Being 'Well-Read' Isn't What You Think - Emerson On Self-Education

so as you progress through the Journey of self-education as you progress through this Jungle of reading interesting books educating yourself having fun in a process you're going to come across certain quotes that tend to stick with you certain quotes that are so good that we might as well Mis attributed to to some Grand literary figure so in this case the quote is pretty uh wellknown quote I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I've have eaten even so they have made me unquote one of these quotes hits upon such an essential

fact of education and human nature that it doesn't really matter where the quote is from but yet we have the silly uh Habit of attributing these big you know Grand sounding quotes to grandl looking people so in fact this quote was misattributed partly misattributed to Ralph wo Emerson and if you do a little bit of digging um Emerson actually didn't write this he didn't really write this quote down directly or he didn't write it down for batim in any one of his volumes it just kind of corresponded with his body of work um but the

first evidence of this quote was actually found in a Harvard University magazine in uh 1896 and was it was actually a part of this obituary about this guy by the name of William Henry furnus so William Henry furnus recounted this conversation with a certain Emerson uh who actually said the quote I cannot remember the books I've read more than the meals I've eaten but it could be the case that it was another Emerson by the name of GB Emerson so there were a lot of 's floating around and so William Henry furnus recounted his account

where a certain Emerson said to him or passed his quote to him and then I think from then on this is kind of like misattribute you know it was misattributed to Ralph wo Emerson because who's the first Emerson that we think of when we say Emerson rth wo Emerson the American transcendentalist Rider but anyway that was a weird um digression in history so um expect more of these weird rabbit holes that's kind of like what I do for a living in the academy which we find these really weird Corners to look down um to to

look down into and we really want to uh we really want to spend every penny we have to dig out of conclusions but anyway that was an example of what not to do when you're trying to embody the qualities of what Emerson's talking about here that was an example of you know remembering too much of what I've read or remembering too much of these um minute details that we missed a bigger picture so in this video I to sort of like um provoke some thoughts within all of you guys I want to open up to

a discussion for you guys to also to contribute in the comment section down below what does it mean to be well read enough so that you don't have to remember any of the books you've read but you actually kind of you've internalized them so much that it turns into a way of living or a way of perceiving life and a way of thinking so I've noticed that Within Myself I've inherited this really bad habit as I've um entered University and exit at University as I've completed my bachelor's and my honors degree and as I've sort

of uh went through the whole High School Gauntlet of memorizing information regurgitating uh auding information back on a test paper we've developed this really bad habit of viewing information acquisition or viewing the act of memorizing as a sign of in a sign of intelligence so there's a really stereotypical image of some literature student walking around with their L Chester feel under their arms and they're they're like quoting big lines from books you know this is such a stereotypical image that um you might see a lot of first year literature students do it but as you

ascend up the ranks as you get better at close reading as you get better at uh analyzing texts and as you get better at parsing through complex arguments you're actually going to find that you find yourself quoting you'll find yourself quoting a lot less people because what's happening in the process is that your own thinking will emerge as you're as you stand on the shoulders of giants as you read fine works of the past you start to develop a very unique perspective combined with your own life experience that's going to be so new that you

know these Giants in the past they can do nothing more than to support your argument and that's sort of the sweetness of developing your own ideas and that's sort of the first step of developing that elusive quality of being well read which is recognize that you're not in a business of of memorization you know you can commit poetry to memory there's no problem with that in fact you know committing poetry to memory is a really good Pastime like doing a cross crossword puzzle but if you view the entire project of reading if you if you

like every time you read a book if you obsessively want to memorize every little fact then I think you've got this whole thing ass backwards reading is about developing a way of looking at the world and in fact you'll experience this definitely when you encounter well red people it's not about they're going to throw some obscure title at you it's not about they can quote the most elaborate passage in Hamlet it's none of that stuff but they have a certain wisdom they have a certain intelligent uh intelligence about him they can approach problems from these

very novel and unexpected ways that leaves you intrigued wanting to hear more and they have a certain way of articulating themselves that is so compelling that whatever ever story they end up telling you end up staying for that story whereas certain people um when they tell a story the first thing you think about is like how the Howell do I make out how do how do I make an excuse to get out of here so that's the difference it's about developing a way of thinking that is quite compelling and it is also about being able

