Reading and Writing

Once upon a time, people were used to writing on the Internet rather than posting pictures. That was a long time ago- about 20 years ago at least. Then the Iphone changed everything.

Writing has a place in this world beside photos and videos. Writing and reading is like watching foreign art film, you know that is beautiful in spite of you not knowing what they are talking because it fires the neocortex of your brain- the rational part of your brain. The effect is not instantaneous but if you have patience, the payoff is cathartic. Let us see what photos and videos does to you and how does it differ from reading/writing, and really eventually convincing you that reading and writing is worth your effort.

Writing is not instantaneous. It does not come from the limbic part of your brain where all innate fears and desires reside. That means that it does not immediately satisfies the most primitive part of brain. It requires you to use the neocortex of your brain to edit and to articulate your thoughts into intelligible language. But when you are able to connect the dots from disparate parts of your brain, that is where the satisfaction resides. It means when the brain is firing away, the satisfaction is not like satisfying your hunger or thirst but more of a lingering effect of a aromatic coffee. It is control coupled with desire to form a structure that communicates not just to yourself but others.

You can build empires in your head with writing which is something what videos and photos cannot do. It is because that part of your brain is pure chaos. Dionysius run riot while we watch videos and photos. This is because we satisfying are an hunger, a thirst. It is purely biological. We are satisfying an innate desire for pure emotions, the emotional need to identify with others, to form an social and emotional connection. It is embedded deep down in our primitive limbic brain.

But when engage in reading or writing, we are engaging our neocortex of our brain- which was developed later in our evolution. The rational part of brain. In order to articulate our deep-down desires and fears, we need to engage our rational side to bring structure to our otherwise chaotic and disparate primitive desires and fears and not rational thoughts. 

And when we form structure to our chaos, that is when we are able to connect the dots to these dormant fears and desires. We can discover the "why" question. Why do we fear rats or cockroaches and for myself, heights. Thats when your full brain is firing away. Apollo will bring order to the chaos and thats when that lingering satisfaction occurs 

Thats when an aromatic cup of coffee satisfies the thirst and the brain.

And thats why we should read and write, beside consuming the incessant videos recommended by Facebook and Youtube.