Inspired by the daily social media explosion of carefully curated photos of beautiful girls posing with/on books, I can't help but feel sad.
This phenomenon, which I jokingly call "the phenomenon of the bookish babe", has led me to reflect on how reading has been transformed from a very intimate personal act into a social accessory, a means of attracting attention and being seen as pseudo-intellectual.
In this new era of image dominance and social perception, reading has undergone an incredible metamorphosis. It is a bitter paradox to see how such a precious act as reading has shrunk, turned into a simple accessory, a toy to gain as many likes and followers as possible.
How much validation it needs... the book, this attention magnet...
Today it seems to me that the book is more a symbol than a real source of knowledge; an object that makes us seem more "deep", more knowledgeable, more... intellectual.
This kind of superficial and untruthful reading does not contribute to the development of critical thinking or to spiritual enrichment, and in my personal opinion I see it as a threat to society, which needs to increase the number of critical minds.
With the rapid development of technology and the spread of social media, individuals have moved away from reading books and towards consuming short and often empty content.
I call this a crisis and a symptom of a society that is losing interest in thinking deeply and exploring the world through classic browsing.
This trend strikes me as "scary", firstly because it trivialises the true value of reading, and secondly because it contributes to a culture where appearance is more important than substance.
Today, more than ever, society needs real readers, people who engage with texts at a level that requires concentration and reflection, or who encourage the sharing of reading experiences through discussions or "book reviews". Unfortunately, these initiatives are so few and far between when they are done well, and so many and far between when they are done by pseudo-intellectuals.For true reading does not need an audience.
It is the process of the sweet escape into new worlds and depths of thought.