Why don't people read?

since forever

>>more than one friend I've lent a book
>>oh I still haven't gotten around to reading it
Should I ask for the book(s) back? They're two of the first books that got me into reading when I was 14 (Republic, The Prince), so they're very personal to me tbqh.

What a puerile post

First and foremost, people read less because reading takes time, energy and concentration. People have less and less leisure time (by design, I should add) because wages and job stability have taken a nose dive over the last 40 years. The 1960s was last time people had decent wages, leisure time and job security, and not coincidentally this was the last time regular people had a voice in politics.

Second, familiarity with Classical literature and the literary canon used to be markers of class superiority in Anglophone societies. From the time of Henry VIII to Victoria, one was not considered a gentleman unless one knew Greek and Latin, or at the very least had a grasp of ancient literature and history. After Milton, gentlemen were also expected to be familiar with canonical literature by English authors. But these days, the ideal of the gentleman is more or less dead. The mark of being among the elite is either having money and/or having gone to an elite university, especially a prestigious business school. There was even a thread here on Veeky Forums asking about what goes on at cocktail parties. People don’t go to parties to discuss anything hoity toity, just Donald Trump and golf scores and vacations. Being familiar with belle lettres doesn’t carry any more cultural currency, so the people who still read almost always do it for pleasure.

In fact, here is an Onion article that presents George W. Bush as a sort of early 19th century gentleman. politics.theonion.com/bush-regales-dinner-guests-with-impromptu-oratory-on-vi-1819566001

Only lend a book if you don't care about losing it.

You just gotta be the clown that pulls them into the sewer with you. I am slowly pulling my friend's into reading more and more, and though it is slow it is satisfying in the same way as introducing someone to their favorite music album they had never heard prior

Everyone in my immediate family and circle of friends likes to read. We are constantly lending each other books. Sounds like you just live with stupid people.

...

STOP BEING GAY

You said it yourself. Only rich people and those from ivy league have the leisure to read. So it follows that only these can be considered gentlemen.

>only classical music can be compared to good literature.
what about my bloody valentine

>gentlemen in the ivies
if only, there are hardly any [non-jewish] whites, much less old-money WASPs.

The average person doesn't really have the oppertunity. Chances are if you are on a literature forum you aren't the average person

I am the embodiment of the ordinary person. Parents aren't very bright, never encouraged me to read. My school was poor performing and was more focused on peoples behaviour than learning. All of my friends are interested in football and cars. I got a job in a workshop out of high school where i start at 7 and finish at 4. I go home real tired, not in the mood for reading. On the weekends I go shopping or go to the pub with my friends

The average person doesn't really have all that much of an oppertunity to read. Throw kids and financial stress in there and you have no chance

In school I read a couple of Stephen King novels and the first 5 Harry Potter.

The reason I dropped off is because I grew out of the childish wizard stories into my angsty teenage years, and the King I was reading wasn't particularly good (even by King standards). At school we read Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and two YA novels.

Being said angsty teenager I had no interest in a romance story and to this day Macbeth still bored me, although to be fair it's probably based on a bad prior experience. Plus, at the time I barely understood it. I had no idea what "wherefore" meant until 10 years after school. I'm not sure my teacher did. The YA novels, Junk and I'm The King Of The Castle, really did nothing for me. I don't recall the class finishing Junk and I remember hating the other.

tl;dr I didn't know there were good books which interest me. We don't read the classics in school here in the UK.

>%100

They never had time alone / didn't get a liberal degree / didn't go to college

Out of those I read because I had time alone. Grounded as a kid and reading from the blue screen created from an unplugged cable box and again for a few months in jail Tb h

kek

>the reason I dropped off
user you never even began

Because socializing is a much more rewarding, validating, and pleasurable experience. I have begun to turn my life around this year to make up for being a depressed and decaying sack for the previous 4+ years of my life.

Tonight I had a breakdown for the first time in several months. I felt overwhelming regret and ended up crying. If you are using your spare time to read books, you are throwing your life away. Please try to get out every once in a while. It is for your own good. Talking with friends and flirting with girls will surpass whatever "transcendent," "ethereal," or "sublime" feeling you get when reading.

Yes and no.

According to journalist Paul Jay, he has given lectures at elite schools where Latin is still taught. I don’t know how prevalent this kind of thing is among the elites, but it would be interesting if someone were to do an anthropological survey along these lines.

But more to the point, a Classical, liberal arts education used to be the mark of a man who could discipline himself and master knowledge of Western civilization’s formative thinkers and historical experiences. This sort bourgeois gentleman defined himself against the slovenly landed gentry, who fought and drank and carried on love affairs.

