Reading Rehab

Words and the Word

Words matter. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2). It is through the Word of God that we learn about and communicate with God. It is therefore crucial that we are able to understand words in context, otherwise passages are misinterpreted and misapplied. As a general example, without an understanding of the New Testament, and specifically Jesus’ sacrifice, the Old Testament can be confusing. Conversely, without an understanding of the Old Testament, and specifically God’s Law, the meaning of the new Testament is incompletely grasped.

Reading Dysfunction

Everyone has had the experience of reading a sentence, paragraph, page, or perhaps even entire book, only to realise afterwards that they had not absorbed any of it. Their eyes had treated the page as an image, scanning the words mindlessly for nothing in particular. I propose that this symptom is the result of one of two maladies. The first is ‘reading fatigue’, suffered after reading excessively, in terms of either duration or ‘load’ (i.e. difficulty). The second is the exact opposite: a lack of reading, in terms of either duration or load, can induce ‘reading atrophy’.

In a way, I suffered from a curious combination of these two afflictions. At university, I ‘over-read’ as a way to cope with insecurity; unfortunately, this coincided with another coping mechanism, anorexia. When I became severely underweight as a consequence, my mental function was impaired. Upon recovery I was obligated to ‘re-learn’ basic processes such as reading; unfortunately, I was therefore in the undesirable position of being both fatigued and atrophied.

Symptoms and Prevention
Either condition can be very frustrating: even when consciously attempting to ingest the words, the reader may be unable to digest them. Such disruption of the eye-mind connection can occur on various levels. The most severe case would apply when an individual cannot distinguish letters, but sees only meaningless symbols; this would be the case when trying to read in a non-Latin alphabet. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a reader may comprehend whole paragraphs or even chapters, but fail to grasp the ‘key argument’ of the text. The most common case is in between, when a reader can decipher individual words or sentences but is unable to string them together into meaningful passages.

Needless to say, prevention consists of finding the happy medium: exercising your ‘reading muscles’ for sufficient periods of time and with sufficient loads to maintain or enhance them, without overdoing it and inducing counter-productive effects. In terms of treatment, the prescription for fatigue is likewise obvious – rest your reading muscles. As Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes 12:12, "excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body." If you have been reading dense academic articles or 18^th century manuscripts, try a novel instead. Or, rather than reducing the intensity of your reading, stop reading altogether for a few days. You will probably find that when you pick up a book again, you can tackle it with renewed vigour.

Diagnosis
Atrophy is much more common than fatigue in the modern world, due to the saturation of screens: computers, phones, TVs, and other forms of entertainment tend to make us lazy and impatient in our approach to information. We thus consider text to be an unnecessary evil, placing undue demands on the audience: we not only have to repeatedly move our eyes from one size of the page to the other and even to turn over the page, but we have to conjure sounds, images, and ideas in our minds without the aid of graphics or audio. As a microcosm of atrophy, consider that schoolteachers often complain that students 'forget' basic academic skills over long summer vacations during which they are not sufficiently stimulated.

As a result, society displays a chronic neglect of linguistic comprehension. To keep apace with this systemic deterioration in readership, literature must become less and less demanding on the audience. It is for this reason that books like 'Harry Potter', although written at a child's level of comprehension, are so popular among adults (and is even studied at A-level as a 'contemporary text'). This creates a vicious cycle whereby readers choose texts that fail to challenge their comprehensive ability, which only exacerbates chronic and systemic weakness.

Unfortunately, atrophy is also much more complicated condition than fatigue. Somebody with fatigue may already have a healthy relationship with words, and ‘resting from reading’ is merely a healthy aspect of that relationship (note that this is not always the case: compulsive reading is obviously unhealthy). However, a sufferer of atrophy needs to establish, or re-establish, that relationship, which has been lost to under-use.

