157: The Intellectual Life

This episode is brought to you by Canopy. Canopy.us backslashclassical. Hi, and welcome to Classical Stuff You Should Know. We're a podcast about old books, old art, old sculpture, old stuff, and we are here to help you engage in learning in a way that is not terrible.

My name is AJ Hanenburg, and I'm joined by my compatriot, Graham Donson, and Thomas Magby. Hi. And we are fresh off the heels of Easter, and what would you call that thing we do every week? Would that be engaging in the intellectual life?

Is that what you call it? Yeah, I mean, engaging pursuing the intellectual life. Maybe just exuding, like living in a game. I like that dwelling.

We are intellectual, in my word. Are we intellectuals? Will you tell us, Mr. Magby and AJ Sir Toulange?

I mean, you're a resident French pronunciation. So you tell me, is it not certainly an answer? Certainly. Yeah, but before.

I mean, if we got to keep up with our proper pronunciation. Proper pronunciation. Yeah. I did have a listener literally just send me an email with a link to the Montalou.

That's not how you say pronunciation. So thank you. You don't need to do that anymore. Any of you.

Out in the middle of the wind. Yeah. So I mean, for a while, in my series of episodes, we're on like, how to read history and how to understand history. This now makes part three of Thomas and Barris himself with French names.

So that's the actual underlying series that I'm going through right now. Our podcast license is probably going to be under review. That's exactly right. All the paperwork we did at the beginning of this thing.

I mean, you would think that anyone could apply that. Yeah. You could be just like recorded and funnening on the internet. I'm ready with the bribes again.

It's cool. Wait, what? Get all those apple bribes? OK, so Graham and AJ made reference to this.

But we will be talking about a book called The Intellectual Life Today. The author of this book is A.G. Sir Leange OP. So there are lots of letters attached to this individual's name.

So OP. Yes, indeed OP. He's so overpowered. He's going to get.

Overpowered French guys. He's going to get nerfed in the next patch. That means I assume this. Do you want to know what OP stands for?

It's the order of preachers. Yeah, exactly. And what does that mean? He's Dominican.

Dominican. The Dominicans get the comma OP at the end of their name. So it's order of preachers. Really?

That's cool. Oh, yeah. How long do you have to be a Dominican to get one of those? I just joined for the month.

You can't know it's called a long commitment. Yes. That's all the. Sir, what is that?

You're left to pay dues. No, no. You got to take about poverty. Yeah.

I've got that. You got to dedicate yourself to presumably some sort of literally the hours living in a convent. Just one of the comments. I'll say, oh, I knew.

That's all messed up. OK, so yeah. I didn't expect this to be upset on the Dominicans. Yeah, you have to make a what is the vow to?

Dominican order. I'm not going to find this in time. Anyway, yeah. If I were to worry about it, you don't have to satisfy my silly questions.

That's literally the whole reason the podcast exists. OK, so order of preachers Dominican. He has a Dominican. He and then AG's.

And you know what the AG stands for? No, gosh. No, I don't know. He has a number of years.

Is he some sort of like French? Is it? How false? Jean Aldous.

You are so close. French Civil Word? No, it's his first name. So that's why I said Al Fon.

Yeah, that is like the guy's name. No, it's the guy's name. No, it's a weirdo. Alex.

Alex what? Gerald. How did you know? Alex Gerald's surly on just the guy's name.

His name, this is again me just butchering the French language, Antonin Gilbert. Antonin Gilbert. AG is what he'll be called for the rest of this, because that is what he puts on the front of his book. So I'm going to go with that.

Anything that is slightly confusing, because I'm sure all of you are going to be looking up surly on, which you spell at the way it sounds. S-E-R-T-I-L-L-A-N-G-E-S. That's not, no, anyway. There's a T in there for some reason.

Anyway, he changed his name from A-D surly ons to A-G, surly ons. So there's your, in case you're confused by the surly onges as you look them up. OK, let us talk about this book. Graham, you have some background with this book.

What do you know about the intellectual life? You said when we first met each other, you're like, hey, you should read this book. I'm going to lend it to you for a brief spell. And then I kept it for three years.

Sorry about that. You did more than that. I also marked it on contributions. Well, I thought I'd gone through, because I specifically did it all in pencil.

So why make the marks? Well, I was going to go through it. Before I gave it back, I was going to type up some of them. Oh, you know, since I got it.

But did you do that? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I put them in there. I have a bunch of it in my commonplace book.

I thought your commonplace was a written book? Yeah, no, sorry. I didn't mean write them onto note cards. So yes, I do.

So I have a section of him in my commonplace book. So it's basically a book about, hey, you want to be a scholar, but don't want to make money. Here's how to do it. Is that your take away from this book?

No, it's a book on just the way of life and headspace one needs to pursue leisure, but in the classical sense of leisure of the intellectual life, of learning for the sake of learning. And parts of it are very practical. Like here's how you take notes, and here's how you plan your day. And other parts of it are more theoretical.

Yes. That's what I remember from it. AJ, is this a book that you have read before? No, I'm not interested in the electoral link.

