Reminiscing about past. I was going to write about my secondary school and JC days but I guess I’ll get back to that another time.

Books, the first addiction

I’ve been reading more than I have been reading lately. I don’t think I’m anywhere near my absolute peak, which may actually have been in primary school, when I used to read all day and all night. Before I was interested in women, or in social status, or had any disposable income, or had any idea that masturbation or cigarettes or alcohol were quick ways to douse the brain in fun, pleasing chemicals, books were my primary source of pleasure. Before the Internet, they were my primary means of exploring the world.

Books as magic; crystallised human thought

So lately I’ve sort of come full circle and I’ve been trying to read more. Bill Gates still reads books. I think the reason for that is- books are magic, they upgrade your brain. Books are essentially crystallised human thought, tidied up so they’re easier to absorb. By reading the cleaned-up thoughts of ideaspace explorers, you get to go where they went, without the perilous amounts of effort and groping in the dark required. It’s the closest thing we have right now to Neo learning Kung Fu by having it directly streamed into his brain. Reading is a little slower (although even that can be hacked a little bit).

So I want to read more. Every so often, I look up after finishing a book and think “wow, I should have read this sooner”. I don’t feel that after every single book, and I can’t actually entirely predict which books will and won’t do it- I can have a rough idea, but books can surprise you, both ways.

Quality Writing

I’m currently reading Obama’s Dreams From My Father.  It’s been on my mental reading list since, I don’t know, since Obama got elected in 2008. [1]

I’ve been enjoying his descriptions of his struggles as a community manager. He wrote it in 1995, probably before he seriously thought of becoming President, so it feels relatively “real”- meaning it doesn’t feel too much like it’s polished PR (which, of course, is the best kind of hyperreal PR). I enjoyed his descriptions of the racism he encountered, his description of his relationship with his ex girlfriend(s), his description of the realpolitik challenges he faced even at the level of local community organising. I feel like I’m a little wiser for it. I feel like he’s spoken to me (as all writers do to readers- we write partially because we can’t find anybody to talk to in the particular way we want to, or because we want to reach others like ourselves). I flatter myself,  of course. But reading Obama’s memoirs beats reading stuff from bloggers no more experienced or qualified than I am (for the purpose of learning about how the world works and how to make decisions). Nothing is completely free from agenda, of course; Obama could be wrong about some things, he could be lying about some things, he could be making stuff up… etc. Etc. But at the very least, it’s a more compelling read.

I think the lines between fiction and reality are overstated.

Fiction can communicate truths that non-fiction might not be able to. What I’m enjoying about Obama’s memoir is how it’s possible to sort of get inside his headspace (granted, it’s the side he chooses to show us, and it could be artificially constructed), and the space seems/feels valid. It seems to correspond with my experience of people, as a person.

No good reviews?

And I think the main point I want to get to is this: I’ve never really encountered a review of the book in a public/popular space, and I’ve never really seen a compelling description of the scenarios described in it. Maybe they exist, and I simply haven’t noticed them because I never thought to look for them. But it’s ridiculous that intelligent people attempt to have thoughtful conversations about Obama without reading him first. Why do we do that?

I guess it’s partially a stakes thing. Most daily conversations are incredibly low-stakes- we’re essentially playing with pocket change, peanuts, dummy money. If our livelihoods depended on it, we’d probably do the reading.

Most conversations are pointless

Which leads to an interesting realization- most conversations, unless you’re particularly deliberate about it, are kinda pointless. Most opinions are uninformed. It’s a consequence of the way incentives are “structured”- if you don’t have skin in the game, you don’t really have an incentive to be accurate about any given issue. You may personally decide that you want to be accurate and precise in your thinking, but that’s probably in service of something greater- your personal mission or vision for yourself. But people around you aren’t obliged to do the same.

Almost everything should come with warning labels

This is where I think there’s a bit of a revelation to be had. Cigarettes aren’t the only things that should have warning labels. Almost everything does. Family. School. Banks. Loans. Insurance. The media. The media itself doesn’t have a singular, grand agenda- it’s made up of millions of people pursuing their personal agendas. Same for governments and large organizations. We tend to reduce them into simple villains because it’s convenient and easy, and it makes the ‘moral’ landscape less complex. Clearly defined villains can make life easier to parse in the short run. But they hide the messier, uglier truth- that we’re all guilty, that we’re all complicit in villainy.

We have to acknowledge that, I think, if we want to truly make a difference.

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Notes:

[1] I just watched the HBO documentary of the 2008 election, by the way, and it’s amazing to see how everybody’s using flip phones. It was before smartphones became ubiquitous. It looks almost like ancient history now. But I was in junior college then, it wasn’t that long ago! Time is moving faster than it did before, that’s for sure.  I remember when the Motorola v3 was an exciting, new piece of technology. I remember when I first used my Samsung and Sony Ericsson semi-smartphones; they seemed so powerful! Now I’m writing essays on my phone on the way to work… soon will I be doing this entirely inside my head? I was flabbergasted at the voice recognition power that Google has now (just say Okay Google to your phone when the screen is at the search bar).