Consulting With The Dead Is More Meaningful Than Watching Netflix
Endless easy entertainment distracts us from life-changing lessons
You know you’re officially getting old when you suddenly notice how much the world has changed around you. Personally, it hit a crescendo for me in a waiting room recently. As a kid, I remember bringing a magazine or book with me to read.
That’s officially over now.
The room was filled with people watching videos or TV series on their phones. This holds true at my business as well. While customers wait for me to write up invoices or repair machinery, I hear TV series or YouTube videos playing as they kill time — even for a single minute.
We’ve entered a golden age of entertainment. By this I don’t mean it’s better quality, just easier to consume, and ever-present. Consider it McDonald’s for your eyeballs.
So, I wasn’t surprised when the New York Post reported on a study which said the average American will spend over seventy-eight thousand hours in front of a TV (or screen). Moreover, the average US citizen consumes about three hundred minutes of video content on TV-connected devices, cable, or broadcast media daily.
For perspective, Statista reports the average daily time spent reading was under sixteen minutes.
That means many are spending twenty times longer passively watching, then engaging their mind and reading. Obviously, there will be some negative consequences to this. But they stretch deeper than you can imagine.
It starts with a loss of connection to a great body of wisdom, from past and present, created by deep thinkers in literature. Although a certain Greek philosopher would call it losing our connection with the dead.
A Merchant Of Dyes Learns To Dye His Mind
Author and psychologist Donald Robertson put together a short story explaining the creation of the philosophy Stoicism. Its founder Zeno of Citium was originally a merchant. This Phoenician traded a purple dye created in the city of Tyre for coloring the robes of kings and the wealthy.
It was made by a laborious process of squeezing the color out of mollusks.
On a trip to Athens, Zeno’s boat sunk in a storm. While he survived, he watched his entire life’s savings dissolve back into the sea where it came from. As you can imagine, the man was distraught and looked for direction.
While we have Google, the ancient Greeks had the Oracle of Delphi, where a priestess could commune with the god Apollo and seek answers. Zeno asked what he should do. But the reply was extremely vague and made no sense. According to the priestess, he should:
“Dye himself with the color, not of dead shellfish, but of dead men.”
With confusion, Zeno wandered to Athens, ending up at a bookseller’s stall. He picked up a random book that was written by a famous Athenian General named Xenophon. The soldier told the story of meeting Socrates, how the philosopher changed his life, and the lessons he learned.
Socrates taught followers excellence of character and to love wisdom.
The philosopher liked to hang around at the “bustling market” to remind himself of all the things he didn’t need in life.
Socrates was also fond of repeating a line from a comedy: “The purple robe and silver’s shine, more fits an actor’s need than mine.”
Zeno snapped his head out of the book, and the words of the Oracle were clear.
Philosophy was his path, not purple dye. Furthermore, he learned these lessons from people who were…dead. Reading — that habit we only devote sixteen minutes a day to — gave structure to a life in chaos, and it still does today.
In fact, reading likely saved Rob Henderson’s life.
Reading Can Add Perspective And Relief To A Chaotic Life
In his book, Troubled, Rob Henderson explains his rise from an unwanted child in foster homes, to graduating from Yale, and obtaining a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
He describes his childhood by reflecting on his full name: Robert Kim Henderson.
“Robert” is his biological father’s name, who he never met, and left while Rob was a baby.
“Kim” is his biological mother’s family name. Rob was taken away from her by the police when he was three, due to her severe drug addiction. According to state records, Rob’s mother would tie him to a chair while she did drugs in another room. The boy’s screaming through thin walls gave it away. He never saw her again.
“Henderson” is his adopted father’s last name. He disowned Rob when his adopted mother filed for divorce. This was a tactic to hurt his former wife by hurting Rob in the process. By the way, his father would still see his daughter (Rob’s sister), but not Rob — it was like he didn’t exist.
Rob tells how most of his friends growing up became serious drug addicts, died, or went to jail. He wasn’t a saint either. Rob regularly did drugs, drank, and got into constant fights. However, he also did something his friends didn’t — he read.
