I’ve been a fan of Penn & Teller for yonks but because I don’t have TV I hadn’t heard of/seen their Showtime show Bullsh*t!
Well, now I’ve started watching the episodes and, man alive, these guys rock! Their goals have always been to expose b.s., whether it be showing how illusionists do what they do in order to spur current illusionists to come up with some new tricks or pointing out the complete crap peddled by the media and culture in the U.S.
I read a lot but I don’t read as deeply as I’d like. Sometimes I want only to read everything I possibly can during my short time on this sphere, but other times I wish I could get more from my reading. To that end, I picked up Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, a classic for very good reason–it tells readers how to more fully engage with their reading material, no matter the subject. He says that reading is engaging in a conversation with the author and gives suggestions as to how to better conduct the conversation.
He starts with the dimensions of reading, wherein he talks about the four levels of reading that every person goes through, goes into detail on the first two levels (elementary and inspectional, which most people are up to by the time they’re in secondary/high school) and then gives tips on how to be a demanding reader.
The second part starts with the third level of reading–analytical reading. This is something I need to work on so I’ve been taking notes on that section.
Part three breaks down how to read everything from fiction to mathematics, social sciences, plays, history, philosophy–you name it.
Part four is about the most advanced type of reading: syntopical reading, which is the ability to read many books on one subjects and allow the authors of each of those books to talk to you but also to one another about their subject–sort of a literary conference call. This is something that amazes me when others can do it and something that I would very much like to be able to do one day so this section was note-heavy, too.
Luckily for me, Adler says: When you buy a book, you establish a property right in it, just as you do in clothes or furniture when you buy and pay for them. But the act of purchase is actually only the prelude to possession in the case of a book. Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it–which comes to the same thing–is by writing in it.
I’ve recently acquired the British edition of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, which is an inaccurate title, but the book is pretty.
The most amazing thing is that I didn’t buy a copy as soon as it came out.
Looking down the list of books my chief problem is that it’s all fiction, which is fine, but I’d like to read some non-fiction, as well. There’s also the issue of several books by one author, rather than choosing one outstanding book by an author and letting other writers onto the list. And because I’m a classic snob I have no argument with several books by Woolf, Dickens, or Dostoyevski but how many Bret Easton Ellis and Don DeLillo do we need? [The good part about several by Winterson and Iain Banks and that was that it boosted my overall score–I still felt contemporary authors could have been represented by one book each.]
For those of you playing along at home: Here’s a list of all the books on listology.
And here’s a downloadable, interactive spreadsheet (mmmm spreadsheet).
My current score is 4.8%, as I’ve read 48 on the list.
There are a few I have tried to read and doubt will ever work for me, such as House of Leaves, Naked Lunch and Gone with the Wind.
Some I’m not remotely interested in for entirely prejudiced reasons (Moby Dick, The Corrections and The Poisonwood Bible.)
And I own 130 on the list so just reading the books I own would bring me up to almost 18%.
Of course, with the bajillion other books I want to read (including non-fiction) who knows where I’ll be on that list in a year, two years or a decade. But it’s a place to start.
This is an idea I’ve had for some time, but recently decided to put on my blog, since I use this site to primarily keep notes for myself.
The Aeonian Academy is a fictional organisation I created for a novel and I started thinking it was a pretty great idea in general. The Academy was created for people who want to pursue knowledge in a somewhat structured setting but in a more personal way than taking classes at university. There are various chapters around the world; each chapter has certain specialties and potential members join chapters that focus on what the member wants to study. Each chapter is headed by a scholar who guides the members in their charge.
Here is the Hierarchy of the Academy. It may give a clearer picture of how it works in my head.
Ж Hierarchy
The Academy chapter in my novel is called the Aegis chapter (I don’t know why I was drawn to the AAA except that it’d make a cool insignia) like this:
The crest at the top of the page is the crest of the Aegis chapter. [Yes, it’s the Magdalen College Oxford crest, but I added the groovy Latin banner beneath it. It says “Learn to Live”, as in–one must learn in order to more fully live.]