I know that part's not true. But hearing that title, the intellectual life, how much do you want to vomit as we're going to do this episode? I don't know. It could be interesting.

I'm wondering how much it's about habits or what's the undertitled there? It says the methods. It's spirits, conditions, methods. Yeah, so it's just sort of like an overview.

It seems like an intellectual, smart guy, self-help book is what it seems like to me. Wow. That's actually literally the perfect way that you could have described this book. So OK, we'll see if we, sorry, Casper?

Was he being sarcastic? No, no, you're being sarcastic when you were saying, wow, that's a. No, that's actually the perfect spoken. No, no, I'm sorry.

I know that I just sounds sarcastic all the time, but no, in this instance, I was actually being genuine. Though I do have a section in my notes that are quotes that AJ will hate. So just to be clear. Awesome.

I'm so excited. I just want your appetite for these. He talked about the importance of sleep. And instead of just saying that sleep is important, can I just read you this quote?

I want to get the reaction to you. The attitude of the sleeper is no empty symbol. He lies nearer to Earth, as if he said to nature, take me back. Long enough that I have held out against your powers.

Standing, I have combated your determinism against the equalization of all forces, which is the law of this perishable Earth. I've set up the strong reaction of life. I now surrender until the moment comes to take up the struggle afresh. Were my eye rolls audible?

Could everyone in? You could have turned those down just a little bit. It's actually my. It's nicer in the French.

I do have a few moments where I wondered about that. In the translators note, Mary Ryan, who is the translator in her translators at the beginning, is like, there are so many phrases I just can't translate. And so she'll just have footnotes at the bottom. They're like, here's why I chose this.

But there's literally no way of translating this French expression. So maybe it's actually better than that. At some point, you just got to give in to sleep. That's the thing he's just standing and just let sweet, sweet, sleep overtake you.

I like it. I do. You do like it. I do.

Beautiful and poetic line. I'm not setting myself on the best foot with this. But yes, the main point of this book is what AJ just said, is that it's essentially a form of self-help feels like the wrong term for it, because it's like early 1900s is when this book comes out. So it's like pre-self-help is what I would say.

But the first diet book came out during the Civil War. So maybe it's in the self-help world. It is how, just to combine the two comments, it's how anyone can enter into the intellectual life and be a part of the intellectual life, in addition to an apology of why it's important to be a part of the intellectual life. So we'll try and cover a lot of the topics today, get into some of the practical parts, and then assess it, see what we think of sort of the own, which is his method is approached to all of these things.

Just as a starting place with this, this is a book I read a long time ago. So if it was when I first met Graham, it's before I started at Veritas, which would have been five years ago or whatever. This came from a 100% certain that it's referenced in a podcast interview with Father James Shawl on the Art of Mainliness. He talks about this book and praises it there.

I think it's recommended in probably all of Father Shawl's books. It's one that he highly recommends, one that was important to him for understanding how to pursue his intellectual journey. We've talked about Father Shawl before, but he was a Jesuit scholar, Jesuit priest, who died a few years ago at this point. But right around Easter, if I remember, it was the Wednesday of a holy week.

It might have been a year ago at this point, maybe two years ago. We've talked about him before, but you can find other episodes on him. But he was very influential for me in discovering great books of the Western world, this idea of classicism or reading the classic, reading important works. He's someone who is trying to make accessible that line of Western thought.

So anyway, that's where I found this book is through Father Shawl, and you can find that if you want to listen to another episode. It's the Art of Mainliness podcast. And if you search James Shawl, it'll pop up in there. But it's a very good episode.

All right. So starting off in this book, we're talking about the intellectual life. It's literally the title of this book. Who is an intellectual?

What qualifies a person to be an intellectual? PhD, obviously. Obviously, obviously. Yeah.

Working at a university. Working at a university. So actually, this is a guide to getting your dissertation finished in seven years. Sorry, I'm not just saying.

That's what I meant to say. That's what I actually let this book is about. It makes you more excited, less excited. Well, if I remember.

So this may not. I think this is answering the question. When he assumes, when he writes the book, he doesn't assume that the reader has a project, some sort of intellectual project. And that sort of is an assumption that he has.

It's like, OK, well, if you want to keep studying biology, you don't work as a, and this isn't your profession. Here's a way to do it. Which I thought was very charming, that he just sort of assumes that people have these private amateur passions that require intellectual pursuits. But is that maybe part of the answer is someone who is an amateur?

Amateur would be a part of it. I would say most of this book is written to amateurs. And well, maybe, I say this 1,000 times each of my episodes will get to that later, which means we never will. So yes, it's mostly for people who aren't teachers.

So kind of the opposite of our joke at the beginning. It's not the PhD already knows the stuff that they need to read. They already know the dissertation they're working on. This is for common people, this is for common men and women who want to educate themselves.

I guess anybody that said, looked at a book and said, man, I really want to read that book. Is that's like the first step of being intellectual. Like it's somebody that has even just the first little bit of some kind of project of the mind. Yes.

So that desire to start something, but not really knowing where to go with it. Yeah. That's where certainly I don't want to be most helpful. My book is literally falling apart from here.

