Intellectual Snacking -- just be sure you eat healthily

A quick insight into my methodology. I've started these "Bits and Pieces" posts as a way of sharing with you articles that I find interesting, but haven't had time to thoughtfully digest, analyze, and connect with other ideas. How do I put the posts together? I set up a file and dump little paragraphs about each article into that file until I have about 4-5 things to share -- then I post. It doesn't take much time, and it enables me to share interesting things without spending a lot of time on them.

Apparently, if Al Mohler is right, this practice makes me a purveyor of intellectual flabbiness. He points to this interesting article in Wired about how information and media comes to us "snack sized" for greater consumption. From the Wired article: "Music, television, games, movies, fashion: We now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy candy and chips - in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed. This is snack culture - and boy, is it tasty (not to mention addictive)." I hope that my posts are tasty -- doesn't any author/speaker hope that his/her audience enjoys (or at least is challenged by) their work?

But Dr. Mohler sounds a note of concern: "All this may be great for the marketers, but it spells further challenge for educators, parents, and preachers. How will people be able to listen to a serious biblical sermon if their minds are set to pay attention only for a few minutes -- or even less?" In this concern, he echoes Neil Postman's warnings going all the way back to his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. (a stinging and thoughtful critique of television's influence upon our culture). The perennial worry is that new technologies sap our critical thinking, analysis, and reflective skills. With every blessing there comes a curse, to be sure, and Postman (and Mohler) are very good at sounding the warnings about these curses.

Mohler and Postman have strong points -- these technologies enable us to quickly indulge our basest instincts and we have used them to reward boorish behavior and to set up a society of a million Little Brothers (always watching, always recording, potentially revealing your secrets on the web). There is a great need for us to cry in the wilderness for wisdom as we approach new technologies (see my previous post on Lifelogging for further thoughts on this). I'm thankful for both men as they help me think through the consequences of my choices.

Wisdom, however, demands restraint. I tire of the panicked cries that "our children can't sustain their attention any longer." We must realize that, as the saying goes, "brevity is the soul of wit." The Wired article rightly reminds us that the capacity for concise targeted statements is not unique to our culture "Neither Nabisco nor Apple was the first to distill things to their essence. Moses gave the world its first Top 10 list long before Letterman (on handheld tablets, no less). Old Farmers Almanac, Readers Digest, and CliffsNotes pared information down to pithy synopses. But cultural snacking isnt just distillation, its elevation. In 17th-century Japan, teenage poet Basho popularized the haiku, an early, lyrical version of the IM. Abraham Lincoln delivered his 272-word Gettsyburg Address in a YouTube-friendly two minutes." Indeed, the entire book of Proverbs is a collection of short, memorable maxims. Popcorn sized for your easy consumption. Brevity in of itself is not a cause for concern. Great intellect has always had both the capacity to snack and the capacity to feast at the banquet.

Neither should we be concerned about losing the ability to attend to subjects for long periods of time. I point you to Adam Cleaveland -- Adam has embraced new technologies and new ways of communicating, yet on his reflections about teaching methods, he gives us this unexpected nugget (The bold emphases are mine, not Adam's): "When I first heard that professors read manuscripted lectures at Princeton, I was so disappointed. I couldn’t believe they would teach in a way that was so un-interactive, so boring. I was not looking forward to those classes. And then…after a few weeks of sitting through Intro to Old Testament, and then later in the year, Systematic Theology, I got used to it. In fact, I was appalled when another student would raise their hand during a lecture (especially a woman we dubbed as “Question Lady“). “This isn’t your time - put your hand down - we’re here to learn from the professor!” So I had become used to the “Princeton way” of doing things. Not that all of my classes were like this; they weren’t. We had some great discussions in some courses, but it was rather funny to see how quickly I became a supporter of these types of lectures."

It seems that Mr. Postmodernity himself has no problem adjusting back to long lectures.....my guess is that the reason he had no problem adjusting is that they were good, thoughtful and engaging. How about the thousands of young postmodern adults who go to hourlong sermons at Mars Hill Church? They don't seem to have much of a problem adjusting. The challenge for us is not to bemoan the new technologies. It is for us to learn to use them wisely and to use them well. The challenge for us is to write and speak in ways that are engaging. If we are going to snack (and to make snack food), it is up to us to snack on friut and granola rather than chips and fries. Just like in our dietary choices, snacking isn't so much the problem as what we snack upon. (Yes, Mom, I remember all those warnings about "empty calories" in cookies and chips).

Technology doesn't save us, only Jesus does. However, we must also remember that Jesus calls us to be salt and light, using technology in redemptive ways. The Holy Spirit empowers us to learn how to be wise in our intellectual snacking and in what we offer up as snack food in this new technological realm.

Soli Deo Gloria
Russell

Al Mohler on literacy and reading

Fresh on the heels of yesterday's post about great children's literature (which has generated great comments and lists of books), I find this post from Al Mohler about the importance of literacy and interacting with good books -- here the quintessential quote:

"Do our own young people read books? Do they know the pleasures of the solitary reading of a life-changing page? Have they ever lost themselves in a story, framed by their own imaginations rather than by digital images? Have they ever marked up a page, urgently engaged in a debate with the author? Can they even think of a book that has changed the way they see the world . . . or the Christian faith? If not, why not?"

Dr. Mohler interacts with an article in the Washington Post from a school librarian lamenting students' hesitancy, indeed resistance, to reading. Here's a story from the article that makes me wince:

I recently spoke with a junior who was stressed about her decreasing ability to focus on anything for longer than two minutes or so. I tried to inspire her by talking about the importance of reading as a way to train the brain. I told her that a good reader develops the same powers of concentration that an athlete or a Buddhist would employ in sport or meditation. "A lot out there is conspiring to distract you," I said.

She rolled her eyes. "That's your opinion about books. It doesn't make it true." To her, the idea that reading might benefit the mind was, well, lame.

A library's neglected shelves reveal the demise of something important, especially for young readers starved for meaning -- for anything profound. Still, I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. I'm turning the new-arrivals shelf into a main attraction in my school's library. Recently I stood Charles Dickens's "Bleak House" next to the DVD version produced by the BBC. Lady Dedlock (Gillian Anderson) graced both covers. A senior fingered the DVD for a minute, then turned it over to read the blurb. "The book is too long," she said. "Is the movie any better?"

"You're right. The book is long," I said. "But once you start this one, you won't be
able to put it down, right from that first page about the London fog."

"I think I'll watch the DVD," the student said.

Admittedly, Bleak House is a mammoth tome -- over 1000 pages (it's my goal to finish it this year -- a great story, but I have many irons in the fire) -- I'm not sure I'd have started there with a teenager. Even so, the story is revealing. I covet your thoughts.

Soli Deo Gloria
Russell