WEBVTT - The Article Was Simply Too Long! 0:00:00.000 --> 0:00:02.760 There was an article about how reading is so important, 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:04.480 but it was too long, so I didn't read it. 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:10.280 It's one more thing I'm strong and getty speaking of books. 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:12.880 I just saw this up on the screen, the screen capture, 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.439 so we can talk about it tomorrow. Oh, thirteen percent 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.360 of eighth graders are proficient in US history. They did 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:22.439 that study coming up on the two hundred and fiftieth 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:27.520 birthday of the country. My own eighth grader was complaining 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:31.360 yesterday he was looking forward to the chapter. It ended 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:33.680 up being a page. He was looking forward to learning 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.440 about the Civil War. They barely talked about it at all. 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:39.920 Gettysburg got like a mention in the fact that Lincoln 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:41.839 gave a speech called the Gettysburg Address. That was the 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:43.600 sum total of that and all the rest of it 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:45.800 was about how the Native Americans were affected by the 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:50.280 Civil War. And my son, who's super into history, so 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:54.200 he's watched hours and hours of YouTube videos about the 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:56.120 founding in the Civil War and all this sort of stuff. 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:58.800 He said. Kids that don't do that, he said, they 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.840 would They view of the Civil War would be just 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:05.160 what they got in school yesterday. I said, I know, 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:07.760 that's what drives me nuts, and so that's how you 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.920 end up with a thirteen percent of eighth graders are 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:13.440 proficient in US history. And as you've been pointing out 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:15.600 later lately, and it should be pointed out all the time, 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:18.000 proficient means you got above an F. 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:22.920 Yeah, yeah, it sounds wow, he's proficient. No, it's like 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:23.760 barely acceptable. 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.800 So only thirteen percent have barely acceptable knowledge of their 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:31.679 own country's history. You cannot continue like that. 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:36.480 And you cannot read or well enough house explanation of 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.240 when you deny people in understanding of their own history, 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:42.080 they don't know who they are, so then you can 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:44.280 tell them who they are. You know. 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:47.840 I've never talked about this much because I'm always uncomfortable 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:49.760 on how it sounds and how to present it. But 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:52.680 I used to watch a lot of book TV. Not 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.520 as much anymore. I don't know why not anymore. I 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.680 guess because I can listen to it. Didn't used to 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:00.280 be able to listen to it like this, But uh, 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:04.240 book TV on C Span two and it's a thing. 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:06.960 It's all day long. I think it's eighteen hours or 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:10.320 something like that of interviews with authors or authors giving 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:13.079 a speel about their book at bookstores and stuff like that, 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:17.280 and any time it's US history of any kind or 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:21.160 any really any history of any kind, it's a whole 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:23.720 bunch of old white guys and a few old white women, 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.239 and there's nobody else at those things. 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:26.960 Wow. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:31.120 And I always think that's the only person that's interested 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.959 in this stuff, old white guys. And so I suppose 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:39.359 the you know, the progressive crowd would say, well, that's 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.040 because this country was set up to help white men 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:44.960 and nobody else, so nobody else says you could shut 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:50.760 the f up. On the other hand, anyway, that's enough 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:51.800 of that. I didn't mean to get off there. 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:53.960 Yeah, I don't have time for book TV. I watched 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.520 TikTok video TV. It's you know, it's all about fifteen 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:02.040 second videos. The interviews are seven seconds long. So I 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:07.680 found this just crazy, crazy interesting. I don't know this guy, 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:12.560 Sam Chris, But you know, the interesting thing about substack 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:16.440 is and I probably need to cancel some of my 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:21.680 subscriptions because much like you know, like YouTube and Instagram 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:26.600 have shown everybody that there are way more amazing musicians 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:30.799 in the world than we suspected. American idol it was 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:32.760 actually kind of the start of this because you realized, 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:35.000 Oh wait a minute, there's like somebody with the best 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:36.760 voice I've ever heard in my life in every town 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:40.800 in America, and probably three to fifty of them, depending 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:44.440 on the size of the town. Right. But Substack, there 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:48.240 are so many people who have so many interesting ideas 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:52.200 and have research to fascinating questions and write so well. 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:54.920 I was just asked the other night do you write much? 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:57.480 And I'm like, yeah, I'm so mentally exhausted by the 0:03:57.480 --> 0:03:59.520 time this show's over. I'd rather, you know, work on 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.320 my golf or write music. And the other thing is 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:08.640 I just if I were to subscribe to every Substack 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:12.880 column columnist I come across that I think is not 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:18.359 only really good, but is brilliant, I would go broke. Anyway. 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.239 I came across this on substack, and again, this gent's 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:23.080 name is Sam Christ I don't know much about him. 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.640 What's it cost per sign on or whatever? 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.920 It's up to the author. And I wish I could remember, 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:37.280 like I subscribe to Matt Tayebe's Substack and the Reality 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:42.240 Strikes Back thing, which is all about common sense in 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.279 the face of gender bending madness. But I can't remember 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.840 a couple more. But it's marbling more than they should 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:49.839 because it's impossible to get to all the good content. 