Do you attempt to read things you're sure you'll hate, or things you know you'll disagree with, in order to better understand them? Do you find it shapes your understanding at all or that it just sets up and reinforces your current opinions? I'm a fan of cranks and manifestos, but I'm not exactly planning to start trying to tap the phoenix amerind bigfoot frequency or doing meth and trying to turn myself into a government owned troonputer. Reading some of the less objectionable feminist lit mostly just made me leas receptive to its ideas.
yes. if i dont come up with more refined reasons to both dislike what i dislike and like what i like, i lose the sense of progress i have for my mental life and i get depressed. things i disagree with prompt me to find new words to dislike them. very seldom do i actually change my mind about things because of a rational argument, usually life experience forces me to change my mind. know thy enemy as they say
>>25188575Yes, I've been reading some contemporary fiction lately, primarily by women, just to see how people think and what they value. I haven't liked what I read, but it's been interesting to critique. I think it's helping my own writing. My views have become more thoroughly entrenched by reading it so far, but I do try to empathize.
>>25188637anything good you've been reading? or at least interesting?
>>25188670It's a *very* recent development haha. Finished Wayward by Dana Spiotta yesterday. It was an interesting glimpse into how people similar to her and the demographic she writes for thinks, and she's quite competent and even occasionally great as a stylist. There were bits of characterization and plot that were quite compelling, but it was overall drowned out by unnatural plotting and digressions, unnuanced political commentary, like she was trying to reach a word count minimum. Much of it struck me as quite false and artificial.
>>25188575i skipped the chapter in trainspotting in which the narrator is a woman who won't stop interrupting herself with "no way!" and the like.
>>25188575When I was in college I read Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters for this reason. His arguments had what seemed like some obvious flaws to me but it was good to get a better idea of what Christians believe and why. I also started After Virtue but bounced off it.
>>25188575>Do you attempt to read things you're sure you'll hate, or things you know you'll disagree with, in order to better understand them?Yes, though I've found that having my beliefs confronted and misunderstandings corrected hasn't really changed the way I think as much as reading something without any preconceptions. I think it's important to live outside of an echo chamber. Currently I'm reading That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, a mean and sneering book I don't think I will change my mind on, and The Stripping of the Altars because I've always seen English Catholicism after Henry VIII as a fad imported from the continent and want to see if that belief bears out.
>>25188876I've found C.S. Lewis' "mere Christianity" a very personal faith that other Christians adopt parts of to suit themselves. I don't consider him a serious thinker even if he was a decent writer.
