Balancing our reading diets
Intro
I recently set out to learn what people want to read. The aim was to calibrate my own writing on politics in a way that engages a broader audience. But it quickly became apparent that a bigger question stood in front of me. One we all face daily and subconsciously. That is, how do we choose what we read?
The point kept being raised that people want to read what they agree with. And they won’t bother if they think the author is just going to point fingers at them.
There’s a lot of truth to this. Too much.
Democracies are too fragile and policy problems are too large to neglect the power of ideas that don’t fit our worldviews. I’m preaching to myself on this one too. So it’s worth briefly dissecting our goals in choosing what to read.
Goals from a reader’s perspective
We read to learn what we don’t know and to understand more deeply what we already know. This means consuming both information (e.g. news) and commentary.
Reading those with whom we agree is good. There’s no shame in it; it’s the protein of our reading diets. It helps us understand issues more profoundly and to better articulate ideas. Plus, we enjoy it the most, so we do it more, which keeps us engaged on the issues. Finally, the writers we like tend to apply the same set of principles to new topics, which helps us form opinions quickly on complex current events.
Reading those with whom we disagree is also good. It’s the vegetables of our diet that cleanse whatever rubbish is in our mental systems.
That’s because the goal in reading people we disagree with is not necessarily to change our minds but to stress test our ideas by comparing them to the counter-arguments. We may discover that we missed a critical part of the debate and our logic is flawed as a result and adjust our position. Or maybe it confirms our views.
In any case, challenging ourselves to be intellectually vulnerable is hard work. It’s not for the proud or stubborn either. Being open to criticism is a matter of integrity and character. If we want to be right, it’s important to acknowledge when we’re wrong and to concede there’s more to know than what’s currently stored in our brains.
Finally, reading people we disagree with is an act of civility. It validates others as worthy to be heard, even if we ultimately decide they are wrong. This creates empathy, which is a basic building block for productive democracy.
The fruit of a balanced political reading diet is a topic altogether different. Any topic, really. Something of relative importance but outside the traditional realm of political inside baseball that expands our schema to see the world more clearly. For me, it’s history. For others, it may be technology start-ups, astronomy, sports, management practices, etc.
Goals from a writer’s perspective
The ultimate aim of writing is persuasion. To persuade, commentary should be insightful, thought provoking and even convicting. Maybe not all at once, but that should be the flavor of the topics and angles that writers take.
The key for writers is to be intellectually honest arbiters of truth who value persuasion over provocation. Building trust in this department is, I suspect, what ultimately wins over audiences of all beliefs. It signals the sincere intentions to search for solutions rather than a defensive posture that parrots whatever defense necessary to be seen as ‘right’.
In order to persuade though, readers must hold a different or underdeveloped view from the author. So it’s up to readers to uphold their end of the bargain by reading their vegetables.
Conclusion
The act of reading across the political spectrum is a healthy admission of our lack of certainty and the need for more contextual understanding about the world we live in. It’s a quality worth striving for and demand from our political leaders. There’s nothing wrong with reading people we agree with so long as we remember there’s little value in echo chambers apart from the fleeting since of (false) intellectual security of untested ideas. After all, it’s a balanced diet of reading we’re after.