I love this. AJ, when you hear this word intellectual, what comes to mind? Well, I was going to say Graham probably phrased it better than I possibly could. I was going to say it was someone who couldn't.

I doubt that. Let's be honest. I mean, he did OK. It's a simple way to put it is that they have a project.

I was going to say they are concerned with either the finer points of some subject or progress within that subject. So for scientists, he wants to find new things for maybe. Or test something out for somebody who's interested in literature. They want to further develop the thinking around a particular book or piece.

But all of that could easily be said is just a project. So I think you phrase it well. That's good. He will be reaching for a broad definition of an intellectual.

So not necessarily someone. He won't define it as strictly as we're saying about the project that the person is pursuing. He takes us a given that people, well, I guess maybe not as a given. Because he teaches that people need projects, but we'll get there.

These are the opening lines of the book. So when we speak of vocation, we refer to those who intend to make intellectual work their life, whether they are entirely free to give themselves up to study or whether through, though engaged in some calling, they hold happily in reserve as a supplement of their activity and as a reward, the development and deepening of their mind. So that phrase at the end, the development and deepening of their mind. So we take that as a definition of intellectual who qualifies as intellectual.

I mean, anybody. Anybody that's doing it. Anybody that's sort of not. Anybody who's in their free time is wanting to develop their mind on a subject as opposed to being entertained or amused in their free time.

Yes. Well, that's actually one of the points we'll cross through. And maybe we'll just jump there at that point. In previous times, we've talked about intellectual pursuits or, again, this phrase, the deepening of the mind as some kind of high goal for people to attain to, as a thing that we would recommend all people to go after.

And I think sometimes there's disagreement as to how high, what is the relative value of pursuing intellectual things in comparison to other goals that a person has. So maybe I'll phrase it this way. You want to go back. Is this different from like a hobby?

If you're like, OK, first of all, for example, we just moved on to the piece of land that my wife and I bought years ago. And now there's like a ton of landscaping that needs to get done. And so we've been spending all this time learning about the plants that grow in Texas and the kind of soil that we have and all that kind of stuff. Is that fall under the intellectual life as he defines it?

Because that seems a little bit, it's not like, I mean, it's definitely learning. You're definitely going to be doing, and if you're going back to the scientific method of it, we're going to be talking. There's going to be a lot of trial and error. There's going to be a lot of testing.

A lot of failure and note taking and thinking. Is that qualified as what he's talking about with intellectual life? Yes, I would say yes. And again, our habit is to jump around, which is what I like.

So the reason I would say yes ties in with this. Therefore, if you want to have a mind that is open clear, really strong, mistrust your specialty in the beginning. Lay your foundations according to the height that you aim to reach, broaden the opening of the excavation, according to the depth that has to reach. But still, you must understand that knowledge is neither.

No, no, I won't worry about that part. But so lay your foundation according to the height that you aim to reach. So you're in approaching gardening as your project. You could just read books on gardening Texas plants.

That's like a whole line of books that you could read and get information about. But didn't we watch this together? Did we watch the small farm? Yeah, the biggest little farm?

Bigest little farm? Yeah. It's a documentary about people in California who start a farm and they don't know what they're doing. They make lots of mistakes along the way.

Well, a lot of their early mistakes are they're not thinking critically enough about the whole ecosystem of the farm. They're only thinking about the problem in front of them. We actually get rid of these slugs. I don't know if they do this.

But we have lots of slugs. Let's put salt on the slugs. Well, if you put salt on the slugs, you're going to kill the ground. You can't grow any plants and then you have bigger problems.

What they had to learn is they essentially had to become students of the entire ecosystem of their farm. Well, that's what makes it an intellectual pursuit. It's that it's a broad knowledge that you're gaining for yourself with the high goal of a fully functioning farm. That's why I would put it under that category.

And maybe using the term intellectual in that broad of a category erases some of the problems we've had in the past. I don't know. Is this triggering any of your alarms of pretension or? No.

I don't think so. I understand that so if Graham wanted to be more than just a gardener, he wanted to be an intellectual about all of these things. He could either, to lay the foundation for the height he wanted to reach, instead of just reading about Texas plants, he'd be reading about plant biology, understanding photosynthesis, weighing all of that groundwork, knowing about plants in general, the different types. He would do scientific study leading all the way down to Texas plants.

And that would lead him to a greater height of understanding what's happening rather than just a practical understanding. So I think that would be a, depending on what you want, I would call me both intellectual as much as he's applying his mind to them. But one is a greater aim. Yeah.

But even that point is better because it's circular in a way of, you have what seems like a simple problem at the beginning. But there aren't as simple problems. And so to solve your very, which should be simple of what plant should I plant next, you have to learn about all of ecology that they're right. Yeah.

But I guess the topic at hand, or the subject at hand, which is gardening, does that play a role? Like for example, think of a high schooler who really loves playing some complex role playing game and plays a game forever. But then tries to figure out ways to like min-max his character, or tries to figure out ways that he can not break the game. But like, I don't know, I'm just thinking that there are things that you would look out at the service of and say, well, that does not lend itself to, or I would feel that Mr.