The first point to note is that reading impediment is essentially the result of fixating excessively on individual words or phrases to detriment of your understanding of the overall argument. Trying harder to read is therefore futile, because by doing so you will most likely intensify that fixation. In short, you will not be able to see the woods for the trees.

To rectify this obstruction, you have to realise that words are tools to convey a message, and it is the message that is important. They are, in other words, symbols employed by the author to transmit an idea to the audience. When you are reading, remember that the words in front of you do not exist as incidental, impersonal objects; rather, somebody wrote them for a specific reason. To see that reason, you have to use 'peripheral vision' in the same way as appreciating a cluster of stars requires you to look at it without looking at it.

The key, then, is to ‘see through the words’ to access the mind of the author. If the author is to convey her message through words, however, she must invoke some pre-existing idea or sensation, precisely because words are merely vessels or conduits of meaning rather than meaningful in themselves. This is, of course, a chicken and egg problem: to some extent you must share her idea so that you can understand her idea. This is perhaps one reason why knowledge is always incremental, or at least reflective: while most ‘new’ ideas build on existing ones, even ‘revolutionary’ ideas are typically reactions against something that is already conceived.

This problem of ‘meaning transference’ relates to the differentiation between tacit and technical knowledge. Technical knowledge refers to knowledge that can be codified in blueprints and understood universally and identically. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand, requires some prior experience with the subject, because it is embedded in the task at hand. I was recently helping my dad with a presentation for his work; I knew what every word meant, but I had only a vague idea about what the presentation was actually about, because the knowledge it was evoking was tacit – shared only by those involved in that field. It is not just that they use ‘jargon’, i.e. words that only make sense to those in the field, but in a way the text itself is jargon, because it refers to tacit ideas that are shared only by a certain group of people.

Healthy digestion occurs when words enter the mind and are quickly translated into meaning; unhealthy digestion occurs when this translation is obstructed. That translation involves an indirect link (through words) between your mind and that of the author. However, without some kind of personal identification, that connection will be lost and words will appear as empty vessels. Hence, 'personalisation' is a crucial feature of re-establishing cogency: your mind must treat the words on the page as somebody's voice rather than as anonymous pictures.

A helpful comparison can be made to music.  Just like text, music attempts to invoke latent emotions, images, or ideas. Words are analogous to individual notes, the whole book representing the score. Words, like notes, do not express the intention of the author or musician in and of themselves – it is only in their orderly combination that this is achieved. Reading words rather than message is like when a child first plays a musical piece, eliciting each note one at a time with no structure or flow to connect them. Moreover, just as musical scores are played in certain keys that will determine which notes are and are not played, and thus the mood of the composition, so writing adheres to a certain register, be it academic, formal, informal, etc. This ‘key’ helps to convey the meaning of the piece by giving a ‘voice’ to the otherwise impersonal words. Other features such as pace and loudness in music, or paragraph structure and punctuation in writing, help to define the message.


Prescriptions
Below is a list of recommendations to address these malfunctions.

First, take notes. Even if you throw them away afterwards, the act of putting the author’s words into your own words allows you to focus on the meaning without fixating on the words.

Second, write down your own ideas. If you write about topics that inherently interest you, you may find that you enjoy words more; because you are thinking about what you want to say, rather than the words themselves (you have practiced the exercise of conveying meaning through words), you will build up the ability to absorb meaning; for both reasons, and because you are the creator of the words, they will be personal and familiar to you.

Third, learn another language. This will help you to reflect on the structure of your own language, and to identify its strengths, weaknesses, and in general, mechanisms, for expression. This forces you to grasp the actual meaning of words rather than just the words themselves, because you are required to transfer that meaning into an altogether different word, and have to figure out the meaning of unknown words through their context, i.e. the meaning of the whole sentence, paragraph, or text. Those idioms and expressions that are not translatable, or combinations of words that have to be reordered into a different syntax, will be especially advantageous, as the translation will be from words to meaning rather than from words to words.  In short, reading in another language is an indispensable exercise for restoring the uptake of the words that you intake. Note that this is the same process that babies go through when they first learn to speak and read.

