Reading and writing has become a first order necessity in this age, illiteracy is an unacceptable circumstance for the majority of modern societies and everyone accepts that reading and writing is one of the fundamental skills to be able to survive in the present. Having said that, and trying to think in terms of magnitude, I should admit that, even being more fundamental, reading and writing are less important now.
Do we really know how to read? Do we read to understand? What kind of reading are we performing? Is casual reading different than not reading at all? What do we read? What conclusions do we get from that? Who are we reading to? Are our sources reliable? What is the value of the text we are reading? Is it actually worthy to practise the common net/jumping/quick reading that most of us practise these days? Can we read between lines?
And what about our writing, do we have the slightest idea about how to write? Do we even command the conventions of our own languages? Can we actually express ourselves clearly when we write? What are we expressing while doing it? Do we actually have anything worthy to say? Are we willing to be sincere? Are we really offering something through this process of communication or are we just typing random letters, copying-and-pasting them sometimes, making them easy to read, accessible to everyone, posting them till we get to dissolve their meaning?
I honestly don’t think that in this time of social-networking, reading and writing has gained importance, but exactly the opposite, it has become a much more trivial matter. An inaccurate, unserious, and unfounded compulsory human exercise that leaves us discontent far too often and that, unfortunately, offers true and long lasting intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth less and less.
