To think or to twitt, that is the question. Is it nobler to broadcast and eavesdrop until you drop, or to pause? Perhaps it is nobler to oppose the endless flow of the mindless chats? To reflect in your own mind? For instance, to reflect on the slings and arrows of the most outrageous twitts and fakes?
Once upon the time, reading bred reflection. To reflect, one looked into one of the mirrors carried along a high road. They were called novels. Novels were fiction. Books marked as fiction includeded descriptions of virtual events. Reading about fictional events readers tried to understand the real ones better. The medium of the novel was the message. The authors invited readers to a meaningful experience. Following fictional events, the readers were guided by the sensitive and sentimental narrators. Some critics think that the times of the novels walking leisurely down the main streets and highways are gone. Others point out that more schoolchildren read more and better than fifty years ago. Courtesy of the small screens replacing large printed pages? Others point out that we read more books than ever before. Novels are longer (sometimes 1600 pages are barely enough) and more sophisticated (enchanting both highbrows and lowbrows, leftists and rightists, the young and the old). Feature films drag for 3 or 4 hours, series drag on forever, no complaints. Why no complaints? Because the readers and the viewers know that they decide about the message. The medium is the message, but the message is determined by the masses of the receivers, at the expense of the senders. Call it democracy.
Novelists know that the printed pages are replaced by the screens of smart phones. Film directors know that their films will be viewed in more contexts and situations than are dreamt of in anybody’s philosophy. Reality - this barely imaginable maelstrom of events - is reflected by many more much smaller mirrors these days. Each of these mirrors feeds a stream of consciousness. We pocket the screens and click them back to life at will, and at random. How to tune these individual streams of consciousness in to the democratic pulse of the public opinion? Ask the influencers. Ask them about the ways we rest and reflect. Ask them how we relax and think. Are we aware of our most meaningful experiences?
October 25, 2026