AG would be a little, would be a little swiffy if we were applying his methodology to something like a video game. But there are definitely an entire industry of people for whom that is what they do. And they are applying the methodology of the intellectual life to a game. Yeah.

Is he sports? I mean, I kind of gave up on video games a long time ago. So I'm not really up in how it's sort of developed. But so this is a subject matter.

Yes. I feel like it has to. Let's come back around that one and see if we can get answers as we go along. Just to tie up this point on the field of what to learn.

And again, where I think something like even calling it, gardening understates the work that you're doing for your land. It is the building of a productive farm. Is that the right term? But I mean, it's not just bad.

It's we want, it's not just like we're going to eat food. We just want the various types of shrubs and plants and flowers. And we want things to flower. And then when they die, something else is coming behind them, that's going to flower.

So you kind of have this, you don't have this season where everything's dead and you only have two weeks where everything looks good. Like you kind of want to have this sort of flow to it. Right. But it's that plus wanting to live alongside it.

Because if you only wanted the plants to live and you find you wouldn't move out there. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Again, it's more complicated problem than it looks like at first. So again, just to tie up on this, this is certainly not just making a broader point about how you pick what to study. That first point we just read was about a broad foundation is necessary to achieve any heights and a subject. But he'll still acknowledge the need for some type of specific knowledge.

But he's critical of specialists as you will see. Everyone in life has his work. He must apply himself to it courageously and leave to others what providence has reserved for others. We must keep from specialization as long as our aim is to become cultivated men.

So it must be generalist, right, to be cultivated. And as far as concerns those to whom these pages are addressed to superior men, but we must specialize anew when we aim at being men with a function and producing something useful. In other words, we must understand everything in order to succeed in doing some one thing. So it's this combination of broad knowledge, broad foundation, but to be useful to people.

We're going to need to learn deeply individual subjects. This is tying in with what Graham mentioned earlier. This book is mostly written for people who have jobs. It's not mostly written for like future monks or whatever.

And that's what he's trying to say to be useful in some capacity will require specialized knowledge, but to be a cultivated person, man or woman, to be a great man or woman intellectually requires a general knowledge. Is that a fair comment? Do you all agree with that? Yeah, I'm yeah, I'm vibing with most of that, except the part where he says he's superior.

Oh, no, no, he's not saying he is. He's saying that this is like a cultivated intellectual person is to be a superior one. I've always taken beef with that. Yeah, I mean, if why is it cool to be an intellectual any better than a man who serves his family works hard?

No, no, that's not. Do you know, I think the access is intellect. I don't know. Like if you have a 30 year old who's read a bunch of great books and a 30 year old who's played video games for those 30 years, like is there a difference between those two people?

You're taking superior in the language of like a value, like does the video being person have like less value than the greeting person? Well, I would maybe take constant video game playing as a lack of virtue, in which case there would be a problem. But so far as they both pursue the virtues, I don't see any extra virtue in someone who pursues the intellectual life versus someone who has, you know, charity fortitude wisdom and how they act. Right.

I think that's the that's the clutch right there is prudence prudence is where you might say that the intellectual life is superior, but I don't know that you have to be specializing in any one field or have a great wide reading to know how one should act in society. And so that's my problem is that and that's my problem with almost all philosophers is they say the greatest somebody can be as a philosopher and you know, I'm always taking issue with that. Correct. Yeah.

But he's not saying that again, this is written to people right well, we might get there later where he has a really touching section about, you know, fathers and mothers and like, you know, having children will eat into this time that you originally spent in intellectual pursuits, but that doesn't make it any less worthwhile in being having children is still better than like reading books to like go for it. So he's trying to balance me. Yeah. Having children reading books.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My one experience is what I mean, you got more you got more baby experience than we do this here.

I'll check back in there, teenager. Let me know. I like them quite a bit. I do too.

Yeah. All those were nice. Okay. So who counts as an intellectual that was our opening question?

The answer is anyone can and an intellectual is a person who is pursuing the growth of the intellect. That's probably the easiest way to put it. Fellas, the intellectual life is a worthy pursuit, but in the modern world, there are lots of distractions. I mean, the Internet is literally a machine that is dedicated to stealing our attention.

That's hard to keep that intellectual life. If you've got something that is constantly stealing your attention, there's been tons of apps that have come out that are that block websites or limit restriction websites, but this new app called Canopy, which is a sponsor for today's episode, is awesome. Not only can it block entire websites that are big time sucks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, but if you're a parent, it can also block explicit content for your student. If you're a school, it's something that can not only just block entire web pages, but it can block partial web pages.

So if there is a web page that has worthy content, but has questionable advertisers, can it be can block that stuff out? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's great.

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That's great. So canopy dot us that's canopy with a C dot us backslash classical for 20 days free and 20% off forever. I think one thing to add is before we move on is when you're talking about that general general knowledge and then also the specialized knowledge that it sounds like it's something that you choose, but he meant me reference to the fact that it was Providence. And I think that's definitely true is there are going to be you were going to be called to know to learn about something that you maybe didn't necessarily think you were going to have to.

