Books Give You Invisible Lenses. The Ideas Don't Matter That Much

The ideas a book gives are good, but what is amazing it's how it invisibly changes how you see the world.

I propose that books have two functions.

1) They give you clean, legible, discrete ideas. (Which is awesome)

2) They give you an invisible framework/mental model to view the world through. (Which is very awesome)

When you read a summary of a book you get a Pareto understanding of it. With very little effort you gain about 50% of the usefulness of the book.

That’s fine. It’s a way of quickly uploading ideas into your mind. Even if it is a shallow version of the ideas.

But when you read a summary you completely miss the way reading the whole book invisibly changes the way you think. You miss out on having that mental model/ framework in your mind.

A book not only gives you new ideas, but also a new lens from which to view the world.

A book gives you discrete ideas you can then share but it also subtly changes your view of the world irrevocably. In ways we might not notice. It’s even scary in some ways.

Once you read the book and download its lens you cannot return it. You gain the ability to view the world in that way.

That is why reading books is so cool.

Maybe you can’t explicitly state the ideas of the books you’ve read but they live unconsciously in your brain and shape how you view the world.

This happens for nonfiction and fiction books alike.

If you read stories about fairy tales vs the stories of criminals your worldview will be very different. Even if you don’t remember the story.

You might not notice how reading a book changed your outlook on life. It’s a transparent process. A lens by definition is transparent so you rarely know you have it.

Books give you discrete ideas and transparent frameworks.

So next time you read the book enjoy the ideas but look out for the lens it’s giving you.

Have a wondrous day!