My friend runs a resistance group

The radical act of reading in community slowly

My friend, who I will call P. to protect her identity, runs resistance groups. She doesn't know it. She resists the tyranny of the algorithm by gathering people together to read for two hours at a time once a week. Progress is slow. It might take eight months to read a Shakespeare play.

Tyranny relies on propaganda and propaganda counts on the audience to not have time to question the messaging. We have been, and continue to be trained to consume small bits of information like we're speed-eating at a county fair—fast and mindless—with hits of deep fried fats and sugar. We grow mentally lethargic with empty data calories. A bite here, another byte there. But, no nutritional, or intellectual value.

Misinformation with intent, propaganda, relies on repetitive fragmented digital consumption. The algorithm, through clicks, double taps, and shares, constructs echo chambers. Brief posts, images, videos, trigger emotional responses that bypass critical thinking before our prefrontal cortex can engage and then swipe we’re off to the next dopamine hit of the next post.

Authoritarianism succeeds by disabling curiosity and suppressing questions. Fascism goes further and demands popular support. We can argue within the algorithm all we like. It will never be a winning strategy. Clicking like or on an angry face emoji may feel like an act of solidarity but actually bolsters the disintegration of independent thought and action playing directly into the disintegration of participatory democracy.

We too easily jump to "the island of conclusions in the middle of a sea of knowledge." Social media has turned this island into a continent. Platforms seek profit and political initiatives seek acceptance. Both profit from quick judgments, emotional reactions, willingness to accept the first version of a story.

We consume a headline, maybe a subheading, perhaps the first paragraph, then react and share without further investigation. We're not reading; we're looking for confirmation of what we already believe or for something to provoke an internal and emotional response. This is the fertile ground within which propaganda takes hold. Authoritarianism nurtures this behavior in order to gain more traction. Fascism demands expressions of support for its positions.

Political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt understood that power requires a willing audience—it depends not just on force but on our participation, our consent, our choice to keep showing up. Every scroll, every click, every hasty share makes us that willing audience.

Reading slowly from paper subverts the propaganda machine and is subversive because it refuses to participate in the economy of attention extraction. Sitting with a text for hours, questioning passages that confuse or challenge us, examining multiple possible meanings for unfamiliar words, or words used in unfamiliar context, is resisting.

Slow reading means engaging with nuance, questioning sources, tolerating ambiguity, and exploring tangents. It's the difference between swimming in the sea of knowledge and standing marooned on that island of hasty conclusions.

When we read with a community, when sharing our thoughts in real time, we are resisting. We are also practicing the increasingly lost art of civil discourse. This is where assumptions get challenged, where blind spots are revealed, where questions are treasured, not suppressed.

My friend P. leads Shakespeare reading groups. She doesn’t think of it as resistance to tyranny or the rise of authoritarianism - but it is. People meet for one to two hours to read the same text. Sometimes, it takes two hours to work through eighty lines of text. that’s about 1.5 minutes per line which might be 10-16 words. Each idea, each word, each phrase, the placement of commas, variations between editorial choices are all examined. There is no literary rock left unturned. It is indulgent and stimulating.

This kind of reading requires the mental space that is in direct contradiction to clickbait headlines. Where social media demands instant reaction, reading Shakespeare this way demands sustained attention. Where algorithms push us toward binary thinking, the complexity of Elizabethan verse nourishes independent thought. The readers leave not with easy answers but with richer questions.

There's a deeper historical resonance here. Throughout American history, reading Shakespeare has been an activity fostered by women who were otherwise disenfranchised—including women of color who found in communal reading both intellectual sustenance and a form of quiet rebellion. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, African American women's literary societies gathered to read and discuss Shakespeare alongside contemporary works, creating spaces of learning and leadership that society denied them elsewhere. These women understood intuitively what P.'s groups demonstrate today: that slow, careful reading in community is both an act of self-determination and collective resistance.

Throughout history, communities of readers have been sites of resistance and transformation. The salons of 18th-century Paris, where ideas about democracy and human rights were debated over coffee and wine. The study circles of the civil rights movement, where activists read philosophy and strategy together. The consciousness-raising groups of the women's movement, where personal experience was examined through the lens of systemic oppression.

Neuroscience research tells us that high levels of internet usage and heavy media multitasking are associated with decreased gray matter in prefrontal regions responsible for maintaining goals in the face of distraction. The very parts of our brain responsible for critical thinking, sustained attention, and complex reasoning are being physically altered by our digital consumption patterns. Exactly what is needed for the end of democracy.

Resistance is not always flashy. It may not make the news. It may not come with poster signs or chants. It may come in slowing down and reading with a friend, family, or in broader community with out a mediator. Adopting the default position of ‘I don’t know what I think’ is the best starting point for challenging political steam rollers.

This isn't just about personal enrichment or intellectual satisfaction, though those matter. In an era of increasing polarization, misinformation, and manipulation, our ability to read carefully and think critically is essential to democracy itself.

The stakes become even more urgent when we consider that the very institutions designed to foster critical thinking are under sustained assault. The profession of teaching faces unprecedented attacks, from legislative attempts to control curriculum to the systematic defunding of public education. Higher education confronts mounting hostility, with universities branded as bastions of elite indoctrination rather than centers of inquiry. Faculty face threats for assigning books that challenge assumptions, for teaching history that includes uncomfortable truths, for encouraging students to think rather than simply absorb approved narratives.

In this context, every reading group becomes an act of protest.

When we read slowly in community, we model a different way of engaging with ideas—one based on curiosity rather than certainty, dialogue rather than debate, understanding rather than winning. We create small pockets of resistance against the forces that profit from our confusion and division.

We lose too much time jumping to islands of conclusions. Worse, we're losing the capacity for deep thinking that complex problems require. We are falling directly into the space where authoritarian power wants us.

Reading slowly in community won't solve all our problems. It won’t change a Supreme Court decision, or an unconstitutional executive order. But it might help us prepare to challenge them. Nuanced, hard-won understanding is a first step toward resistance.

The algorithm will always be there, hungry for your attention. Instead, pick up a book, find some fellow travelers, and take the radical step of thinking slowly, together. If Shakespeare isn’t your cup of tea, maybe start with some Hannah Arendt or Sal Alinsky.

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https://reachmd.com/news/understanding-the-brains-response-to-social-media-a-closer-look-at-dopaminergic-mechanisms/2470999/

https://sites.dartmouth.edu/dujs/2022/08/20/social-media-dopamine-and-stress-converging-pathways/