Harold Bloom talks about the impor­tance of the read­ing life in the for­ma­tion of char­ac­ter. For him, this is done through a life­time of inter­nal dia­logue with one­self, with the char­ac­ters, ideas, sit­u­a­tions and con­flicts in nov­els, plays, poems, short sto­ries and so on. This life­time of dia­logue builds char­ac­ter, broad­ens hori­zons, exer­cises the mind, expands it. It is a key in the for­ma­tion of our abil­ity to lis­ten to our­selves, lis­ten­ing to oth­ers, ana­lyz­ing that data, loop­ing it back into the ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion of a life­time. For him, it is not the slant of the work that does this. It’s the qual­ity. His is an apo­lit­i­cal ideal of the unique power of inter­nal con­ver­sa­tion with as diverse a read­ing life as is possible.

Art, music, crafts, etc.. all have this syn­ergy, but words on the page and in our minds coin­cide with the struc­ture of our com­mu­ni­ca­tion vehi­cle most imme­di­ately. Language. Through lan­guage, because of lan­guage. Studying his­tory teaches us that this thing we take for granted today was not avail­able to the vast major­ity of human beings until recently. Prior to Gutenberg’s inven­tion of the print­ing press in 1439, most peo­ple did not read. Most peo­ple could not freely select what they read. Most peo­ple didn’t know the vast wealth of con­ver­sa­tion avail­able to them from across the globe. And even with the inven­tion of the print­ing press, lit­er­acy lev­els remained much lower than they are today for centuries.

It seems more than a coin­ci­dence that, through­out his­tory, lit­er­acy lev­els go hand in hand with the amount of free­dom and con­trol the masses have over their own lives, and the amount of con­trol oth­ers have over them. Church, state, kings, queens, and rulers of all kinds, across the globe, have a bet­ter shot at keep­ing the pop­u­lace down and under their thumbs when that pop­u­lace can’t read … or when it has lim­ited access to a wide range of books, ideas, and con­ver­sa­tions that tran­scend time and place. To take this a step fur­ther, it is also more than a coin­ci­dence that when peo­ple limit their own read­ing to one book, one set of ideas, one ide­ol­ogy, they are less likely to be truly free, regard­less of the pow­ers that be in their par­tic­u­lar coun­try, empire, region.

Which brings me back to the word, expec­ta­tions. The tyranny of low expec­ta­tions is a phrase we bump into now and then regard­ing a very dif­fer­ent topic, but I think it bet­ter fits into this one. And those who use it today in that other con­text, often fall prey to it them­selves. To me, what the phrase really means is that our own chance to broaden that inter­nal con­ver­sa­tion with the ages and the most diverse minds across the globe is all too often thrown away. Even in this age of vast access to the widest range of lit­er­a­ture, the­ory, his­tory, and infor­ma­tion of all kinds, all too many peo­ple choose either not to read at all, or seem sat­is­fied with the nar­row pur­suit of read­ing nar­rowly. They suc­cumb to the tyranny of low expec­ta­tions, and we all suf­fer because of that. We suf­fer as a peo­ple, because that nar­row­ness of dia­logue is repeated in our media, in our polit­i­cal con­tests, in the range of pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion. And that in turn lim­its progress toward what the lit­er­acy rev­o­lu­tion should actu­ally have accom­plished already: An end to the tyranny of all pow­er­ful elites.

Expectations. Because I’ve read widely my whole life, because I’ve read a great deal of com­par­a­tive myth and reli­gion, because I’ve read about var­i­ous forms of gov­ern­ment, the pur­suit of empire, war, polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion, rigid ide­olo­gies, cru­sades drenched in blood and ter­ror, rev­o­lu­tions drenched in blood and ter­ror, I am less likely to fall prey to spe­cial plead­ings from those who seek to impose their will on us all — yet again. I am less likely to fall prey to rhetoric and pro­pa­ganda telling us that this or that is the only pos­si­ble way, be it reli­gion, ide­ol­ogy, polit­i­cal struc­tures, wars, eco­nomic visions and so on. The abil­ity to see things whole, from a mul­ti­tude of per­spec­tives (which also brings mod­ernist art into the con­ver­sa­tion), is what read­ing widely can do, and this in turn should raise our expec­ta­tions regard­ing our own role in our own lives.

I think the lit­er­acy rev­o­lu­tion has stalled. At least here, at least in this coun­try. We need to raise expec­ta­tions again through a new con­certed effort to broaden our inter­nal con­ver­sa­tions with the ages and all places. We need to embrace the all through the height­ened embrace of the widest range of read­ing possible.


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