“Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.”
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny
When we allow ourselves to repeat talking points, our vocabulary range decreases and we begin to sound like everyone else. Online, algorithms help to reduce the range of ideas to which we’re exposed, as they aim to serve us more and more narrow content.
We have both certainly succumbed to mindless scrolling and easy consumption of social media and television. Until we noticed what was happening and made efforts to change it, the number of books we read plummeted and on occasion we even lost the focus needed to read. Though this has been our recent experience, we’re leading ourselves back into reading by scaling back on our media consumption in general (more on that in a future post). We’re also giving ourselves more permission to read for pleasure, reading during small snippets of time–or listening to audiobooks while we drive around doing errands–and through repeated reminders that we like to read!
Snyder argues that we must become less predictable by reading books. One of the pleasures of the library or a bookstore is picking up, and taking home, books you may have never come across otherwise–and learning something from and enjoying them. Another way reading can be an antidote to media overconsumption is that it provides a more nuanced and careful understanding of difficult and complex subjects, instead of the highly polarized (and always oversimplified) talking points we are fed online.
Snyder boils this lesson down to “read [more] books,” and this is a lesson we enthusiastically endorse.
Watch Snyder’s YouTube video on this tenet here.
This lesson was letterpress printed in Pantone 396 ink on a Vandercook proofing press.
