A survey released last week in the States reports that fewer people are reading for pleasure. The National Endowment for the Arts survey also showed that

… people who read for pleasure are many times more likely than those who don’t to visit museums and attend musical performances, almost three times as likely to perform volunteer and charity work, and almost twice as likely to attend sporting events.

More than half the population in America therefore, has made a (sub- or semi-conscious?) decision to downgrade their lives into a presumably virtual existence. The information we have didn’t mention the rise and rise of PlayStation, TV, and internet chatrooms, but what else are they doing? It seems that, as Andrew Soloman of the New York Times says:

… there is a basic social divide between those for whom life is an accrual of fresh experience and knowledge, and those for whom maturity is a process of mental atrophy.

Yikes! And he is prepared to go further; cites evidence that the rise of Alzheimer’s reflects this, and that our elders who continue to stuff their brains with fresh intellectual fodder may be less likely to develop the disease.Best in this article though is his quote from Walter Pater, which I’d like to make the quote of the day at LeafSalon (if we had one):

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it to a life of sharp and eager observation … The poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.

Yum! So there you are: as a reader, you can to rush off, tome in hand, to your sporting event, roused and startled; and you’ll be playing chess in your 90s. Go tiger.