On Reading

Reading is such a blessing! And I’m not about to reel off a dry list of “the benefits of reading” to try and convince you to get on it. How boring! I do, however, want to remind you about the flame that once roared from within after you read a book, a paragraph, or an article that struck a chord with you. This is the most important effect reading can have on you. You must allow this to fuel your movement in life. You must allow this flame guide and direct you through life.

I’m talking about that phase switch when you go from merely perusing over words on a page, to constructing vivid virtual worlds in your mind where you become completely rapt and immersed. This moment where what were previously mere sentences and paragraphs become world-makers, reflecting the passing of time in a universe confined to your imagination. This optical flip is where “the benefits of reading” are to be found. Inspiration unstoppably wells up from within once you reach this phase switch moment when reading. It’s hard to reduce this partially inexplicable experience to a stale, bullet-pointed list.

Reading is like a drug in this regard. When you take it, you’re hoping for a good, fully immersive trip. You want to be transported into a new world that offers novel insights that excite and inspire. Your mundane, real-world life becomes enriched as a result, and the magic of reality looms large on the horizon.

Perhaps most importantly, what this experience of reading does for you is it fortifies your mind. It instils in you a confidence that you would otherwise be lacking. It empowers you to strive forward in a direction of your own choosing. You are no longer shackled and bound to the limited view of reality those around you possess. Despite their projecting onto you a specific, narrowly-defined way of being, you understand there are innumerable potential ways of being at your disposal, and you have the self-belief necessary to pursue them.

Adversarial External Forces

This is such an important point. There are external forces that seek to influence and manipulate you in such a way that they benefit, and you lose. A seemingly innocuous example is advertising. An advertisement’s purpose is to convince you that you need what it is presenting before you, that you would probably do perfectly well living without. A good advertisement will make you believe that your life is less without this product. It instils within you a feeling of dissatisfaction that was not previously there. It disturbs your peace! And it wants you to take an action that you otherwise would never have thought of taking.

Another seemingly innocuous example is that of fast food. A fast-food restaurant creates an addictive loop within you to ensure your continued purchasing of their products. The menu is full of “food” that has been formulated to maximally appeal to your evolved sense of taste by hitting all the right buttons. This food has the perfect ratio of salt, to fat, to sugar that your ancestors would have killed for. The only problem is that it’s missing the nutritional content that those salt, fat, and sugar measures are a proxy for. Our bodies evolved those tasting modalities as a means to sense good nutrition in what we were eating. Fast-food restaurants are gaming that evolved system to their own advantage, and at your expense!

These are just two examples of the types of external forces vying for your attention, and seeking to manipulate you such that you make decisions that benefit them, but often come at a cost for you. You can be rest assured that these forces allocate resources to staying up-to-fate with the latest advancements in human psychology, and how best to influence and manipulate. Reading is your mechanism by which you can counter-balance this asymmetry of power, and at least open your eyes to the reality of this negative manipulation. You can be rest assured that your mind is a battlefield of external competing interests, none of which have your best interest at heart, all of which are unapologetically pursuing their own ends, even if that is at your expense.

What Does Reading Offer?

Reading

• Opens your eyes to the reality of these adversarial external forces. And
• Helps buttress your mind against their insidious effects.
• Connected to 2), reading informs an alternative direction you can take your life.

An Alternative Direction

As alluded to above, these adversarial external forces are not limited to ads, and junk food, but another form they can take is in what the people and culture around you expect of you. Culture is an inherently oppressive force. It has to be! Culture is that which tames the individual and offers a set of pathways for you to avail yourself of. But for some people (myself included!) there is a constant stream of intruding thoughts that alert us to the perilousness of unquestioningly adopting a pre-made cultural role. It feels disingenuous. It feels like I’d have to completely reject the awesome person I know I can become in order to hold up a well-defined image my culture has foisted upon me. It feels like I’d have to betray myself! And I don’t want to do that.

So how do we withstand the constant pressure of having to conform to some cultural image and continue down the much more exciting and adventurous path of becoming some sort of an individuated human being? By rejecting notions that compel us to conform, and accepting ideas and concepts that help our progression towards the person we know we can become. We actually have to have alternative ideas that inform our next moves. Otherwise, we’re left stranded and alone, and bound to accept defeat. No thanks!

On The Memetic Frontier

This is a life of constant battle, engagement, and adaptation. That’s not to say it’s arduous. We can adapt ourselves to the relentless never ending-ness of it all. But that adaptation will look different for every person. That’s why reading is so important. To help inform what your unique form of adaptation looks like.

To think of oneself as incapable of adapting to this hyper-novel world says more about the quality of our formal education system than it does about an individual’s capacity to adapt. We humans are the most plastic and adaptable of all species on earth. If anyone can do this, it’s us! And since you are a human being, you too are capable of the adaptation necessary in our modern times.

Human beings are receivers of information. We absorb all sorts of information coming from within and without, and we adjust course accordingly. One of the key capacities we will have to refine in our chaotic modern times is distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information. We have to be able to sift through the useless stuff, and find the signal in the noise. Ideas that increase our capacity to do so are what we want to find. In finding them, we only increase our capacity to do so again. And we find ourselves in a positive positive feedback loop!