He learned late, using kindergarten books in the second grade and picking up the fundamentals. Rob soon learned books were more than words. They were stories of life. He found himself attracted to the biographies of people who lived hard lives and succeeded. Rob says:
“Whenever I felt down, it was soothing to read about others who experienced hardship and found ways to rise above it.”
Chuck Norris taught him the benefits of self-control, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson taught him the benefits of hard work, and George Orwell taught him there’s no shame in being a bus boy at a diner.
Everything he read also expanded his mind beyond his surroundings. He eventually aced the entrance exam for the Air Force and used the G.I. Bill when his deployments were over to get into Yale, after winning a slot.
Rob admits things could have easily gone another way, but reading dyed his mind, creating a buffer from the chaos. It also provides guidance from incredible minds without ever meeting them.
Reading Provides The Greatest Guides In Life, Both Living And Dead
“I understand the limits of having one brain, and one personality, and one story. So, I have a council of people I refer to often.”
— Dr. Andrew Huberman, interview on Modern Wisdom Podcast
During a recent interview, neurologist and author Dr. Andrew Huberman described how a single brain can only do so many things. However, when you link it with others, their powers magnify. So, he set up his own board of advisors.
The most interesting thing about this is that many are either dead or people he’s never met. Physically having them around doesn’t matter. Dr. Huberman says he can learn their lessons through their written words, so it doesn’t matter where or when they exist.
Philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius found his home in Stoicism after reading the lecture notes of Epictetus, who he never met. Then, two thousand years later Navy pilot James Stockdale used the words of Epictetus to guide him through eight years of torture at a POW camp in Vietnam.
While many rightly see Arnold Schwarzenegger as a unique character, he had a guide on the way. In his book Be Useful, Arnold says as a child in Austria, he saw British bodybuilder Reg Park.
Park not only lifted weights but was a businessman who eventually found his way into Movies. Schwarzenegger saw how Park used bodybuilding to catapult himself into acting as he starred as Hercules in a series of movies.
Schwarzenegger read everything he could about Park, even duplicating his workout routines, and following his path to America to enter into pro bodybuilding. Arnold was so convinced in Park’s path, he even turned down a massive payday from Jack Lalanne to be a spokesman for a series of gyms. It would distract him from acting.
Whereas Tanner Greer found himself invoking an ancient guide when teaching a high school class in modern China. The purpose of the class was to get Chinese students ready to study in Western universities. One of Greer’s foundations for the class was philosophy.
His tool of choice was Homer’s work The Iliad. The course became so popular, Chinese students asked Greer if he could teach them a private course on this book after the semester was over. It turns out Homer is a solid guide, even in present day Beijing.
With all this in mind, let’s revisit our addiction to endless streaming entertainment.
What We Lose When We Avoid Reading
We all need entertainment, otherwise we’d be as robotic as the laptops in front of us. But we’re overdoing it. Technology and the ease of its use has given us the choice to never be without entertainment.
It’s turning into an addiction. Through endless gaming, binge watching, and passively focusing our eyes on a screen, we’re losing out on wonderful things. This makes it easy to lose your way.
We’re dying our minds with Netflix and not the color of dead men like Zeno.
We’re losing touch with that council of brilliant minds Dr. Huberman recommended.
We’re losing that perspective and relief from tales of others who’ve lived harder lives than ours and succeeded, as Rob Henderson points out.
We’re not finding our Reg Park who points us to a direction in life we’d like to go.
We’re not experiencing our own version of the Iliad like high schoolers in Beijing.
Sixteen minutes isn’t enough, not by far. Sadly, we’re all guilty. But when you spend nearly three hours a day with your eyes on a screen, it’s impossible to notice. Endless entertainment distracts us from those needed life lessons cataloged in literature.
That's why consulting with the dead is far more meaningful than watching Netflix.
-Originally posted on Medium 5/3/24
Couple this with the consumption of junk on social media and a decades-long decline in the quality of public education - and the defunding of humanities and liberal arts - in many countries, and you've got a bad, no-good civilizational concoction.
Very important contribution as we seek how to live a full, meaningful life. What we read (whether on paper or the screen) is important. Thanks!