Read as an act of subversion

I'm not telling you to read this rag, it's telling you to read. Period. Not online, not text, not rage-baiting social media sites. Read a fucking book and reclaim your critical thinking.

Your mind has been hijacked. You can't focus. You can't think deeply. Sustained work is impossible. Let's try it out. Ready? It's down at the bottom of the page, I knew if I put it in the middle it would scare you off. Go check see if I'm right...

We have all heard of Young America. He is the most current youth of the age. Some think him conceited, and arrogant; but has he not reason to entertain a rather extensive opinion of himself? Is he not the inventor and owner of the present, and sole hope of the future? Men, and things, everywhere, are ministering unto him. Look at his apparel, and you shall see cotten fabrics from Manchester and Lowell; flax-linen from Ireland; wool-cloth from [Spain;] silk from France; furs from the Arctic regions, with a buffalo-robe from the Rocky Mountains, as a general out-sider. At his table, besides plain bread and meat made at home, are sugar from Louisiana; coffee and fruits from the tropics; salt from Turk's Island; fish from New-foundland; tea from China, and spices from the Indies. The whale of the Pacific furnishes his candle-light; he has a diamond-ring from Brazil; a gold-watch from California, and a spanish cigar from Havanna. He not only has a present supply of all these, and much more; but thousands of hands are engaged in producing fresh supplies, and other thousands, in bringing them to him. The iron horse is panting, and impatient, to carry him everywhere, in no time; and the lightening stands ready harnessed to take and bring his tidings in a trifle less than no time. He owns a large part of the world, by right of possessing it; and all the rest by right of wanting it, and intending to have it. As Plato had for the immortality of the soul, so Young America has "a pleasing hope -- a fond desire -- a longing after" teritory. He has a great passion -- a perfect rage -- for the "new"; particularly new men for office, and the new earth mentioned in the revelations, in which, being no more sea, there must be about three times as much land as in the present. He is a great friend of humanity; and his desire for land is not selfish, but merely an impulse to extend the area of freedom. He is very anxious to fight for the liberation of enslaved nations and colonies, provided, always, they have land, and have not any liking for his interference. As to those who have no land, and would be glad of help from any quarter, he considers they can afford to wait a few hundred years longer. In knowledge he is particularly rich. He knows all that can possibly be known; inclines to believe in spiritual rappings, and is the unquestioned inventor of "Manifest Destiny." His horror is for all that is old, particularly "Old Fogy"; and if there be any thing old which he can endure, it is only old whiskey and old tobacco.

If the said Young America really is, as he claims to be, the owner of all present, it must be admitted that he has considerable advantage of Old Fogy. Take, for instance, the first of all fogies, father Adam. There he stood, a very perfect physical man, as poets and painters inform us; but he must have been very ignorant, and simple in his habits. He had had no sufficient time to learn much by observation; and he had no near neighbors to teach him anything. No part of his breakfast had been brought from the other side of the world; and it is quite probable, he had no conception of the world having any other side. In all of these things, it is very plain, he was no equal of Young America; the most that can be said is, that according to his chance he may have been quite as much of a man as his very self-complaisant descendant. Little as was what he knew, let the Youngster discard all he has learned from others, and then show, if he can, any advantage on his side. In the way of land, and live stock, Adam was quite in the ascendant. He had dominion over all the earth, and all the living things upon, and round about it. The land has been sadly divided out since; but never fret, Young America will re-annex it.</em><br><br><em>The great difference between Young America and Old Fogy, is the result of Discoveries, Inventions, and Improvements. These, in turn, are the result of observation, reflection and experiment. For instance, it is quite certain that ever since water has been boiled in covered vessels, men have seen the lids of the vessels rise and fall a little, with a sort of fluttering motion, by force of the steam; but so long as this was not specially observed, and reflected and experimented upon, it came to nothing. At length however, after many thousand years, some man observes this long-known effect of hot water lifting a pot-lid, and begins a train of reflection upon it. He says "Why, to be sure, the force that lifts the pot-lid, will lift any thing else, which is no heavier than the pot-lid." "And, as man has much hard lifting to do, can not this hot-water power be made to help him?" He has become a little excited on the subject, and he fancies he hears a voice answering "Try me"   He does try it; and the observation, reflection, and trial gives to the world the control of that tremendous, and now well known agent, called steam-power. This is not the actual history in detail, but the general principle.

But was this first inventor of the application of steam, wiser or more ingenious than those who had gone before him? Not at all. Had he not learned much of them, he never would have succeeded -- probably, never would have thought of making the attempt. To be fruitful in invention, it is indispensable to have a habit of observation and reflection; and this habit, our steam friend acquired, no doubt, from those who, to him, were old fogies. But for the difference in habit of observation, why did yankees, almost instantly, discover gold in California, which had been trodden upon, and over-looked by indians and Mexican greasers, for centuries? Gold-mines are not the only mines overlooked in the same way. There are more mines above the Earth's surface than below it. All nature -- the whole world, material, moral, and intellectual, -- is a mine; and, in Adam's day, it was a wholly unexplored mine. Now, it was the destined work of Adam's race to develop, by discoveries, inventions, and improvements, the hidden treasures of this mine. But Adam had nothing to turn his attention to the work. If he should do anything in the way of invention, he had first to invent the art of invention -- the instance at least, if not the habit of observation and reflection. As might be expected he seems not to have been a very observing man at first; for it appears he went about naked a considerable length of time, before he even noticed that obvious fact. But when he did observe it, the observation was not lost upon him; for it immediately led to the first of all inventions, of which we have any direct account -- the fig-leaf apron. 

That's a part of  —a small part of— Lincoln's speech on discoveries and inventions. It's a portion. Spoken to a crowd who could follow the asides and kept sustained attention for the duration of his speech. Can you?

Fuck no.

Why?
You are trained.
In Insta posts.
And LinkedIn lunacy.
Snippets sell.

Long text does not. You can't fucking handle it. You've been crippled. You helped cripple yourself for a few shiny gems to occupy that vast chasm of 30 seconds of unoccupied space while sitting in a waiting room.

Not people watching. No conversing. Heaven forbid I fucking dwell on my life, I need a quick game of fucking candy crush.

Meantime, your messaging stack is piling up like a blackout of La Guardia air traffic control. When your 'do not disturb' lifts, there's a thousand distractions carefully planned by aspirational product managers awaiting your engagement and monetization. 

Fuck you. Stop being a fucking pansy and wake up. Your brain has been hijacked and you need to reclaim it now.

Read a book. All of it. Without a phone nearby. Great thinkers have long ruminated about nearly everything you face today but you ignore them. 

Start reading as an act of subversion. Here's a start:

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Start with this, it's much more compelling than many of the distopian books. See how man is enslaved.

Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut
One of his early works foreseeing automation taking over society. Corporate culture is spot-on.

We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
Precursor to Orwell's 1984. Much more interesting in my opinion.

1989 and Animal Farm - George Orwell
Everyone knows of these books, read or re-read them.

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Books are illegal, and a fireman's job is to light them up.

The Water Knife - Paolo Bacigalupi
What life looks like when the Colorado river runs dry

Wag the Dog - Larry Beinhart
The book that inspired the film. OK, it's the film is a damned good one, you can watch instead of reading if you must. See if you can find any contemprary analogies.

That's a start. If you have suggestions, send me a postcard.