It sounds like you have hit a stale point in your journey. Your book list is not very stark. It generally trends into a certain sort of person, the sort of person you do not want to learn from. I would guess because you already agree with most of it, and so you’d rather just write it yourself.
That’s reasonable, I understand, and I have written a good volume of work that will never see day because of this. However, I do have a solution if you will try it.
Take a specific belief you have. Ethical, political, scientific, you name it- something you think is true- and go prove it wrong. Do your best. Not the ‘oh hah look at all these dumb posts’ but really dig for the reasons that your interests/ideals/ethics may be wrong. Take one of your favorite books and rip it apart. Be fair; always check sourcing, cite yourself. Steelman the target, or counter-strawman, however it can be described.
Play devil’s advocate for something you should never consider and then realize that there are so many better ways to criticize your opponents, and that they’re really doing it quite poorly.
It’s worth noting somewhat apprehensively that you are in fact the sheep here; most of the world already stopped reading books. Some just read more earlier, and some will keep reading until later. Reading or not doesn’t help you integrate knowledge, reflection does. Hence why reading and writing is the best way to do it.
pick an old research paper’s critique, and then figure out how it cherry-picked/straw-manned the paper. Wikipedia is easy for this. Pretty much every source is incorrectly cited or incorrectly summarized
watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie and try to describe the scene direction in words.
translate a difficult concept into something you can explain to a third grader.
translate something from third grade into something a science fiction reader would be convinced by
go to a used bookstore and look for books published a long time ago. no revisions. must be originals <1920
read through newspaper archives from 1914-1916
read Paul’s chapters of the Bible and analyze them as a rhetorical piece for arguing a case for replacing their cult with his cult, and whether the techniques he used would have been effective then, at the target audience
read papers by Bell or Fourier
The problem with this new era of information is no one really made sure the information was any good, and so we’re all loaded up with a lot of inputs and no insurance on the output. As we can see from this latest election, it is quite easy to flood the internet with incorrect data and convince a lot of people who think they are ‘doing the research’.
This feedback makes sense in the context of what I wrote. I’m going to provide broader context which didn’t make it into the original post.
My reading is cyclical. The books I read in any given year indeed tend to be quite narrow. Some years I read lots of science fiction. Another year was about spirituality. In previous years I’ve read Heart of Darkness, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1984, Ancillary Justice, The Little Prince, The Wealth of Nations, Goodbye Darkness, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, Steal Like an Artist, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, Arabian Sands, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, The Fault in Our Stars, Guerilla Warfare and The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Technical books don’t show up on this list either because I tend not to read them cover-to-cover. The same goes for other books I’ve tried out without finishing such as Pride and Prejudice, Mere Christianity, Hard Choices, Twilight, Quotations from Chairman Mao and the 1911 Boy Scout Handbook. My scientific research with commercial applications doesn’t get posted to this blog either.
I’m slowly working my way through Sunzi’s The Art of War. This bodes well with your recommendation to read old writings and translate difficult concepts. We may be on the same page here.
I’ve also cracked open a D&D book. Your comment is helpful in encouraging me to continue.
It sounds like you have hit a stale point in your journey. Your book list is not very stark. It generally trends into a certain sort of person, the sort of person you do not want to learn from. I would guess because you already agree with most of it, and so you’d rather just write it yourself.
That’s reasonable, I understand, and I have written a good volume of work that will never see day because of this. However, I do have a solution if you will try it.
Take a specific belief you have. Ethical, political, scientific, you name it- something you think is true- and go prove it wrong. Do your best. Not the ‘oh hah look at all these dumb posts’ but really dig for the reasons that your interests/ideals/ethics may be wrong. Take one of your favorite books and rip it apart. Be fair; always check sourcing, cite yourself. Steelman the target, or counter-strawman, however it can be described.
Play devil’s advocate for something you should never consider and then realize that there are so many better ways to criticize your opponents, and that they’re really doing it quite poorly.
It’s worth noting somewhat apprehensively that you are in fact the sheep here; most of the world already stopped reading books. Some just read more earlier, and some will keep reading until later. Reading or not doesn’t help you integrate knowledge, reflection does. Hence why reading and writing is the best way to do it.
pick an old research paper’s critique, and then figure out how it cherry-picked/straw-manned the paper. Wikipedia is easy for this. Pretty much every source is incorrectly cited or incorrectly summarized
watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie and try to describe the scene direction in words.
translate a difficult concept into something you can explain to a third grader.
translate something from third grade into something a science fiction reader would be convinced by
go to a used bookstore and look for books published a long time ago. no revisions. must be originals <1920
read through newspaper archives from 1914-1916
read Paul’s chapters of the Bible and analyze them as a rhetorical piece for arguing a case for replacing their cult with his cult, and whether the techniques he used would have been effective then, at the target audience
read papers by Bell or Fourier
The problem with this new era of information is no one really made sure the information was any good, and so we’re all loaded up with a lot of inputs and no insurance on the output. As we can see from this latest election, it is quite easy to flood the internet with incorrect data and convince a lot of people who think they are ‘doing the research’.
Above all, stay cozy.
This feedback makes sense in the context of what I wrote. I’m going to provide broader context which didn’t make it into the original post.
My reading is cyclical. The books I read in any given year indeed tend to be quite narrow. Some years I read lots of science fiction. Another year was about spirituality. In previous years I’ve read Heart of Darkness, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1984, Ancillary Justice, The Little Prince, The Wealth of Nations, Goodbye Darkness, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, Steal Like an Artist, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, Arabian Sands, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, The Fault in Our Stars, Guerilla Warfare and The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Technical books don’t show up on this list either because I tend not to read them cover-to-cover. The same goes for other books I’ve tried out without finishing such as Pride and Prejudice, Mere Christianity, Hard Choices, Twilight, Quotations from Chairman Mao and the 1911 Boy Scout Handbook. My scientific research with commercial applications doesn’t get posted to this blog either.
I’m slowly working my way through Sunzi’s The Art of War. This bodes well with your recommendation to read old writings and translate difficult concepts. We may be on the same page here.
I’ve also cracked open a D&D book. Your comment is helpful in encouraging me to continue.