Notes on reading – freestyle

Library
By Olena Bohovyk

Notes on reading |
Wednesday – January 21, 2026

Is it important to read? Well, according to most scientists this is the case, and I have no reason to disagree. I do believe that it's very important to read, but I do care less about the particular form I read, but yes I do find it easier to read a book than to use a computer screen to read. I guess as well, from a metaphysical standpoint, that this loss of quality, that I have noticed at any rate, is yet another step in the materialist direction. But I do not intend to dwell on the metaphysical aspects of reading in this post; that may be a topic for another time, or not. I guess the major issue I have with reading is not so much reading in and of itself, but rather the material that I am reading, because it's true that far too many people, yes including myself, are lazy when they write, and this makes my own quality of reading and later writing go down, and quite frankly I don't much look forward to becoming a poorer reader and in turn a poorer writer. I guess I could admit this about the materialist order, even though this is always carried out without skills, modern men are good at pushing the limits of division and multiplicity, but again only in this very narrow sense within the temporal domain, which is a shame since a lot of this brain power could've been used to provide insight to more people than ever before, but that would be too out of tune with the cosmological order. I guess this materialist tendency is best expressed in the notion that a language can somehow be a "living" and "breathing" thing, and that there is no point at which one can assert that a language had a particular form and character – indeed this is yet another emanation of that very modern concept of "evolution", and indeed from this point of view it would be right to assert that a language can never be anything in particular but a stream of ever evolving artifacts and particles that are becoming the future. But from my point of view, and from the point of view of many scholars, this is simply not true or at any rate this view of language is one of promoting both a corruption of knowledge and a dilapidation of quality, and I believe that there surely is a case to be made that with the inception of mass mobilized reading in the form of compulsory education, yet another modern confusion in parity with compulsory military service, not for the benefit of the pupils, who at any rate cannot be expected to be on the same mental level, but for the benefit of the state, always in the form of dissemination of easy-to-understand propaganda; and this is really the main problem with reading, or rather the lack of skillfulness in writing and reading and the tendency of language to lose its meaning and therefore also its connection to the past, and once a language can be controlled in this manner people will lose the connection to reality, and this seems particularly striking when it comes to the very modern phenomena of "internet talk" and "memes". Can anyone really understand the world through memes and cheap and lazy talk online? I don't think so, but these are only the latest reiterations of this similar tendency, the tendency of gradual decline and dilapidation. So while reading surely is good, it seems that reading in modern times, or really here at the end of history, comes at a price, but such is the case for all that can be said about the material order: are we really better off in modern times, even when we only consider our material circumstances? Remember that language doesn't only serve the purpose of being a carrier of information; language serves the more important purpose of explaining the world, and this latter part is surely missing in the continual abstraction of language. It's easy then to see why even such things as laws seem to have lost much of their meaning as the domain of interpreting the meaning of langue has enabled a gradual pushing of the limits of what laws actually meant through judicial legislation and activism, and at any rate anyone can see that the spirit of many laws have been completely violated. Not even an attempt has been made to at least change the law in many circumstances. So I hope you would excuse me for taking language and reading seriously; this isn't about merely being grammatically correct.

    On a lighter note I guess I can say that I do encourage you to read and really actually to push your limits, because you will only be better of if you read, and I guess to that I can say that if you view your brain as a muscle, that you can train your brain to gain more of an ability to read and to write. Yes, it's important to be able to read and understand language; this will also be useful when it comes to defending yourself. When you know more about a language, and preferably several languages, you will gain more and more awareness about the nature of the world. Yes, information is crucial, but who controls that information may just be more crucial; so much of your world is shaped by words, and the sooner you take command of your own ability to form meaning through words, the sooner you will be able to gain real power, and the sooner you will be able to shape your own destiny. Do not let the limitations inherent in another man's formulations become your limitations – become your own author. Yes, this is truly something a man that seeks Independence must realize.

Reginald Drax – January 21, 2026.