These days, the bourgeois has other ways of marking their superiority over the toiling masses: by exercising, eating more nutritious foods and of course by being richer. Being able to say that one has read Spenser, or Aristophanes doesn’t count for much. In one sense, this might not be so bad because only people who truly enjoy literature will make the effort to read the stuff. On the other hand, there is something fundamentally leveling about literature. Anyone who is literate and curious can engage with texts of great cultural weight and significance. The Bolsheviks not only read Marx, but also belle lettres. Chomsky reminds us that even illiterate blacksmiths would pay literate students to read them Shakespeare and Dickens while they worked. I can’t think of any other exercise that confers the kind of dignity that comes with mastering a literary tradition. Certainly not bing viewing some garbage from Netflix.

Why does it matter to you if people read or not?

I should add that many of the Bolsheviks who had intimate knowledge of belle lettres were people who were poor, had limited formal education, but were driven and curious. Stalin is a paradigmatic of this dynamic.

On this note, it is important to consider the drop off of union power and the dwindling importance of belle lettres. Chomsky, who grew up during the Great Depression, recalls the role of labor unions in his aunt’s life. Not only did the unions help her to secure higher wages, but they provided education and cultural opportunities, as well as leisure activities like vacations to the beach. Unions existed to prevent everything that has happened in our society: stagnant wages but also loss of the dignity that comes with culture and the leisure necessary to create it.

you don't read either

talk to em

No but really. Listen up Werthers

Reading is private. The fact that you need a social circle to validate or turn your reading activity from an act of learning and aesthetic appreciation into a suck n' fuck undergrad pseud orgy about Joyce's letters to Nora, explains why you feel so upset about this. You can't get any social standing from it, so you feel like you've been wasting your time.

I know that's not what you asked in the OP, but it's obvious that you sort of desire some sort of 20s postwar Paris intellectual circle. Be an intellectual, and maybe you'll find a circle, maybe not. Right now I bet the only circle you're in is a cock ring hidden underneath the floral lace panties you stole from your sister, you whiny fag.

unironically upvoted

I think you need a reading circle for philosophy. Or, at least have people with the same interests so you can talk about it with someone. I should get off Veeky Forums and read though, thanks user!

>I don't know anyone who reads
That's because you're a Pepe poster. If you were a normal person you'd know how to find decent friends.

underrated posts

Hahahah

Oh my sweet summer child

How long will it take you I wonder to see how empty those people are?

not nearly as empty as a sour grapes autist like yourself

Obviously.

Imagine being willfully ignorant of how empty you are every day.

I can't imagine it. Living in the moment & enacting your role as a mere vessel, being empty, taking in all. (No homo) That's the real shit.

>something I severely lack in my life is the absolute bestest and greatest thing ever
Woah, very insightful objective analysis, cretin.

Nice reddit spacing. May I ask how much you weigh

This.

We all learned this the hard way

This, also unironically death grips.

but those points aren't relevant anymore.
>exercising
now you have the whole meatheat chad bro exercise culture
>eating healthy
the poorest people can eat healthy
>more wealth
nepotism is more prevalent todat

Sounds like you're not at university tbphwy

This is unironically true

t. formerly sad lonely teenager who eventually managed to into socialising

...on the other hand, OP hasn't mentioned having trouble socialising so, while that post is correct, I'm not sure what the hell it has to do with OP. Reading and socialising are not mutually exclusive things you have to dedicate all your time to.

I'm 18 and quite a few of my many friends have read philosophy and political theory books.
Since I live in australia and the legal drinking age is EIGHT TEEN YEARS OLD. I often invite my FRIENDS over for dinner and we taste fine wines (except me for I am a whiskey man)

After drinking 6 STDs (Standard Drinks) worth of WHISKEY I get maximum
>WHISKEY DICK
I then proceed to reproduce to protect the future of my australian multi cultural society.

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is my favoute romance novel.

>WHISKEY DICK
>then proceed to reproduce
does_not_compute.xml

This is what happens when you send someone to uni in Melbourne/Sydney. Be warned, future parents.

Stupeid unindependant goy.
I live in a SHARE HOURSE that means I have my own room in a house filled with over 13 other university students.

My word is law, I have rigged the rules of the chore roster so that new housemates do all the work and pay the bills.

We even have our own eugenics program

self-destruct posthaste, lover of furry beings

So do you engage in 13-way homosexual orgies, or pair off one by one, with a threesome left over?

Seriously, you probably think you know what’s happening, but you need to realise that you’re on the path to becoming the most generic millennial imaginable(please read ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/).

>I then proceed to reproduce to protect the future of my australian multi cultural society.
This is why you make drunk posts on a japanese cartoon anime imageboard. It's okay, user

I have already embraced my fate of becoming a generic millennial. I am poor, estranged from drug addicted parents and I finished highschool whilst living with a friend. And now I have a room in a share house for 100 dollars a week. I work as a bartender in order to get by and for I spent my scholorship money in highschool on buying books. (over 1000 dollars worth)

I am going to be studing psychology in 2018

...

