What's going through my head right now #9

About books, reading and what we make of them

I'm currently reading the book ‘Club der Dilettanten’ by Bettina Stangneth. It deals with the topic of what writing, i.e. composing texts, and reading, i.e. consciously absorbing information, ways of thinking, perspectives and experiences, entails. It deals with many different aspects: the experiences released in the process, the power of knowledge, the targeted use of reading material or the accessibility and manipulation caused by the new media (especially digitalisation) and their now often unfiltered access.

I am still in the thick of it and follow her thoughts and philosophical approaches with rapt attention. What struck me from the outset was that writing and reading, and access to these two skills in general, is seen by most of us as something commonplace and normal. Of course, there are people who experience limitations here, whether for physical, mental or other reasons. This should be clearly stated here. Nevertheless, in our social system, the opportunity to learn to read and write is fundamental and is offered and taught as part of the educational canon from an early age.

The selective choice of reading, the opening up or restriction of access to content therefore also offers the opportunity to influence each individual person as well as entire sections of the population, nations and cultures in many different ways.This power is enormous and has increased over the last few decades. And not necessarily for the better.

Particularly after the last few months in the German political landscape, especially before and after the recent elections, I have noticed how headlines, short telegram-like news splashes and information that can hardly be traced back to any source are spreading. You get the feeling that decline is near and that everything that is being aimed for is doomed to failure from the very first word, leaving you disillusioned and, as in a nebulous blind flight, with no chance of looking ahead or even having a sense of direction.

So the more confusion, chaos and unpredictability spread, the more I thirst for information, dialogue and self-assessment at eye level. Not so easy in these times and always fraught with questions about the source, the truth and the proportion of fiction.

The mere fact that I now reach almost fifty people with my newsletter, some of whom (according to statistics) also read it, means that I can not only share my thoughts, experiences and views with other people, but also influence them to a certain extent (no matter how close or distant they are to me), would hardly have been possible in this indirect way a good twenty years ago. At least not in such a quick and efficient way and not in this compactness and direct accessibility in terms of time. As the saying goes:

‘Reading can change the world.’

Of course, you can decide whether you want to read what I've written or whether my verbiage is too much for you, gets on your nerves or rarely picks you up or even touches you. Maybe it's just because you're lazy and haven't unsubscribed from the newsletter yet. Or perhaps you simply don't have the time or leisure to devote yourself to my written outpourings, or even to enter into a dialogue and perhaps even respond or confront me in a spirit of discussion.

This is also the freedom to simply decide for yourself how much, how long and until where, where in or just the end to read ... and then to make decisions. That is the writer's lot, especially nowadays, when there are so many approaches, so many texts, so many sources that you can no longer keep track of. And as Umberto Eco describes in a quote (cited by Bettina Stangneth as an introduction to her book), this can also be the case:

But what happens when the reader brings to light something that the author could not and would never have wanted to say and yet the text seems to say with absolute clarity?

With this in mind, have a wonderful time reflecting on your own writing, reading or simply perceiving the world.

Yours Jochen, sincerely

„Club der Dillettanten“ / Bettina Stangneth

Rowholt Verlag / ISBN 978-3-498-00717-1