity.

You must be willing to confront and engage your role and existence as a subjective being and with that, reading as an expression of your subjectivity.

You may not proceed without understanding. This does not mean you may not proceed without having understood what was meant. It means you may not proceed without a conscious critical engagement. You can continue translating the squiggles into words, but you lack the means to go on reading. This is not a matter of "ought" but of freedom of possibility. You, as an existing subject, must be engaged in the process of reading, of creating, of questioning, of understanding- otherwise you do not read despite any demonstration of literacy. Reading is not a matter of reception but of creation.

Following that, this is not for everyone, but only those who choose to actively read. I suggest that reading is a model for life and that we are in fact creating the world as we live, however, we often imagine living to be a matter of objective reception: things are as they are and we receive them as such. This is not the place for such an approach. If there is a place where one may remove one's self from the need for understanding it is not here, nor would it be a place where reading mattered. If there was a place or matter for which that was appropriate, you, as you exist, could not matter.

You, as a subject, matter. You, as a subject, read. If that is beyond the scope of your desire then you ought to be elsewhere, but then you aren't you, and so have no desire so none of this matters to the non-existing, object you.

There is elsewhere.