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I came across my favorite line in all of philosophy. Now, I feel like this line is going to help each and every one of us be better readers, but also better thinkers. We're going to get into that line today and why it's so important. Let's do 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 Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and today we're talking about a line I found in a specific philosophical text written in 1700 and something I should have done my research before. 1756, I think, is the year that Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote the Social Contract. Now, this is a book that talks about how. Now, stick with me. If you're not a philosophy person, that's okay, because this podcast is about reading, and I appreciate that. But this is important to understand. The Social Contract is quickly, this sort of implicit agreement that he argues exists when people come together in societies or groups. And the goal is that if I'm going to obtain my happiness and my safety, the best way to do that is to make sure that each of the people in the group also gain their happiness and safety. And we sort of work together. Right? There's more to it than that, but in this book, it's set up in separate sections, and if you turn to book three, the very first paragraph, under the subheading government in general is the line we're going to talk about today. Let's do this. Okay? The line says, I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading and. And that I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive. So that's funny. I want to read that one more time. I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading and that I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive. I feel like this is a really important line that we should think about. It's important philosophically because although it has nothing to do with philosophy, he's teaching you how to read philosophically. And that is a very different skill set, say, from reading, I don't know, the comic strips. I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes with my grandpa reading that comic strip. Very different from reading the Social Contract. However, there is a line in there that he cannot get his point across unless we are going to pay attention. And he. I love how he says, for those who refuse to be attentive. So let's break this down. First of all, I wrote a little essay about this today. I'm going to tell you, you know, the main points of this essay, and then I'm going to share with you a crazy experience I had in the previous week and some of the most important lessons I learned sitting at the table with some of the best philosophers in the country today. Okay, the line itself. Here's the point. If we refuse to be attentive as readers, that means that we are distracted, that we are thinking about other things, or that we are not taking the material seriously, that we're not giving it the due respect it deserves in order for us to learn from it. Now you might be thinking, eddie, I read for enjoyment only. I'm not really here to learn. I just want to escape. And I want to read about dragons and vampires. I love you for that. I think that is fantastic. I will say, though, that it is possible for you to get even more out of your dragons and vampires, which I like them, too, if you decide to be attentive. Now, that means that every time we sit down to read a book, we have a decision to make. We need to decide to be attentive. Because if we don't, if we just open the book and start reading words, our default position is going to be distraction. We are filled with ideas and to do lists and tasks and the need to be efficient and to get lots done. Bringing that sort of mental skill set or those tools to a book really is not the optimal reading experience. You actually have to decide to trade those tools out for a different set of tools. And yeah, you have to make this decision every time you open a book. It's not like you can decide to be a reader one day and to be a good reader, and that decision will serve you for the rest of your life. It clearly is not going to happen. Some days you come more prepared than others to read and to read well. Okay, so let's say you've decided to sit down and you're going to be attentive. As a reader, what should you be attentive to? Well, I would like to argue that every book is asking and trying to answer a specific question. Even the fantasy books, the fictional books, all of those books. Okay? Now, I love all of the things. If it's got a cover and it's got pages in between, I probably love it. Okay? So I am definitely not speaking up or down to Any genres of. I read them all. But if you're reading fiction and nonfiction, you might think that you don't need to really. You know, this doesn't apply in. In certain areas. Well, every book is asking a question and then trying to answer it. So when you're reading, I would love for you to try this next time. Go ahead and ask yourself, what is the specific question this book or this author is asking within these pages? What are they trying to explore? Trying to understand and try to figure out exactly what that question is not. Don't be satisfied with a general idea. I mean, case in point, I just read James Baldwin's book Giovanni's Room with my book club, and that is a book in general about love. And you might. You might wonder or say, yeah, it's a book that explores what love means to different people. That's a fine answer, but can we make it more specific? Because if we're willing to do that little bit of work, the book gets better. And in reality, this is a book, I think, that explores what self appreciation and self honesty does and self identity does to the love relationship. Right. What is it that you're bringing to each of your relationships to. To your partner or partners such that it affects you and it affects them Right. In the book, there are several metaphors as our protagonist, David is facing himself in a mirror, and he's sort of examining his reflection. And all sorts of fantastic things happen with mirrors throughout the book. So really, it's not just about love. It's about the identity you bring to love. Okay, so knowing that makes the book richer as you're reading it. Now, the second thing to be attentive to once you have a good question is to start paying attention to how the author is exploring the answers to that question. And if you're working with a skilled