← The Read Well Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Last week I talked about how Ralph Waldo Emerson used his journals as a savings bank for his best ideas. This week I would like to talk about how he remained in constant contact with his journals, always interfacing with them, and how that improved the usage and the mileage he got out of them. Let's get into it. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Readable podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I have a quote for you from the great Ralph Waldo Emerson. Something to the effect of nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. And I share that with you because it has been a crazy week. I've been running around trying to open a brick and mortar bookstore and doing podcasts. I've gone back to school as well, which is nutty if you know anything about me. My wife teaches at a local college here in Utah at Weber State University. And so because of that, all family members get six free credit hours every semester. And of course I have to take advantage of that because I like to learn things. And so in my spare time, quote unquote spare time, I have been taking classes towards a degree in philosophy and a minor in English literature. Why not, right? Well, fall semester just started and I'm excited actually because I am taking a class called the Ethics Bowl. Every year Weber State does a debate style competition with other universities and we put together an ethics team and then we debate on key topics or issues, applying specific ethical models which I'll cover in a minute, which help us to either win or lose our case. And the crummy thing is that apparently I'm too old to compete, mainly because I already have a degree in accounting and because of that, because I'm not a first time degree earner, I'm not allowed to compete on the team, but I am allowed to support my team and go and help do research and what have you. So I will be doing that this year. And this really scratches the main inch I have for studying philosophy, which was that I want to get really good at sitting in a conversation or hearing something online and trying to avoid that knee jerk reaction or response where my emotions take over and I say something that I don't mean or that isn't well thought out. And I want to get better at crafting arguments that are supportive and you know, referenced and have some sort of logical conclusion to them. And I felt like philosophy was the best degree to help me do that. And this class in particular applies that skill to real world application. So I'm really excited about this class. And then the second class I'm taking is a class on existentialism, which is the branch of philosophy and art and literature and everything else that sort of stemmed in the early 20th century in Paris after World War II. And you had all these people like Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir who were watching the horrendous nature of the world fall apart. As, you know, the Nazi occupation took place and they had to craft a new way of thinking to deal with that dread. And so I wanted to take this course mainly because one, I think existentialism is just cool. I think it's this really fun way to analyze the meaning of life. I don't always agree with everything that the existentialists teach, but I do find their writing engaging and thought provoking and worth my time. So that has been really fun. I've gone to class for two weeks now and I'm getting my, my rhythm back to being a student while managing all of these other things. Okay, well, let's get into Ralph Waldo Emerson's approach to existing with his journals. I, I have had the chance, the good fortune of listening to the biography of Ralph Walt Emerson called the Mind on Fire. The Mind on Fire is a biography of Emerson written by Robert D. Richardson Jr. And it's, it's pretty extensive. I mean we're, we're getting into the 600 page mark here because the man did so much in his life to affect the way the American approach to knowledge occurred. Right. He had a lot to say about being independent and becoming the best version of yourself. Going out there and attacking life with some self reliance. That was his most famous essay, the self reliance. Anyway, Emerson is quite famous also for his note taking system. He had 263 journals, he called them journals, which sort of drives me batty because I, I can't say the word journal. When I do, I think of my grandma who used to sit in her chair and watch the weather report every day. And she would always write in her daily journal, you know, sunny, 78 degrees high, yada yada yada. So to me that's a journal. It is a tracker of daily mundane events. Just I went to the grocery store, picked up my kids and so on. That is not what we're talking about here. Emerson used his journals as tools for clarity of thought, for a way to become a better speaker and thinker and writer, which were his primary objective aims. And so he came up with 200. Well, he filled 263 of these things over the course of his life. And it was so extensive that he needed some sort of indexing system to keep track of it all, because he found that he would lose all of the good stuff in his journals. And I have that too, where I'll think, ooh, this is a really good piece of content that I found or discovered or thought up. And I'm almost hesitant to put it in my notebooks because I'm worried that once that notebook goes on the shelf, I'll never find this thing again. It's gone to the depths of the notebook. So Emerson was really passionate about different indexing systems. And I'll begin talking about those next week. But for right now, what I want to get across to you is this, that he knew there were gems in his notebook and it's not enough to index them and put them back on the shelf. You have to be in constant contact with these notebooks. Now, he would read his notebooks and then he would reread them. He would go back years later even, and he would annotate them, mark them up, write in the margins. He would point out things that were interesting years later, and he would make notes about how his thoughts have changed, how his belief systems have changed, and so on. And I think this is where I have gone wrong with my notebooks in the past. You know, I've started them and I filled them and I've lost them, or I've kept them on the shelves somewhere and they pile up in the corners. I have not done a good enough job at being in constant contact with them. I haven't gone back and re read them. And so this week, my Emersonian homework for myself and for you as well, is to gather all of these disparate