Stefan Martin Riesel

After all, reading is very bad to people, wake up to realities impossible men, making them unable to bear the bland and ordinary world in which they live. Reading leads to madness, moves man's humble place he was destined in the social body. Do not let me lie examples of Don Quixote and Madame Bovary. The first, poor man, for both read adventures of gentlemen who never existed and went into the world, to believe himself capable of reforming the world, keel bone that it held bad you and poor Rocinante. As for poor Emma Bovary, his wife became useless for gossip and embroidery, losing himself in delusions about dances and courtly love.

Read does not really do well. The child who reads an adult can become dangerous, unhappy with the world's problems, led to believe that everything can be otherwise. After all, reading develops an uncontrollable power. Frees man too. Without reading, he would die happy, ignorant of the close bonds. Without reading, though, would be more accustomed to everyday reality, he would dedicate himself to work hard, without seeking to enrich it with capers imagination.

Without reading the man would never know the extent of pleasure. Not experience never supreme good of Aristotle: the know. But for that knowing if, in most cases, what require is just execute orders? If you must, finally, is to do what they expect and nothing more?

Read can cause the unexpected. You can make a man to create shortcuts to paths that must necessarily be long. Read may generate the invention. It can stimulate the imagination in order to take humans beyond what is due him.

Moreover, the books encourage dreams, imagination, fantasy. We carry a mysterious paradise, make us see unicorns blue and crystal palaces. Make us believe that life is more than a handful of dust in motion. That there is something to discover. There's horizons beyond the mountains, there are stars behind the clouds. Stars never seen. We must be wary of that penchant for the absurd that keeps us from accepting our raw realities.

No, do not give more books to schools. Parents, do not read to their children, can lead them to develop the taste for adventure and discovery that has made ​​man a different animal. Before you were still walking on four legs, with no sense of progress and civilization, but without knowing nor wars, destruction, violence. Teachers do not tell stories, can stimulate an unwanted curiosity in people that life destined for the repetition and hard work.

Reading can be a problem, humans can generate too aware of their political rights in an administered world, where being free is nothing but a fiction no likelihood. It would be impossible to control and organize society that all human beings know what they want. If everyone were to stand and to articulate their demands, to put down their position in the world, making speeches of the instruments for achieving its freedom.

The world is already going on the right track. More and more people read for utilitarian reasons: to understand forms, contracts, leaflets medicine, designs, manuals, etc.. Look at the queues, one for small cancers of contemporary civilization. A book would be enough for everyone to see themselves magically transported to other dimensions, less cumbersome. That's the magic carpet, the pixie dust, the time machine. For the man who reads, there are no borders, no courts, prisons either. What is more subversive than reading?

You must understand that reading to enrich themselves culturally or for fun should be a privilege granted only to some, those who never develop practical work or manual. Be in queues, in subways, or in the silence of my bedroom ... Read should be a rare thing, for no one.

After all, reading is a power, and power is not for everyone.

To obey is not necessary to see, silence is the language of submission. To execute orders, the word is useless.

Moreover, reading promotes the communication of pain, joys, so many feelings ... Reading is obscene. Exposes the intimate, the individual and collective makes public the secret himself. Reading threatens individuals, because it makes them identify his story to other stories. Make them able to understand and accept the world of the Other. Yes, the reading should be prohibited.

Read can make man dangerously human.

In: PRADO, J. & CONDINI, P. (Eds.). The formation of the player: points of view. Rio de Janeiro: Argus, 1999. pp.71-3.