Hello, dear one!
Whatever bothers you is a story, but if you’re self-aware, you can bring the power back to you and turn your poor-me story into glory.
When all the schools reopened in the summer of 2021, my state mandated all students, like my son, who didn’t receive the Covid shots to wear a mask all day.
My son was a sophomore in high school and tested with a decision:
“Should I continue public high school, wearing a mask with a few students on campus, or should I self-teach at home, breathing as a sovereign soul?”
Did I mention the word, “SOUL?”
Yes, you’re an energy being in a physical body. You’re a soul.
Since birth, you were brainwashed to decide from your ego, which is your mind. But all along, you’ve been a soul, a feeling with your unique truth.
For every challenge, there is a SOUL-ution, which is your truth.
The first thing my son acknowledged was that he hated wearing a mask.
Then he examined the necessity of a mask, useful or useless?
He concluded after some research:
The brain is only about 2% of the body’s mess, but it consumes 25% of body oxygen. How can you think better when you’re out of oxygen in the brain?
Plus, the mask does not prevent viruses from coming, and you end up breathing the bacteria on it. The oxygen is what the body needs to kill the bacteria and stay healthy.
I shared my truth with him:
Whatever something, like a degree, a job, or a mate has power over you, you’re not living your truth and are a slave to it.
If he hated wearing masks and would choose to stay in high school, the school became his master, as he would be a slave to the mandate.
This hurtle was a perfect lesson for him to turn a hapless story into a future glory.
He decided to self-teach as a homeschooler.
For two years, instead of joining discussions in school on racial discrimination, transgender tolerance, or climate change, he focused on reading, Great Books of The Western World.
The truth lies in these books, written by some of the wisest souls before us.
My dear friend asked me why I have been writing these articles. There is ChatGPT to do the work. English is my second language. Where is the monetary reward?
We’re beautiful souls, connected as a whole. Maybe my authentic writing from my soul will resonate with you and light your heart.
For all the degrees I’ve obtained from the school system, none of them taught me how simple life is:
You’re either mastered by your mind (ego) or mastered by your soul (truth).
When you’re worried about your stuff, the degree, the career, the car, or the deplorable comments from others, you’re operating from your ego. They master you.
When you listen to your soul and dare to follow it, you’re home free.
I’ve been writing about self-development, acquiring soft skills, and reading growth books, because I attribute my easy life today to learning secrets that the school system intentionally withholds from us.
To add value to your reading, I’ll end this article with my 17-year-old son’s notes on an acclaimed book, How To Read A Book, by Adler & Van Doren.
I wish you growth, success, joy, and EASE in life, with all my love.
How To Read A Book, 1972, by Adler & Van Doren
Summary by Ray:
This provides a systematic method of reading books for understanding.
Four levels are discussed, the greater encompassing the smaller: elementary, inspectional, analytic, and syntopical.
Inspectional reading involves a systematic skim, and, if the book is difficult, a superficial or nonstop-linear reading.
Analytic reading consists of finding what a book is about, interpreting its content, and providing critical judgment.
Different kinds of books should be analyzed differently; approaches to many genres, from practical books to social science, are discussed.
Syntopical reading is the cross-comparison of many books to better understand a particular subject.
Practical Outline
- How to Be a Demanding Reader
- Four basic questions of active reading:
- What is the book about as a whole? Theme.
- What is being said in detail, and how? Arguments, main ideas, assertions.
- Is the book true, in whole or in part? You are obligated to make up your mind.
- What is its significance?
- How to mark a book (take notes):
- Underline major points.
- Vertical lines at the margin emphasize longer statements.
- Star at margin, used sparingly, to emphasize the book’s most important passages.
- Numbers in the margin, indicate a sequence of points.
- Numbers of other pages, for comparison, e.g. “Cf. 128”.
- Circling keywords and phrases.
- Writing in the margin, top, or bottom, to record thoughts and questions.
- Utilize endpapers for personal indexes. Adler recommends creating a simple outline in the front endpapers and a personal index at the back.
