Don't Read Yourself Stupid

The point of reading is to improve in the act of living, not to increase knowledge

The “Intellectual”

The goal is not to write about Stoicism as an idea – it is to apply it as a practice. My mission is to construct habits of the mind and master the inner discourse in order to improve in the act of living.

I write in the form of discourse and argument because that is how we speak to ourselves in our minds and how we speak to others in the world around us.

Said another way, this is not a theory - it is a path.

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What is the point of reading?

The Intellectual tells me the point is this: to increase knowledge.

How so? Isn’t the goal to gain wisdom, not just knowledge? Knowledge is one small piece of wisdom, perhaps the smallest, and all but useless if gained without the other crucial ingredient for wisdom: real world experience.

Assuming the Intellectual reads to become wise and not just for knowledge, he is therefore mistaken; he is in a bad way; his path is crooked.

Because when do we say that reading is profitable? Is it when someone spends four hours a day reading, and stays up late at night, and can quote any number of authors?

Well what is the point of reading about war if we’re too atrophied to carry armor and ammunition like good knuckle-draggers or too anxious to command? Of reading about geology if we don’t then stand in awe at the knowledge that our flesh and blood and consciousness came from star matter? Of reading the great novels without becoming better governors of the discourse within our own minds?

And from another angle, does the fireman lift weights in order to brag about how much he can back squat, or to carry a child away from a fire? Does the cancer patient fight and rage and breathe against the self-destructive cells to have something interesting to talk about at a party, or because she wants to be there to raise her children? Does the soldier practice close quarters shooting so that he can take his paper target home and say, “Look how close my grouping is!” or does he do it to rescue a hostage?

There is a time for reading, but then there is a time to do something with all that industriousness.

The Intellectual disagrees with me.

Read your way, Intellectual, and then show me how much good it does you. But I won’t stop trying to convince you. So let us take hold of reading and turn it around in our hands.

What if the point of reading were to be a worse person? The Intellectual says, “This is absurd.” Is it? Do you think people find value when you’re stuck in transmit mode and won’t stop talking long enough to take a breath? When you have a complete disregard for the other persons insight into the subject that you may not have, or, God forbid, he might have actual life experience relevant to the subject? When it means nothing to you that he has already zoned out because a humans capacity to be talked at is capped by nature?

“You’re being overly sensitive.” Yes, I am. I am all too sensitive because that clock on the wall is ticking and at some point I'm going to die, and my bones will be exposed, and they will turn to dust, and they will return to the stars.

I want to make sure that the time I have been given is put to good use – not spent being talked at by a middle-man: neither the thinker that created the writing nor the true reader who applies it, but a wretched peacock. 

PC Getty. glaflamme.

Now if I read for knowledge, like our Intellectual Peacock, what am I missing out on? What other endeavors could I have filled my dwindling time with? Let’s list a few: rucking with friends and dogs and the birds and the leaves and the sounds of breathing, laying in freezing water to charge like a bull into the voices within my mind that wail and gnash their teeth in protest, or simply looking into the eyes of those I love.

You can either form your seat of command or you can adorn your ego with plumage.

Pick one.

“Isn’t this extreme” the Peacock asks? Of course it’s extreme. If our gnarled ancestors cared more for talking about the hunt than savoring the primal thrill of adrenaline on the hunt, then we wouldn’t be here. We are wired for action, but in the modern world where that wiring no longer needs to be applied to the lions prowling in the tall grass and the enemy crouching in the darkness just beyond the firelight, it can be channeled into anything – and you, Intellectual, channel it right into your wretched feathers.

You turn your mind’s eye within because you have so hidden yourself from external stressors, and just as a beginner in chess cannot see the patterns and routes to victory in the pieces on the board, so you fail to see the patterns and routes to victory in the voices within your head.

What follows? The unengaged and unguided mind can delude itself into thinking it has attained mastery.

But mastery of what? As Epictetus says, it’s easier to be a philosopher in the backwater of Nicopolis where no temptations exist than in Rome where temptations surround you. Just so, it is all too easy to be an intellectual – a mere pseudo-philosopher – when your unpressure-tested thoughts don’t lead to broken bones or being ousted as a complete fool in the real world.

“Why this focus on operating in the real world? Some of the greatest thinkers deny objective reality and say that we can’t really know anything at all.” War is the ultimate pressure-tester of philosophical ideas like this one. I have seen reality denying sophists go from a rant about how “we can know nothing” since “reality isn’t real”, to seeking the nearest rock to hide behind in a firefight.

Why does the aspiring intellectual hide? Because bullets are real. Fragmentation grenades are real. The difference between life and death is real.

What then? If all your reading has amounted to is a denial of reality, then you can’t even call yourself a peacock because at least this bird is a thing of beauty. You’re more like one of those colossal NYC rats that preens itself after skittering about the subway tracks in search of moldy bits of food that are more likely to kill it than nourish it.

So much for your thinkers and madmen.

So much for anyone whose each and every thought is not pressure tested by reality.

So much for those who, despite their reading, lie awake at night trembling at what others think of them.

So much for those who don’t care enough about the act of living to be more useful to those they love, and to rage against those who are evil, and to stand in awe at this gift of life.

Read for joy, to escape, to learn, to pass a test, to have a good conversation – but never forget that what matters most is the world beyond the chair you read in.

The Intellectual is myself. These are arguments I have had with myself far too many times as I unconsciously separate the “reading” section of my mind from the “doing” section. What is it but insanity when I read a thing and instantly forget about it the moment I can actually use it?    

A rule I’ve laid for myself is this: don’t read yourself stupid.

Read yourself into living.

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