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:52.880 But so this guy writes a lot about literacy and 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:59.280 learning and that sort of thing, and he writes about, well, 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:02.919 the title is reading is magic. What will happen in 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:07.000 our second peasanthood? And we've talked a little about how 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:11.159 the era of literacy of people reading books filled with 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:14.680 ideas and stuff, it's actually not. It didn't start very 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.160 long ago, and it appears to be ending. I mean, 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:20.640 so what's what's it generally considered to have started with 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:28.520 the Enlightenment, like sixteen hundreds or roughly. Yeah, okay, anyway, 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:32.520 so he writes in nineteen thirty one, there's this Soviet neuropsychologist, 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:34.760 and the fact that he was a Soviet doesn't enter 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.200 into it. But he was traveling into the foothills of 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.440 these mountains in the barren borderlands between Uzbekistan and Kirgizia, 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:43.159 which I've never heard of in my life, pretty this 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.560 time of year, to find out how the locals thought. 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:51.040 He had this theory that mental processes are social and 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.960 historical in origin. Not just that the content of our thoughts, 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.200 but the way we think is determined by the kind 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:01.040 of society we live in, and he trying to investigate 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:01.960 whether that was. 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:06.320 True and amazingly deep and fascinating to think about. 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:10.120 Yeah, it's uncomfortably close to some of the critical theory 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.000 stuff that is so ugly and dangerous and toxic. But 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.000 and so he went to this place that was a 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:22.000 different world than what he knew as an intellectual. In 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:31.280 the Soviet Union, dry hills, illiterate cattle herders, isolated green valleys, 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:35.840 there were illiterate peasants growing cotton. For centuries, essentially no 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:39.880 one there had been able to read or write. No one. 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:44.280 But that was changing somewhat because when the scientist arrived, 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.360 the Soviet government was forcing herders and peasants into new, 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:51.920 regimented collective farms where large numbers of rural people were 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:55.000 being taught to read as part of their great Soviet 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:58.440 program for bringing the Marxist to utopia. And so he 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:02.640 spent the next year among these people, as this guy writes, 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:06.600 bothering them with a series of annoying texts. And what 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.120 he found was that just a few years of basic 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:13.680 literacy education in an agricultural school had massive cognitive effects 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.000 and here's where it gets crazy. In one of his 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:19.880 early experiments, he showed people a group of geometrical figures, 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:24.680 complete and incomplete circles and triangles, squares and rectangles, drawn 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:27.040 with straight or dotted lines. He asked them to group 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:29.920 the shapes together, even if they didn't have any training 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.880 in geometry. Nearly half of the peasants who'd learned to 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:37.320 read sorted the shapes geometrically squares of square, circles of circles. Meanwhile, 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:42.080 none of the illiterate subjects considered the shapes geometrically at all. 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:47.080 They related to them as objects. One subject, a twenty 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:50.400 four year old woman from an isolated village, insisted that 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:53.559 nothing could be grouped with an incomplete circle that should 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:57.400 go by itself. That's the moon. When Lorea tried, the 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:00.280 scientists tried to suggest that she group as sc where 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:03.520 an erectangle, she refused, that's a glass and that's a 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:07.280 drinking bowl. They can't be put together. Other objects describe 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:11.480 the shapes as tense bracelets, mountains, irrigation ditches, and stars. 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:15.280 When sorting objects, collective farm workers put a saw with 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.000 a hammering because they're both tools, while peasants put a 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:20.640 saw with a log. The log has to be here too. 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:23.080 They'll be left without firewood, they won't be able to 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:30.560 do anything. So uh uh, So they couldn't relate to 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:33.880 things in an abstract way. Everything had to be an 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:38.120 object they were familiar with. And then he gets into 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:42.320 the most upsetting of Laria's puzzles with a mathematical problem. 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:44.240 He told the subjects that it took three hours to 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.640 walk from their village to a town and six along 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:51.040 the same road to a different town. How long would 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.680 it take to walk from the second town to the 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:57.040 third town? Again? Every single one of the collective farm 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:00.960 workers solved the problem, but the illiterate villagers knew very 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:03.800 well that the town one was actually closer than town 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:07.760 to and refused to answer. Laura kept saying that it 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:10.440 was just a scenario, but the villagers kept insisting that 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:14.400 they couldn't entertain a scenario that contradicted actual reality. No 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:16.840 one exploded, how can I solve a problem if it 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:20.000 wasn't so? And he took pains to point out that 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:23.640 these people weren't remotely stupid. They were perfectly capable of 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:26.640 thinking rationally and deductively, and they could make excellent judgments 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:29.760 about facts of direct concern to them. But they lived 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:33.480 in an incredibly conservative world with its walls closed tight 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:38.880 around direct sensory experience. Meanwhile, even a cursory exposure to 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:42.600 writing produces an entirely different kind of thought. It lives 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:46.200 in a spooky realm of ideal objects and useless categories, 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:49.440 where you can talk confidently about invisible bears and measured 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.439 distances even when they're going the wrong way. But if 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.120 we think, but what we think of as politics seems 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:58.000 to depend on this stuff, and revolutionary politics in particular. 