Intellectual Junk Food

Did you hear what they are doing in Singapore? The government is paying people to read. Things like newspapers, books, magazines. For 15 minutes a day. They get a minuscule amount per day (and no, you can't read for 6 hours and get paid more!). It takes about 50 days to reach the equivalent of one Singapore dollar. But... why even pay people to read? Because somewhere along the way, we started reading for 30 seconds and then swiping onwards.

I was mulling this over the other day... and wondering... have we lost the art of the long read? We subscribed to The Atlantic magazine last year, mostly because their ads were intriguing. "Wow, that sounds like a fascinating article". So we bought the subscription and got both digital and print editions. Can you guess how many articles we actually read? Big. Huge. Zero. Why not? No idea. The magazine just sat there and... unread, gathering dust.

Somehow it's easier to flip through social media and ingest cute little memes, pithy 200 character quotes and elegant one-liners. Oh sure, I might click "More" and scan a longer piece but... read it? On my phone? Nope. I flip to the next insightful meme or watch some reel.

Then one day, something about all that endless scrolling struck me as oddly familiar. The mindlessness... just consuming one thing after another, after another... and always left feeling... empty afterwards. Craving more... but never satisfied.

It's like junk food. Ultraprocessed, carefully crafted content designed to keep us scrolling to the next one, wanting just one more, and maybe another... and then another. An endless stream of virtual M&Ms. Engineered to keep us 'engaged', hook our attention and poke our 'outrage' button. Endlessly.

It takes too long to read an article from The Atlantic. We don't have time for that. Our lives are too busy, too hectic. We want our information in short, digestible snippets. Something that we can snack on while standing in line at Superstore, or waiting in the doctor's office. And it's all so convenient... the only thing that gets tired is our thumb.

And it's not just that we are consuming intellectual junk food... we are producing it too. We send a quick text, a message, a tweet, a Like, a comment. One or two words thrown out; crumbs of connection. We skate on the surface and call it engagement. It takes effort to sit down and write a letter or send a thoughtful email. We have to gather our thoughts, organize them, consider what we want to share, and find the words. Yeah. "I'll send them an email later." For now, a sad emoji face is enough.

But if ultraprocessed food is so bad for our physical health... what is all this ultraprocessed intellectual pablum doing to our ability to think deeply? To connect meaningfully with others? Humans are relational beings. We thrive on deep connection, sharing our experiences and learning from others. But staying connected takes effort. It isn't always convenient. Facebook was supposed to make it easier to stay connected. And in some ways, it has. But how much of that connection goes beyond the surface?

And then there's AI. We can simply say, "Write an email to So-and-So about the upcoming event," and Poof! We don't even have to find the words ourselves. We can skip the effort of wrestling with our thoughts, organizing them, figuring out what we actually want to say. Easier? Absolutely. But what are we losing in the process?

It's why I still write letters and cards. It's why I write articles like this. Sure it's not an article in The Atlantic. But it's a place where I can let my thoughts run around and come together into some coherent whole. It's also why I read books. Real books and ebooks. Because sometimes I want to spend more than 30 seconds with someone else's ideas. Sometimes I want to lose myself in another world, consider something more deeply. I want to nourish my intellect, not just feed it.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll actually sit down and read an article or two from The Atlantic.

Food for thought.