Right? Like we all got ended up getting jobs teaching at a high school and therefore we need to think about childhood development using to think about like the growth of a soul through school and then also, which may not have been what we thought we were going to do with our lives. But here we are now we're learning about it or gardening. I never thought growing up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan that I had to learn about Texas plants.

But here I am. And so there's there's a certain sense that also where the where God's providence sort of plants you in life you kind of have to have a humility to say, okay, I guess I'm going to have to learn how I'm going to have to learn Texas plants, even though maybe like in my mind I would have wanted to grow, I don't know. One of those dahlias, dahlias don't grow in Texas very well, but you know they're very beautiful. So I know there's just this idea that it's not a complete choose your own adventure.

Like you have to kind of work with the context that you find yourself in. Yeah, I was flipping through to find this to act without throwing oneself into action is not the act of a man. And man cannot find real rest or instruction or training in it. Therefore, if they're not already any demands on you look look for causes which will inspire you because they're worthwhile.

And that's so there's something to the problem. This is what you just said problems present themselves and we either ignore them and in your case it would be well, I hope the dirt grows something or you throw yourself into the task of figuring out how to better the land around you. I was trying to there's another quote in here that's either actor act with full force or not at all, but like don't have heartedly do anything. That's another part of it.

So throw yourself into whatever is around you would be one of the lessons from this. Okay, so we are all of the place and this is good. So who counts as an intellectual anyone who wants to pursue the growth of the mind or the development and deepening of the mind is the phrase from the very beginning. So hearing that phrase the development and deepening of the mind, I would say that you two are people who have committed yourself to this again.

Three of us, Mary. Yes, but I'm flattering the two of you and feel weird flattering myself. So you are a bunch of nerds on a podcast about, you know, old nerds flattery. What's it called to me like give a compliment and then like immediately undercut it back into conflict?

Yeah, thank you. So you all bunch nerds. So when you all hear about this deepening of the mind, I view this as something you all have already committed yourself to. How long, I don't know, how do you go about that?

I mean, if that's too broad we'll get more specific, but how is this something that's a part of your day to day life? I go about it poorly, I think. What do you mean? I mean, I've bad habits and I'm currently trying to kill those, but the podcast is honestly one of the things that forces me to have good habits.

I have to read a book for the podcast. I have to research a piece of art. I have to read a few files for this. And man, I never would have done that just on my own for kicks.

So I also have a book club that I can usually keep up with the books, but occasionally I have to miss. I've had to miss this last one, but we're doing another book coming up. So that's another thing that forces me to learn and also teach in English and better classes. I have to learn about my craft.

So partially this is one of the ways that I do it. So you have something on the line. You have the two of us that you have to be embarrassed in front of. I've got deadlines and stakes.

That's a good point. I think it's completely inseparable from some sort of habit of reading. So for me personally, there needs to be protected time in the day that is dedicated to reading. Normally it's in the evening, but that needs to be time that is not unquestionable because there's definitely times where you don't do it.

But it needs to be seen as something that's built into the habit of life. So this is the first time it comes to mind. It's protected reading time. If you were to guess how much that time is, do you have any estimate?

It's probably at least maybe like 45 minutes a day, which isn't lots. And it's usually at the end of the day. And then before we were building the house, and that became big time. So basically for the past two years, my reading of life has been difficult.

But in years past it was, there could be entire sort of afternoons out of Saturday where I was reading for three hours. And then that became fodder, again fodder for the podcast or things that were brought into the classroom. So it's, yeah, you definitely need to have it be a protected time in your life and your day. Yes.

That's one of the main points in here is that the time needs to be set aside. So there's the amount of time itself, but then also that time needs to be treated. You know, he'll use wanted language with it, but it's wholly at sacred. It's whatever, set apart and needs to be guarded.

That's the language you're using also Graham. So you have to be really careful with that time because if you're not careful with that time, people will take from it, right? And you won't be able to pursue the things that you care about and want to go after. His recommendation for an amount of time, are you ready for this?

Two hours a day. Two hours a day dedicated to the development and deepening of the mind. What do you think about that length of time? It makes sense.

I feel sort of as teachers, so for example on Wednesday and Fridays, I've got six hours of class where I'm teaching. But a lot of that time, if it's a specific kind of class wherein there's going to be conversation, is not time that, like, it's also time that sort of feeds into that. So there, every once in a while there'll be things that a student says they don't even realize it, but it's putting together some pieces of something that you've been thinking about before. And so you jot something down and all of a sudden you've got the next little piece to whatever you've been turning over in your mind.

So the job definitely, I think, feeds into that as well. So that's helpful. That's a good thing. If I was, you know, like, Lane Bricks all day, or I used to work in a library, when I was shelving books all day, you had less opportunity to do that.

But you still find things. So it's like you're shelving books and you read the titles and you read the spines and you're like, okay, that's interesting. I've never heard of this thing before. You flip the table of contents and then you're like, I should come back to this.

So I think it's two hours seems like a lot of where it's just sitting down at my desk doing X, but if you kind of have your antenna up for it all the time, podcasts in the car, conversations with people. Yeah, I was even at a brunch for Easter yesterday and the guy who was hosting the brunch had a giant bookcase. And while there was a delay in the conversation and he went to make eggs or whatever, I was left alone in the room and I just spent maybe 15 minutes just looking at all the books in the bookcase. And so then you're like, oh, this looks really interesting.

