I just explained in another post how I contextualize the usefulness of books, but why do I event want to read? Should people read in general? To answer this question, I first have to ask you one. Have you ever been asleep then suddenly startled awake? Maybe your alarm goes off at an annoying early hour or your neighbor’s dog barks just loud enough outside that they startle you. Coming out of that sleep, you may be a little groggy and disoriented but you’re awake now. It’s your choice whether you hide back under the covers and shut your eyes to the world (expression by Jordan Peterson).
I argue that coming across new useful information or knowledge is like that. You can either choose to confront it and do what you can to learnmore about it or choose to ignore it, but objectively speaking the gap in understanding is there. That sense of discomfort, that awareness of how you are in the world versus how the world actually is can be a gift. Self-consciousness in those 3 to 5 seconds is hard to replicate but the decision you make to either confront the world or ignore it is hard to replicate – but you do when you come across information that could help you grow into a better person. Because of how interconnected we are with social media, 24/7 news, and platforms like YouTube, there’s probably a small population of maybe 15-30% of people in the Western Hemisphere who don’t come across new potentially useful information online. We may as well remain awake to our surroundings and learn as much as we can to adapt to the times; reading is one way in which we can do that and actually cement the knowledge.
The beauty of our mind is that it can be described as existing as two realms – the conscious and the unconscious. The conscious brain includes our faculties for logic, reasoning, and interpretations of our subconscious brain. Experts in neuroscience and psychology tend to view the subconscious as our reptilian brain (Haidt, Divisions between People). The naming comes from the observation that without needing any prompting a baby (human or dog) will reflexively run away or shirk from any object that resembles a snack. An action that’s run on pure instinct like the quick wrinkling between eyebrows and upturning nose when you pass by a foul smell coming from a garbage bin – we don’t directly control these reactions. Johnathan Haidt describes the joining of the two realms as the elephant and the rider. In a circus performance when a rider sits atop an elephant, it may seem the rider is in control. However, the elephant truly decides where it wishes to go and the rider guides it along. If for a second, there was a mouse scampering by or another natural enemy to the elephant, it wouldn’t wait for the rider to direct it. No, it would move out the way or act in accordance with its true nature.
I bring up the subconscious brain because many times that’s where we store emotions on past experiences. These emotions can show up as gut feelings or that “thing” that’s on the tip of my tongue and is the bane of discussion when my memory recall isn’t strong on that topic. With the imagery as the brain as a library, the worst thing for us to do is store information and never engage with it. How should we expect to grow in our understanding of that concept or the greater world? Subconsciously we may have an idea of what we want to say, but I’ve noticed it’s not very useful just to have an idea when Tom or Sally fully understand the topic and are able to actually do something with it. As someone who loved having options and having a myriad of experiences growing up as a child, I’ve noticed that being a generalist in the world only works if you have credibility in several domains. To have credibility requires diving deeper beyond cataloging one or two concepts in your subconscious. Reading will help you begin to do the deeper investigative work to form newer and more synaptic nerve linkages to retain that information and be useful.
Tom Bilyeu uses the equation to frame his reason for seeking other people’s experience:
II = IO
Ideas In = Ideas Out
In sum, it’s a reference to how the best we can do is be – ready for action.
With reading, you have a tool to expand your horizon and thus scope of reference. You aren’t beholden to one opinion or narrative. You have the ability to learn about dissenting positions on topics as benign as what it takes to keep a pet happy to one as significant as what it takes for us to build a life on Mars. Just because there are so many possible ways to live your life doesn’t mean you will execute each of those possibilities. When we’re kids all we have is a few short pages in our book of life with so many blank pages ahead to be written. As we grow older and spend more time on this earth, the window of time that we have gets shorter. For simple math (and what could likely be our future), let’s say the average life expectancy is 100 years. From birth, we have 365,000 days to do something worthwhile with our lives. We can quantify our time as a unit of opportunity. As we make choices that lead us down one particular path compared to countless others, books can help us outsource experiences and learn from other individuals who have chosen a path tangential from ours or on a completely different plane. The beauty of reading is that it’s a vector or portal to so many other dimensions that we may not have direct access to and want to learn more or can expedite our learning in a dimension we’re already in at a rate that exceeds your current capabilities.
Reading is like any tool where as long as you set an intention prior to wielding, you can be lethal as Jordan Peterson would say. In this age of process optimization and utilization of technology to disregard redundancy, being articulate, well-versed, and an associate thinker can help you excel in whatever field of your choosing. I would argue that reading and by association writing can help you achieve all three. How does one articulate an opinion on a topic that they don’t know? Well, that’s where laying out your preconceptions in an organized way and doing research via interviews, article or book reviews, and other methods come into the picture. Even laying out the patterns between topic A which you are unfamiliar and topic B where you are deeply familiar can help in guiding your thoughts and formulation of an opinion or solution.
Outsourcing your ideas can help you think for yourself because it gives you a preview of how other people see the world. When formulating a hypothesis – the scientific method first calls the individual to form a question on a topic. Upon selecting a book to read, you get to choose the topic whether it’s something completely new, a different perspective on a topic you’re generally familiar with, or a deeper dive into that topic. You select a topic based on background research maybe it’s your own experience being dissatisfied with your eating habits and you’re curious about how to lead a healthy balanced diet that works with your lifestyle. The research could also be tied to work performance at a biotech company and you’re interested in the life of a pioneering imaging engineer and how they approached their work. Once you feel comfortable and probably subconsciously, you form a hypothesis on what you expect to take away from reading that material. Whether your hypothesis is supported or not at the end of reading the material, you as the reader have the freedom to take action on what you’ve discovered/ learned.