I'm looking for any general proofreading issues (they way it's worded, spelling or grammar mistakes, etc.) but mostly in your reaction to the ideas. I wrote the piece more or less under the assumption that people would know the book I'm talking about, but I want to know if it's clear to someone who hasn't read the book what I'm talking about.
If the essay is clear enough, what motivates you to read in general and science fiction and fantasy in specific?
I figure a conversation about reading is good for us, since we all intend someone else to read what we've written and if we understand why people read, perhaps we can write to better motivate people to read our stuff. :)
To my American mindset, the counterculture is essentially supposed to consist of “make peace, not war,” and “drugs, sex, and rock and roll.” But for a long time I have been unsettlingly amused by the way that “the man” has domesticated these supposedly independent aspects of American culture and made a pretty dollar in its distribution. I know I have often felt a strong social pressure to accept counterculture values as my own and to conform to accepted forms of nonconformity in dress, speech, music, and philosophy. I fear that counterculture has been transformed from liberator to conquistador, leaving it devoid of positive social impact. As an accepted norm, countercultural values can deny individuality just as readily as the values against which they rebelled.
The primary value of counterculture is its willingness to question the accepted norms of society. As John Stuart Mill argues in On Liberty, this allows a culture to develop, whether or not a counterculture’s ideas are truer than the accepted norm: even largely fallacious arguments contain part of the truth, and even if they have nothing to offer, they prove the importance of the accepted argument. Counterculture is necessary if a society wants to avoid calcification and obsolescence. The conflict between establishment and dissent breathes life into a society and gives it direction as it works out the debate. But when the counterculture becomes the establishment, it is difficult to understand how to dissent against dissention and the function of questioning may be lost for a time.
Against the incessant pace of technology’s march and the restless pull of consumer culture, Coleman recommends that an important countercultural activity is simply reading. Surrounded by electronic stimulus that gives us no rest and seems inescapably accompanied by the insistent demand that we consume more and think less, reading is inherently in opposition to the accepted norms. “Reading is counter-cultural mainly because it requires quiet time, being slow and meditative, and it is active rather than passive” (26). Coleman goes on to say that of course not all books are constructive and not all electronic media are destructive, but that as a general rule reading, by its meditative nature, provides a greater opportunity for spirituality and creativity. I would say that it allows us to act more and be acted upon less, liberating us from a state of subjection to other things and allowing us to develop an independent perspective.
Coleman highlights another essential aspect of reading as counterculture: the dual application of the hermeneutics of suspicion and the hermeneutics of affirmation. Western culture has widely accepted the application of the hermeneutics of suspicion, creating an orthodoxy of skepticism. This has been, in my opinion, a powerful tool for social development as a means of dismantling unjust power structures and enfranchising the oppressed. When applied correctly, it should also to some extent free us from the grip of consumer culture as we approach advertising with skepticism. But I agree with Coleman that in absence of the hermeneutics of affirmation, the hermeneutics of suspicion can erode spiritual development by disallowing humility. “Spirituality assumes that I have something to learn and that I can learn it from the many things around me that draw me out of myself” (39) Coleman writes, but an all-pervasive suspicion undermines my ability to approach anything with the humility required to learn. In this way, reading – which requires humility and even vulnerability before the text in order to be done properly – gives an opportunity to pursue the hermeneutics of affirmation and develop a counterculturally positive perspective.
Works cited.
Coleman, Daniel. In Bed with the Word. Edmonton: Univ. Alberta Press, 2009. Print.