- Types of notes depending on the level of reading:
- Inspectional—structural.
- Analytic—conceptual.
- Syntopical—dialectical (relating to a discussion between books).
- Inspectional Reading
- Systematic skimming to determine whether a book is worth reading and to grasp its structure. Check or do the following (4, 5, & 7 may contain summaries):
- Title page and preface. What subject, and what kind of book?
- Table of Contents. Typically provides a meaningful structure.
- Index. Look for recurring terms.
- Most important chapters. Read the opening and closing statements.
- Skim! Read a few paragraphs every few pages. Look for the main contention.
- The last few pages and epilogue.
- Superficial reading for difficult books. Read them through without stopping; try for one sitting.
- Reading speeds should ideally differ, e.g. speeding over rhetoric, when appropriate. Untrained readers sub-vocalize and fixate their eyes five or six times per line, sometimes rereading prior lines. To read faster, place three fingers together and sweep lines faster than what is comfortable. Your “pointer” will improve your concentration.
- Analytic Reading
- Find what a book is about.
- Classify the book according to its kind and subject matter.
- Summarize the book’s contents.
- Create an outline that relates and orders the book’s major parts.
- Define the problems the author has tried to solve.
- Interpret the contents.
- Understand the author’s use of key terms.
- Identify the leading propositions.
- Know the author’s arguments. Discriminate between the inductive and deductive, and identify axioms (self-evident truths) and postulates (assumptions).
- Determine which problems the author solved. Were the unsolved problems intentional?
- Provide critical judgment. You have the responsibility of taking a position.
- Intellectual Etiquette. Complete the outline and interpretation before you begin criticism. Do not disagree contentiously. Present reasons for all critical judgments; this demonstrates that you know the difference between knowledge and opinion.
- Criteria for Points of Criticism. Acknowledge personal biases. Show wherein the author is uninformed (missing knowledge), misinformed (erroneous assertion), illogical (inconsistency or non sequitur), or their analysis is incomplete (the author did not solve his problems). The first three are criteria for disagreement; the last is a reason to suspend judgment.
- Approaches to Different Genres
- Practical books persuade the reader to action. What are the author’s objectives? What means for achieving them is he proposing? Know the character of the writer and the historical context of the book’s writing. If you agree with the author’s objectives, you are obligated to adjust your actions accordingly.
- Imaginative literature. The unity of a story is its plot; the parts are ordered chronologically. Sympathize with the characters and events. Criticism of this genre involves drawing reasons (from the text) for matters of taste. Read in one sitting; read poetry aloud on the second reading.
- History is always written from some point of view, so read many accounts. Definitive biographies are the most comprehensive; authorized biographies carefully select what is presented; autobiographies suffer from a similar pitfall (is the subjective account objective?).
- Contemporary events. What does the reporter want to prove? Whom does he want to convince? What special knowledge does he assume? What language does he use? Is he credible and unbiased?
- Science and Mathematics. Distinguish assumptions from the conclusions that follow. Paying attention to how arguments unfold is particularly important in mathematics.
- Philosophy. Discover the questions and assumptions. Five styles of philosophical writing: dialogue (Plato, Berkeley), treatise (most popular), dialectic (Aquinas), formal system (analytic), and aphoristic (Nietzsche). Adler does not recommend reading about a philosopher’s life and opinion.
- Social Science deals with particular problems, rather than authors or books; thus, you should read this genre syntopically.
- Reading aids should be sought after one has analyzed a book on his own and continues to find it incomprehensible. Special experience (experiments) may help read scientific works. When using reference works, dictionaries, or encyclopedias, you should specifically know what you are looking for.
- Syntopical Reading
- Create a tentative bibliography of your subject.
- Inspect each work and adjust your bibliography accordingly, removing irrelevant works. This will clarify the subject.
- Inspect the books once more to find relevant passages.
- Construct a neutral terminology. The authors may not use these terms.