This is a topic I've never thought of. I would want to read that book. That's how I get to know people that I've just met. I feel like you learn a lot about a person, look at their books.

So I think you just need to have your antenna up about it for the whole time or just feel like it's always a program that's running. So you're always looking, yes, I think that's really helpful. So when I hear two hours, I'm thinking a two hour block. It takes literally two hours and I'm focused during those two hours and I don't think that would ever happen.

He certainly owns a lot of the speak really highly of doing this work in the morning. Well, maybe that's the point to say, it's never going to happen. Good luck, buddy. Which is probably more on me than it is anything else.

Maybe like one blessed summer day when all the stars align and Swool is off for the summer. But most every day it's not waking up early enough to get fit in two hours and then go to work. I don't know. Maybe that's what got me coffee for.

It just seems like I go really poorly. I do think that I've read this before and just because it's online, I assume it's true that the average person now reads more words a day than ever before in history. So long periods of history, most people couldn't read in the first place. But then also books were rare for a while.

Anyway, we're surrounded by words all the time. But they're not books. They're not like great material that we're exposing ourselves to. I think your example of podcasts is spot on.

Whatever information that in 1934 or whenever the first version of this book came out. Certainly on Twitter, it's been focused on one book. We're experiencing that information diffused throughout the day instead of in one two hour block of time. So it's a 10 minute chuckle podcast here.

It's a couple of tweets that are really fascinating. It's like collecting those things throughout the day. I think that amount of time would be more than two hours. If you think about it that way.

But as some commenters have pointed out, there's no substitute for actually reading a book. And listening to a podcast is always a derivative of that. So even this podcast is a derivative of going and picking up this book and reading it. And it's a dense book.

Yeah, like a lot of modern reading is derivative. Where instead of reading the primary source, you're reading a codification of six different primary sources that is its own. Well, there's a lot of fear, right? People saying, I really want to get into Plato.

What's a good guide for getting into Plato? And it's like, you actually can do it. It's not hard. It's not as an easier one.

There's an easier one. But there's just a fear that I don't have what it takes. I need someone to take me by the hand to get into it. That's why I just get the norm of criticals, baby.

Because they could be the annotations throughout. Yeah, the extra little help that you need. And then if you're confused, there's always introduction. Criticism at the end, an explanation, essays.

I find that they're super helpful. You are probably better people than I. But I remember this is in high school going through Shakespeare. And having enough trouble with the language that I wanted to do.

What's the one that's the future Shakespeare? Yeah, yeah. So that would be anyway. I think it does side by side, right?

It has the no fear translation on one side and the original on the other. So I should have been able to read Shakespeare on my own. But instead I wanted to, what's the polite term for it? It's just bad, isn't it?

I mean, it's translated. I think our students will talk about it. It's translated Shakespeare from English to English. So I just want to identify.

And maybe that's a part of that intellectual growth being dispersed throughout the day. It does feel harder to sit down and actually focus for, you know, don't call it two hours. Call it one hour. Like to actually sit down and go through a difficult book is really hard.

And to avoid the temptation to flip up your phone or like take an offer up into something entertaining. It's just something that's like genuinely difficult to do. I think it's just cultivating that. I remember when I was in high school reading Shakespeare and talking about it in class.

And you read it and you don't understand it and teach with summarizing it. Okay, I kind of get it now. But just distinctly that feeling of there's lots here that I know is going over my head. Like just knowing that you weren't getting it and being good and being comfortable with that.

How did that feeling last week? I was not new to me. But I remember so and then a really big switch was flipped. When I was in first year undergrad, I was in a philosophy survey course.

And we had our first tutorial where we sat around and I was sitting around with a bunch of these students and they were all using words. I didn't know what they meant. Like ontology and epistemology. And I was like, I don't even know what those words mean.

And I was sort of like not despair about it. But I was kind of, I realized that there was two paths. One where I could fake it and pretend like I knew everything. And the other one was I had to go and put in some work.

And I remember talking about two hours a day at the end of class going to the library at Victoria College on the University of Toronto campus and sitting in that library for, it must have been four hours at the end of my class before I took the subway home multiple days for the first month of school. And just slowly reading whatever philosopher we were reading. And any word I didn't understand looking it up and writing it down. And it wasn't until I did that.

Then I owned it. Then it was like mine and it was territory that I had won as opposed to mimicking other people's, the way that they talked in tutorials. And that was a really big lesson for me. It was one, I can do it under my own power.

Two, there's no substitute for like sitting down and going and sort of feasting a linte, right? Doing the long way properly. And three, when you had it, it was yours forever. Like it was, and you never felt like you were going to be this big faker that was going to get called out for not knowing something.

Because if you didn't know it, you honestly didn't know it as opposed to pretending like you knew it. If you were just sort of copying how the smart kids in class talked. So that was, and I think that's kind of what he's getting at too, is you kind of have to put in that legitimate time. And there's always the danger of faking it that someone in there knows you're faking it or being found out.

