Books have always been a huge part of my life. I haven’t always been reading, though- I read a lot as a child, and then it sort of tapered off in my teens, and I recently got around to picking up the habit again as a young adult. (I’ve explored this before in an earlier post, but I can’t seem to find it.).
I owe a lot of my mind, my ideas, my worldview, everything- to the books I’ve read. It’s nice to think about how the authors who wrote those books would probably say the same thing- so we’re all part of this huge process that persists through time and space, that was around before us and will be around after we’re gone. I like to think of it as a great well of human knowledge, like a sort of massive city, but more than that. It’s quite literally the greatest thing about humanity- the development of human knowledge as a self-organizing entity at a massive scale, emergent from books, conversations, art, everything. If you can visualize it as something real (even though you can’t actually touch or feel it), you’ll find that it boggles the mind, and humbles the individual. We’re all servants to this greater Being that is our knowledge- we’re like ants or termites building and being built by our Hive. The symbiosis is elegant and beautiful.
It’s also fun to think about how Knowledge went through massive leaps with the development of the printing press, and now the Internet- Wikipedia, YouTube. It’s fair then to say (for more reasons than this specific one, actually) that we live in the most exciting time of human history. Because it no longer takes decades or centuries for a powerful idea to slowly spread from a few wise people to others- all of that has been flattened, compressed, simplified- most of our limitations- time and space- have been greatly diminished. A lecture a hundred a years ago could have inspired a hundred people- today it can inspire millions. Progress is about to accelerate faster than it ever has before. (One can only hope that this will also apply to our heuristics- that we will learn to resolve our problems in a more sustainable and effective way.)
That said, it’s hard to figure out what our roles are in such a massive system. It’s so easy to feel irrelevant and inconsequential- the world most certainly goes on without you. It feels like we’re individual cells- maybe a flake of skin, a single neuron, a single ant or bee in a hive. Except that those particular bits aren’t exactly self-aware- they don’t really have the time to ask themselves if there’s any point doing what they do- they don’t really have a choice in the matter. So human beings really have the most interesting, complex and challenging opportunities on this planet. That’s self-evident, sure, but how many of us go about each day thinking of it that way?
But explored a little further, we’re not actually like single neurons or ants- we’re obviously somehow more than that. Because individual ants and neurons are limited in their roles- they can only ever do so much. They don’t have the freedom to decide for themselves what they’re going to do. Ants and neurons live in Mediocristan (Nassim Taleb’s idea), where life is boring, simplistic, predictable. We, on the other hand, live in Extremistan- a single individual could go on to change Humanity as we know it. Every one of us has the potential to transcend our circumstances (which appears to be a uniquely human opportunity), to hold the universe in our hands and to grasp infinity in an hour. There is hope, there is possibility. Again, in our weakness lies our strength, our greatest gift is shrouded shabbily in fear and terror.
Back to Earth. Books are a huge source of knowledge and wisdom- they’re like crystalized elements of the Lifestream (a Final Fantasy VII concept). If everybody spent a little more time and effort reading good books- and really reading them, having conversations with them- I believe it would change our collective behaviour for the better, at least marginally. I believe that I’ve read a pretty unique mix of books that have contributed substantially to my worldview, and if I could get those of you who come here regularly to be interested in reading them as well, I would be a step closer to my ideal- an enlightened, civil world. It’s not spectacular, but it’s something- it’s a start.
The Book Project
Books have always been a huge part of my life. I haven’t always been reading, though- I read a lot as a child, and then it sort of tapered off in my teens, and I recently got around to picking up the habit again as a young adult. (I’ve explored this before in an earlier post, but I can’t seem to find it.).
I owe a lot of my mind, my ideas, my worldview, everything- to the books I’ve read. It’s nice to think about how the authors who wrote those books would probably say the same thing- so we’re all part of this huge process that persists through time and space, that was around before us and will be around after we’re gone. I like to think of it as a great well of human knowledge, like a sort of massive city, but more than that. It’s quite literally the greatest thing about humanity- the development of human knowledge as a self-organizing entity at a massive scale, emergent from books, conversations, art, everything. If you can visualize it as something real (even though you can’t actually touch or feel it), you’ll find that it boggles the mind, and humbles the individual. We’re all servants to this greater Being that is our knowledge- we’re like ants or termites building and being built by our Hive. The symbiosis is elegant and beautiful.
It’s also fun to think about how Knowledge went through massive leaps with the development of the printing press, and now the Internet- Wikipedia, YouTube. It’s fair then to say (for more reasons than this specific one, actually) that we live in the most exciting time of human history. Because it no longer takes decades or centuries for a powerful idea to slowly spread from a few wise people to others- all of that has been flattened, compressed, simplified- most of our limitations- time and space- have been greatly diminished. A lecture a hundred a years ago could have inspired a hundred people- today it can inspire millions. Progress is about to accelerate faster than it ever has before. (One can only hope that this will also apply to our heuristics- that we will learn to resolve our problems in a more sustainable and effective way.)
That said, it’s hard to figure out what our roles are in such a massive system. It’s so easy to feel irrelevant and inconsequential- the world most certainly goes on without you. It feels like we’re individual cells- maybe a flake of skin, a single neuron, a single ant or bee in a hive. Except that those particular bits aren’t exactly self-aware- they don’t really have the time to ask themselves if there’s any point doing what they do- they don’t really have a choice in the matter. So human beings really have the most interesting, complex and challenging opportunities on this planet. That’s self-evident, sure, but how many of us go about each day thinking of it that way?
But explored a little further, we’re not actually like single neurons or ants- we’re obviously somehow more than that. Because individual ants and neurons are limited in their roles- they can only ever do so much. They don’t have the freedom to decide for themselves what they’re going to do. Ants and neurons live in Mediocristan (Nassim Taleb’s idea), where life is boring, simplistic, predictable. We, on the other hand, live in Extremistan- a single individual could go on to change Humanity as we know it. Every one of us has the potential to transcend our circumstances (which appears to be a uniquely human opportunity), to hold the universe in our hands and to grasp infinity in an hour. There is hope, there is possibility. Again, in our weakness lies our strength, our greatest gift is shrouded shabbily in fear and terror.
Back to Earth. Books are a huge source of knowledge and wisdom- they’re like crystalized elements of the Lifestream (a Final Fantasy VII concept). If everybody spent a little more time and effort reading good books- and really reading them, having conversations with them- I believe it would change our collective behaviour for the better, at least marginally. I believe that I’ve read a pretty unique mix of books that have contributed substantially to my worldview, and if I could get those of you who come here regularly to be interested in reading them as well, I would be a step closer to my ideal- an enlightened, civil world. It’s not spectacular, but it’s something- it’s a start.