notebooks all over your house and your work and your desk and wherever else they are, put them into a big stack and yes, put them on the shelf, on the same shelf. Let's get them grouped together. But then to start reading through them this week, to go through one and just start on page one and read it like you would a book. It's going to take you immediately back to the day that you wrote these passages. You'll remember what you were thinking. You might even remember who you were with or what you were doing. But what's fascinating is you will see the arc of your thinking, you will see yourself changing and growing as a person. You know, I've gone through my notebooks and I found quotes that I love and I had completely forgotten about ideas for my business or for my family, things I wanted to do with my personal health and so on that just died away. And I'm thinking, oh, wow, these were really great. And I'm just grateful that I have them back in my life to begin implementing them. So the only homework this week again is to get your notebooks on the shelf and then to begin reading them like a book. Next week, we're going to start the process of indexing these babies. Well, okay, let's give you a book recommendation. I love giving book recommendations each week. And this one is a philosophical book, mainly because I've gone back to school and I was asked to read this one in preparation for my Ethics bowl class again, the class where we are debating current hot topic issues. Now, this book is called Ethics in a Nutshell. And it's written by Matt Deaton, D E A T O N. And he has a PhD and the reason why I love this book is, I mean, it's less than 100 pages. Maybe it's just barely over 100 pages. Yeah. But it's a book about ethics written in a way that is very approachable and easy to understand. I think I paid $14 for this on Amazon. You're not going to find it in local bookstores, I don't think. It's not a very widely printed thing. But yeah, paid roughly $14 or $15 on Amazon. And chapter five alone is worth the cost or the investment of that book. It's titled the Four Dominant Ethical Theories, and it walks you through. Kantiism, Consequentialism, Virtue Ethics, and Care Ethics. Now, why on earth would somebody want to read about ethics? Well, let's talk about that for just a second. Look, we're all walking around this earth with a set of beliefs as to what makes an action right or wrong. And that belief system might come from our religion, our family, our government, or what have you. But even at the core of that, your belief system is probably grounded in one of those four sort of pillars of ethics again, Kantiism, Consequentialism, Care ethics, or virtue ethics. And it's really interesting to read chapter five here, which is written for the everyday person and to learn about them and realize, oh, I've kind of been working in Kantism my whole life. I had no idea. And then as you read the other three, you see that there are other ways to sort of evaluate the goodness or the badness of an action. And having those evaluation methods in your toolbox, I would argue will make you a more well rounded human being. And this book will only take you. I mean, it's quite easy to read, but definitely worth the time. So, yeah, I would check it out. Ethics in a Nutshell by Matt Deaton. Okay, a quick community update and then we'll get you out of here. So again, thank you to everybody who has been helping me with my Kickstarter campaign to open the brick and mortar store at Edgewater Bookstore. Now, I want to tell you sort of what's going on here because this is real estate and because it's this idyllic, perfect building and bountiful with so many good things going on. There were. There was a lot of people trying to start bidding on this building and I was panicking. And so I went to my friend who is a commercial realtor, and I asked him to just put an offer on the building because I wanted to essentially control the building, to have our name under contract on it. And then we put in several contingencies in place that would allow us to back out if things didn't go our way. And so we're definitely protected right now. But the good news, you guys, is that I'm under contract on this building. I don't have it yet, right? It's got 60 days of due diligence, which means one, I need to raise the rest of the down payment. And because of the kind of loan that I have to get, that's 10 to 20%. And I've negotiated with the bank to get that down to 15, which is lovely. But that's $140,000, which is quite a bit of money. And I am putting 100,000 of my own in. And the Kickstarter is definitely helping to make up the difference there. And then I have some family and friends who are interested in helping out as well, so I know we can get there. As of this recording, the Kickstarter campaign has 15 days left and we've raised just under $15,000 because of you, because of your kindness and your willingness to, you know, log onto the dang thing and create a quick account and pledge $10 or $25 or whatever it is. And of course, when you do that, there are several fun things that I'm able to offer you as a thank you. The most popular right now is for the $25 donation access to my online 30 day course called the 30 Day Focused Reader. It's a fun course where every day you watch a little video by me on a lesson that will help you fine tune your focus and reclaim it. And it starts you off with a five minute reading habit each day. And by the end of the 30 days you've worked yourself up to a really strong one hour reading habit in a book of your choice. So it's a great course, it's a lot of fun, it's gotten a lot of great reviews and that is one of the many gifts that you can pick up for helping me open the brick and mortar store through donation to the Kickstarter. Hey, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you are interested in this direction. I'm taking the thing with the Ralph Waldo Emerson project here. We're episode two of six on that. Now. Next week I'm quite excited because we'll begin talking about indexing systems and we're going to talk about how Emerson started to think about his journals to gain organizational control over them. And and we're going to talk about the ways it kind of failed at first and maybe you have done some of these things. And then ultimately in the following week we'll talk about his indexing system that begun to work for him. Until next time. As always, remember to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. Thanks everybody. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwell podcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.