Reading and 'Mindreading'

With more content to watch on streaming services (not to mention video-based social media), more people are spending their time watching things instead of reading. One effect of this is that people get a little more impatient reading books as compared to watching videos.

During my time in high school, it was already lazy to read the English version of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere instead of the Filipino one (sorry, we don’t speak turn-of-the-century Manila-bred Spanish anymore), and for the ones who couldn’t make any time at all, there was the comic book version. (The 1961 movie of the same title at this point in time would be hard to come by, and probably not an easy watch for high schoolers.)

These days, it’s a choice between reading something or watching a video, and anyone can tell you that watching a video is a much simpler endeavor. You can just look and listen, be a passive spectator. Whereas when you read, you have to decipher the letters and the words, comprehend them, exercise that imagination, and perhaps enjoy yourself in the process. I have experienced this myself: it’s easier (and more entertaining) to reach for my phone and watch a cooking show on YouTube, than, say, look through the recipe books I have on my shelf. Following a recipe from a book is more difficult, especially if there are no pictures. The reader needs past cooking experience and a cook’s intuition to follow the instructions and get it right.

Reading fictional characters… and real people

The same is true for understanding characters and their motives in fiction. It takes a little patience to read the work, some imagination to understand the point of view of characters, a certain amount of inference and deduction to see through the meaning of their words taken against the background painted for the reader. It’s no wonder why today, many people seem to be lacking in the area of empathy—or our ability to put ourselves in other people's shoes and somehow try to understand how they feel. In the article, this is called “recursion”—defined as the “ability to represent the mental states of others in our own minds.”

Reading this article on The Conversation, “Jane Austen and theory of mind: how literary fiction sharpens your ‘mindreading’ skills,” I find it interesting that there is yet another reason to read—to read and enjoy reading fiction, that is. We all possess the ability to read another’s thoughts to varying degrees: their facial expressions, actions, the motives behind them. As readers of fiction, we need this ability to empathize, “since what we read would be meaningless without being able to put ourselves in the characters’ shoes in order to discern the motives that drive their actions.”

The more we read Austen (or other similar authors whose stories are driven by characters’ thoughts and mental states), the more we exercise this skill, and the better we can “read minds.” Readers get caught up in the entangled web of thoughts, feelings, actions made, words said, and the misunderstandings that result out of them. Being caught up, they participate in the whole affair, albeit they cannot themselves choose the next steps for the characters. The article goes on: “Cognitive psychology suggests that the human mind can comfortably handle up to three levels of recursion. Literary fiction, especially that which explores complex interpersonal relationships, is a natural way to train this ability.”

Videos and books

I suppose watching a video can also force the viewer to analyze feelings and empathize… resulting in honing those mindreading skills, too. But there seems to be something lacking in watching video clips and films as opposed to reading novels and storybooks.

As I mentioned earlier, reading is a far less passive activity than viewing a video or film, because of the mental acrobatics you must do to comprehend what you’re consuming. It is also an activity more deliberately chosen: a book will not flash in front of your face to vie for your attention, whereas any user of those popular video apps (or even plain social media apps with “reels” or “shorts”) will tell you that all you got to do to see a new video is scroll down.

I think it’s about time that we be more deliberate in the way we consume media or spend our free time. It may be just the key to create mindreaders; that is, sharper minds… with better mental states to boot.

"Anyone can tell you that watching a video is a much simpler endeavor. You can just look and listen, be a passive spectator. Whereas when you read, you have to decipher the letters and the words, comprehend them, exercise that imagination, and perhaps enjoy yourself in the process."