Article by: Curtis Beaird
Photography by: Norma W. Beaird
If you have read this far, you are already armed to survive, maybe even thrive in the barrage of noise, rancor, dissonance and shrill-voiced jangle that passes for communication today. You are reading.
The willingness to pursue ideas by way of words on a page or screen
gives you, the reader, the advantage.
Readers, unlike watchers and spectators, if they have a shred of independence and individuality left, retain the freedom to talk back to the author. They can scribble notes in the margins or mutter under their breath. Reading provides the space for the individual to generate ideas as well as feelings. Readers participate.
Unlike our time as passive viewers, when we read, we are free to read and re-read and read again what is before us. We hold in our hands the words used to persuade us. The reader is in control.
Viewers enthralled by sight and sound are emotionally messaged in the direction of the commentator’s point of view. Once we have become “fans” of the image on the screen, the sound of logic replaces facts associated with truth. At that point, the viewer will believe anything as long as it sounds logical and feeds our preferred feeling.
Today, we have been trained to choose anger as our primary emotion.
The joy of being enflamed by the man on the six o’clock news is a delight. What is more delicious than to sit passively in a recliner and flirt with rage? In feeling our anger, we actually think we took action. We never realize the experience is an addiction.
Readers have the opportunity to maintain control of thoughts and emotions. Reading is our first line of defense in the constant assault on our person today.
Those who would remain free will read.
2 Timothy 2: 15 - 16
15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.
Copyright 2012, Curtis Beaird. All rights reserved.
