After giving away a great many books a few months ago, I’ve had the chance to stem the tide, reflect on what information is actually valuable to read, and take something of a break from buying so many books. Overall, I think this has worked, and I’m finally reaching the point at which I really don’t want to buy any more, although that is always subject to change.
For some reason, I perceive books as having a certain “stability” to them. As in, if I read a book [that is, a non-fiction book, the only kind I ever talk about], I am more likely to feel confident in my understanding of a subject, simply by the perceived authority given it from being written in a book. Which is counter-intuitive, since knowledge and reading are two separate things. You can learn from reading, but you can’t assess the validity of what you read through its words alone, so to learn from a book requires a certain trust in the book. But this is problematic, because authors can be wrong, even when they are not tremendously biased.
Part of the joy of buying books comes from the promise of knowledge that the title and its table of contents offers. “If I read this book, then I will know”, but that is an assumption, and it’s often wrong.
I’ve used the example before – if you read 50 books on climate change from a conservative perspective, you cannot call yourself an expert on climate change, but you might just be able to call yourself an expert on climate change books written by conservatives. Likewise, if you read 50 books on Christian apologetics, you cannot call yourself an expert on philosophy or history, but you might just be able to call yourself an exert on Christian apologetics. There is probably a book to confirm every bias under the sun, but a book itself cannot promise you the truth, it can only promise what it contains, which may or may not be true.
To be fair, though, it’s somewhat arrogant to think that could otherwise A) come up with all of the wide gamut of ideas alone, or B) don’t need to read anything if you wish to understand a subject. If you wish to be well-versed in philosophy, it would be pretty foolish to be wholly unfamiliar with Plato or Aristotle. Nonetheless, modern philosophy has become so academic and abstract, that people no longer think it a philosophical question to ask, “What is the proper way to have a marital relationship?” or “What is the best way to spend your money?” Philosophy as a subject has become dreadfully dry, but moreover, it’s questionable whether these things can be learned from books in the first place.
Seeking answers in books is, to some extent, an act of relegation, or abdication. This is why self-help books are so appealing – “if only I read this book, I will have the answers for this area of my life”.
But what have I been abdicating? Why is the promise of knowledge so alluring to me?
You could be the most well-read person among thousands of others and still be no better off for it. I think a lot of people are realizing that college, for example, is a mostly propaganda, since so few people have any idea what a woman is these days, to reference a popular documentary, or other things that are easily discerned from life itself. Apparently, if it isn’t stated in a peer-reviewed journal, it can’t be truth, right? How far we’ve fallen!
I’m realizing that I just don’t have the patience to read very much. I just can’t do it. I pick up a book, read a few pages, and have to set it down for awhile. Sometimes I get into a groove and read more, and sometimes very late at night, but it’s rare that I can read for hours. It’s possible I’m reaching the point of burn-out after decades of following this pattern, but I think something else is shifting deep inside.
What doesn’t help, either, is the writing process itself, which, if I understand correctly, often involves an author signing a contract for a book, then writing it to the standard of the contract, which often involves writing X number of pages. Consequently, a lot of non-fiction books are absolutely packed with fluff. If you read economics from over a hundred years ago, it will split your brain because there is no fluff. But who knows? Maybe people want that fluff. But it’s simply amazing to browse reddit and see someone list off a dozen books to read on a particular subject, and you really have to wonder how much substance is contained in those thousands of pages. Too often, these “intellectual” types are simply opinionated assholes, which makes you wonder what reading books really accomplishes.Why exactly were they reading those books, again?
And again, to be fair, the beauty of books is that you can benefit from someone’s life’s work. I still want to read William Dever’s “Beyond the Texts” someday, but I don’t know when it will ever make sense for me to commit to reading those 770 pages. That’s maybe not a bad commitment, though, if it means learning from his long career, but the knowledge I gain from reading his book is only a fraction of the knowledge he needed in order to write it: reading a book does not make you an expert in anything but maybe the book itself.
I wonder exactly what it is that I’ve been abdicating, and I only have a few suspicions at this point.
[Ever since reading Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, I’ve wanted to read Karl Marx’s “Capital” [Volume 1], but it’s a solid 1000 pages as well, and I have to wonder what exactly I could learn from it, except what Marx said inside of it. I strongly suspect I would not have the historical background to understand the time period he was writing in, and I also suspect I might struggle to follow what in the world his argument is, as I often did with Smith. You can read 1000 pages if you really want, but what can you really get from it, I wonder? More realistically, a good book to read would be a summary of the interesting bits with commentary on how those ideas influenced later thinkers, why some ideas are perceived to be wrong, why some are perceived to be right, etc.]