“People don’t want to read. They want to have read.”
And every time I remember that, I realize I wasn’t just talking about books.
There’s something in that phrase that describes a very particular relationship with experience: wanting the result without the process.
I see it everywhere today.
It seems people don’t want to think. They want to have thought. They don’t want to question things. They want to be able to say they question things. They don’t want to go through discomfort. They want the image of someone who went through it.
It would be easy to call this laziness. Or frivolity. But I think it’s something more interesting.
Wanting to have read isn’t laziness: it’s a way of relating to knowledge that prioritizes its exhibition value over its experiential value. Knowledge to show off, not to transform.
And that has consequences. Because knowledge that doesn’t resonate in the body, that doesn’t generate discomfort, that doesn’t leave you different from how you were before encountering it… isn’t really knowledge. It’s decoration.
What Dolina was pointing out, I think, is that effort isn't an obstacle to getting to the book. Effort is the book.
And in a world that sells shortcuts for everything, that's pretty much a revolutionary act.
“People don’t want to read. They want to have read.”
And every time I remember that, I realize I wasn’t just talking about books.
There’s something in that phrase that describes a very particular relationship with experience: wanting the result without the process.
I see it everywhere today.
It seems people don’t want to think. They want to have thought. They don’t want to question things. They want to be able to say they question things. They don’t want to go through discomfort. They want the image of someone who went through it.
It would be easy to call this laziness. Or frivolity. But I think it’s something more interesting.
Wanting to have read isn’t laziness: it’s a way of relating to knowledge that prioritizes its exhibition value over its experiential value. Knowledge to show off, not to transform.
And that has consequences. Because knowledge that doesn’t resonate in the body, that doesn’t generate discomfort, that doesn’t leave you different from how you were before encountering it… isn’t really knowledge. It’s decoration.
What Dolina was pointing out, I think, is that effort isn't an obstacle to getting to the book. Effort is the book.
And in a world that sells shortcuts for everything, that's pretty much a revolutionary act.