Eric Wilson - 2013
Everyone knows (or at least – I hope – by now Brush Fire Forum has convinced you) that reading the classics is important, but have you ever asked why it is so important? Here I list out 5 reasons why reading books by dead guys – or any classic – is important:
Everyone knows (or at least – I hope – by now Brush Fire Forum has convinced you) that reading the classics is important, but have you ever asked why it is so important? Here I list out 5 reasons why reading books by dead guys – or any classic – is important:
1. Historical Perspective
It is difficult to achieve an accurate understanding of your own time and culture when you are living in the middle of it. Reading classics enables us to stand back and get a better perspective on the current situation. I had stated before (Rome is Burning – So Read a Book), “In our modern arrogance, we like to believe that the happenings in our lives and world today are unique… All of humanity’s big questions have been previously considered, weighed, and discussed by brilliant scholars who devoted their lives to thinking it all out – thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and numerous others.”
Many of the old books have had a profound influence on the thought of subsequent generations. It is fascinating to see how ideas infiltrate minds and then translate into opinions, laws, and actions throughout history. There is no better way to see the connections over time and catalysts of events today than having those historic references and reading the classics. Without reading the classics, you miss the underlying interplay between the psychological, sociological, and physical history of the world. Once someone records an idea in writing that is compelling enough to “take hold” of imaginations, it never goes away.
2. Find Yourself
In addition to gaining a better understanding of history, classics give you a better understanding of yourselves and help clarify one’s own beliefs. Classics make us realize that human nature several centuries ago is pretty much the same as human nature now. Do you wonder why people tend to look for scapegoats when things go wrong? Try reading the first 10 chapters of The City of God, in which St. Augustine discusses why the Romans blamed the Christians for the sack of Rome by the Visigoths. Do you think you are unique and cornered the market on dysfunctional families? Try reading Shakespeare’s King Lear or Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Reading helps you form a better you. Reading these classics does more than show you your situation through another’s eyes; it can help you grow as well. Through reading, you expose yourself to new things, to new information, to new means to solve a problem, to new ways to achieve anything. When you are reading, you are actually gaining the knowledge and experience of someone. It is like a mountain of gems for you to discover in books – of people's success, failures and advice. Life is too short for you to keep repeating the mistakes that have been made by others in the past. Why not learn from them instead of your own painful experiences?
3. Fresh Ideas
Is it not ironic that the best sources for new ideas are writers who have been dead for centuries? It never stops amazing me that I continue to derive some of my best ideas directly from the classics. I can be reading The Forgotten Man and find the parallels to what a group of us are experiencing today and find fresh ideas. When reading the classics, you can’t help but open up windows to insights and spark brush fires in your mind. Reading classics exposes you to a world of imagination – showing you nothing is impossible in this world. By reading, you are exploring a different angle to view something you have known, seeing how different action leads to different results. Books are beyond imagination. It is like a huge spider web where you keep linking to more and more – to things you knew and things you just learned – structuring a new solution and answers.
These are insights and ideas that are usually void in the content and collective of today. Not only are the classics a figurative and literal library of thought, but reading those sets you apart from the status quo that is reading from the same playbook today. It makes sense when you consider the competition. Everyone you know is reading the same popular blogs and bestselling books and watching the “lame stream” media. Observing the same ideas as everyone else nearly always leads to mediocrity and repetitive thinking. By looking to the classics for inspiration, you can enhance your creativity and find fresh subject matter.
4. True Diversity
As we just said – when you read the same blogs and watch the same shows as everyone else – guess what…you think like everyone else. Facebook becomes an echo chamber, and you become a parrot. Reading the classics exposes you to thoughts and experiences from a much broader collection of life. It gives you insights through assorted stations of time, social standing, economic environment, and province. How else and where else can you look into the mind of Galileo or peer into the perspectives of Herriot Ann Jacobs?
Learning is not just reading a single bit of information to be recited back again. Learning comes when you take in that unique piece of information and mix it around with all the other pieces to come up with something you did not know or think of before. This is what reading the classics gives you. It is not a single source but the variety of points of light that can only come together in your mind if you read different books from different eras, genres, and types. It is simple to say: the more you read, the more you understand.
5. Toolkit of Communicating
It is the one of the most important tools of communicating. Through reading, you understand more and thus you can communicate better with people. Through reading, you build a more solid bridge of communication. It is one of the most important tools we use every day to connect with each other.
Reading the classics is the easiest way to improve your writing. While reading, you unconsciously absorb the grammar and style of the author. Why not learn from the best? Great authors have a tendency to take over your mind. After reading, I have observed that my thoughts begin to mirror the writer’s style. This influence carries over to my writing – helping form clear, rhythmic sentences.
Reading the classics is also the easiest way to improve your public speaking. Becoming a better speaker accompanies becoming a better writer because both are aided by becoming a better thinker. Studying works of genius will teach you to express yourself with clarity and style. By improving your command of the English language, you will become more persuasive, sound more intelligent, and be able to communicate with precision and create the perception (and reality) of higher intelligence that will often give you an advantage in work and social situations.
6. (Bonus!) Entertainment
Reading great books is fun. Classics are classics for a reason. Classics have endured because of their entertainment value. They have survived being swallowed by clouds of obscurity through the ages because they are lasers of brilliance that are continually able to break through the darkness. Their words find relevance and strike familiar chords in our minds no matter the century. In most cases, they are not as boring as you may have thought (or remember from your school days). Trust my advice and pick one up and you will find the classics as readable as modern books and infinitely more stimulating.
