Keith Parsons: If You Can Reads This, Thank . . . !

By Keith Parsons | 4 September 2026
Letters to a Free Country

(Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay)

A postliterate America

Being able to read and write is basically what separates us from the baboons. The first Sumerian scribe to put stylus to wet clay tablet to make a cuneiform inscription was a greater benefactor than the inventor of the wheel. Before they were literate, my British ancestors were a bunch of blue-painted naked savages chasing the deer across the heath. Without reading and writing we still would be.

The nineteenth century—before radio, TV, and goddamn TikTok, Instagram, X, etc.—was the great age of literacy. People really read. Dickens had such an avid following that when he got a haircut on a visit to New York, fans scurried to get the clippings. Crowds gathered dockside to greet the ship with the latest installment of The Old Curiosity Shop, breathlessly waiting to find out if Little Nell had died. Writing letters was an art, with beautiful calligraphy, perfect grammar, and vivid, if sometimes flowery, writing. Some of the letters written home by Civil War soldiers are beautiful and deeply moving. Newspapers abounded and were avidly consumed. The first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) sold out on the first day. (If you find a copy of that first edition, first printing in a used bookstore, I will pay you $100 for it. Ahem.) (I’ll do even better. —Ed. Ahem, ahem!)

Rose Horowitch’s Essay

Now, the lead story in the August 2026 Atlantic is “The Age of Reading is Over” by Rose Horowitch. Here are some of the facts she adduces:

According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported reading a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38 percent read a novel or a short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023…The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse.

Also, “the books that people do read are simpler than they used to be.” In 1958, the English translation of Doctor Zhivago was the bestselling novel of the year. Last year, it was the latest in the Hunger Games series. Pasternak wrote in complex sentences rich in content, but people at the time were willing to go to the effort to read serious literature. So reading seems to have decreased in quality as well as quantity.

The decline in reading aptitude is rapid. For the last decade fourth and eighth grade readings scores have slid. School librarians have had to accommodate students’ decreased reading aptitude by stocking up on graphic novels, i.e., comic books.* Adult literacy also declined:

Adult-literacy scores have also dropped. Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent.

On a personal note, I was appalled and deeply puzzled when students who were functionally illiterate would sometimes reach my junior-level classes. They could not read a college-level text and tell me what it meant. How did they get through high school and the lower college levels? Frankly, a high school diploma stopped assuring that its bearer could read or write quite a few years ago.

It is not that people are reading fewer words, Horowitch notes. People are bombarded with emails, text messages, X posts, Instagram captions, etc. Yet reading disjointed fragments does not enhance the cognitive skills that are required to read longer works that can convey rich and complex information. “America is not illiterate. It is postliterate.” And things are going to get worse. Today’s kids read much less than adults did when they were kids.

Attention spans are shrinking asymptotically towards zero. One deleterious consequence is that serious issues do not get serious attention. My father worked for the Atlanta newspapers. Every day he would bring home that day’s Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution. Their editorial pages were two full pages of syndicated columns featuring the opinions of nationally-known commentators. A full spectrum of opinion was offered, from James Reston to William F. Buckley. True, there was TV, but in those days, reading could still compete. No longer:

If TV crowded out the silent time necessary for reading, broadband internet and the smartphone make it nearly impossible. Not too long ago, at-home screen entertainment was finite. Shows aired on a certain day, at a certain time. If you wanted to watch an old movie, you had to put on your shoes and go to the video store. Books could compete in that environment. Some people, at least, would turn off the TV and read a book before falling asleep. Now entertainment is limitless. There is no hard stop—one show blends into the next. People watch TV with their phone in hand, monitoring social media and texting with friends . . . In this environment, people have to be really determined to read. Most aren’t.

To accommodate evanescent attention spans, news becomes infotainment and the rational persuasion of the op/ed is replaced by talking points.

