DMB Digest: Dystopia, Where Art Thou?
Or, "Books are not a present!"
Every Christmas, Santa still gives my boys a gift. Historically, this gift has been found at the end of a scavenger hunt. Typically, this Santa gift would be the main dish, or at least a significant portion of the Christmas booty. This Christmas, the Wife and I decided to shake things up a little. Much to the disappointment of my sons, at the end of the treasure hunt, they found a certificate stating they were each invited to an individual weekly book club with me. (Tada! It’s me, your favorite wing nut!)
My oldest son looked like he had been pranked. Like he expected me to laugh and say it was all a cruel joke and that his actual present was in the dryer or something. I smiled and told him I already had several really cool books picked out for us to read together. He mumbled and said something under his breath about how he wasn’t going to read any stupid books, and how that didn’t really seem like a present. I smiled and pretended not to hear his expression of discontent.
Isn’t that how most of us feel these days? When I was his age, I would famously state every Christmas and birthday that “clothes are not a present.” Fashion has never thrilled me. But ideas? Imagination? Those still thrill me. But it takes mental discipline and exercise to maintain the ability to immerse ourselves in a book. Books take more work than visual media. Once those muscles atrophy, it’s hard to get them back. It takes ten times the effort. And the older I get, the steeper the climb.
These days, I can only read content of any depth in the morning. Once I breach the delicate stasis of imagination vs. perception that I’m only capable of sustaining after hours of sleep and before the piercing revelation of worldly responsibilities, I lose the ability to focus my brain enough to read deeply. If I religiously protect my morning routine, I can bar distractions for upwards of half the day, and thus maintain the ability to imagine reality more deeply than what my five senses insist upon.
Isn’t this the whole purpose of books? Don’t matter if they be fiction or nonfiction. Books are supposed to push our perceptions, force us to reckon with reality in new ways. We know reading books is important. Still, most of us read fewer of them. I’m no longer capable of reading books in the evening. I’ve lost that whole part of the day to the streaming graveyard. My mental muscles have atrophied.
I fear my kids won’t fully develop the muscles to begin with. Everything is stacked against them. Their school eliminated the reading of full-length books as a part of the English curriculum last year. Now they read classic short stories or perhaps a novella at most. Their reasoning is that kids can’t finish a whole book any more, and apparently it’s not realistic to ask them to.
Bull plop. I’m dedicating 150 hours of my time in 2025 to reading thought-provoking books with my boys and discussing them. I can’t think of a better Santa gift. I’m sure there are lots of things they would have preferred to find beneath the kitchen sink on Christmas morning, but I’m determined to make this the Santa gift they remember the most. The gift that keeps on giving.
Deep thinking is always dangerous and thus marginalized by ruling institutions and the sorts of popular culture they promote. Books facilitate this kind of illicit thinking. Over the next generation, the world’s many backsliding democracies (including the US of A) will grow more brazen in their silencing of dangerous thinkers. This is an inevitable cycle of history. The main question we need to ask ourselves today, is what side of that history will we choose? The authoritarian regime that clings to power through obfuscation and duplicity? Or the rebels who insist on the freedom of imagination and the universal dignity of humankind?
The good news is that writing this kind of thing, (and therefore reading it) won’t get me arrested. Not yet.
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