Unprejudiced Reading

 

It strikes me that unprejudiced reading is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

An unprejudiced reading first considers what is being said before broaching the question of who is saying it.

Nowadays such reading practices seem rare.

People instead first ask “who is this addressing me? What’s their agenda? Should I trust them? Do their politics or worldview align with mine?

There are undoubtedly many causes for this.

The collapse of any notion of centre ground or shared reality will naturally produce defensiveness and an oppositional attitude as default positions.

When I say the collapse of a shared reality, this also implies the collapse of any purportedly neutral authority that might be appealed to in a dispute.

More generally, the absence of an authoritative shared reality means that even the basics cannot be assumed when we encounter another person.

Have you noticed how people are so much more polite when you pass them on isolated country lanes?

“Good morning!” “It’s such a beautiful day?”

Some might say that's because people are just more polite outside of the cities.

But if so, why do I also find myself being more polite? I am after-all a “city boy”.

Is there not a sense that once we are abstracted from the hoi polloi, as we are when we go out into the country, that those obligations we have to each other – of hospitality and cordiality – come more plainly into view?

After all, if we did not assume these things when we encounter another person alone in the wilderness, would we not be exactly like Hobbes’ man in the State of Nature, and we might well tear each other apart?

In cities by contrast, and certainly in the digital domain, these obligation are obscured, overtaken by rational/legal modes of commerce (in the broad sense of the word) which finesse those exchanges on our behalf.

Obligations are defined by your role, your job specification. There are positions, not persons.

And since you are always plugged into the network, you are always playing a role.

In the absence of a shared reality, which first and foremost is constituted by the obligations we owe to each other, the world is a wilderness, and we are but wolves. 

It has been noted that deep literacy is also passing away. Deep literacy is the combination of an active, synthetic mode of understanding, brought to bear on a text that seeks to communicate with us.

It is associated with an engagement with extended writing and forces us to ask questions about the text and about what the author is trying to communicate.

To open a text deeply demands a suspension of judgement.

Digital technologies, most obviously social media, encourages habits to form in the opposite direction.

Social media is not an extended text to be immersed in and interpreted, but a real-time assault upon attention.

What do you think? You need to respond now! Don’t miss out!

The social media post is not there to be interpreted but to be reacted to – LIKE!

Sometimes we like too fast, then we notice the post was written by someone we are told we must hate.

Now you must make amends.

Every time you like a post on so-and-so group’s page God kills a kitten. Or he would do anyway. Abrahamic Gods certainly. Others I’m not so sure.

It’s better to keep one eye, or one and half, on the person - on the role they're playing - and only half an eye on the words.

Every time you share your #awesomedinnerpics you feel the little endorphins popping behind your eyes.

Dinner is not prejudiced. Unless you share only veal.

Look this little calf in the eye and tell me about endorphins.

In networked society one cannot afford not to read prejudicially.

We are always already judged.