Reading has been a lifelong habit for me. I read to learn, to challenge my beliefs, and for enjoyment. In 2021 I read 30 books across many genre including psychology, philosophy, science fiction, business, history and anthropology.
I enjoy long form reading in the format of books as a way of learning about new concepts or ideas in a way that promotes depth. In a world in which writing as been reduces to 160 characters, or to a square box on a meme, I think that reading books is a way to counteract the fast food reading diet that has been promoted by the proliferation of social media.
I also read to challenge my own beliefs. I do this by reading across a wide spectrum and across ideological and political divides. I think that people will naturally have different views on life and the world. The human propensity to seek coherent narratives of the world is explained by social scientist like Yong et al. (2020) who assert that our ability to rationalize underlies various shared beliefs, religions, norms and ideologies. As therapists we help clients to identify and challenge their maladaptive thoughts ( Sperry & Sperry, 2020). Erikson identified being subsumed by social subcultures as a maladaptive tendency which he labelled fanaticism (Boeree, 2006). In practice, political and religious ideologies create group affiliations (Yong et al., 2020) which often leave no room for tolerance, which is another component of Erikson’s definition of fanaticism. As I therapist, I want to avoid fanaticism and extreme beliefs. I think that a balanced diet of books from different perspectives, read and digested over long periods is a great way to innoculate myself against extremism.
I also read for enjoyment, as is attested to by my steady diet of science fiction novels from the likes of Isaac Asimov, James S.A. Corey, and Nnedi Okorafor. My favourite book of recent times is A Psalm For The Wild Built by Becky Chambers. It is an optimistic view of a future in which humans have learned to exist alongside nature and each other. It’s not a utopia, but there is harmony. One thing that stood out to me was that it took humanity giving up some beloved technology to get to this point. It bore echoes of the Robot novels by Asimov, which proposed that not all our technological inventions are good for us. While this novel features robots, they play an entirely different role (which I will not spoil). This was an uplifting read, and I think we can all use some positivity right now. When reality is stranger than fiction, it helps to be able to escape from reality for a while.
References
Yong, J. C., Li, N. P., & Kanazawa, S. (2020). Not so much rational but rationalizing: Humans evolved as coherence-seeking, fiction-making animals. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000674
Sperry, L. & Sperry, J. (2020). Case conceptualization: Mastering this competency with ease and confidence. Routledge. Boeree, C. G. (2006). Erik Erikson. Personality Theories. http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/erikson.html