I am loving the new substack of Elif Shafak, who wrote a piece the other day called “My Wife Reads Fiction“.It begins with her frustration at how often she hears these words from “important men” who, in addition to their misogyny, dismiss the value of how fiction teaches us about human behaviour and so much more. She then goes on and brilliantly captures something I agree with fervently, that in order to develop any level of wisdom, one must be voraciously curious about learning in many forms.
The truth is, there are different forms of intelligence. Multiple paths to wisdom. And information is not the same thing as knowledge.
So, if you wish to develop greater intelligence, including emotional intelligence, I would listen to her words as she continues.
How can we remain humble learners? Students for life? How can we be good readers and good listeners simultaneously?
I believe our reading lists should be eclectic. Let’s read both fiction and nonfiction, across the board, from the East and the West, the North and the South. Novels. Poems. Oral storytelling. Cookbooks. Political philosophy. Cultural history. Everything and anything that speaks to our hearts in that moment in time is the right book for us to read. There are no hierarchies. Let’s deliberately keep our readings interdisciplinary. That’s what challenges the mind. Cognitive mobility. Let’s be intellectual nomads and refuse to settle down.
We cannot understand our complex world without connecting with its stories and silences. There are so many things that data alone will never reveal. And if you need any proof, suffice to consider modern history. How often did these ‘very clever and very important men’ get things awfully wrong?
We need to debunk this myth of fiction being for the tender-hearted. We have seen enough politicians talking about parts of the world they have visited maybe once or twice and reduced only to numbers and ‘facts’. Without understanding the literature of a culture you cannot possibly get to know that culture. Literature tells the underbelly, the invisible, the unheard.
We need leaders who are avid readers and humble learners. Politicians who sincerely read both prose and poetry, and not only of their own culture but also of others. Maybe then the world would be less messed up.
Oh, and last night I went to listen to Carlo Rovelli in conversation with Dara O’Briain, then this Friday I am off to Kilkenomics to listen to some of the most brilliant thinkers in Economics, with, as always, my particular interest and focus being on learning more and more about how and why humans behave in response to stimuli of all kinds. Oh, and the Guinness and the Craic are both deadly in Kilkenny!