I am a journalist, I like to read a lot, to write, to walk, to listen to music and to explore the world around me. I am a big dreamer and I want to awaken the desire for dreaming in people. This is why I started my research on the people that read books – based on what books they read. I organized a number of book reading events, during which I was exploring the mentality of participants, as well as finding out the effects of the books on them. Unfortunately, what I found out was that they read mostly materialist and idealist literature. Romanticism is left back in remote era of Renaissance, which is a pity, I think. This book reading initiative that I started unfortunately didn’t have a long life, and I think the reason is that nowadays the youth is totally absorbed in social networks and doesn’t even want to participate in such events. My desire and aim is to awaken the interest towards reading books and to encourage the youth to discuss the books they read, face to face. Ironically young people spend really a lot of time on just random talks and discussions of different issues and ideas on Facebook, but when they get invited to come and talk about those issues personally, in order to find solutions, they often don’t show up. So, my open question to the youth would be – “Dear young people, are you sure it’s a good idea to get totally occupied by the social networks, which are made just for entertainment?”
After the second world war came the era of loneliness and absurd, according to some modern philosophical views, and I share this opinion in a way, based on what I have observed and I keep observing around. Are we ready to rethink some aspects of our modern reality and to maybe conclude that “Those who are not able to feel happy when they are alone cannot be happy.”?
This is an interesting way of looking at good/real vs bad books… Do you mean idealist and materialist would be the self help/ “how to”, “5 steps to” books teaching people to achieve greatness, hapiness, success or whatever books?
Taste is difficult to assess, even harder to judge… so I’m quite curious what others here think. I would still go with “Better to have read than to have not read at all?” when it comes to youth. You have a lifetime to get yourself a proper education through books and make better and better choices…
just for the sake of a more provocative discussion , what if gaming was invented before books ,how will we react and how will the “adults” look at their children reading books .
“Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children”
- " But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion –– you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you."
for me I am still pro books also , but I think gaming is under estimated by us as it has lots of potential that books don’t have , what do u think ?
On purpose I choose this in a way provocative subject. Of course gaming was invented before books, I can’t recall who mentioned in another post that we humans are social animals. According to basic behavioral theory animals (not all, but for sure humans) learn in a variety of ways: by conditioning (example: Pavlov’s dog (also a fantastic band from St. Loius)), by copying, by doing (trial and error) and abstraction, all of those are part of gaming. I do not believe that anybody would say reading books is more important to gaming, it is more the opposite, reading books is a way to stimulate abstraction and fantasy and in this way an addition than gaming. I am convinced that for a healthy physical, mental and social development both are essential, play and read books.
to be honest, hazem & burkhard, I think you make very valid observations! I am not a gamer myself (as a child I would even rather observe than play, but mostly because I hatehatehate loosing), but I wish I could enjoy gaming more. For now, it’s just solitaire I play on my smartphone but who knows!!!
do you happen to know about co-operative games? a co-operative game is a game where nobody wins, but a common effort of two or more people is achieved.
I have to admit I am no master in co-operative games, but further down you find some links. First, there seems to be a little confusing on what co-operative games are. See here wikipedia on co-operative games (a lot of mathematics thou) and here cooperativegames.com (the latter looks like an online shop selling co-operative games for children to me). The wikipedia definition is more narrow and gives space for non-competitve games, but I was not able to find a wikipedia article on them. See here Summaries of Co-operative Non-competitive Games
but who knows!!!