author. Notice I said working with a skilled author. I'll talk about that in a minute. Because you are doing work. When you're working with a skilled author, if they know what they're doing, they're not presenting a single point of view. They're exploring both or multiple sides of the question. Every question has multiple ways generally that it can be answered. And some of those avenues can be quite beneficial, and some of them might be somewhat detrimental. And it's really nice to get the landscape figured out. Okay? So as you're going through your book, try not to latch on to just the biases that you have, the things that you already believe to be true, and ignore the other ideas presented in the book. Try to be open minded and attentive to what those other ideas are saying and, and why they may or may not be important. Now, of course, that technique right there is far more applicable to nonfiction books when you're learning something specific. Finally, I would love to encourage all of us, myself included, to be more attentive to our physical and emotional response when we're done reading a book. What happens when we finish reading is a sense of either dread because the great book is over and we're going to miss it, or sort of a sense of accomplishment because we achieved something great. Maybe you read Anna Karenina or War and Peace or something, I don't know. Or maybe you're just relieved because you didn't like the book, but you pushed through it. All of those are feelings, right? But they are not your assessment of the quality of the book. They're just the feeling that you had. And what I noticed is that a lot of us, when we close a book, we don't give it time to gestate and to sort of grow in our understanding. We immediately go to the next book. And this is really critical. I think it's. I think it's really valuable if you want to level up your reading game, to put a little bit of time in between the next book. I would encourage you to take a week off in between each book. Now, you might be thinking, okay, I'm never listening to this podcast again. Eddie just said not to read for an entire week. I didn't say you couldn't read. I'm just suggesting that you don't read another book deeply. Maybe you're reading some articles in between, or some essays or some poetry, but ultimately, in that week off, you're thinking about the book you read. You're going through the different arguments that the, the pros and the cons. And most importantly, you're not figuring out where you agree with the author, but you're trying to formulate your own position. I'm going to say that again. You're not just trying to remember what the author said so you can use it in life. You're trying to formulate your own position. If you read a book on health, let's say, the author might prescribe several diets that he or she thinks you should follow. Now you could just take that as gospel and, and, you know, believe everything you read and just say, well, it's in a book, so I'm gonna go do it. Or it's. Maybe it's even better for you to read that and then take a week off and think about it and do some more research on those diets and sort of analyze how you're physically doing and start experimenting with those things, getting some empirical data on how those diets are affecting your body, and then make your decision as to whether or not these diets are actually effective for you. All right? So that's really critical. That's attentive reading. That is you taking the lessons in a book and actually letting them come into your life in a meaningful way that will ultimately help you level up. Now, I want to share a quick story with you. Last week I was in St. Louis because I was essentially, what was happening there is the National Ethics Bowl. Now, this is a very exciting event. Essentially, what happens is the best teams in the country that are collegiate teams all come together. They're usually made up of philosophy students, and they're usually coached by the philosophy department or chair or somebody in the philosophy department of that college. So you've got, for example, a philosopher who's actively writing, who is publishing papers on ideas like animal rights, free speech, AI in the workplace, whatever it might be. And that person is guiding these students. They all are working on the same. I think we had 20 ethical cases that they were working on for the past several months, and they are working through sort of the moral dilemma of those cases, and they are trying to formulate their position as to whether something should be morally permissible or not and why. They have to. They have to present an ethical framework like Kant's categorical imperative or utilitarianism or virtue ethics by Aristotle or something. Right. But they have to then present their argument as to why a specific case, something that really happened in the world, is or is not morally ethical. And then the judges have to listen to those arguments, ask questions back and forth, and then ultimately score those. Those teams. And I went to this event as one of the judges. I was not allowed to compete because I am too old. However, I was invited there to be a judge, which was a huge honor for me. And I share this with you because one, it was a ton of fun. But the lesson to be learned is what happened after the event in the evenings, because at night, all of the college kids would go one way and all of the philosophers, who are some of the best philosophers in the country right now. The, you know, again, they're leading colleges and philosophy departments, and they're actually and actively writing and. And creating new philosophy. They went the other way and they went and had their dinners. And because I was too old, the philosophers were very Kind. And they said, hey Eddie, why don't you come hang out with us? And I was like elated to follow them and just listen. But I got to sit at the table of these men and women and listen to them discuss the work that they're doing. And that was fascinating to, just to hear sort of their thought process on key critical elements. We had political philosophers there, we had ethical philosophers there, we had metaphysical philosophers there, and so on. But here's the lesson I want to share with you. As they discussed their ideas and their work, they would ultimately ask each other questions, questions that had moral weight, ethical weight. Right. And I would watch that the other person received this question and more often than not they would give a response similar