Second-Hand Thinking

Reading is second-hand thinking.

It is hard to advance the position that thinking and reading are not the same. Reading is second-hand thinking. And second-hand items, best known for their durability than their trendiness, are hardly status items - especially when the public knows that it is second-hand. Why then does reading books have so much status appeal? Because we don’t say out loud — or are even conscious of the fact — that reading is second-hand thinking. We treat it as its own fashion.

Only elite men among us — I am not one of them — know what good thinking looks like. But we all know that it exists. But to pretend as if we can identify it, we found a proxy activity that involves the manipulation of symbols that we called "thinking" which really, is not thinking. That activity is reading.

Books — and all print forms — are durable. And that is sufficient a reason why you should take them up. But the mistake we make is to start – as in effectively initiate – by reading when we have not actually made the effort to think – as in observing the world around us and putting forth questions.

Or maybe it is just me. I find the process of mental mastication electrifying.

Reading as "first-hand" thinking removes you from reality and plants you in a realm that is not your own. It makes you an alien. To a world belonging to someone else. Yet you are enamored in it because it is the only world you know and you approach it with wonder. This may prove good on certain cases and measures such as when you need to understand a different point of view. But may I propose to you that this is not a good thing if you are not grounded in your own world?

A good thinker – someone who does the job — must have his feet on the ground as well as have his head in the clouds. He must be connected with both worlds; or all worlds if they are many. He must have his raw unfiltered experiences that will serve as experiments for his thought cases. And the use books as research resources in the place where he is lacking or inadequate.

The result of performing the above stated is that you will experience a different feeling: the feeling of holding a supposition similar to a brilliant author when you arrive at that position without his initial help. It is like meeting your hero halfway; you are proud that you have done your fair share of the thought labour. Also, you will become confident that you have what it takes to partake in the wealth of universal knowledge reached by men across different generations through deliberate contemplation.

Perhaps people sneer at the concept of "reinventing the wheel" because it looks like snobbery, arrogance, and conceit. Although untrue, I think it is a fair assessment. (It is a fair assessment because you don’t expect people to make judgments that exceed their sense of judgment. Sometimes people are not just deep. Free them).

Reinventing the wheel is about starting from where you are – the subjective - to the objective realm. This task is a lot harder to do than opening a book and ingesting a smoothened-out task by every author. The process is way more important than the product.

True, an apprentice may not have to suffer because he rides on the experience of his teacher. Nevertheless, he must perform the motions and rituals that will form him to become a master craftsman. He must learn the first principles of his craft. Irrespective of what his teacher hands down to him, he must at the end of his learning come to live in his craft and his craft in him — as if bound by soul ties to one another. 

Also, unless your problems acquire a type of entertainment value – by learning healthy detachment and gaining a different view — you will never be a thorough thinker. If your problems remain serious problems — so serious unto lacking leisure — you will be a fine instrumentalist thinker. But you will never be a craftsman. 

Reading increases knowledge. Thinking is knowing what to do — combining and recombining – with what you know. Thinking at the end of it all is just dutiful categorisation. Sometimes, endless categorisation.

Have a thoughtful week.

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This week, I celebrate Argentina as the champions of the world. And I celebrate Lionel Messi as the Greatest of All Time.

Lionel Andres Cutticini Messi