- Establish a set of neutral propositions by framing questions that each author can interpret as having a response.
- Define the issues by comparing the conflict between responses. These issues are often inexplicit and must be inductively derived.
- Order the questions and issues. General issues come first. Relations between issues should be clearly indicated. A tone of dialectical detachment must be maintained; include quotations with each interpretation.
Further Inquiry
- Speed Reading. How fast can one read with comprehension?
- Literary Criticism. How does criticism differ among different genres?
- Logical Fallacies. What are the common pitfalls in rational arguments?
- Syntopical Research. What are the alternatives?
Reading List
Works included in Great Books of the Western World or Gateway to the Great Books (selections or whole works) are not enumerated here.
- Cicero, Orations
- Horace, Works (esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)
- Livy, History of Rome
- Ovid, Works (esp. Metamorphoses)
- Plutarch, Moralia
- Tacitus, Germania
- Lucian, Works (esp. The True History, The Sale of Creeds)
- St. Augustine, On the Teacher
- The Song of Roland
- The Nibelungenlied
- The Saga of Burnt Njal
- Dante, The New Life, On Monarchy
- Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks
- Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
- Disederius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly
- Thomas More, Utopia
- Martin Luther, Three Treatises, Table Talk
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
- Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion, The Faërie Quuene
- Moliere, Comedies (esp. The Miser, The School for Wives, Tartuffe)
- John Locke, Thoughts Concerning Education
- Jean Baptiste Racine, Tragedies (esp. Andromache, Phaedra)
- Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, Monadology
- Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, Journal to Stella
- William Congreve, The Way of the World
- Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, Rape of the Lock, Essay on Man
- Montesquieu, Persian Letters
- Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews
- Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, Dictionary, Rasselas, The Lives of the Poets (esp. essays on Milton and Pope)
- David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, Essays Moral and Political
- Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile
- Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
- Adam Smith, The Theory of the Moral Sentiments
- Edward Gibbon, Autobiography
- James Boswell, Journal (esp. London Journal)
- Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Theory of Fictions
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Poetry and Truth
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
- William Wordsworth, Poems (esp. Lyrical Ballads, Lucy poems, sonnets; The Prelude)
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems (esp. “Kubla Khan”, Rime of the Ancient Mariner), Biographia Literaria
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Emma
- Stendhal, The Red and the Black, The Charterhouse of Parma, On Love
- Lord Byron, Don Juan
- Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism
- Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy
- Honoré de Balzac, Pere Goriot, Eugenie Grandet
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men, Essays, Journal
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
- John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, The Subjection of Women
- Charles Dickens, Works (esp. David Copperfield, Hard Times)
- Claude Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- George Eliot, Adam Bede, Middlemarch
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot
- Gustave Flauvert, Madame Bovary
- Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck
- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, What Is Art?, Twenty-three Tales
- Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
- William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Pragmatism, Essays in Radical Empiricism
- Henry James, The American, The Ambassadors
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Genealogy of Morals, The Will to Power, Beyond Good and Evil
- Jules Henri Poincare, Science, and Hypothesis, Science and Method
- George Bernard Shaw, Plays (and Prefaces) (esp. Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)
- Max Planck, Origin and Development of Quantum Theory, Where Is Science Going?, Scientific Autobiography
- Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
- John Dewey, Democracy and Education, Experience and Nature, Logic, the Theory of Inquiry
- Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, The Aims of Education and Other Essays, Adventures of Ideas
- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Skepticism and Animal Faith, Persons and Places
- Nikolai Lenin, The State and Revolution
- Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
- Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, The Analysis of Mind, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, Human Knowledge; Its Scope and Limits
- Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers
- Albert Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity, On the Method of Theoretical Physics
- James Joyce, “The Dead” in Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses
- Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, The Degrees of Knowledge, The Rights of Man and Natural Law, True Humanism
- Franz Kafka, The Trial, The Castle
- Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Civilization on Trial
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, No Exit, Being and Nothingness
- Alexsandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, Cancer Ward