Hello ISRAEL!!!

Something very strange happened yesterday - My blog got 2714 visits from Israel. Check out the table above and you'll see why that's strange. Also note that there hasn't been a single visit from Israel in the past one month before yesterday. The next highest number of visits yesterday was from Russia - 45. I've been getting visits from Russia in the past few days, and until I saw the Israel visits the Russian traffic was surprising to me. And equally surprising now, in comparison, is the low number from India, which I considered normal and significant earlier - given my blog's lack of popularity and regularity - until Israel messed it up. Now everything else seems terribly low. Or there's some serious bug in google's traffic monitoring.

I generally post links to my latest blog-posts on facebook, so that my friends can read them. I do not have a single friend in Israel and Russia. More than 90% of my friends are in India and the US. Other countries may reach my posts through lucky google searches or extremely lucky forwards from common friends or friends of friends or by some such chain. But in no way should these lucky coincidences lead to more readership than from India. Or can they?

Perhaps... if whatever shit I write appeals more to the Israelis and Russians! If that really is the case, I must say I  have finally found my true audience. But they are popping up more like aberrations, than real fans. Come on guys, I need some loyalty from you. So keep reading more of my shit and show me you are my loyal readers. Otherwise, sadly, SochVichaar will remember you like a one-night stand... I hope it's not... :P

At least to some extent, we can figure that out... Readers from Israel and Russia - can you please comment on this post and let me know you're not a bug! At least leave some sign to show me you are real... Look towards right and you'll find my email address as well.

Chalo phir... bye bye... see you...

Should we read books?

Is too much reading really a good habit or plain waste of time?

The world is full of people who will tell you what you should do and what you should not do including those who write all that stuff in books. And somehow there is so much sanctity assigned to the printed word, that we fail to see that it's written by a human who may just be bull-shitting to make money.

Let's ask some basic questions. What could be the possible reasons why reading may be a good thing to do:

1. It helps you learn things about life - I think a better and faster way is to live life better. However, because of human limitations and those of resources & logistics, there is only so much that is possible to experience first hand. So books are supposed to fill that gap and give you perspective about things you've not experienced. Makes sense, but with advances in technology over the past 100 years, books have become too slow a medium to fill gaps. We have other faster ways, that rock, at least superficially. And even if books are still the chosen medium, the fundamentally flawed assumption in this argument is that people read stuff that they do not get to experience. I think that's not generally true. Most people enjoy reading fiction or stuff about others that they can themselves relate to, at some level (say a similar feeling, situation, experience, etc.). They feel some sort of external acceptance or confirmation of being normal in the process and also feel good about whatever they are. And to ensure this feel-good outcome, people are very careful at hand-picking what they read.
2. Reading for pleasure - Well, everyone has a right to choose his/her ways of giving oneself pleasure. So this motive can't be questioned, as long as it is harmless for anybody else. And as mentioned in pt-1, most reading is for pleasure and self-gratification, including feeling normal in this screwed up world.
3. Reading for knowledge - I can't question this motive as well, since seekers of knowledge deserve their freedom to choose where they get it from. And I think there's an inherent assumption that they are wise and mature enough to choose their source based on what they seek. However wisdom and maturity are vague stuff and can't be defined, nor trusted. Anyway, by whatever means, it's important to be selective and smart here so that one does not waste a lot of time reading garbage. And the reason this is important is related to the reason we seek knowledge, rather the reason we should seek knowledge - to make sense of the world we live in. This knowledge is different from the kind referred to in pt-1, which was more related to human experiences. The knowledge am talking about here is factual information about the earth and the universe - whatever leads to the ultimate truth.

I think pt-1 basically means the same as pt-2 - reading for pleasure... and modes of entertainment should be rated based on the pleasure they provide, not by the pace at which they transmit information, and books do pretty well as entertainers for readers of a certain type.

Books, or rather written content, in various forms, have been the prime means of preserving and communicating knowledge for ages. The only other means I can think of are pictures and word-of-mouth. With advances in technology, we have other ways and means of transmitting information, which are faster and more convenient than books, including books on kindle. But at the same time, our minds have a minimum comfortable rate of processing new information, and it needs time also to evaluate and form a point of view. With books, we have a control over that. Books also have more explicitness in the content, so it is less likely that we'd miss important details which we might while watching a video. And physical books can be touched, felt, seen, stored and carried anywhere. It feels like real knowledge in hand.

All in all, although I started writing this article with the opposite view in mind, I now feel books are indeed a powerful medium for acquiring knowledge. And for pleasure, it varies from person-to-person as to which ones, if any at all, are more entertaining.