From Environmental Sustainability to Spiritual Ecology: Reading in an Age of Inner Pollution
- Eva Premk Bogataj
- Dec 17, 2025
- 10 min read
Why personal growth is not about shortcuts – and why books still matter
Personal growth is not accidental.
It requires intention, discipline, and, above all, reflection.
In an age where everything is available instantly—advice, summaries, “five steps to success”—reading books can seem almost archaic.
And yet, books remain one of the most powerful spaces of inner transformation.
Not because they offer quick solutions, but because they force us into slowness, doubt, and thought. A good book does not comfort. A good book moves.
But here an uncomfortable question arises: is all reading really growth?
Or do we, in reading as in food, also consume a form of intellectual junk?
Food, books, mountains: the same psychology of comfort
When it comes to food, the easiest choice is often the one that feels best in the moment: fast, sweet, salty, immediately rewarding.
Pleasant.
Even addictive.
Yet over time, it fails to nourish the body or the mind.
Reading works in a similar way. There is reading that:
soothes,
distracts,
flows without resistance,
and delivers quick emotional gratification.
And there is reading that:
demands effort,
opens ambiguity,
provokes inner resistance,
and only later—sometimes much later—yields clarity.
My thesis is simple: it is better to read less, but better, than to consume large quantities of literary “junk food.” Not because genres are inherently bad, but because different books train different capacities.
This is where mountains enter the picture.
You do not enter high mountains casually—at least not without consequences. High-altitude terrain requires physical conditioning, experience, equipment, risk awareness, and humility before limits. Reaching a summit is not a moral achievement—but it is the result of preparation.
The same is true of great literature. It requires:
reading stamina,
symbolic sensitivity,
patience,
and the capacity to live with uncertainty.
This is not elitism. It is the reality of any demanding discipline.
What Europeans actually read
Let us begin with a simple fact: in 2022, 52.8% of EU residents aged 16+ reported having read at least one book in the previous twelve months. Nearly half read none at all.
Reading is present—but far from universal. More importantly, the structure of reading matters.
European surveys and market analyses consistently show that:
fiction dominates reading preferences,
within fiction, novels prevail,
followed closely by crime, thrillers, and romance.
These genres are typically:
narratively fluent,
structurally predictable,
psychologically closed,
and resolved through clear endings.
This is culturally normal.
But if our concern is inner growth, cognitive expansion, and symbolic depth, we must ask honestly: what does this kind of reading train—and what does it leave untouched?
Reading in the metro
During my student years, I visited Russia and was struck by a scene in the Moscow metro: people were reading everywhere.
Books in hands, eyes absorbed.
It looked like a triumph of reading culture.
When I shared this enthusiasm with my literature professor, she stopped me with a single question:
“Yes—but what are they reading?”
She explained, bluntly, that if most of those books were light romance or crime fiction, the effect was not necessarily cultivation but sedation.
Pleasant, yes—like sugar.
But not nourishing.
That moment stayed with me because it revealed a crucial distinction: reading itself is not a guarantee of growth.
It is a potential.
When reading is cognitively beneficial—and when it mainly soothes
Cognitive science today draws a clear distinction between fluent reading and deep reading.
Reading as emotional regulation (comfort)
This type of reading:
follows familiar genre templates,
relies on predictable language,
minimizes cognitive load.
It can reduce stress and provide psychological relief.
This is not a flaw.
The problem arises when it becomes the only form of reading.
Neurologically, it engages fast, automated pathways. Like walking on flat ground, it maintains basic functioning but does not build endurance.
Reading as cognitive training (growth)
Research by Maryanne Wolf and others shows that deep reading activates multiple neural networks simultaneously—language, memory, empathy, abstraction, and moral reasoning.
Experimental studies have demonstrated that reading literary fiction (as opposed to popular genre fiction) can temporarily improve performance on Theory of Mind tasks—the ability to infer others’ mental and emotional states (Kidd & Castano, Science, 2013).
This does not mean crime novels are harmful.
It means different texts train different capacities.
Paper, screens, and the skimming problem
The medium also matters.
Meta-analyses indicate that for certain types of texts—especially explanatory and complex material—reading on paper often leads to better comprehension than reading on screens, particularly under time pressure.
Screen reading encourages skimming and scanning, which is efficient for orientation but weaker for memory integration, detail retention, and deep understanding (Mangen et al.; Delgado et al.; Clinton).
This reinforces the junk food analogy: information calories are not the same as cognitive nourishment.
Why repetition does not train the mind
Psycholinguistics distinguishes between:
lexical diversity (new words, unexpected combinations, novel syntax),
and lexical repetition (fixed phrases, stereotypical imagery, recycled plots).