Like, oh yeah, the ontological study of dogs and stuff. That being super embarrassed in front of everyone. Yeah, like using phrases like bottles of the mind. And we got a curve of that problem.

This thing you've heard before? I've corrected these in paper. Oh, and paper is wonderful. So, yes.

But how long did it take you to get up to speed? Would you say you were reading? Yeah, I think that was the first year survey course and I think it was Play-Doh at the time. Or maybe it was Aristotle.

Yeah, I mean, it took a long time before I realized I could sit with a page. Because we would have reading for tutorial and you had to come and be able to talk about it. And it probably took an entire semester before I even felt like I could manage a chunk of the reading. This is certainly not reflecting on all of theology.

So here's your fun quote for the day among all these other quotes. It is not so difficult as people think to grasp the science of theology. Nor is it a very long study to reach the degree of acquaintance with it that we have in view. It would be a different matter to take it up as a special take, which is true.

If you devote four hours a week to it for the five or six years needed to form the mind, that will be quite enough. Afterwards, you will only have to keep up with what you know. So four hours a week, five or six years would be enough. Do you want to guess?

Graham, do you remember how he defines knowledge of theology? It's a very fundamental thing. Is he like, you've read all the coin? Yes, it's actually that.

It's for the suma. It's very funny. It's a section in here about, it's called the perfect... Tomism, the ideal framework for knowledge.

So yes, so five or six years, four hours a week is enough to get up to speed and intelligent. I don't know what the word sufficiently cultivated to have discussions on religion would take only four hours a week. And the same with yours, you put more time into it. It was a shorter number of five months instead of five years.

But I had that I was in the environment where that can happen. And there's probably a foundation that you still have to this day. Yeah. And it was less like the actual thing that I learned and more just the realization that it's achievable.

You just got to break through it and you just got to stick with it. I find that that's sometimes an ongoing process. I've known in the past what ontology and epistemology mean. But I looked him up just again just now just to make sure that I was using the word.

And that's what he's saying, right? You get to the point where then all you're doing is sort of a maintaining. Yeah. And there's also there's definitely been books I've read that I've entirely forgotten and have to go back and sort of review.

And so I feel yeah it's a continual process of keeping up with you. Now you're making me question it. So ontology is like the study of being an epistemology is how do you know stuff? Phew.

And that's you know I just showed you all earlier that you know it's been flipped through enough that pages are falling out of it. It's one that I had to stop underlining things because I was underlining so much of the book. It was just losing it's like it didn't mean anything to underline anymore. And so I started flagging things this most recent time through but it's you know I still overwhelmed with flags.

But there were parts of this book that I was re-remembering as I went through it. Right. The things that I'd forgotten that I'd read in the book. And so and that's how most things that you read you will forget right.

That's the way that's not a bad thing necessarily. Maybe the goal is to capture the things that matter from the books that you read. Well nothing so you know Blinkist. Yes.

So that dressing bonkers Blinkist is one of those like we don't read a book we'll just listen to us in 15 minutes. You can either do audio or you can read it in the whole shake is that it's 10 to 15 minutes in place of a book. So let's think of this. So there's that as a paradigm.

Why these people write the books in the first place. So I'm going to have the opposite problem you have. So there's that as like as one way of like engaging with materials. And then there's the other side of it which is in the Middle Ages there were people for whom they had maybe three books and they spent their entire lives like living in those books.

And growing into those books and having those books grow into them and being this you know this rich as insofar as the book was worthy of that kind of devotion. And so if you sort of well we live in an age where we don't just have one book. We have but we also have we also don't want to be like I don't think we just want to be consumers of like bite sized content. Graham, before we go any further I want to thank our Patreon sponsors for making this episode possible.

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Well even as I said at least summarizing an hour. So now that I think there's like there's probably like business management books that can be summarized in 15 minutes. And that's what I was going to say my problem is the opposite where those books shouldn't be published in the first place. Right.

There are many of them are vanity projects or the people who are publishing them or they are a way of it's consultants who want to add to their appeals or publish a book right. You get to put comma author after your name. Yeah yeah okay for a point. So again to say my problems on the opposite side I was listening to a David Allen interview he's the guy who invented or founded whatever getting things done GTD he was saying that three business books are published every day well I don't think any of them are worth reading right any of the thousand books and I don't know when this was this could have been an old interview but.

That's the same. Yeah that's craziness. Yeah but none of those books probably none of those books are worth reading so you're not missing out or maybe one is you got to read all of them. I know which one is just a time with this thought of we'll forget most of the things that we read as a result of that we need to capture what's important about the books that we read.

