By Garrick Hoffman

John Locke, an English philosopher and physician of the 17th century, once was quoted, Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. If I could curtail that quote to just Reading furnishes the mind, I would be content. If reading furnishes our mind, yet it is thinking that enables us to conceive our own original thoughts, how could we ever think for ourselves if we don’t have those materials of knowledge, if we ultimately choose not to read at all?

Let’s look at the tale of Frederick Douglass. Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life bound by the shackles of bondage. At some point along the path of his enslavement, he formed an interest in literature. To his misfortune, slaves were not allowed to read.

Can you guess why?

It’s like our government’s (or the media’s, for the matter) citizens: slave masters didn’t want their slaves to think on their own. The masters wanted to keep their slaves stupefied so they would remain biddable fools. You know, just like so many Americans when Obama was president. Oh wait…

So Douglass turned his interest into action, but he had to be surreptitious about it, or else face the wrath of his slave masters in the event that he’s caught. He would, even at a young age, trick literate boys into teaching him. Clever, right? He would also seek succor from the wife of one of his masters, and she, too, had to be surreptitious about it. Eventually, furnishing his mind with reading, he sharpened his skills and cultivated his knowledge. From here, he took further action and found his freedom, hopping on a train in Maryland (taking the right measures to do so first, since it obviously wasn’t as easy as hopping on one as a white person) and finally arriving in New York as a free man, all within a day.

Later on, with his powerful oratory skills, compelling autobiography, and extraordinary literary aptitude, Douglass became an icon of the abolitionist movement. His deft abilities to explain his trials of slave life fueled the fervor for abolition. Slave owners must have reviled him, as he became an educated slave-turned-free black man who fought alongside abolitionists, including President Lincoln, and made a profound impact in doing so.

Muse on this for a bit: Douglass had to actively fight to be able to read and to have access to literature, all because his masters would expel him and every other slave from such. Now, in this era we live in, people actively and consciously eschew reading. What one man fought for, we dismiss.

I do believe that Douglass already was born with a towering capacity of intelligence, but reading enabled him to “furnish the mind” and, perhaps, claw his way out of bondage at a more accelerated rate than had he not been able to read at all.

Here’s another example of what I’m trying to get at.

Greece’s Dark Age began after their literature (and literacy) perished. After the Trojan War, the Dorian people attacked Greece, and the Mycenaean civilization – the dominant civilization – subsequently collapsed, bringing their language, written in Linear B, down with them. The Iliad and The Odyssey their only pieces of literature during the Dark Age, both of which were passed down, yet they were shared orally rather than written down. The Greek people, known as Hellenes, were rendered stagnant. Although there wasn’t necessarily any, say, civil unrest, violence, or insurrections, no one knew how to read or write, which at the time cast a grim shadow on the people. Because of their inability to do either, they were unable to share intellectual wealth in the written form.

Then, when trade with Egypt began, the minds of the people were eventually nourished. They were re-introduced to mathematics and literature. The Phoenicians also played a role, introducing the Hellenes to their phonetic alphabet. Eventually, like World War II vacuuming America out of The Great Depression in the 1940s, literacy vacuumed Greece out of their Dark Age, which occurred around 800 BCE.

Furthermore, Thales and Anaximander, considered the founding fathers of philosophy, likely would have never been able to spread the word of their insights had they lived in the Dark Age. Even worse, it’s possible that their classical civilization, as well as theater, medicine, history, democracy, and philosophy, never would have materialized at all. Either that, or it would have taken much longer for these things to materialize. Reading and literacy, you could say, furnished their minds, and gave them the means to share their thoughts and observations.

Also, consider Hitler’s efforts to eradicate all of Jewish literature. It was an impossible, already-doomed aspiration because, I contest, you can’t eliminate literature so ubiquitous and embraced throughout the entire world. There will always be books floating around, and that’s all it takes to keep something alive.

What I’m saying here is that literacy, with all its spellbinding qualities and powers, carves the path to enlightenment, to disillusionment, to intelligent/critical thinking, to liberation. Regardless of whether anyone is born on a lower intelligence tier than Douglass, Thales, or Anaximander, the powers of reading can vitalize your mind, swell it with knowledge, and inflate its capabilities for (critical) thinking.

After I graduated high school in 2008, I regret to say that I don’t think I read a single book for four years. At some juncture of my 22nd year, I developed a curiosity in outdoorsman Aron Ralston’s autobiographical book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place. The book served as a tale of his nearly-fatal plight when he got his arm trapped in a slot canyon and was forced to sever it to regain his freedom (hey, there’s that word again). I read it, loved it, and never stopped reading since then. In these last couple years (I am now 24), my thinking patterns and lifestyle have taken a complete one-eighty. Although it likely has something to do with a growing young man’s developing brain in those years of age, I attribute my one-eighty to reading. It’s staggering how much one can learn, how much insight one can absorb and muse on, how much wisdom one can gather, all from books and reading.

And it’s for that reason why education is so paramount for everybody, certainly, education within the walls of a school but, perhaps more importantly, beyond them. When you take your curiosity into your own hands and feed your mind with lessons, insight, and wisdom, then you too, can obliterate those shackles of mental bondage. You too, can carve your path into liberation. If you’re stuck in a dark confinement of ignorance, just know that literature is the key that opens the door for your way out. I’m still turning the key myself.

With literacy, reading, and education, as Winston McCall from Parkway Drive, one of my favorite bands, proclaims,

“From the depths of Hell I rise. From gilded cage, my spirit flies.”

Have a good summer, everyone.

(Many thanks to faculty members Justin Amoroso and Angel Christian, who both aided me for accuracy in writing this piece.)