Fourth, imagine somebody physically lecturing you on the topic that you are reading – preferably somebody that you respect or know well. This will give the words a 'voice' that can be 'heard', so that they will no longer be merely images to be viewed. Similarly, if you follow a blog rather than the news, you will associate the information with a real person rather than consider it as anonymous data.

Fifth, read a book of which you have already seen the movie. This allows for a kind of ‘reverse engineering’: because you already know the message, you can interpret words through the message rather than vice versa. The words will thus already occupy their properly subservient position in textual digestion. It also permits you to apply audio-visual stimuli to the text, which is a crucial facet of personalisation.

Sixth, don’t read the news, at least not only or always. The text is written as concisely and neutrally as possible: there is no personalisation (‘voice’), and it will exacerbate your atrophy because all the work is done for you.

It should be noted that there is a shortcut to restoring comprehension, namely lexiophilia. If you intrinsically enjoy reading, you will be perfectly situated to engage in the effortless, relaxed reading that is required and to avoid fixation on words. Hence, although not necessary, a love of language will assist you immensely in your recovery. To cultivate linguaphilia, try reading poetry, which is essentially a celebration of language that overlaps with its musical cousin. However, linguaphilia is a double-edged sword: if you end up loving words rather than language as a whole, your comprehension of compositions will be further impaired. It is therefore advised that you approach this method with caution and in moderation.

Finally, remember that fatigue is easier when your muscles are smaller, so in a fragile state you must be even more careful not to overdo it.

Conclusion

Words are mirrors of meaning. Reading can be impaired when we got lost in a 'hall of mirrors' that distorts the reflection of meaning in words. Reading rehab consists in focusing on the reflection rather than the mirror.

Production and Consumption

In mainstream Economics, there has been an unjustified deviation away from the study of production (characterised by Adam Smith, Karl Marx, et al) towards the study of consumption, as embodied in terms such as "consumer sovereignty".

I suggest that Mainstream Christianity has committed a similar ploy. It sees faith as consumption, posing the question, "what we can get for the lowest price?". The miracle, in this paradigm, is that the good consumed (salvation) has no price.

However, we are also producers. We are meant to ‘bear fruit’. And isn’t that what God made us for in the first place?

Some of our production involves getting people to consume salvation (of course, only God ‘produces’ salvation; so in this sense it is ‘distribution’). But their consumption should likewise be a conduit for good works. So production is not only a means to consumption; it a crucial part of salvation. Maybe this helps explain why James was so adamant that faith without works is dead.

Interestingly, when everyone wants to consume and no one wants to produce, we have problems. Problems, say, like those which afflict the Modern Church...

Dreams within Dreams

A few months ago, I had a dream within a dream. The contents of the dream are irrelevant. Suffice it to say that in my sub-dream, I became aware that I was dreaming and managed (with some difficulty) to wake myself up from it; upon awakening, I found myself in another dream, although this time I was not aware that I had been dreaming until I woke up properly. After all, I ‘woke up’ lying on the couch.

I was quite excited when I (really) woke up. I had read Descartes and other philosophers of the mind, and I had seen films like the Matrix and Inception where such phenomena are centrepiece. But the experience induced a surge of questions. What if I am still dreaming? How many recursions are there? What if there are an infinite number of recursions? Indeed, in philosophy it is often said that we cannot ‘jump out of our own head’, meaning that we always view the world from our own mind, but at the same time we can self-reflect. 

Although you can never fully escape your own consciousness, you can engage in a potentially infinite number of recursive escapes, by ‘thinking that you are thinking that you are thinking…’ in a similar pattern to what occurs when you face two mirrors towards each other and glimpse an infinite tunnel of reflections – you cannot remove yourself from the picture, because once you do, you can no longer see the optical illusion, but you can still view yourself as if you were another person, e.g. from behind. After all, dreams are just thoughts.

