Why Books Won't Teach You Everything
Vložit
- čas přidán 9. 07. 2024
- Maybe reading isn't the end all be all to living a good life. How to balance reading and life and a travel story to Sydney.
Check out Hano's amazing channel for some more quirky insights: / hano8
My personal essays:
rcwaldun.com/blog
Instagram:
r.c.waldun...
My short story collection Passing Tales (For more travel and humorous stories):
rcwaldun.com/publication
Support this Project:
patreon.com/rcwaldun?fan_landing=true
When you read, you know.
When you experience, you understand.
oof
I agree 100%. You've got to balance between reading and living - reading is a part of living, of course, but sometimes you need to go out into the world and experience it.
When Oscar Wilde said-
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
RC, I used to be so much like you when i was your age. Im 26, so not too far removed. You remind me of myself because I also used to view all of my earthly experiences through the lense of 'intellectual understanding' & 'armchair philosophy' & I realized that when I have that filter on, I am missing the whole entire point of many aspects of life. These concepts are great for hindsight and to look at sociological data, but not so good in connecting to things on a human level. I've been waiting for you to drop a video like this. You're clearly growing up. The human experience is visceral and there is plenty of trauma happening all around all the time. I know i haven't been immune. I've been through painful shit that didn't feel any better when i tried to use philosophy as a vehicle to explain away my pain. Music & tears always helped much more. You may find comfort in the musings of long dead philosophers, but the human experience is primarily a sensual one; an intellectual one, second. I would argue the beautiful poetic realizations put forth by these writers came out of a sense of being compelled to express their own sensual experiences. Using concepts to attempt to express sensation. Intellectual concepts are a tool to help contextualize things in this world, but do little more for me at this point. They mostly bog down the human experience, in my opinion. Jung is now candy to me not gospel.
Absolutely incredibly put. "I would argue the beautiful poetic realizations put forth by these writers came out of a sense of being compelled to express their own sensual experiences." Exactly, Hell those writers and trying to replicate their experience through text meanwhile you could have one on your own.
No mount of pondering over art related to death actually prepared me for it. No amount of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Enter The Void and Trainspotting actually translated to much in seeing the reality of drugs (both the positives and negatives were just, not quite the same) .
The extent to which they are accurate, is the exact same extent to which they are inaccurate. Almost like the more you try to pin down an experience to its' fundamental truth, the further you get away from exactly that.
The more I connected with a character, the harder I disconnected when I grew even a few months older.
Truly crazy. and i love the ending of your comment and definitely applicable to me, because, god i wanted to "just wanna understand people so they are easier to deal with". hehe, boy was that naiive.
@@husgrnd2429 completely agree with everything here. The study of 'intellectualism' is a young man's trap, a sheltered man's comfort, an old man's pretention. I don't think it has many uses outside of being scholarly poetry. I have only ever watched RC's content, quietly waiting for him to come close to this realization. I hope to see him evolve.
@@willp2877 I sometimes think the true winners in art are the artists themselves in the long run since they partake in going through that journey of translating the visceral first hand experience to the second hand art form.
If it was a positive experience for the artist, they are to enjoy re-living that. if it was a negative experience, then they are to have the catharsis in a therapeutic way.
While we win a bit by enjoying the first bit of consumption but I found I quickly lose my own sense of identity.
I even thought I was superior to my colleagues my age since I was consuming "smarter" art with a "message". But as great as that is, no narrator is worth replacing your own inner voice, which can easily be squandered today.
@@husgrnd2429 I absolutely agree once again.
@@willp2877 Great talking with you, Will. I wish you well.
Complete the opposite case for me. Life "taught" me way too much in the first place. Now I can sit down and read a piece of literature and actually enjoy comparing reality with the ideal. It is very interesting indeed. I love your videos and scrapbook. It really does give me food for thought :)
been struggling with the same thing lately, I am starting to feel that in trying to read more and better I'm missing out on so many real-life experiences.
I have had trouble balancing reality and expectations of life. Sometimes, i truly believe, the characters promised in books are better friends than real people. I’m 46 years old and i can say that, in my experience, people i have met, potential friends or even old friends misplaced, have all been disappointing. Completely my problem. But i simply cannot connect with people. So i live in a headspace. And its just too late to keep trying to connect.
i'm going through the same thing. loneliness can get daunting at times, as comfortable as it may be
I've read a lot for years and years, never got a chance to experience life for well life. Next year I'll be moving out for uni and I'm low-key scared BUT *SO EXCITED.* All the best to me lmao
That's how I felt before uni - and trust me, the experiences you'll have will be worth so much. My reading since being at uni has gone down significantly, but I read for pleasure not for pressure now. And I spend time with my new friends too :)
@@cosmicdonkey3473 This makes me feel relieved (??) cause people usually go around saying uni is stressful and shit. I'm so glad you are enjoying it ♡
I say it'll be what you make of it. It could be entirely anticlimactic. Life is... normal, with little blips of memorable moments.
