People are like books. They’re full of both knowledge and opinion. Books are also like people. Also full of both knowledge and opinion. So how are they actually different, and how do you determine what knowledge sticks with you from them? How do you read a person like a book?
Reading a book, all the way through
If you’re looking for a book to read, let’s say a self help book or some other instructional book, you might go to Amazon or GoodReads to find the book you’re interested in to see what other people think about it. You’ll read the back of the book and summaries online to get an idea of what it’s going to be about. Then, all of that information may factor into whether or not you acquire that book (and then potentially read it).
You eventually get around to reading it and you realize that there’s a lot of information that you disagree with or aren’t certain about. You could put it down, leave a bad review, and never look at it again. Or, you could finish reading it and see if there’s anything that you can get out of the book, or see if there’s some twist to what they’re saying that makes it all make sense.
See, one of the issues that comes from the rapid nature of social media is we want an answer immediately and we want the point immediately. I think we’ve lost some of our patience when it comes to reading content. Instead of just listening to what other people are saying about a topic, look into it yourself! And don’t constrain yourself to sources that side with you, look at sources that disagree with your initial opinion! Pretend you’re investigating the other side and are going to be writing an article about them and you must provide sources.
The more you learn about both sides, the quicker you’ll be able to understand where a piece is going when it seems to start diverging from what you believe to be true. You don’t have to be able to understand their side to the point that you agree, but try to gain some understanding. This may feel frustrating, but it is vital to better understanding arguments. Plus, you’ll come better prepared for debates and may already know what the opposing side is going to say.
Reading a person, all the way through
Like I said earlier, social media has trained us to offer knee-jerk reactions: find some weak statement that was made at the beginning of a post (which usually isn’t what the author was emphasizing anyways), and write a rebuttal all about it. This doesn’t promote discussion at all. It can seem fun, and maybe you feel like you’re getting a quick win over the opposition, but the whole discussion is hollow.
You’ve got to get to know the person. And yes, that can take effort. Here’s what I recommend though.
You need to get an understanding of the context of what the person is saying. What do they already believe? What have they written about before?
Maybe they don’t seem smart, or they seem more focused on clicks than content. That doesn’t mean that you have to ignore them. In fact, this is giving you insight into what people on the other side might think. This is useful information, both because you may have a better understanding when talking to someone about this and because you’re widening your perspective on the issue.
You should try to make it a goal to learn something from everything you read, even if that means branching out to other pieces to support the first one. Not only will this likely help you become more sensitive to facts, but you’ll become a more knowledgeable person.
Avoid sensationalized, emotional pieces
Especially in politics, these types of pieces are notorious for being filled with nonsense. They can still contain good information, but you have to look for it. See what I wrote about in Two truths and a lie – Finding facts from within opinions and bias. Essentially, reading slowly is the only way to accurately get information out of these pieces.
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