to this. They would say, you know what, I haven't fully formed an opinion on that or a position on that yet. I need some time to think about that. I just thought that was fascinating. They would openly admit, I don't have a fully formed position on that yet. I need time to think. And what they would do then is they would go back and their process would be to go and read articles on the topic, both sides of the agreement, figure out what's going on and then eventually come back ready to share an educated opinion. And that's what I wanted to sort of get across today is instead of them having that knee jerk reaction we're so used to, where people get emotional and they're angry and they're just sort of, you know, making an opinion and picking a side and they don't really know why, they're just picking sides and getting angry at each other for it. It was so refreshing to watch adults sit across the table from each other and say, I don't know, I haven't quite formed a position on that yet. I'm going to need some time to think about that. That, that to me gives me hope and courage for the, for the human race. I know we have a long way to go. That's not what I'm saying. But anyway, quite, quite valuable. Say, let's do a quick book recommendation this week and yes, I am going to talk about the Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau. A great book. Look, you can get this probably online for free. I'm not sure I bought the translated version by GDH Cole. Doesn't mean that's any better, any worse than whatever else is out there. But if you're interested in sort of how societies come together, the individual's responsibility to the larger group and the larger group's responsibility to the individual and you're curious about how these ideas might apply to today and, And. And all of that. It's a great read. I would. I would highly encourage it. Like all books on philosophy, there are things in here that I agree with, and there are things in here that I don't agree with. Right. And I think that is a valuable place to be, is to have books where I can sort of push back. And that's where I want to go back and remind you that I use the term working with the author. This is our. My last point for today, that when we're reading a book, an author will have spent probably years of his or her life putting this either fictional story together or this nonfiction book that is designed to present a case for something. Now, once that book is published, it is no longer the asset of the author. It is not their baby anymore. It is now your baby. It is. It is the baby of the public. Right. And when you buy that book and you bring it into your library and then you hopefully read it, you are bringing your life experiences, your ideologies, your biases, your perspectives, and your sort of personal tastes to the reading experience. And that is why sometimes people will read books that everybody loves. And you can't stand the book. That can happen because either, A, you feel it clashes with your ideologies, or B, you're just not ready for it yet. Maybe you're not. You haven't gotten educated enough yet to read this specific book. That's perfectly fine. Wherever you're at on the spectrum, it's really important to remember that, because the book is yours and it's not the authors, you have some work to do if you're going to get something out of that, and that's a really valuable lesson. I learned this week that the best experiences we can have with books and with critical thinking, whether it is for academic purposes or whether it's for entertainment purposes, either way, the highest version of those pursuits requires real, honest work on our behalf. Right. We must choose to be attentive. We cannot refuse attentiveness. We have to show up. We have to do the work. And if we do, we will be well rewarded for our efforts. Hey, everybody. That's it for this week's episode of the Readwell podcast. I hope you got something out of that. I had a good time chatting with you today. I know I haven't been publishing the podcast as much lately. That's because I'm sort of retooling my life. I'm trying to focus on things that are more important So I don't know that many people are sort of like, actively tracking what's happening on the podcast. If you are, first of all, thank you, but I'm not posting as much on Facebook as I used to, and I'm not posting on Instagram. I actually deleted those apps from my phone just because I want to focus more on, you know, if I share something, I want it to be a little more meaningful. I want it to have a little more weight, and I want it to be more from myself and. And for it to have had that time to sort of percolate and bubble and all that stuff. So I'm really going to be putting more energy into my newsletter every week. If you're not on that, you can go to the readwellpodcast.com and then you just subscribe. It's free. I'm also putting a lot of energy into my book club. We are reading just fantastic books this year, and in fact, we're getting ready for season four. We're starting to pick the books for that. So if you've been thinking about joining the book club, but haven't quite really been, you know, you've been on the fence about that, I would encourage you to give it a chance. Right. The first 30 days are free, and then after that, it's like 12 bucks a month. But it's a great investment in your reading experience, ultimately, because any book we read, it becomes much larger in itself as we discuss the topics. Right. This, this is not a book club of, like, the Phil Goody kind of conversations of like, oh, this character's super whatever. These are the kind of conversations that open up really important questions, really important questions about life, about the meaning of things. And it's not to say that any of us have answers, but in discussing them, the books are definitely more meaningful and we're all learning to be better readers together. So, yeah, if you want to get into that, you can also learn about the book club at thereadwellpodcast. Com. All right, I'm going to try and get back onto a rhythm of once a week with this show, if I can. My. My life is calming down, which is helpful and healthy. And, yeah, that's the goal. So, again, thank you for listening this week and for showing up and supporting me. And until next week, as always, remember to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you, everyone. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.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.