John Miedema

Reading as a Creative Act, Pt. 3

Why do we read? In the previous post I talked about the development of interiority as a product of creative reading. What follows here is about the discovery of others as a motive for creative reading.

We are creatures of appetite. It distinguishes us from the robots. We have many appetites, for food and sex, for friends and fulfillment. We are born hungry. It is first expressed as a physical hunger, but even before we can name it, it is also a psychological or spiritual hunger. Quickly we learn we cannot have all we want. Mother can’t provide it all the time, and others want it too. We delay gratification. We sublimate our urges. Substitution of one thing for another is the very root of thought and civilization. Reading substitutes text for reality. Reading is a substitute for gratification.

We are little things in a big world. We cannot walk all good paths. I select reading material from all over the map. Fiction and non-fiction; literary and genre; tweets, blogs, newspapers, and books; Dan Brown and Dickens; Harry Potter and Heidegger. Do I lack critical discernment? I don’t think so. My experience is limited, and I cannot experience everything, but I can take the shortcut of reading the experience of others. Reading is an accelerant of experience.

Life is too complex for one brain. When I am confused, it helps if someone has written about that experience. Reading shows us that we are not alone, even in our innermost thoughts. (Cue Elton John’s Sad Songs.) It is good to have companions on the road, if only in text.

In each of three answers, the discovery of others is a vital element. Reading has been called thinking with other minds, and it encourages me to think I can get some answers to the big, philosophical questions. Textbook philosophy is only a fraction of it. I mean philosophy in the personal, existential, spiritual, visceral sense. Life. Why? Why now? Who me? How come? What for? Life is often unyielding with answers to questions about meaning and purpose. It gives plenty of teasers but few satisfactory answers. Scientific inquiry may be a superior approach, but its answers may take more than my lifetime. Religious authority is insufficient without an inner experience to echo it. Reading is a conspiracy of minds toward satisfactory answers to the big questions within a single lifetime.

One of our oldest stories, that of Gilgamesh, tells of the discovery of “other”. Gilgamesh is a tyrant king who discovers a wild man, Enkidu, outside the city walls. Gilgamesh brings him into the city, and they become brothers, together more powerful and wonderful than before.

Series Navigation

«Creative Reading: The Art of SelfCreative Reading: The Art of Self, Take 2»