This also ties in with the point from before about the intellectual deepening will happen at different points throughout the day it's not only when reading that's probably a fair thing to say right conversation is an important way of gaining knowledge just being out on walks with another way of getting important knowledge. Have it in a notebook or a box of slips of paper make a note without waking he's talking about this in the context of you should have a notebook next to your bed so that you don't have to like wake up in the middle of the night you just like write your note and then go back to make it up without waking up to fully without turning on the light if possible then fall back into the shadows to get the thought thus off your mind will perhaps help you sleep instead of disturbing it so keep a notebook with you at all times so that you can capture those ideas as you go even at night right there's an intellectual deepening happening there. Okay so where have we gotten so far we've said that anyone can be an intellectual it's whether you are pursuing that deepening of the mind or not the amount of time that these intellectual pursuits take is two hours a day is what certainly not just recommending I think a reasonable way of modernizing that is to say it's not just two hours of focus time but that you should be collecting whatever is interesting to you throughout the day which could come from conversation it could come from online right I don't I have a whole like list of tweets that I think are fascinating that I've screen shot it so I think that counts as things that I'm collecting throughout the day. I mean we're entering in a really interesting time with the growth of sub-stack and now actually people who are who have really worthwhile things to say are really being able to leverage that without having to go through a corporation or some sort of like editorial not not to rag on editorial boards but like you don't just have to go and find the Atlantic to go find read someone who has a really good take on a current event or whatever you just but the trouble is you need to sift and we need to find maybe but as long as you it requires you trust the person who you're following on sub-stack and for as long as they're interesting you can follow them right and then abandon them when they're not interested.

What is this sub-stack? Oh it's a it's a subscription site where you can subscribe to different thinkers different writers that you find interesting. It's essentially just like creating a blogging website but they integrate it you know it makes it really easy to monetize it so that's how it's sort of grown but it's and it's not just like people talking about politics or current events. I'm sure there are but I found ones where there's one guy and he lives in rural New Hampshire and he tries to tell little like folk fables like the kinds of things he was like a stops fables but he's writing his own and he is an engineer like a software engineer but he lives in rural New Hampshire and he's every he just writes these little folk fables and they're absolutely delightful you know and how he's able to money doing it.

So there's it's kind of this thing that's happening and growing and yeah anyway yeah and even when people talk about their other websites you can go through to do that but sub-stacks probably the main one right now. Sure but to your point saying that like yes we don't need to dog on the internet like there it is there are good things that you can find on there even if I think this with like people complain about their Twitter time it's called a timeline called Twitter feed you can cultivate that right I'm sure we've referenced this before but AJ what does your Instagram feed look like I've gotten off Instagram I do have Reddit but your Instagram feed was like Kevin's fail blog and the onion and yes it's like battle on B so it was all it was all like non-anxious inducing I'm following individual person that we feel bad about myself it was just people being bad at stuff and cats mostly which is honestly delightful. I've thought about this of you know having different Twitter accounts that are you know when I was just one of the ways I'm in the laugh here's my meme account when I just want to like read about finance here's the finance one so there are ways to you know the problem is probably rarely actually with Twitter or Instagram it's with who you choose to follow in the first place. Yes yeah your gates and walls aren't all that calibrated.

Yes but you can put them up for sure in their ways to do it. Okay just in line with this idea of the time that is set aside for this these intellectual pursuits he I'll read this I don't know if I call it a story but what I think this is the situation for most people of what they're giving up for that time would look something like this but look at these serious people called workers, businessmen, industrialists, public officials, big merchants I speak of them in the mass. When evening comes they lay down the reins and throw off thought giving their minds up to the dissipation which is supposed to refresh them dining, smoking, playing cards, talking noisily, frequenting the theaters or the music halls, eating at the cinema and going to bed with minds relaxed. Maybe you can tell from this that it's written in the 1930s but you know what else would you add to this list?

How do people relax at the end of the day? Yeah any like Netflix yeah wouldn't have to do the TV. My dad sleeps in his chair and I don't know if my mom listens to music. Yeah maybe we'd add more to that list.

Yes indeed relaxed but like a violin with all its strings completely slackened. What a labor next day to tune them all up again. I know industrialists who find the relaxation in reading a montane it has a longer list of authors here. Deep in a comfortable armchair well lit from behind beside the fire their family around them quiet or in the buzz of pleasant activity they live a while after entoiled all day.

This is their moment. This is the moment of the man when the specialist has done facing up with head and heart to innumerable difficulties when he goes on from there. But that's that's as clear as you can get that the point of this book isn't just for monks in a monastery to read more books that this is for anyone at the end of their long day to find intellectual pursuits that are relaxing in a way that isn't just for the it's not only for the sake of developing the mind it's to prepare yourself for the next day of work as well right it's there's something to it's like a mental fitness of some kind that you're prepared for the next day as opposed to you know what you would really rather do is slack off in experience entertainment that it's a relaxing type of work that you're doing. I guess it's one way to put that.

Okay that is. We covered everything on this one. I think we got through all the big ones. Anyone can be an intellectual that requires a commitment of time that seeking broad base of knowledge is a great way to go and that that broad base prepares you for the heights of knowledge.

Some of this comes from I had originally wanted to do I think I might have mentioned this to you all that I was going to do an episode on Euclid on mathematics but I actually got the wrong copy of Great Books of the Western World from the library because I'm dumb head. There's this story about in the 1990 version of Great Books of the Western World they took out a number of the scientific and mathematical works that were in the 1954 version and the reasoning for that was that they were deemed too complicated for the common reader. That's one of those insulting things to me to pretend that math is for only a certain kind of human. It was probably I haven't read it so maybe it was actually super complicated but it was something about it.