Reading is the Ultimate Life Hack

Author: Douglas Murray URL: https://spectator.com/article/reading-is-the-ultimate-life-hack/?edition=us One-line: Murray argues that books give perspective, wisdom, and an antidote to “presentism” — the ability to see past the manipulations of present-day language and crisis — and that the cultural normalization of not reading is quietly catastrophic.

How it connects

• Douglas Murray — author; British journalist and cultural commentator known for The Madness of Crowds and The War on the West
• Attention Economy — the piece’s diagnosis: phones now consume the 30-minute commute that once yielded a chapter; 100 short videos per journey vs. sustained reading
• Presentism — Murray’s core concern: without books we lose the sense that others have navigated life before us, leaving us subject only to the alarms of the moment
• Marcus Aurelius — invoked as the kind of interlocutor books provide; rare insight unavailable from contemporaries
• Fyodor Dostoevsky — paired with Marcus Aurelius as exemplars of the wisdom books can deliver
• Thucydides — cited as an example of what Underground passengers might once have been reading
• Active Reading — the piece implicitly argues for Murray’s kind of deep, sustained engagement vs. fragmented phone scrolling

Key claims

• The London Underground and New York subway were once places where commuters read newspapers and books; today every passenger stares at the same phone screen, getting through 100 short videos in the time that once yielded a chapter of a novel.
• The decline in reading is no longer merely lamented — it is celebrated: influencer Alix Earle, worth $20 million, has “never read a book,” and an influencer called “Clavicular” explained in a club that reading books doesn’t seem worthwhile in a “time-maxxing” sense.
• Reading does not make people morally good — everyone knows decent non-readers and terrible well-read people — but books do give something measurable: a greater sense of perspective on the world.
• Time spent with Marcus Aurelius or Dostoevsky offers insight comparable to what most people will never find in a live conversation, because it is unlikely that anyone in a normal year will meet someone with comparable depth of understanding of the world and human nature.
• Books sharpen the reader’s ability to detect language being used manipulatively: “small boat migrants” and “family voting” are two recent examples of language framing that softens uncomfortable realities — a reader attuned to how language works is harder to mislead.
• The most significant gift books give is an antidote to “presentism”: the sense, like a painting on a French cave-wall, that someone has been here before, felt what we felt, and managed to navigate life — preventing a person from arriving at the end of life no wiser than when they started.

Notable quotes

“I suspect most people reading this will have noticed that we read fewer books than we used to and spend ever more time on our devices. People present this as a problem for the kids, but it’s a problem for the adults too.”

“The trouble is that not reading books is now not only lamented – it is celebrated. I read an article the other day about an online influencer called Alix Earle, 25, who is said to be worth $20 million. Asked to name the last book she had read she replied, without hesitation: ‘I’ve never read a book… maybe Dr Seuss.’”

“Reading does not make us good.”

“I suspect that at some point even Alix Earle or Clavicular might ask themselves what their life is for and whether they are using their time on this Earth entirely well. It is hard to shrug off the thought that they would be better off in many ways if they could spend a few days with Marcus Aurelius or Dostoyevsky. Not least because it is unlikely that any of us in a normal year are going to meet someone with a comparable amount of insight into the world or people.”

“Books also give us some ability to see through, as well as put in perspective, the troubles of our own time.”

“If you know language you know how you can be manipulated by it. In the same way that if you know history you know how you can be either led or led astray by it. If you have a mind filled with real and fictional stories from the past you can better decide whether it is time to hide under a rock or weigh up the cries and alarms of our time and suffer through them.”

“I suppose that the main thing that reading gives us (apart from pleasure and some wisdom) is an ability not to be subject only to ‘present-ism’. It gives us a sense – like a painting on a French cave-wall – that someone has been here before, felt what we felt and managed to navigate this mysterious thing called life. It is a sad person who gets to the end of their life no wiser or more informed than when they started it.”