Top 10 Reasons Why Life is Infinitely Better Reading Books

…and not watching movies. (This is in reference to non-fiction books, btw — and quality reads, not crap).

1. Movies leave you under a spell; an illusory haze so you cannot see. Books give control of the haze others are under.
2. Movies manufacture illusion without you knowing it, while books allow you to choose experience illusion, without decoupling awareness from experience.
3. Books enable to you to explain and teach about illusions and reality, placing you at “cause” instead of at “effect” where you are a victim of illusion. You’re in the driver’s seat reading and writing books.
4. Books clarify and provide understandings. Movies merely create suspence and foreshadowing. Movies are hollow, they foreshadow and build suspense, but they leave you empty with no treasure, no gem. Books have the gem. Books, sure, create suspense, intrigue, and connection. I remember countless “on the edge of my seat” reads of Sherlock Holmes and bawling at the end of Where the Read Fern Grows in early elementary school. And just in 2008, I was completely engaged and in awe of the adventure created by Jules Verne in around the world in 80 days. Those fiction reads provided massive suspense, BUT BUT BUT, unlike movies, the books also provided incredible value and understanding!! I learned so many lessons from those books above. For example, inductive observational skill from Doyle’s book (Sherlock Holmes), the touching experience of pet comraderie (from Where the Red Fern Grows), and the necessity of time, precision, and the cool collected travel making things happen skills of Mr. Fogg from Around the World in 80 days. Because I READ those experiences as books as opposed to watch what was blasted at me with pixels from a movie, I experienced them more wholistically and I acquired the lesson and understanding, with the entertainment and fun of a very absorbing and exciting read!
5. You think more clearly with a book because your brain gets neurological activity firing that is congruent with the logic of the book. Kind of like a “mental-cerebral” version of “if you smile, you’ll feel happy”. If you read a smart book, you’ll think more intelligently. Movies trick and obfuscate intelligence.
6. Books, you have total control over the pace, and “order you read”, movies (unless you fumble with FF and RW buttons, you do not have the same control.
7. Books, your vision is the movie and you are the director; movies lack that customization.
8. Books teach and entertain and create more cohesive thinking; movies, merely entertain with an inkling of “teaching”.
9. Both movies and books inspire, but books provide an inspiration that is more enduring beacuse it is “your own version” of the inspiration.
10. Finally, books don’t need electrical outlets, high-tech dvd players, surround sound and the like. Books are portable; you can bring them anywhere. Laptops are fixing that with movies, but with a book, you use your “built-in” surround sound, imax, widescreen mental imagery vision, which is infinitely more crisp, alive, and exciting than a movie screen.

I’m a former movie junkie (thousands and reruns) and have rediscovered the joy of reading!

Refuting Preposterous Counter-Arguments

• Books are hard to preserve — ebooks hard copy, soft copy. egyptian documents have been found that are over thousands of years old, our declaration of indendence has been perfectly preserved for 200+ year. Books have been around longer than movies and will likely stay longer.
• Books are expensive — nope. your average dvd (say $20) is infinitely more expensive than a library book (free), but even if you buy a book, it’s likely to be less than film.
• Books are heavy — ebooks, my friend. wieghtless
• Books can fall from tall places and kil your children — so can movies.
• Books smell bad in high humidity places — film will corrode and become inoperable in high humidity places. Books actually have a broad environmental survival capacity when you think about it.
• Books becomes ugly looking after soaked in water — try putting a wet VHS in the video player and see what happens. The pages might be wrinkled, but a book won’t damage your electronic equipment.
• Books are written by old people mainly — haha. first off, not true. I’ve written a fair share of books and am in my youth. There are tons of youthful authors. Besides, whats the average age of your typical movie director and producer (older than the average author). Besides, whats wrong with some wisdom from elders?
• Books are against technology — apparently you aren’t familiar with the sci-fi fiction genre and the entire nonfiction line devoted to teaching and theorizing about new forms of technology.
• Books use large amount of trees — true, but ebooks refutes this.
• Books are ancient tools — they’re ancient learning devices, tools, forms of carrying messages, passing on research that took years and thousands of people. Yep. they’ve stood the test of time and have endured in their utility.
• Books lack user interaction — no. Books require you (especially with fiction) to 3-dimensionally interact with the interpretation of the material and your mind via visualizations. Movies cripple your ability to visualize. You create “the mental movie” so to speak, but movies just have little creative interaction where you see what everyone else sees.
• Books don;t have any moving things in them — the images created by books (your mental picture) ceaseless changes and dynamically moves.
• Books are rigid — this point, of course, doesn’t necessarily descredit books, but last time I checked, isn’t a paperback much less rigid than a dvd? If you “bend” a movie, it breaks, bend a paperback, it bends.
• Books are 2 dimentional — no, again, 3-d with your mental imagery. Actually, with very creative mental imagery you could visualize a book’s material in infinite dimensions with thought experiments, something impossible to do when just “observing” what happens on a screen.
• Books are usually unclear — haha. A distaste for literature is becoming more and more clear. Unless you’re a cat, scientist, or the rare exception of a courageous person, we usually fear or dislike what we don’t understand. Read books that interest you and work your way up to the complex ones, otherwise, you won’t like the experience. You’ll find some literature that fascinates you. Given that many more books exist than movies, it’s almost a probablistic certainty you’ll find an interesting book, if you found an interesting movie.
• Books have to be copied and printed — and movies have to be spliced, edited, printed, copied, and distributed as well.
• Books can’t be edited easily — actually neither books nor movies are designed for post-final print editting, but changing one word is MUCH easier than having to call back in the director, the camera crew, the actors, the editting crew, and reshoot, refilm, reprint and republished one line of s movie scene.

That said, I just wanted to say, I don’t dislike movies. Movies have reached and inspired me in ways that some books could have never have done, but, on the other hand, books have done the same — evoked intrinsic understanding that open up new doors of thought that completely change my life. Both definitely possess the ability to inspire. However, in my experience, the quality of the motivation and change you experience from a book feels MUCH more solid and grounded. In other words, the longevity of inspiration received from a book is greater — the fictional scene, or idea, or inspiration — sticks with you longer than with most movies (unless the rare exception of incredible filiming and cinematography) because you have to “design the mental movie” cognitively. But I definitely wouldn’t be person I am today without movies, and certainly without books. In part, I feel like I was “raised” by books and movies. Lessons from authors and films that teach what was skipped over at home or school. Good stuff!

I think the ultimate underlying mutual understanding here is this: “You read the right books, on a topic, skill-set, or value you want to acquire, and you will program your mind to genuinely live that life”. Movies are a quick way to glimpse at, and live vicariously through the characters and plots of other (fictional, screenplay) stories.

Why do so many Millenials (almost every member of the IWR club) LOVE Office Space? Because we’re constantly mobile, we loathe actual stagnant office spaces, but don’t mind the internet and that dynamic exchange at all. However, watching the movie “Office Space” will merely create a vicarious, temporary, short-lived feeling of “freedom” from something in your real life that you wish to escape. If you actually want to CHANGE your life, books will do that for you. I guess an analogy is a movie is the ignition (it can start the desire or create awareness of a desired change) but then the book is the actual car (it supplies the programming you need in order to get you where you want to go).

Books connect your body, mind, and voice.

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Tags: filmcrap, fun & trivia, inspiration, literature, Nerdom, technology