Is it possible to share dreams with other people? I say, of course. We are sharing ‘reality’ with each other now, are we not? We both agree that we are occupying the same time-space continuum. We may not be able to read each other’s minds, but at the end of the day this reality may simply be one recursion of many – so perhaps we are indeed inside each other’s minds. Perhaps this explains why people tend to get the same thoughts at the same time, even when seemingly random. How many times has somebody declared ‘that’s so weird, I was just thinking about that!’?

Is it possible to get trapped in a dream? Several potentialities exist. First, it is plausible that one could be unaware that one was dreaming (as in the first recursion of my dream). In this scenario, we are essentially sleepwalkers, interacting with real life and yet not conscious. In fact, this is quite common, in the form of self-deception. Obsessions often hijack our rationality to the point where we convince ourselves that they do not exist, even to the point of distorting our visual perceptions (for example, of our own bodies). Likewise, people often deceive themselves into thinking that some tragedy has not really occurred; this is what is meant by the phrase ‘being in denial’. Another possibility is that you are unaware that you are dreaming that you are dreaming; but since recursions are infinite, this is an identical case.

A separate case inheres when you are aware that you are dreaming (even if we are unaware that we are dreaming that we are dreaming), as in the second recursion of my dream. This scenario may be relevant to somebody that is aware that they are experiencing irrational thoughts. We may not be able to wake ourselves up from the dream (to overcome the irrationalities) even though we know that we are not fully awake (rational). This is, essentially, Hell, in quite a literal sense. My dad has a gruelling story about a surgery that went wrong – the sedative did not function enough to dull his pain, but only to keep him unable from communicating. That is how I see Hell: when we choose life without God, we are choosing sin (or pain) without grace (or communication). Perhaps it is better represented by the Jewish ‘Sheol’ (see my other post on Sheol).

Interestingly, in the second recursion of my dream, I became aware that I was dreaming because I knew that my perception of familiar faces was distorted. So self-deception usually contains a grain of truth in order to make it believable. Most phobias are fears of things that could potentially be harmful; correspondingly, even irrational, unholy fears are a perversion of the rational, holy fear of God. Indeed, “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10, 111:10) – wisdom, perhaps, to know that you are dreaming. Conversely, the fear of anything else is the beginning of deception. Maybe this is why falsehood features so heavily on God’s ‘hate list’: lying, a deceitful tongue, a false witness, etc.

Indeed, not only our selves, but also Satan practices this form of deception. For example, he quoted scripture to Jesus in order to tempt Him (Matthew 4). In both cases, we have to say, “yes, but…” to restore rationality. Finally, the world – i.e. other people deceived by themselves or Satan – may deceive us. So ‘negative Inceptions’ can be implemented by ourselves, Satan, or the world, by distorting truth. Such deceptions, whether it is “being wise in your own eyes” (Proverbs 3:7; Isaiah 5:21), a temptation to ‘bite the apple’ (Genesis 3), or accusations from dreamers that you are in fact the one dreaming (Christians are often accused of being irrational), are not heavenly wisdom, as Paul often asserted.

Being aware that you are dreaming is not sufficient to wake yourself up: it is notoriously difficult to wake yourself up from a dream (perhaps impossible without Christ) even when you know that you are dreaming (even when you know that you are separated from God). But is it necessary? What about when something (or Somebody) else wakes you up by appealing to your real self as opposed to your dreaming self? For example, if your alarm goes off, or if your mom comes in to tell you it’s time for school, the stimulus is purely exogenous – nothing changes within your dream.

Or does it? Surely we have all had dreams where external stimuli are integrated by our minds into the dream itself, whether they are noises or other sensations. So maybe even when God appeals to our ‘real selves’, for instance by revealing Himself through a vision to somebody with no prior knowledge of Christ, there is an endogenous element of undeceived self-reflection.

