When Fiction Might Become Reality
By: Tiago Miranda
Tags: Philosophy, Education, Books, Learning, Reading

When Fiction Might Become Reality

And we are not still reading enough

Photo by Darwin Vegher on Unsplash

The world is full of cultures. Cultures that sometimes are different or similar in several ways. Within these cultures, sub-cultures emerge as a result of different habits adapted overtime.

We are living amongst habits that are constantly changing around us. Habits that are causing our world to consider different priorities, different life values, different learning mechanisms and different ways to educate the young. As this article may specify a bit more, culture shapes our minds after all.

Today’s situation is completely different than it was fifty years ago. Today’s information flies like a fighter aircraft during war: so fast that it could deploy a bomb at any time.

But the youngsters are the ones to suffer through this process.

The high flux of information, normally available online, is one of the burdens for storytellers. It is so easy to pick the smartphone and find on Google what anything means and where they are located.

The culture of reading and discussing is long gone. Though it does not need to be unless we create new habits. Habits that were once old and now can become new.

Do books stand strong along this fight on short reads and lack of attention?

I think they do, as long as we bring back those habits of reading them more often. The habit of spending time quietly in your room, with or without music, and read a long story that takes you to another reality. Books can have superpowers. And you can feel it.

For different people are different ways that motivate them to read. It could be a non-fiction, a fiction, a short story, a real story, a good book cover, a book advice from someone, the librarian enthusiasm about a piece, a good title and so forth.

We can tell that books made history possible. Books were once read as part of a formation process. Part of a life dedication job and simply to understand about the outside world.

Sitting down and flicking through a few pages were once things of the most privileged. The ones that could read, write and had time for it. As only to them that the Illiterate ones did not have a chance to access books. Books were like gold on the hands of the most powerful ones.

Reading books was like reading the newspaper nowadays: they were more often read to acquire information and to conquest accordingly. The references were minimal and the writers were selected by the minority.

Not everyone could sit down and write. Only those in power and literate had access to it, and also the ones responsible to solve problems. Intellectuals were paid minds to take hold of progress within an empire. Without them, kings would not be able to conquer.

“Privilege yields opportunity, and opportunities confers responsibilities” — Noam Chomsky on “The Responsibility of Intellectuals”.

The art of reading is not something taught at schools today. Amongst many technological devices, reading has no space within the classroom, unless it is done through a screen. And if it does, none of the youngsters would be keen to dive into a reading story anymore.

There are exceptions though, and I might be one of them. So do you?

I cannot find any other best way rather than books to create a self-conversation. The one type that takes your attention away from the confusion, complexity and mind-boggling world. The one type that instead makes you dream and talk to yourself in how the world can be according to that point of view; the writer’s point of view.

Reading a book makes you humble. Demonstrates that you do not know what you think you do because that writer showed you another way to know. Even through fiction, the world can be adaptable by different ideas into a real one. Ideas that open your mind to the possibility of innovating the self. Ideas that sometimes can be only told by words and nothing else.

That is why libraries are the sanctuary of knowledge where words become weapons to shoot your brain with creativity, wit, innovation, emotions, curiosity, friendship, love and self-identification.

It will come a time yet that books will disappear. Completely. It is sad to think but Kindle is a perfect example of it. Do not get me wrong. I love Kindle, but it does not smell like a book. It does not look like a book that has remains of handwriting. It does not feel like it has any soul.

Although this is the new generation, we are happy to have one and continue to read several masterpieces on it. I am happy to have one anyway.

Speaking about masterpieces, burning books could become a habit. A habit of the future that will stop humans to access knowledge through words.

The fireman could be the most important professional to create order amongst society, whereas they consider books as a threat to the mind of the one. A threat to a system once numbness is the new civil law. People will not be able to touch pages because it could cause a revolution. The elite could eliminate the access to books and this is scary.

Photo by Jonny Caspari on Unsplash

You probably think I am crazy but I am just based upon a novel that, nonetheless, is close to being a reality. Ray Bradbury was not so crazy after all in creating a story where books and knowledge are only stored in hard disks away from the population’s lore.

When he wrote “Fahrenheit 451”, he made it clear that the firemen were the ones responsible to inhibit society of knowing deeply about their past, their diseases and their problems that once occurred.

Burning books was an activity, according to the novel, as a priority.

Now, can you imagine for one second this happening in the future? It could be, but better not to think too much about it.

The read of every day might be a solution to combat the loss of books, the loss of knowledge. If we are ought to discover the art of reading, to identify the avid reader and pinpoint the essentials, we must preserve books.

And also, we must read them. A little bit every day, for the rest of our lives. Only then we can be in peace with our mind and continue to be humans — the only animal capable of reading so far.