How To Read A Book: Reading Club

An introduction by Benjamin Lupton, founder of Bevry

The most important book that I have ever read, and my uttermost recommendation to others, is the work How To A Read A Book by Mortimer Adler, in it he teaches how to progress from reading for entertainment (the most basic reading level), to reading for understanding (to become equal to the author), to reading for original research (syntopical reading).

Included is a reading list of 150 works (some containing multiple books) that became the substrate of ancient and modern civilisation. The reading list is chronological, following an eternal conversation over three thousand years, where each philosopher studies the prior works, grapples with the solved and unsolved dilemmas, to offer solutions upon the students yet to born to continue the tradition. Each work is a shoulder of a giant upon which the our shared tree of humanity stands today.

Consider inspiration, it is to be inspired — which root comes from spirit and spire — which is to have an uplifting connection with the forces of creation and renewal. When we are dispirited, or lacking of spirit, our spire (our connection to the gods - the supreme forces of the world) have become weak.

Consider mankind, or human, or “hey guys” — why is it that the masculine pronouns are gender-neutral in many languages except for contemporary American English? A female can assume all functions of a male, yet a male can do all functions of female except for birthing; gender from behaviour to conception has emerged from real sexual constraint and distinction; that woman is a superset of man, that all women can function as any man, but any man cannot function as any woman, as woman contains more than man: the ability to birth and nurse a child.

Consider humanity, why does it evoke such reverie? Why are we honoured (or ashamed) to be called human based on our own judgements of ourself and society? What separates us mythically from non-human animals, from plants, from earth, from nature? What unites all men (be it man or woman, master or slave, parent or child)? What unites all life?

Consider the difference between what is logical, reasonable, rational? When and where, and by who, did these distinctions evolve?

Such understandings are not novel, nor are they antiquated. They may be challenging, especially to contemporary overlays of reality, however, whether one individually or socially conceives god or gender, does not detract from such insights, they only add to them; and to survive they must become supreme, not just wished.

For instance, the first work, Illiad by Homer, challenges us to consider how much of our lives are our own? The second work, Odyssey by Homer, challenges us to consider what home is worth returning to? The third work, the Old Testament, challenges us to consider if civics could be supreme? Each work challenges us in some way, as it did the original author aeons ago. Civilisation needs not be an amorphous concept enacted ethereally, but can transform into a concrete realisation of the best understandings we have of how to scale humanity successfully, and civility can cease being wishful and contemptful and can become as compassionate and humble as maturation.

This reading club is designed to offer each of us, around the world, without the need to wait or to pay, the democratising ability to integrate within ourselves eternal wisdom, and partake in the duty of a becoming a mature independent agent, an adult, in our lives, our communities, and our societies.

Let us march forward, not in err nor in haste, but upon the shoulders of giants, to whom we owe the developmental freedom to comprehend this.

This is a WIP, if interested email b@lupton.cc

The Reading List

The Reading List

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Notes

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