After I worked out the details of the Academy for my novel, I thought the idea was great–a personal commitment to self-disciplined life-long learning. As mentioned in my previous post, I am trying to learn how to be a more analytical thinker. I realised that I could use the syllabi I’d been working on for the Academy to achieve my goal or at least get a start on it.
When I’ve considered taking on canon or learning about philosophy I’ve been too overwhelmed to begin. Pascal said that if you choose a path and stay on it you’ll eventually be whatever it is you set out to be. The problem is knowing where to start. My new philosophy is to simply begin somewhere. I’m beginning with 1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die and The Lifetime Reading Plan and see where those take me. I’m also reading Mortimer Adler’s classic How to Read A Book to be followed by Reading Like a Writer for lessons on analytical and close reading of books of all types.
So I’ve started a new section of pages devoted to this endeavour. It’ll be reading lists and notes on those readings and any other things that seem to fit.
Roughly once a month I have to explain why I don’t have a degree so I’ve decided to make a post I can send to those who bring it up. This may be of some use to those in a similar position that can’t find the exact words. Use what you need, comrades. I know how difficult it is to live in a culture that tells you you’re stupid if you don’t have a degree. I work in academia and I can tell you, having a degree is absolutely no guarantee of intelligence or sophistication of thought.
I tried to make a list from biggest reason to smallest reason but they interrelate, so, instead they’re in order from immediate problems (everyday problems with University) to the more existential issues.
When I asked people why they didn’t use their degree the answer was something like: I realised I didn’t like my subject. They’d started university and by the time they got through two years of basic studies and started studying their actual major they didn’t care about it anymore, but they’d gone too far and didn’t want to partially start over and switch majors. Then it was time to enter the RealWorld or go to grad school… Flash forward a few years and they have a mountain of debt and a shiny degree in something they care nothing for.
I would be just like those people if it weren’t for my apathy and deficit of an attention span, as it was always presented to me that I was going to college and probably further. I was 29 before I realised I no longer needed to feel stupid for not following a path that I’d neither chosen nor been interested in. I spent the first three decades of my life feeling like a loser because I hadn’t done what other people thought would make me happy. Obviously, organised education doesn’t make me happy. It makes me anxious and depressed.
These things do not mean that I don’t enjoy learning. I read a lot and I’m growing less and less tolerant of ‘lighter’ literature. I’ve lately taken a more structured approach to teaching myself about things I’m interested in, as discussed in my next post.
Something I would like to say in this post is that I’m ticked off that no one told me it was possible to have a decent job without a degree. From the time I was moved to the ‘academically gifted’ class when I was eight, it was assumed I was one day going to uni. When I was thirteen I told one of my teachers that I was going to quit school as soon as I could do and she said that was fine if I wanted a menial job. It was always presented to me that if I didn’t have a degree I would wind up doing jobs that were ‘beneath’ me.
Now I’m offended of the implicit classism in that sort of statement and I’m pissed right off that no one told me I could have a decent job without a degree. It took ten years of being miserable and falling into my current job before I discovered that not having a degree wasn’t a prison sentence. Way to help wreck someone’s self-esteem, Western Culture.
Female, red-head, right-handed, English, Irish, moderate, asexual, lesbian, Southern, American, Anglophile, Atheist, schizoid, writer, reader, homo sapien sapien.
Labels are a pain in the tuchas.
Any thinking person knows that many qualifiers change throughout a person’s lifetime. Unfortunately, the majority of the people in the world aren’t thinking. It’s understandable, really. One has a difficult enough time keeping up with the person one is without having to keep up with who one’s acquaintances are. It’s so much friendlier to become one person in teenagedom, adopt the appropriate labels, and stick with them for the following fifty or sixty years. I mean, really. Do me a favor and remain the same person you were when we first met, all right?
And don’t get me started on how others perceive me.
I’ll always be female, right-handed and a red-head–even after my hair goes white I’ll still have earned my red badge from having to put up with the ‘hey, carrot top!’ jeers from childhood. I’ll always be American and Southern–it’s where I was born and raised and even though I can see the world through English eyes if I put some effort into it, I still fundamentally see the world as a person born below the Mason Dixon line in the U.S. I’ll most likely always be asexual, as I’ve never been interested in doing sex with another person, I’m gathering I will never want to do
I’ve only recently began calling myself ‘moderate’ or ‘independent’ and that’s because my family is ultra-right wing. Because I don’t see the world the way they do I assumed I was a super-liberal. Now that I’ve been out in the world and have met some super-liberals I see that I’m really a moderate, as I think all politicians are full of it (not that they have any choice–it’s what the Public wants).
