Helen Rittelmeyer’s back! Here she is on “Winning the Distraction War, Losing the Distraction Peace” :
In the last six months I’ve eliminated from my reading life everything that felt like empty carbs. The rule of thumb was: In a year, will I look back and think that this was a good use of my reading time, which after all is limited? The result was a reading diet made up almost entirely of books, plus a handful of magazines, some blogs, no newspapers, and no articles about how Tumblr is making us stupid.
If I had deliberately set out to design a reading life that took into account all the warnings about digital natives and their addiction to distraction, the result would have been the same. Alas, after six months, I have to report that the results have not been entirely satisfactory.
Read the rest here .
(Personally, I only read books by dead people.)
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