Much genre fiction relies on repetition. It reads smoothly because the brain completes patterns automatically.
High literature does the opposite: it disrupts expectations, forces re-mapping of meaning, and demands active participation from the reader.
The reader does not consume meaning—they help create it.
That difference is decisive.
Felski, Nussbaum, Wolf—and why literature is relational
Here literary theory deepens the picture:
Rita Felski (Uses of Literature) reframes value not as hierarchy but as effect: recognition, shock, enchantment, knowledge. Literature matters because of what it does to us, not because of labels.
Martha Nussbaum (Not for Profit) argues that demanding literature cultivates moral imagination—the capacity to perceive others without simplification.
Maryanne Wolf shows that deep reading is a practice that must be preserved, or it is replaced by fragmented attention.
Together, they dismantle the accusation of elitism and replace it with a question of cognitive ecology.
Mountains, statistically speaking
The EU does not publish data such as “percentage of people who climb above 2500 meters.
That would be dishonest to claim.
What we do know:
a significant proportion of Europeans report no regular physical activity,
most recreational activity occurs at low intensity (walking, parks, flat terrain),
only a small minority trains for demanding environments.
The metaphor holds: most remain in valleys. A few prepare for altitude.
Belinsky: reading as a moral act
Let us return to the 19th-century Russian literary critic Vissarion Belinsky (1811–1848) who articulated with striking clarity a distinction that remains deeply relevant today: literature is not a form of leisure, but a moral and intellectual act.
For Belinsky, reading was never neutral.
A book either awakened the reader—or it failed in its highest task.
In paraphrase of his position, often echoed in his essays and letters:
To read is not simply to recognize letters, but to live the life of the spirit.
This was not rhetoric. It was a criterion.
Belinsky belonged to a generation that regarded literature as the primary arena in which ethical, social, and philosophical questions could be confronted—especially in a society where political speech was restricted.
In Tsarist Russia, the novel carried a weight that journalism or philosophy could not openly bear.
As a result, the quality of literature was inseparable from its responsibility.
Literature and Moral Awakening
Belinsky rejected the idea that literature exists to soothe, distract, or entertain in isolation.
Comfort alone was not enough.
On the contrary, he believed that literature which merely pacifies the reader is morally suspect.
For him, a serious literary work had to meet several core criteria:
Moral seriousness A novel must confront real human and social dilemmas. Not abstract morality, but lived ethical tension: injustice, dignity, responsibility, freedom.
Truthfulness to life (pravda zhizni) Literature must be faithful to lived reality—not idealized, not sentimentalized. False harmony was, for Belinsky, a form of dishonesty.
Psychological depth Characters were not types or functions, but morally conflicted individuals. Inner contradiction mattered more than plot mechanics.
Social consciousness Belinsky considered it unacceptable for literature to turn away from suffering, inequality, or oppression. A novel that ignored its historical and social context failed its vocation.
Intellectual awakening A book should disturb habitual thinking. If a reader closed a novel unchanged, Belinsky regarded this as a sign of artistic and ethical failure.
In this sense, Belinsky anticipated what modern theory would later call literature as cognitive and ethical training.
The Novel as a Form of Ethical Knowledge
Belinsky regarded the novel as the central genre of modernity precisely because it could hold contradiction: individual fate, social structure, moral conflict, historical movement.
A true novel, in his view:
does not provide ready-made answers,
does not resolve tension prematurely,
does not reduce complexity to comfort.
Instead, it places the reader inside unresolved moral space.
Why Belinsky Still Matters Today
Belinsky’s thought aligns strikingly with contemporary insights from cognitive science and literary theory:
Like Maryanne Wolf, he understood reading as a practice that shapes mental structure.
Like Martha Nussbaum, he believed literature cultivates moral imagination.
Like Rita Felski, he judged literature by its effect on the reader—not by prestige alone.
Where Belinsky goes further is in his ethical uncompromisingness.
He would not have accepted the defense: “It’s just entertainment.”
For him, such a statement was precisely the problem.
Belinsky and the Junk Food Analogy
If we extend my analogy, Belinsky would likely say:
literature that only pleases is like sugar: immediately gratifying, long-term weakening;
literature that challenges is like demanding nourishment: harder to digest, but strengthening.
Not every meal must be austere.
But a culture that feeds exclusively on sweetness loses its capacity for resistance.
Reading as High-Altitude Practice
Belinsky understood something essential: reading forms the reader.
Not every book demands altitude.
Valleys matter.
Rest matters.
Pleasure matters.
But if literature never demands effort, never destabilizes, never requires ascent, then it ceases to be a practice of freedom.
Belinsky’s legacy is therefore not elitism, but responsibility: responsibility of the writer, of the critic—and of the reader.
