Just Human #378

To start, I want to share this Arthur Schopenhauer quote with you.

He wrote this some 150 years ago.

You know, these little accounts that share quotes from different authors and philosophers and stuff, yeah, they're all botted accounts and, like, the same person probably runs a huge portion of them, but I appreciate them, and I actually like following them, and I don't really care that they're botted accounts because wisdom is wisdom, and insight is insight, and good literature and good thought is just that, and I appreciate it coming across my feed on any social media or anywhere else in life.

This is from Arthur Schopenhauer in Eth- Essays and Aphorisms, and he writes, "The art of not reading is a very important one.

It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the atten- attention of the general public at any particular time.

When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet or novel or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public." Then here's the part that I really wanna zero in on.

"A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones, for life is short." And I think that quote right there, "A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones, for life is short," is one worth sitting with because yeah, life is short, and the comp- the competition for our attention is more fierce than ever.

But much of what fills our screens now is emotional bait, it's bad ideas, it's misinformation and conspiracy nonsense and psychological warfare, and a large portion of all of that is monetized.

Now, in Schopenhauer's day, you didn't have all these TV screens and radio and all that kind of stuff, right? So him talking about reading is like that's how they communicated, was these pamphlets and books and, uh, different things that came around.

It would try and get people's attention, and word would spread.

It'd be communicated by mouth or by these pamphlets, and it would get a bunch of mu- it would get a bunch of attention with the, with the people.

And so that's why he s- focuses in on the art of not reading.

But I think that if he lived during our time, he would say the same thing, and he would say the art of not reading or not viewing Such material is very important.

Being selective and using your own discernment to avoid taking in things that are bad for you, that are junk, junk food for your brain, right? And there's been quite a bit of junk food for our brain that is monetized and comes at, at us, uh, wherever we look.