And what is the consequence of a population that does not read, a society that, in effect, reverts back to features of an oral culture? Donald Trump is one consequence. Horowitch notes that he is the first postliterate president:

Trump’s communication style is perfectly suited to an oral society. He employs epithets–”Low-energy Jeb,” “Little Marco,” “Sleepy Joe”–that are easy to remember and repeat. He contradicts himself as though there is no record of his previous statements. Even his writing is almost indistinguishable from his speech…Many are memes with little text…Trump has pioneered a style of communication that exploits our distracted, disputatious age.

Trump is an ignoramus who reads nothing and he knew how to appeal to a population of ignoramuses who read nothing.

Horowitch attributes the decline in literacy to technology, but I think it is deeper than that. The “elite” used to be the rich, those who excluded you from their gated communities and country clubs and who, as Garrison Keillor put it, would spatter you with mud as they raced their Pierce Arrows through your village. Now, when you hear people talking about “elites,” they mean people who know more than they do. Deep resentment of expertise among his base is why Trump has defunded science, fired scientists, and replaced them with crackpots. Reading is what those snotty scientists and smarty pants professors do. Real Americans watch Fox. No need to read when Laura or Tucker or Steve Bannon will tell it to you straight.

Judicious Weighing

Philosophers have often counseled forming opinions only after a judicious weighing of evidence. That is not how brains work. Our brains are belief engines. They cannot patiently wait until a judicious sifting of the evidence has indicated a conclusion. They jump to conclusions and then confront the evidence. The consequence is that we are chronically liable to confirmation bias, the almost irresistible propensity to notice only the evidence that confirms our beliefs and ignore disconfirming evidence. Being rational is not impossible, but it is a lot harder than some philosophers have imagined.

Scientists develop rigorous methods to deal with confirmation bias. For instance, in testing the efficacy of a new pharmaceutical, double-blind testing is used. Neither the person administering the doses nor the recipient knows whether the pill is the drug or a placebo. Such methods allow us to constrain the bias of expectations. Applying such rigorous methods is not practical for us in our daily lives. How do we avoid confirmation bias? Deep and wide reading is the answer. A sustained argument, supported by well-confirmed facts can change your mind. I knew that I was no longer a young radical when I found myself occasionally agreeing with Buckley or George Will. Literature is also potent in shaping thoughts and feelings. Teaching humanities courses in a prison, I got to see how literature and philosophy changed lives.

Reading Lets You Know . . .

What is it like to be a Russian? What is it like to be a Russian during the Great Patriotic War when hordes of Nazi barbarians trashed your country and murdered your people? What is it like huddling underground as bombs and shells rain down for hour after hour? What is it like to liberate a Nazi death camp? What is it like to storm the Nazi capital? You can get some idea of these terrible experiences by reading the eyewitness accounts of Vasily Grossman, the preeminent Soviet war correspondent. I am currently reading From the Front Line: Stalingrad, Treblinka, Berlin (2026), Grossman’s accounts of what he saw. How can you write so beautifully about such horrific things?

Reading permits you to see through other eyes, to feel the terror and horror and also to know the exaltation of great triumphs over hideous evil. Reading lets you know what it is like to live in another country at another time and maybe to be someone of a different race or gender. Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” I would modify that to say, “the limits of my reading are the limits of my world.” Those who do not read have a tiny, congested, myopic little world. Their mental universe hardly extends beyond their noses.

And if Horowitch is right, the fate of our Republic is in their hands.

Keith Parsons is a Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, emeritus at the University of Houston at Clear Lake and the former editor of the philosophy journal Philo. He has debated William Lane Craig on the topics “Is Christianity True?” and “Does God Exist?”. Dr. Parsons holds a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Queens University.

William Lane Craig vs Keith Parsons | “Why I Am/Am Not A Christian” | Prestonwood Baptist Church

The Case Against Christianity (Keith Parsons)

How reading changes the way your brain works – BBC World Service

Why everyone stopped reading

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