There Are Two Ways to Read — One Is Useless

This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

From Medium:

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.

Everything that we value in the modern world has its root in invention of writing. 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.

. . . .

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.

Link to the rest at Medium

5 thoughts on “There Are Two Ways to Read — One Is Useless”

  1. This article seems to be saying that reading for pleasure is wrong. It seems to command people to read for edification only. If I read fiction for this reason, I wouldn’t be writing it. I’d be writing pointless twaddle about how to write instead.

    • Oh, to be clear, I have written how to write articles, but because I happen to be a writer of some experience (if few publishing credits), I did so from the seat of experience. (And I still think it’s largely pointless twaddle, ’cause what do I really know about writing anyway?)

      Most pointless twaddle about writing is written by people who have never actually written but who wish to express their opinions on how it should be done anyway.

      Considering that distinction, I have to wonder if the OP ever actually enjoyed a book they read, or if they’re so afraid of being thought frivolous in their reading habit that they developed this method as a way to justify to themselves (and others) why they ever pick up a book.

      • Some people are incapable of doing things just for the fun of it. Some go further and actively oppose others having fun at anything.

        They do make for useful antagonists in many stories. (Footloose, anyone?)

  2. *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.

    Everything that we value in the modern world has its root in invention of writing. Everything that we have accomplished has come from reading.”

    Someone has apparently managed to forget the concept of “oral tradition.” Books certainly make the transmission and preservation of knowledge easier, but they are not necessary. Now you could argue that writing is necessary to develop a high-tech society, but that’s more about the bureaucracy necessary to run cities than anything else.

  3. Wait, you mean the unwashed riff-raff can read, too?

    But… but… they are doing it wrong. The way *I* read is *special*!

    ;D

Comments are closed.