How long will it take you to see how empty those books are too?
too long

Reading too much is stupid - like most anything else. Didn't you read Don Quixote?

Alice Munro fucking rules. It's too bad no one on Veeky Forums wants moral complexity either.

holy shit look at the retarded faggots on goodreads

That entire article is just a bitter brown person writing about how much he loathes white people

>tfw this was written before 9/11

The only time I' ve lend a book, the bitch never returned it. At least was It

>a wall of inane pseud drivel concerned with minute semantical nuances of a completely pointless authorial neologism and its relations to edgy cardboard-cutout stereotypes that form the blogger's entire worldview
>complete with 'list of things I like and don't', pop culture references, quirky self-deprecation, clumsy "techie" lingo, ironically self-aware whining and total lack of any actual insight or meaningful propositions
It's this kind of cringe-inducing gobshite that rightfully makes flyover genpop hate insufferable faggots like you with burning passion.

>all these le the real world and socializing is much better than reading amirite
Is literally nothing. I used to have a pretty "decent" social life, laughing out loud with other dudes and making out with girls, and if I could get back in time I would rather spend that time reading because people are really not worth it.
Wait until you get down and 90% of them will act like you don't exist, the other 10% are probably worth it so stick to them and fuck everyone else.
Everytime I go out I regret it the next day for losing my time. Is like if you all only started socializing at your 20s. If you try too hard and spend too much time socializing you will lost yourself, lost your identity because of being forced to mold yourself to other people. Get your dick sucked a few times and then go back to reading or writing or something that actually builds and sustains in time

As for your question OP, most people don't read because modern education sucks and so they never understood what literature is all about and they don't have time to do it

Reading is a luxury. Most people are busy trying to survive in this nightmare world. Furthermore books are often about intellectual problems that a wage slave cannot relate with. He'd feel offended that people complain about such banal crap.

But they do have time to watch tv and get drunk huh... Makes me think, really

who needs books when you have TV? fuck you and fuck books

tfw I still believe love is more important than money

I swear I've read at least three articles exactly like that before.

His deduction isn't wrong

I'm literally the poorest fag in my friend circle, and I'm the only one who at least has read some entry-level meme books.

You are probably poor because you are not a good enough worker bee.

I'm 22 and still at uni. I plan to graduate this year and start working after that. Same goes for my friends, all of them are still students.

THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LIVE IN THE USA

I just wished people actually delved into any media/hobby at all seriously.

It's not even just books, it's hard to have a discussion even with stuff like films because a lot of people don't go beyond watching basic capeshit ect

>it's just a movie bruh

>receives love
>pushes it a way

STOP BEING CRAY

>most people don't feel the need to substitute a lack of personality with a fetishized consumption habit
What a tragedy.

how to acquire personality?
you're probably just an accumulation of all consumption you partake in - this includes books, people, foods, experiences

This isn't the point, but okay. I just said it's hard to have discussions on those topics. Notice i said any kind of hobby too, not just media consumption, i was just relating it to the board.

>this is your brain on /mu/

Define personality then. Give an example of a man "with personality" who doesn't consume.

I know plenty of people who read a lot. I'm in a top Biology PhD program. Maybe you're just traveling in the wrong circles. If you don't know people who read, then the problem is you.

Because your friends are stupid. For whatever reason, you've failed to embed yourself in intelligent social circles. If you work on living up to your fully potential you'll meet smart, well read people.

please teach me senpai.
I have never met someone beyond family. I can't help but feel stupid since I can't find anyone of value. Anyone that considers themselves intelligent are usually dumb as fuck

The "easiest" way for you would probably be to enter a field with a high proportion of intelligent people. Maybe try getting into an elite law school or STEM grad program.

That's why you come to Veeky Forums a converse with the greatest minds of the age

don't, he's probably a lech

>brainlet tier paper on the decline
>god tier audiobooks on the rise

YES

A what?

I'll just leave this here.

Ahhh this.

Like other people have mentioned, part of the problem is your social circle. I used to run into these types all the time when I had my crappy factory job. Now that I'm in an elite STEM program like, magically people are a lot more engaged.

The pseud npc's jobs are to feign happiness in each other's company.

Nah man, there are real intellectuals out there, you just need to know how to find them.

>moby dick is god-tier
>moby dick is god-tier
>i love thomas psycon
>i love thomas python
>pleb
pleb
pleb

This is all over the place

>dude these people are over emotional over trivial things
>wtf these people aren't getting engaged and emotional over trivial things