The words ‘asexual’ and ‘lesbian’ are what cued this entry. On another forum on which I post (which is populated by intelligent and thoughtful people, by and large) I said I was an asexual lesbian. Someone pointed out that I was married to a man and so I should call myself an asexual bisexual and I blanched at that phrase. Chiefly because I look at romantic preference by percentage. I’ve only been romantically drawn to one man–my husband–so I feel I am still a romantic lesbian, as my mushy feelings are toward women. If I hadn’t met my husband I most likely would not have ever considered a relationship with a man, simply because I only thought of people with Y chromosomes as friends…or potentially annoying stalkers.
I say it’s a matter of percentage because if 99.95% of the time I’m attracted to women romantically then that’s most accurate. I suppose I *could* call myself, “an eensy bit bisexual asexual,” or, “an asexual lesbian married to an asexual man,” but labels are meant to simplify life, not make it more complicated. I think that’s something more people to keep in mind.
“Hi. I’m a female, red-headed, right-handed, English, Irish, moderate, asexual, lesbian, Southern, American, Anglophile, Atheist, schizoid, writer, reader, homo sapien sapien.”
“But there’s more to me than that.”
Autistic people cannot understand that other people have different thoughts than they do. For example, if you put a ball under a box and ask an autistic child where a person who didn’t see the placement of the ball would think the ball was the child would say, “In the box. Because that’s where it is.”
This anecdote is usually met with bafflement by ‘normal’ people. I find that interesting because most people seem to have a difficult time understanding that other people have different experiences and therefore different knowledge from them. (Of course, this is only my personal experience of humanity. Perhaps everyone you know embraces and encourages diversity of thought.)
For example, recently a co-worker of my husband’s has hinted at wanting to socialize with me so she can ‘get the dirt’ on him. This assumes that most women enjoy gossiping and putting down the men in their lives. My husband’s co-worker is in her early twenties so I’m guessing that she hasn’t met many people like me–women who don’t go in for gossip and have nothing negative to say about their husbands and even if they did they wouldn’t rubbish their men to a new female acquaintance.
The concept of other people having different thoughts is evident when others presume you hold the same political views they do. This has happened to me many times–a person leans in and starts bashing on whoever they don’t like in the political race, expecting me to agree. In a way, that’s a compliment–most humans think they are intelligent, thoughtful, sophisticated people. They then believe that others who are intelligent will come to the same conclusions they have. Believing I agree with them means they hold me in high regard.
So that’s all to the good. What then becomes the problem is that when I explain that I don’t agree they feel compelled to argue or defend themselves. To most people, it’s not all right for other’s to disagree with them–dissent is interpreted as a personal attack. Up until a person says, “My belief is that I can punch you in the face whenever I’d like,” what that person believes isn’t a reflection on you. It’s not your job to change the minds of the people who disagree with you. Your blood pressure and sanity would benefit from spending time with people who hold similar views to you.
That said, it’s edifying to attempt to see the world the way others do, but many seem to fear that merely listening to another person’s opinions will magically make them change sides. If your beliefs are that tenuous then perhaps you’re not fully committed to them. Further, being a sentient being means continually thinking and being allowed to alter your opinions upon receiving additional information. There’s a tendency in the U.S. to call people who change their minds weak rather than thoughtful or circumspect. Americans want the fast food version of opinions–simple and easily digested. An explanation that requires more than one sentence is far, far too complicated.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Something that I work at is keeping in mind that other people’s beliefs are as valid to them as mine are to me. That and ‘different’ doesn’t mean ‘bad’. As I can be reactionary at times, this will be a life-long struggle, I think, but it is a worthy endeavour.
Of course, this is also my opinion. And would require arguing with those who disagree. And that’s where I have to practise what I preach. Bugger.