I must say, I really love reading science-fiction and fantasy and I always have. But I recently decided to fast from reading novels in order to "free up" some brain space to absorb more non-fiction. The wonderful thing about fasting in general is that it brings clarity because you resist your deeply ingrained habit patterns. And sometimes, the fast works so well that it breaks up some of the gluttonous mast that has been collecting in the little pockets of your soul that you forgot were there. So, two weeks ago, I decided to fast from the normal kinds of fiction books that I read.
It occurred to me that I was reading my books of choice, not because they were so good and deep and fulfilling, or even so vastly entertaining that I couldn't keep away from them. On the contrary, novels, most of the time, function like junk food for me. They aren't as much junk food as TV or movies are, but they are pretty close. I realized that they weren't remotely challenging to me, and I wasn't really learning anything from them. At best, they were comfort food, but who needs comfort food all the time? Thus, I decided to make a little experiment and give up reading "my usual" sort of novels (normally run-of-the-mill science fiction and fantasy novels, interspersed with some better-than-average science fiction and fantasy) in favor of being purely engaged in academic non-fiction, devotional literature, or more demanding literary works.
So far, I rather like the effects of my fast. My one consistent superpower in life has been my ability to speed-read without really trying. Thus, I can read about 100 pages an hour of undemanding prose--say a Harry Potter novel or maybe even a Mercedes Lackey novel. But my attention span for non-fiction has never been quite so good. I am limited to a paltry 30-35 pages an hour for a very demanding book like Personal Knowledge (Michael Polanyi) that I am still making my way through. (At least, I think so, I have definitely documented my ravenous inhalation of fiction much more thoroughly than my more stately march through non-fiction.) I can't tell yet if my rate of reading has increased, but I know that I've already finished The Great Chain of Being (Lovejoy), which I had worked on for months, and made short work of Mircea Eliade's Myth and Reality (and I firmly intend on reading everything that man has to say, peculiar Romanian genius that he was). I also reread Rodney Stark's Rise of Christianity yesterday, and got through one and a half books (read, chapters, for the uninitiated) of Plato's Republic--which I have been meaning to reread all year. Oh, yes, and I am still working on that frustrating and beautiful book, Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill. For me, this is really excellent. I rarely plow through academic literature at this rate.
But there's more here, I think, than merely shifting gears. For years, fiction had been a great teacher to me. Learning through stories is a natural way that humans learn, and a very natural way for me to learn. Science-fiction has also been a real imaginative tutor for me. Anything is possible, and I learned that lesson much more thoroughly from Star Trek or Orson Scott Card than I did from my science teachers at school. But that has changed. These days, what I read in Scientific American about current scientific research blows my mind far more than any work of science fiction. What I learn from Polanyi or Lovejoy about ancient and modern cosmology spurs my imagination more than the average episode of Doctor Who. In short, reality is every bit as enchanting and mysterious as the world of the imagination. Imagination--and art in general--was always supposed to be a way to get at what was truly interesting about life itself, but for many people (for much of my life, myself included) that's simply isn't the case. For many, the realm of science fiction isn't a gateway into a new way of thinking about our world--it is just a replacement for our world, because our world is uninteresting.
It very possible to live as if our world is uninteresting. To take what exists for granted--to live without curiosity, without wonder, without any sense of the art and magnificence of the contingent, without any attempt at real scientific discovery or real philosophical inquiry or reflection--this is to make light of the world and to reduce it to far less than it is and far less than it was intended to be. I imagine most of us are guilty of at least one of these crimes, if not all of them, and that is why Socrates bothered to say that the unexamined life is not worth living. That's not just a snooty intellectual saying trumpeting the superiority of the life of the mind. It was Socrates' way of saying that the unexamined life doesn't mean anything to us, and therefore isn't really worth much. You don't have to be an intellectual to want to have a soul that does something and is something worthwhile.
Furthermore, the examined life is not first and foremost about intellectual virtue, although for those with academic gifts, it certainly contains intellectual virtue. The examined life is about practical virtues--about the everyday work of the soul in each human person and in humankind collectively. In other words, it is something accessible to everyone: everyone can think about what they have done in a day, what it means, what they are grateful for, what brought them life, what brought them death. Recollection, reflection, and gratitude are not skills for the intellectually wealthy, they are skills for anyone who does not wish to be impoverished in the life of their soul.
It took me a long time to really appreciate that this world is truly fascinating and wonderful and worth paying attention to. I required the tools of academic life and the arts of imagination to discover that fact. I doubt everyone needs that. But everyone does need meaning, and sometimes we have to let go of things that we like in order to find things that are really good and fulfilling. That's what I learned from fasting. I like novels and worlds of fiction a lot. But they usually don't feed me the way scientific and philosophical inquiry do. And I need to give those novels up for a while to discover why I seem to have this deeper, more encompassing taste for something else.
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