SEPTEMBER 5, 2019 – When I was young and ambitious, I wanted to influence the world. Now that I’m old and contemplative, I want to understand it. But how? I’ve developed a three-part prescription:
READ GOOD BOOKS. In the first place, a non-fiction book, as opposed to most any other media (e.g. podcast; film documentary) or print sources (e.g. magazine article), can go deeper and longer with data and analyses. Likewise, good fiction can take you on more extensive expeditions into human nature than can other vicarious experiences.
Good non-fiction books are those based on solid scholarship—reliable, relevant and sufficiently extensive data—synthesis and reasoning. Good fiction gives the reader a better understanding of the human condition.
To understand the world beyond your immediate, first-hand horizons requires that you see and know stuff beyond them. One of the best ways to bend your vision and knowledge over your horizons is to use good books as your periscope. The more books you read, the higher the reach of the periscope—and the broader your view of the world.
HANG OUT WITH SMART PEOPLE AND ASK ’EM LOTS OF QUESTIONS. Another good way of leveraging your first-hand capacity is to piggy-back onto someone else’s. I love hanging out with smart, engaged people, especially in disciplines and vocations and with experiences divergent from mine. Many such people are deep reservoirs of information, but often I have to prime the pump with questions to get the fountains working.
READ THE NEW YORK TIMES. As a long-time subscriber to The New York Times, I’m biased toward that source. In our polarized age, of course, people right of center are quick to identify The Times as “biased.” Of course it is, just as every book is “biased.”
(Without getting too far off task here, “bias” itself has become a loaded term. The Times is relentless in its negative political reportage about the president. Accordingly, supporters of the president call The Times “biased” —or worse. But if such supporters appreciated the foundational operating principle of our democracy—holding elected officials’ feet to the fire—they’d understand that constant criticism—which is interpreted invariably as “bias”—is the essential role of journalism in a free society.)
But quite apart from its political coverage, The Times publishes in-depth articles about life and works all around the globe; expansive, probative pieces about science, finance, business, economics, and technology. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal offer similar quality journalism, but The Times, in my estimation, is the leader. The paper is encyclopedic in its reach. If you could read it front page to back each day—especially Sunday’s edition—and retain 10% for more than a week, you’d vastly improve your understanding of the world, no matter how well you’d understood it previously.
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That’s my prescription. Note that it can be done without a smart phone and without the internet. Maybe that’s a good thing; maybe not—I’ll need to gain a better understanding of the world to say definitively.
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
