“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.” – Francis Bacon
The guiding principle for reading – whether you expect to agree or disagree with a title – is the question, “Is this true?”. Books are valuable, not for being entirely right or wrong, but for expanding our knowledge and allow us to become “less wrong” in our thinking. We all have limitations and biases. Books offer a way to see beyond them and understand different perspectives in a logical way.
Polarizing books are uniquely suited to give us information, without the potential minefield of a heated conversation. Reading polarizing books allows a reader the opportunity – and advantage – of engaging with a set of arguments without being distracted by emotional digs, comments from others outside the conversation, or any other variety of flying herring. A book calls for the strongest and most persuasive arguments to be presented in a logical manner, offering evidence alongside potential consequences and addressing opposing arguments in good faith, all in a single body of work. A book can be an incredible resource of sound thinking and well-reasoned positions. Arguments should appeal to fact and logic, not only to emotion. (Helpfully, a book can also be picked up and set down at the reader’s discretion.) Ultimately, the aim of a book is to help the reader understand the topic, the conversation around that topic, and the author’s position on that topic.
The most crucial step in reading a book that conflicts with your views is understanding what the book says. You must be able to say, “ I understand the author’s argument,” before you can reasonably say you agree or disagree with it. This means you should be able to summarize the argument in your own words before ever embarking upon deciding whether you agree or disagree. Understanding books is not to criticize what you thought the book should say or looking for pieces to pull out to belittle the author. It is reflecting on what the author presented and how persuasively they did so. To understand a book requires working to understand the author’s line of thinking from premise to premise, accepting what is there, and holding judgment until you’ve taken in the entire argument.
One of the best ways to understand an author’s is by reading their work generously. This means to allow the best interpretation of the author’s words and the best application of their arguments to the problem being addressed. It also means taking into account the context and time they are speaking in. Anyone can point out inelegant wording, outdated customs, or construct a straw-man of the argument, but what does anyone gain from that? It’s only by engaging with the author’s arguments, and considering the strongest parts of those arguments that we broaden our understanding and can honestly and thoughtfully decide to agree or disagree.
While one doesn’t need to be a leader to benefit from reading, leaders certainly benefit from understanding the arguments and perspectives of their opponents. A prime example is how many people benefited from Winston Churchill reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf during WWII. From the very beginning of the book, Hitler makes no effort1 to conceal his hatred and intentions toward the Jewish people. From the first page, literally, his obsession is evident. Had more people read this particular disagreeable book when it was released, atrocities might well have been avoided. As it was, Churchill did actually read and take seriously the claims made therein. He understood Hitler’s objective, and this understanding enabled Churchill to recommend decisive and specific action. While Hitler is one of history’s outliers, the principle of listening to people -especially those in leadership and one finds offensive – with the purpose of understanding what they are proposing and taking those proposals seriously remains as applicable today as it ever was. Knowledge is potential power; it can be a great agent of change when combined with specific action.
Finally, let’s also remember that reading a book does not mean those ideas are automatically embodied by the reader, for better or for worse. Ideas can certainly influence a person’s thinking, but reading a book does not transform one into a practitioner of a book’s ideas, does not force anyone to act on the ideas in the book. If that were the case, we’d all be instant experts on a variety of topics! It may seem so obvious it doesn’t need to be said, but this error-prone thinking appears to be the guiding force behind many pushes to “protect” people from ideas.
A democratic society is composed of many diverse perspectives and opinions – and democracies find a path forward through debate and compromise. Healthy leadership would encourage reading a variety of opinions and perspectives – and this must include reading titles one expects to disagree with. However, we live in a time where one side of the political spectrum attempts to remove certain perspectives from bookshelves – while at the same time, the opposite side of the spectrum insists on trying to ‘protect’ people from certain ideas by, again, removing books. Both approaches are misguided. Ideas are not things to be ‘protected from’, but concepts to engage with and think through. One refutes a line of thinking by following the argument to its logical conclusion and demonstrating the argument to be ineffective, not by pretending the argument doesn’t exist. Refusing to hear or understand an argument does not make the argument untrue.
Reading polarizing viewpoints and arguments can be challenging, but clear, informed thinking is well worth the effort. Reading leads to understanding and understanding is the only way we possibly decide whether we agree with a position or not.
Photo by Paul Schafer on Unsplash
- I should note that the English translation available from 1933 toned down Hitler’s rhetoric to make his calls to action more palatable for a foreign audience. However, his hatred remains evident, and even that tamer version was helpful in eliciting a response. ↩︎
