12.8.24 - Quote from Chesterton and lots of other thoughts
A quote from Chesterton
I'm reading Orthodoxy by Chesterton, because I have a tradition of reading Christian apologetics around this time of year. I don't know if I can properly call myself a Christian. But if I'm anything its that. The tradition started when one of my very religious friends gave me Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis one year in college. So now I read something Christian (or something from the Bible) every December.
Chesterton has been on my list for a long time, because I like Slavoj Zizek, and I've always found the concept of "Christian atheism" very intersting, and personally compelling (as someone who is drawn to Christianity, but struggles with like, literal beleif).
I'm half-way through, and will have to write about this amazing book in full once I'm done, but there is this beautiful quote I just want to put on here now, because it's just so perfect.
"Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything—even pride."
I was texting my friend some nonsense (context unimportant) maybe a week before I read this, and I feel that I said something that was striklingly similar, which is why I guess I liked the quote.
When I was talking to my friend, I was basically working up to the idea that people who act like they're okay with settling are actually not humble AT ALL, that they're in a sense too prideful to give something their all, and that it's the crazy ambitious people who have true humility. I think Chesterton captured this idea ---the paradoxical fact that humility precedes pride--perfectly.
Reading for pleasure
There was a period where I feel I lost the ability to read for pleasure. I still read stuff. But it felt like a chore. There was a weird guilt about not doing it enough. A weird fear that I had lost the ability to do it. But I've gotten over it.
I think I reclaimed reading for pleasure by: (1) talking to my friends about shit more, making it a slightly more social endeavour (2) just not caring about finishing shit and taking long breaks for certain books (3) taking it completely out of the mental space of "self-improvement" and entirely into the domain of pleasure (which is a shitty stupid way to approach life which has infected many young men) (4) expanding on the last point--accepting that it has no instrumental value at all; like scrolling IG reels or something, there's no point to reading basically ever, its just something I fucking do because its fun and one day I'll die and I can't take the information with me. I feel there was a point in time where I wanted to read stuff that would help me in my career in some way or that had some relation to something I wanted to do, I guess for the sake of efficiency? Why not kill two birds with one stone? I stopped thinking like that. Most of the things I want to know I have no buisness knowing and I will probably never bring up or use in my life. There is no reason I should know about Serbian politics in the 1990s. I'll forget it. But I forget reels I watch and it was still fun to watch it. So who cares. So I read to fuck around now.
Miscellaneous unformed thoughts
I'll start by saying I've noticed something troubling in my own thought patterns, and what they suggest for our "society" at large.
I try and take note of how I think when using different mediums. I read write talk and listen all day. I call my friends on the phone constantly, I am sending links to people all day, checking my favorite blogs, reading cases for clas, tweeting bullshit, listening to podcasts on drives and commutes. I send unnecessary emails to old friends and professors. It's to a level where somethings may be wrong with me. But I have a lot of opportunity to compare and contrast how different modes of information consumption and conveyance "feel."
In short, I'm realizing how much more thoughtful and reflective I am when I read a book, when compared to reading on the internet. Shocker, right. I guess everyone knows that. But I feel that I have been able to appreciate that the contrast is pretty insane recently. X forces me to simplify my thoughts. And I almost always feel that I misrepresent them if I don't try hard enough. Consuming information on X is like a zero calorie energy drink. It's like Celsius. It's stimulation with no satiation. It makes me feel evil.
Reading stuff, marking up a book, its like eating good bread. I think in full sentences. I have much more developed thoughts that I feel more aligned with. I think thoughts that I agree with even more than the thoughts I think in other contexts. More harmony.
Social media makes me think thoughts that I can disagre with moments later. It's much more reactive, fickle.
But here's the problem, reading isn't generally a social activity. It's a private one. Those better thoughts don't really get sunlight, unless you're part of a bookclub, which basically no one fucking is. Social media is how we share thoughts.
Our technology for sharing thoughts seems to have a bias towards stupid thoughts?
I don't think this is a very novel idea, but it had me thinking, maybe the limitations on thought sharing were good?
But then I think, I mean, I guess even back in the days of pure print, really bad ideas were able to spread. Like Nazism, eugenics, straings of communism, and they caused a lot of damage. So I can't say that social media has a terrible bias towards the spread of bad ideas, given what we know about the past?
So no, that's not the issue. But maybe the problem is how the way we consume the thoughts of others makes us feel. The average person doesn't read longform anything anymore. Idc what the stats say. People, even educated people, don't read at all. I know so few people my age that read anything for pleasure.
And if I can extrapolate how I feel, that means that people are consuming information that feels like Celsius, all the time. This has to be really bad when scaled up.
I think that the whole newsletter thing is a very good trend, because its filling this missing middle level of length we need. Lots of writers who are fucking stupid on X on a regular basis are thoughtful enough on SubStack.
I think there's room for improvement. We should bring back "the pamphlet." That's an underrated and overlooked vehicle of idea spreading.
Why write
Writing is therapy and more people should do it. And I can't wait to do it perfectly to do it. Too many domains in my life require high levels of precision. Writing like this is a good way to keep my edges rough. And this platform, this habit, will build up to something better. One day. Soon.
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