[Prestidigitweeze]

As a teenager, I used to think that beautiful homes and lofts devoid of all but self-help and coffee table books exemplified the shallowness of modern culture. The eyes of one owner whose kid I knew seemed to have the hollow allure of the TV screens he worshiped.

Now that e-readers and digital music libraries exist, the lack of clutter has taken on a different meaning: The polished wood and nigh-empty walls seem more mental easel than void.

Or else my childish assumption was utterly wrong, and the people with homes uncluttered by books, sheet music and recordings were not necessarily shallow at all. Perhaps to assume so is to confuse a particular kind of materialism for intellectual depth, which means, ironically enough, that the person who makes the assumption is being shallow.