to articulate that thinking using uh language and using storytelling so those are kind of the two grand pillars that I think will over over time get developed no matter what you read no matter like um no matter the kind of genre you're reading I mean like if it's good information if it's deliberately mind expanding if it's sufficiently difficult and if it's rooted in um literature if it's rooted in like some some high quality uh history book if it's rooted in high quality non-fiction over time as you sip through these um dense webs of information these

two skills will simultaneously get simultaneously developed because it's both going to work on your language skills and work on the kind of um the way of thinking and um that's what I think those are the two components that I think really mix up that really elusive well- read quality and I think um over time you'll transcend this need to memorize things because in the age of AI and internet you can look up any quote you want you can find precisely where the quote is you can kind of find whatever whatever information you want but true

the the true quality of being well right is really about how this information or how this piece of information turns into knowledge and in turn Morse into a way of looking at the world and way of thinking to give you a compelling idea to talk about and to also give you the language to articulate that idea and that's what I think re really is the kind of um invisible force that shapes us as we read more it's not about accumulating uh I don't know a stack of clever ideas but it's about how do you put

that idea into compelling language how do you speak in a common tongue of every of to every man how do you inspire people with these ideas and how do you think enough about an idea that it becomes inspiring enough for you to share so those are the things that I think um are the two most important things when it comes down to being well read and before we go here and there's another example which is have you ever noticed so I recently met one of my friends who's um who's actually practicing as a doctor and

sometimes I'm very fascinated by these types of people which is like um you know what do you think about when you look at a piece of bone which to me it's like you know this bone just looks like the thing that my girlfriend's dog is chewing on right but the minute she perceives that bone you know just by feeling it just by judging the texture of it immediately she would have a label for immediately she's she won't know like which bone uh which part of the body this bone belongs to that's kind of like what

medical students do they commit years to memorizing details until it becomes a kind of instinct and then um vice versa uh another friend of mine asked me recently what do you think about when you're parsing literature what do you think about when you look at a a block of text and what do you think about when you read a very long kind of tretis on a certain philosophical topic and I sort of had the had the same reaction as that medical student or that doctor friend of mine which is um well we perceive text which

looks just like text to untrained eyes but we're able to find tone we're able to find um arguments we're able to find ways of articulating this tone we're able to impose theory on this piece of text we're able to situate the text in its historical context we're able to reading to uh the histo historical currents at the time the politics at the time so for us it is really kind of like doing anthropological work where it is really like taking a scalpel and dissecting the text into uh and for us to draw interesting conclusions from

so that act of making those finer distinctions so if a doctor is making finer distinctions about how to heal the human body the humanity Scholars we are making a finer distinctions on how to fix the human soul so it's a process where if a piece of literature is really compelling if a novel is really really mesmerizing to read we want to know what made it so mesmerizing and for us making that finer distinction is all about teasing out the things that make us truly human it's about teasing those things out and then we will broadcast

it using whatever method possible through a journal article through a video like this or through you know something that we write on the internet so that's really the kind of um the healing process that that goes on as you engage with the humanities over time you develop this this kind of this gaze where you're able to look at a block of text which used to look like just a normal block of text but all of a sudden you'll find traces of humanity in it you'll find traces of what makes us so selfish but at the

same time so selfless at the same time you find beautiful contradictions in how human beings act and you find these beautiful descriptions of inspiration descriptions of uh sadness descriptions of melancholy and descriptions of just subtly human emotions that you wouldn't normally pinpointing yourself but that finder that finer distinction is going to give you this brand new way of looking at the world because if you change yourself on a page you can read into Humanity in the same way when you turn your attention to the outside world and that's what's going to give you two of

those pillars one be able to develop really compelling ideas that you no longer rely on quotations from other people and two having the language enough to articulate what being human is all about because it's still a grand mystery to a lot of people it's still a grand mystery even to me and I feel like um my journey that's just um this this just the beginning of my journey and I'm going to spend more years exploring this um this this deep well of what it means to be a human being and I think that's that's how

I read the quote I cannot remember the books I've read anymore than the meals I've eaten even so they have made me because it's an invisible force that that you will gleam from being able to make finer distinctions not necessarily about memorizing quotes and dates but being able to develop that process of thinking is what will make you into a well- r person Robin wner here hope you guys I hope you guys have enjoyed this video and I'll see you in the next one take care and goodbye