I particularly enjoyed the statement of how our theory should be adjusted according to our lives experiences. I think it’s an incredibly important thing to have our understanding be informed by reality, and extending a bit further to generalise, the conditions within which we operate.
I think philosophy often falls into the trap of attempting to make reality conform with theory instead of the other way around, and I think this is one of the primary ways in which people become skeptical of the contributions philosophy can have towards our society or just grow to completely disregard it. The fact that it feels like they are discussing and theorising about a world separate from our own truly makes philosophy seem unworthy of our attention.
applies to all things that u can pretty much consider as “readable” (twitter, facebook, hell even any piece of art like movies)
Well, All I can Robin,
Is that, Life certainly will Throw curve balls towards us.
Personally, before I was introduced to you back in year 10,
I never did much reading, nor did I think all that much.
I never really thanked you, for training me.
For teaching me, not just how to think, but how to take a particular thought, and evolve it into something greater.
There is a dark side, to every place which Men and Women roam.
For instance, Year 12, My mother passed away, and since then,
I've embraced my darker side,
Yet I've also walked back to the Light which dewlles within us all.
Thank you, for Caring enough to make a real difference to a lot of people, You're a shining beacon of hope and order, as well as, Attempting to establish you're own Normality to a world gone truly Mad.
Sincerely with Kind Regards;
William Quadara.
I'm moving to Melbourne and going to university in a few months after taking a gap year (yeah a few of my plans got messed up) and I can tell that after 2 years of absolute dullness, I'm going to grow so much as a person. I'm looking forward to it.
glad you made it back to the land of the living, my friend !
you two need to collab.
That hair is always lookin bomb
I think the lesson here is to scout for a good hotel far in advance.
Welcome to the world of travel 😉 I'm so happy you are experiencing these moments, Robin 🙏 Go out there and explore! Wait till you get to the Outback 😅
Cheers Jay. :) Can't wait to recount all the crazy tales eventually.
rich kid goes outside
Yes, it all comes down to balance. And inversely, I think life experience informs your reading. Because your experience will change the way you look at a piece of literature, it will take on different shades and colours depending on your background. But without experience, your look will end up a very cold and insensitive one, one that reduces the quality of your reading.
This video is a sign for me to finally get out of my house 😂
I can completely relate!!! I like the theories, but life is so difficult to put in a box, I can never say "I should do this", usually it depends.
You should have done your research on the internet.Just like that I found a two night stay in Sydney over the weekend for $193 with 8.5/10 rating.Never stay anywhere in Australia with a rating under 7/10.
I was needing this video
🖤🖤🖤
Christ. I didn't expect to hear Hano in this channel. He really produces superb content. Must check out!
I’m sure Oscar Wilde would approve.
Great video. I've spent a lot of time in King's Cross so it's so funny to hear you talk about it. It used to be so much worse than it is now.
its almost an insult to the author if you spend more time reading them than living. whats the point of learning their lessons if you won't use them?
Thank you
Your hair perfectly compliments the topic at hand. 🤘🏻😂
People read for different reasons....many people just read for entertainment not to gain anything to take with them in "real life".....It is important to experience the world around you but a lot of people do deal with so much anxiety and mental health issues that real life is very scary for them. Reading is a way of escape. My mother was blind and wheelchair bound and reading (audiobooks) was her saving grace. I agree that we should all experience things to enhance our life but reading too much is not a thing for me lol...Reading is my number one hobby and that will never change. I do understand where you are coming from.
A great example of theory or speculative thinking crashing into reality is being a teacher. I realized after my first day of teaching that 80% of my education classes could be trashed. The pedagogy I was taught did not adhere to the context of my students. #learningonthejob
Absolutely agreed. One of the reason is dynamic nature of present. Earlier people were not under morden rule of democracy, means they followed sovereign, but democracy made people themselves sovereign. Hence more latitude to explore and experience. Earlier rulers hamstrung their latitude of experience. Books and maxims were hence easy to apply then. Chaos doesn't have rule.
This is all true, but also true - you are smarter and far more intuitive than most. So all of your real-life experiences will deepen your studies and add to your intuitive knowing, but it's easy to see you're already much ahead of the curve when it comes to understanding human nature.
I love this young guy, he knows what he is saying in a deep way.
Living your life, experiencing new things and making connections with people will always be more important than reading. Reading just helps contextualize the complexities of life but if you don't live life well than that reading will be no good towards that end.
