There Are Two Ways to Read — One Is Useless
Reading is telepathy, and a book is the most powerful
technology invented.
Homer, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Woolf,
Hemingway — these are names without a living body. We can’t talk to
them, nor touch them, but their thoughts
are immortalized through the written word.
Aristotle’s logic, Kepler’s astronomy, Newton’s
physics, Darwin’s
biology, Wittgenstein’s philosophy — these are memes
without living originators. They no longer champion their ideas, and yet,
we still talk about them.
Without books, humans would never have escaped
the boundaries of space and time. Each new generation
would have had to learn the realities of life for
themselves rather than having the luxury to build on the
past; knowledge accumulation would
have quickly dimmed towards an asymptote.
Almost everything that we value in the modern world has
its root in the invention of writing. Almost everything that we
have accomplished has come from reading.
Even on an individual level, one of the most effective
ways to learn about the world is to dip your toes into the wisdom of
the past. Instead of spending your life figuring out how the mind works,
you can just seek out the experience of someone
who already knows. Rather deducing the laws of nature yourself,
you can simply refer to an existing body of work.
Even beyond that, reading is a joy. It’s a touch
of growth, it’s a beacon of inspiration, and it’s
source of connection. We are how we spend our
time, and we become what we consume. It only makes sense,
then, that what we read informs how we see the world.
That said, there is more to reading than
just whispering words in our mind. It’s about mindset,
too. The way you read plays a major role in what you take away. It shapes what
you pay attention to and how you evolve.
Unfortunately, I think this part of
the equation is often neglected.
Is It
About Right or Wrong?
Most of us learn to read in school, and when
we do, it’s for one of two reasons: to memorize or to critique —
both with the intent of choosing right or wrong.
When we memorize out of a textbook, the goal is essentially to
score well on tests. Even if we don’t directly memorize word for
word, the aim is still to absorb all the details in one defined area so that we
can write an exam. Anything outside of that matters very
little for the end result.
Similarly, when we critique something, say, like a piece of
literature or a historical decision, our goal is to establish distinctions
between what is right and what is wrong, and we have to ensure that
everything we read fits into a predefined box so that we can make
a strong case.
This works in school, and it teaches in its own way,
but unfortunately, when reading in the real world, this kind of mindset
cheats us out of knowledge.
I know people who have gone through this process,
been seduced by it, and then feel that if they
can’t remember or memorize all they read, they are wasting their
time, hence discouraging them from further reading.
I also know people — and these people
are abundant on the internet — that can’t
help but read everything with a critical lens. They’re so
intent on finding every little fault in something that they always miss
the larger point. They dismiss anything that doesn’t align with their existing
model of reality, and they forget to pay attention to what lies
beyond black and white.
Now, having the focus to absorb what you need is
critical and so is having a filter in place to detect if what
you’re reading is factually wrong.
That said, anytime you read something with the mindset that
you are there to extract what is right and what is wrong, you are by
default limiting how much you can get out of a particular piece of
writing. You’re boxing an experience that has many dimensions into
just two.
One of the things that become increasingly clear to anybody that
reads a lot is that if you were to only read books that you agree with a
100% or those that are worth memorizing in full, you would soon run out of
options.
Reading isn’t about jumping
at details. It’s about incorporating a perspective.
The Real Joy
of Reading
Where, then, is perspective? If we shouldn’t recall all we
consume, nor wear a lens of criticism, where exactly does the value in
reading lie?
To answer that, we have to dissect why we read in
the first place, and that reason is actually
relatively simple— we read to understand.
You might be reading a modern-day comedy or a Russian
classic. You could be going through the latest pop-psychology volume or an
old Roman emperor’s notebook. Either way, you’re
trying to put yourself in a different mode of reality so that you can
absorb some of what the writing is telling you.
In this case, the only filter worth having is
the one that distinguishes between what is relevant and what is
not; what matters and what doesn’t.
When you filter by right or wrong, not only are you trying to
paint a whole with the smaller component of its parts, but you’re
also limiting what you understand. Who is to say that there isn’t a
lesson in what is wrong? Or more importantly, who is to say
that what you assume to be right or wrong is just a
current bias that, one day, you will come to readjust?
Any time I reread a book that has been important to me
in the past, I always come back with new lessons. Most books contain
more than one idea, and they say different things in
different places.
I can count many instances where I have arrogantly
dismissed something that I thought I knew, or that didn’t make sense to me, or
that I judged prematurely — assuming knowledge of right and
wrong — only to learn that with a new mindset and a sharper and
more nuanced point of view, that something contained profound wisdom.
The better questions to ask are always: What is right
about this? Even if this isn’t what I believe or value or see as
true, why does someone else believe it?
The point of reading isn’t to memorize, and it’s certainly not
to critique. It’s to absorb and filter with an open
mind — to find the right thing at the right time so
that you can improve and update your existing model of
reality rather than mold whatever you’re reading to fit into it as it is.
The beauty of this mindset is that you don’t actually need
to filter this consciously. You just need to decide that it’s
okay not to agree, and it’s fine to overlook what doesn’t make
sense. From there, your mind will automatically filter for what is
relevant and what is not.
When it does, you’ll know — it’ll change you in a way
memorization can’t.
The Takeaway
Reading isn’t just a delightful hobby. If done well, it’s
also a virtue. It teaches you more than just how to live and
what to do; it teaches you how to see.
By diving into the minds of some of the greatest
thinkers and storytellers, it moves us into realms of
reality that would otherwise stay unknown to us. We often walk
out a good book with a new pair of eyes, and we can then use
these eyes to create a better world around us, if we so choose.
That said, in order for a book to have this
effect, we do also have to do our part. We have come
in with the correct mindset, and we have to put ourselves in a
perceptual state that is okay with fine-tuning itself.
Contrary to how most of us learn to read, the process isn’t
limited to the two simple dimensions of extracting right and
wrong. And every time we approach it with this mentality, we cheat
ourselves out of a more nuanced lens of understanding; we limit
retention.
Every word, every sentence, and every paragraph of a good piece
of writing has the potential to teach you something. That doesn’t mean
that you shouldn’t be selective about what you read or that you can’t give
up on something that isn’t speaking to you. What it means is
that for something to move you, you have to be ready to be moved.
If you come in with an open mind, you might actually leave with
something in it. If you filter for relevancy and understanding,
that’s what you will find, and that’s when you will truly capture the joys
of the written form.
Or as George R.R. Martin puts it in A Dance
with Dragons:
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he
dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
https://designluck.com/two-ways-to-read/
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