God often reveals Himself through dreams. But He also does so through regular thoughts. Not only prophecies, but our daily communication with Him, often occurs through thought, and dreams, which are merely a specific type of thought. I don’t think that is a merely a way of transmitting information. As Descartes acknowledged, we do not have minds, we are minds (C. S. Lewis conveyed this idea using the word ‘soul’ rather than ‘mind’).

Regardless, awareness is undoubtedly a useful tool for waking up. It would be virtually impossible for somebody with a psychological disorder to recover without first admitting that they are unwell. So while somebody who is completely unaware may need to be woken up by an exogenous ‘bump’ (to use Inception’s term), awareness itself might constitute just such an exogenous intervention. This, perhaps, is what is meant by ‘conviction’. And this is why the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit, are so important: we require define revelation to wake us up. Indeed, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17); similarly, “Surely He does nothing before revealing it to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7).

So from where does the endogenous bump come? Well, the awareness part derives from the Law, which shows us that we are dreaming (Romans 3:20). It is theoretically possible to wake yourself up through the Law, if you obey it fully. But this is virtually impossible – it requires you to ‘jump outside of yourself’, i.e. to be completely selfless, even though are you are a self.

However, Jesus Christ, by denying Himself, has provided us with a spiritual-physical ‘portal’. Love sums up the Law and the Prophets, and God is love. Perfect love, meanwhile, drives out fear (Galatians 5:14; Matthew 7:12, 22:40; Romans 13:10; 1 John 4:8)! So God's love is what allows us to restore rationality by escaping our dream worlds (John 3:16).

Indeed, the very Word of God went through a nightmare by entering our dream world, fulfilling the prophets and leaving us with the Holy Spirit, which, thank God, is infinitely above our own minds in terms of dream-recursions. The Spirit of God transcends our minds through the Word of God, which “separates joint and marrow, SOUL AND SPIRIT” (Hebrews 4:12; note that the mind is part of the soul). 

We can be “transformed by the renewing of our mind”, and consequently know God’s perfect will (Romans 12:12), only because we have the Holy Spirit. We can walk out of our own personal Sheols, through the hallway and past “many rooms” (John 14:2) to the Throne Room itself. Another way of seeing this is through the imagery of light and darkness: Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12), but the world does not understand it (John 1:5). Because the Word of God is a lump unto our feet and a light unto our path, we can walk in ‘the Everlasting way’ (see my post in walking) even though we are in a world of darkness.

So maybe Heaven is the infinitely recursive state of awareness (light). Although Christ tore the veil, we still do not yet “see face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). When the New Jerusalem descends from Heaven, it will be perfectly clear (as the Jasper stone; Revelation 21). Indeed, when Jesus returns, He will do away with the dream once and for all, giving the ultimate bump to wake up even those who are dead (incidentally, the Bible refers to these as those who are “sleeping”, whilst Paul uses this same term to refer to unbelievers or those who have deviated from faith). Furthermore, Heaven is more real than our world, because it is eternal. Indeed, dreams elude time, because they can happen in an instance – is it not conceivable that when we wake up from our current dream, we will expand time to a further level?

Christ will, however, not return until all nations have heard the Word of God (Matthew 24:14). So, if we want to be a part of the Great Awakening (or Ultimate Enlightenment), we should be actively trying to wake up others, just like Neo et al do in the Matrix by re-entering the dream world as ‘agents’ of reality.

Why do, and will, some people remain deceived? All I can say is ‘see Romans 3’. The short answer is ‘the Glory of God’, but in all honestly I am not entirely certain. I can only posit that deception is a choice: although you require knowledge to make a decision, if the knowledge itself is a decision then we are left with another infinite recursion. An alternative interpretation may be that “artists use lies to tell the truth”, although I find that version rather distasteful.

In sum, to be an ex-ception to the de-ception, we require the in-ception of Christ. You know what’s weird? I got this “divine wisdom” about dreams, in a dream. I urge you to read Romans 3 with it in mind.