Reading Gymnastics

20 Mar 2019 at 20:10 // under Personal Books

I am currently reading a book and I suspect that my politics completely disagree with that of the author's. The author makes many remarks that I feel are pretty and unnecessary, but bluntly criticise some group of people.

I am fairly sure that there are some useful things that the author is trying to say. I want to learn and understand his ideas. But his regular frivolous comments make it difficult to read. Each time I want to stop or to tell them to grow up. But I still want to learn what they have to say.

So I am currently doing some mental gymnastics, trying to ignore the side comments and focus on the main ideas. If they have a point, then I should be willing and able to learn about it. It doesn't mean that I need to adopt their complete world view, but I should be able to adapt and adjust my own if required.

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