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:04.480 What he I'm saying is abstract thinking seriously looking at 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:09.280 ideas seems almost impossible without the ability to read. For 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:13.319 reasons that scientists are just scratching the surface of understanding. 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:17.720 Well a little too late, since reading is going away. 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:23.160 So yeah, most people reading didn't really come around till 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:27.960 seventeen hundreds, when there is enough literacy and books printed 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.880 and everything like that. So all of the conversations we 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:35.880 have about populations prior to that Middle Ages go back 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:38.480 to the Roman Empire whatever, as almost all the literate people. 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:41.760 So I mean, so based on this thing we're talking about, 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:45.640 like a different species or animal than what we think 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:47.880 of as human beings because of the way they think. 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:50.800 So none of the things that we extrapolate about all 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:54.000 of those times make any sense. 0:10:54.040 --> 0:11:00.120 Then, yeah, human nature doesn't change, but that's close to it. 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:04.199 I was. I'm reminded of reading Tim Sanderfer's brand new 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:12.480 book Declaring Liberty. Proclaiming Liberty copy next to me, Oh 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:17.800 you're important, and they point out that one of the 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.960 political philosophers that the Founding Fathers really really liked. One 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.040 of the first things he did was taking down the 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:30.439 idea of persecuting people for being witches, explaining how unjust 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:32.760 that was and how it's prone to hysteria and stupid 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:36.280 and we got to stop doing it. And it was 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:38.680 an example. I think it butts up against this, the 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:44.360 idea that you can't reason with people in a productive 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:49.559 way until they've learned to read and take on abstract 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:51.160 ideas outside themselves. 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.240 I don't know, well if this is true, and I'm 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:57.880 not sure I believe it can be, but for the 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.559 sake of the artment, we'll go with it's true. If 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.480 this is true, I wonder what the next iteration of 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:05.880 humans is going to be like. Who just take in 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:09.439 short videos for all their information. 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:13.320 Yeah, he gets into that and it ain't great. Let 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:14.920 me throw in one more thing though, that I found 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:19.400 unbelievably compelling. This author points out that, like a lot 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:23.840 of his contemporaries, he had a basic, basically progressive model 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:28.880 of psychological development. Thinking based on abstractions is more advanced 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:31.360 than thinking based on direct experience. As time moves on, 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:33.800 the advanced way of doing things will obviously overtake the 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:35.840 more backwards, which is why he had to go to 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:38.520 the farthest barren fringes of the old Russian Empire to 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:40.760 find people who had never been exposed to writing. But 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:44.080 the villages he visited hadn't always been a backwater. A 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:47.040 thousand years ago, this land in the foothills of the 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:50.480 Alay Mountains Alie Mountains, I'm not sure, had been one 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.880 of the great centers of world civilization. In his notes, 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:59.280 he mentioned that he was walking in the homeland of scientists, astronomers, mathematicians, 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.120 and poets like guys I've never heard of. The illiterate 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:04.320 herders and peasants were living in the ruins of a 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:08.520 sophisticated literary culture that had for the most part vanished 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:12.880 from the world, and these people were utterly illiterate and 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:17.240 incapable of abstract thought in the very streets where great 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:21.679 philosophers had strode. And he's afraid that this could happen 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:23.200 to Western civilization too. 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:24.280 Sure could. 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.000 I could do part two of this for the One 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:29.720 More Thing podcast tomorrow. 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:31.280 I wonder how happy they were? 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:33.280 Oh? 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:35.880 Being happy is one of my main goals in life 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:37.040 and should be for most people. 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:39.880 Yeah. 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:43.360 Yeah, Now, if you can't form a civilization that can 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.080 continue or protect yourself, it doesn't make any difference because 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:48.319 it won't last long. But I do wonder how happy 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:48.640 they were. 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:55.559 That is a question that you know you'd need twenty 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.480 seven philosophers to argue each other to death to answer, 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:02.360 Or if you know you're better off being happy and 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:06.120 refusing to answer a theoretical question because you've never done it. 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:13.880 I don't know. Ignorant is a damn dog, But dogs 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:14.520 seem happy. 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:18.160 It is beyond fascinating to me that the period of 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.000 reading for human beings might end up having a life 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.720 span of three hundred years. Roughly started around seventeen hundred 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:27.600 and it has ended roughly now. Our friend Tim sanderfer 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:30.320 We referenced his book. I've been talking to him about that. 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:33.240 People don't buy books anymore, people don't read anymore, and 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:37.880 it's exponentially going away because old people still kind of 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:40.440 read their dying off. Young people ain't got no interest 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:41.640 in reading books. 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:46.280 So the future will be unambiguously hellish and miserable. Part 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:49.440 two of that discussion on tomorrow's One More Thing podcast. 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:50.760 Why would you want to miss that? 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:55.280 Oh it'll be a nod kid, I kid, so join 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:56.000 us tomorrow. 0:14:56.960 --> 0:14:58.400 Well, I guess that's it.