To read, in his sense, is not to pass time. It is to enter a space where conscience, intellect, and imagination are trained.
And that, ultimately, is why reading—like high mountains—still matters.
From Environmental Sustainability to Spiritual Ecology: Reading in an Age of Inner Pollution
In recent decades, we have learned to speak fluently about environmental sustainability. We recognize that not all consumption is equal, that short-term convenience often produces long-term damage, and that ecosystems collapse not through catastrophe alone, but through accumulated neglect.
What is less often discussed is that cultures, too, have ecosystems.
Just as nature can be polluted, so can the inner landscape of the human mind.
The Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr has long argued that the modern ecological crisis is not merely technical or economic, but metaphysical.
In his view, environmental destruction is the outward manifestation of an inner disorder: the loss of a sacred relationship to the world, to meaning, and to limits.
Nature, Nasr insists, is not only a resource but a sign (āyah).
When it is reduced to utility alone, it becomes disposable—and so does everything else, including culture, language, and thought.
The same logic applies to reading.
Intellectual Overconsumption and the Problem of Spiritual Pollution
In an attention economy driven by speed, quantity, and constant novelty, books too risk becoming extractive resources: consumed, discarded, replaced.
The result is not enrichment, but saturation.
Just as environmental pollution is caused not by one factory, but by millions of small, normalized acts of disregard, spiritual and cognitive pollution arises from constant exposure to shallow, repetitive, low-demand content.
This is not a moral accusation.
It is an ecological diagnosis.
Repetition without depth erodes symbolic sensitivity.
Constant narrative closure weakens tolerance for ambiguity.
Excessive cognitive ease dulls intellectual resilience.
In Nasr’s terms, this is a loss of inner proportion—a forgetting of hierarchy, measure, and orientation.
Sustainable reading, like sustainable living, is therefore not about purity or austerity.
It is about balance, discernment, and responsibility.
Sustainable Reading: Less Volume, More Depth
A sustainable relationship to literature resembles a sustainable relationship to nature:
It favors quality over quantity.
It respects limits of attention and digestion.
It recognizes that not everything should be consumed at the same speed—or at all.
High literature, like unspoiled ecosystems, requires protection—not from readers, but from being reduced to entertainment alone.
This does not mean abandoning pleasure. Just as sustainable food culture does not reject taste, sustainable reading does not reject enjoyment. It rejects thoughtless overconsumption.
Nasr’s insight helps sharpen the earlier metaphor: just as environmental degradation results from treating nature as inert matter, spiritual degradation results from treating books as content.
Literature as an Inner Commons
Seen this way, literature is not a private indulgence but a form of inner commons—a shared symbolic space that shapes how societies think, feel, and imagine futures.
Belinsky intuited this when he insisted on literature’s moral responsibility.Wolf confirms it at the neurological level.
Nussbaum defends it in democratic terms.Nasr grounds it in a metaphysical vision of order.
All converge on one point: what we read shapes not only individual minds, but the moral and symbolic climate we inhabit.
If we pollute that climate with endless cognitive sugar, we should not be surprised when attention collapses, judgment weakens, and meaning thins.
Toward an Ecology of Reading
To speak of reading as high-altitude practice is therefore not elitist—it is ecological.
Not everyone must climb every peak.
But a culture that forgets where its peaks are loses orientation.
Sustainable reading means:
knowing when to rest in the valley,
when to walk the ridges,
and when to accept the effort of ascent.
Because the goal is not difficulty for its own sake, but long-term resilience of mind and spirit.
And just as with the environment, the real question is not whether we can consume more—but whether we should.Conclusion: not pleasure, but consequence
As with food, the real question is not: Does this feel good right now?
But: What does this make me over time?
Some books are walks in the valley. And, yes, there are times when this might be all you will get from the mountains - a wonderful view ahead.
Some are climbs to scenic ridges.
And some are high mountains.
We do not need to live permanently at altitude.
But we should know where the peaks are—and why we might want to climb them.
Because reading, at its highest, is not consumption.
It is training.
And the view, once earned, is never the same.
Our libraries, our plates, and our paths through the landscape are mirrors of the same inner ecology. In tending them wisely, we tend ourselves.
Selected References
Eurostat (2022): Reading habits in the EU
Kidd, D. C. & Castano, E. (2013). Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind. Science.
Wolf, Maryanne (2018). Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World.New York: HarperCollins.
Felski, Rita (2008). Uses of Literature.Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (2010). Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities.Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mangen, A. et al. (2013). Reading linear texts on paper vs screen.
Delgado, P. et al. (2018). Paper vs digital reading: meta-analysis.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1996). Religion and the Order of Nature.