Yes, it’s like when you start a new job and they train you with lots of theory and then when you go and do the real job you find out that sometimes you can’t apply that theory. For example you may be understaff, or the politics on the environment makes it hard to apply the theory, or you have to leverage quality because of deadlines, or you get sick etc. All those things that you can’t control will always pop up years after year and usually you have to rely on instinct. I feel that what you learn on literature always help but in real life scenarios you can’t control so well all that theory. When you read about how Elon Musk founded SpaceX you can get some insights or frame in how to take decisions. But that does not mean that when you have to take a decision that will affect your life like “should I take this job offer?“ you’re going to be able to avoid being uncomfortable.
You really want to watch a film called Barfly. It's based on Charles Bukowski's life.
Fully understand you but sometimes big part of the society we live in use the books as a ticket to survive from the reality because the people are cruel or simply because something in our lives is not quite arranged as we want. I appreciate your videos and I'm sorry if my grammar is written incorrectly.
Yours Michelangela
I used to not read enough but thanks to you I'm finally learning how to read. So many people these days don't know how to read and they don't care. What type of books do you think are the most underrated?
5:13 it was probably hot in Australia
I heard a story related with knowledge and its practical application on life.story is about one who have sophisticated weapons of 1000 kinds,he was passing through a forest with full of wild animals,on the way,he met a wild animal,he dnt know how to use those weapons of different kinds on an attacking animal,similarity of this story explains reading knowledge and its practical application on accurate situation
💥 "You have lot of bullshit going on"💥 that got lmao
All depends on how fast you can read and how good your vocabulary comprehension is.
You don’t need to be afraid of strippers, buddy. They are very friendly.
totally agreed, theory is different from life.
Actual reality. Hehehe , ❤️
te falta calle /sar
You are not really explaining how this episode in the bad hotel contradicted a specific theoretical framework you were upholding before. Yes, life surprises you sometimes, but how is this connected?
As a fellow Yorkshire person to another, I advise you to chill out. Keep calm and carry on.
If you have been reading all your life; just keep reading until the end..
The same goes for writing
Are you a full-time writer?
This eye on the corner is haunting me.
I think even if I hide behind books for the rest of my life, I'm just good on the life experiences end. I've experienced quite enough. Abuse, neglect, isolation, death, loss, injuries, and now complex-PTSD where I have to survive my brain actively trying to kill me.
I did the same with movies and it has lead me nowhere.
At 55 I have lived quite a lot in my short time, if you have not tasted life how can you understand life in all it’s aspects? One thing,keep safe one eye open 👍
Have you ever listened to Terence Mckenna? What's your opinion on psychedelics?
I think if you really want to have the totality of human experience you should look into it
i hope you can get a better hotel next time
reading is so boring to me now. it used to be novel mainly because it was a difficult to understand what people were talking about. but im sick of reading other peoples thoughts and opinions when I could be creating something of my own. its too passive. but when its new you think people have some sort of knowledge that exceeds yours which is why its compelling. but after a while and once you get confident in your ability to think critically, you realize that you don't have to listen to or believe what anyone says no matter how well known or influential they are. nothing is set in stone and everything is subjective
Bro listen
U need to move to somewhere dangerous
Im sorry but that's just the way it helped me in shaping my perspective IMMEDIATELY
It taught me right off the bat what I do want and what I dont and that goes a long way
when it comes to writing, once u have A (no typo) perspective intact, then it's easier to map out a story u feel does u justice as well as ur audience
books r nice yes, but life itself just fills u with this energy that books cant even channel if they tried
lotta the time books r verbal masturbarion
#BoyleHeights
I think it is pretty arrogant to assume important pieces of knowledge and experiences are wrapped up nicely in literature. Why digest ideas in a single format? The best lesson'sI've learned were from a street vendor in Prague who was illiterate yet spoke four languages. I found this video so surface level but it worked. A gentle reminder for those maybe stuck with the idea of learning and consuming. Obviously, we know reading the physics of a back flip will not enable us to perform said backflip. I hope people take this as encouragement despite its simplicity. Actions can speak louder than words. Also, glad you were safe, seedy hotels in the wrong side of town can be the perfect mixture of trouble 😬
Nothing I have ever read was useful in real life to be completely honest...
Jordan Peterson says that If you remain a sheltered human being, inside an insulated existence, and you don't go out into the world and experience everything that the world has to offer, good, bad, terrible, scary, the list goes on and on. Get out of your shelter and get out into the world and live every experience you can, because until then you will never know what it is you can really handle. ( on You Tube - Jordan Peterson and Dennis Pager in Conversation)