As a child, I loved reading nonfiction. Atlases, mathematics textbooks, and history books caught my fancy, while fantasy, literature, and other fiction bored me and failed to leave an impression. The former easily resonated with me—it was facts and statistics, sometimes stories, but they had a clearly mathematical component, and math is the language of the universe. As for the latter, I did not sympathize with the characters of a book, and I could see little reason for writing what wouldn’t be true, a confusing jumble of people in made-up space.

What I missed was that fiction has a raison d’être, and that it too can be analyzed strategically, despite the superficial emphasis on emotion. Indeed, plotting characters on a piece of paper, drawing relational diagrams, and understanding the inner motivations of them—in effect, converting them into numbers and graphs—was the surest mathematical way of understanding fiction and knowing which character does what. This procedure demystified fiction sufficiently for me to acknowledge its place in reading.

Now when I reexamine books, I do so less out of the nonfiction-vs-fiction framework, instead using the purely strategic one. After all, books, put simply, are a person’s teachings or accounts of events. We often lament the dearth and death of reading among the younger generations, who are apt to play video games or go on social media² these days. But then we should ask: What makes reading worthwhile? Why is it hailed as a cornerstone of human achievement and advancement? What’s its value?

I answer that reading’s value is primarily strategic: books grant us maturity and higher perspectives, clarity, and ultimately, inner strength and confidence.

We tend to behave as our environment does, and what we consciously absorb, we start to resemble³. Therefore, if we read books depicting great deeds, we prime ourselves to act in brave manners. Regarding maturity, there are many ways for us to grow up. With academics, we ascend in our knowledge of the world and its complexities. Guided by our parents, we start performing adult tasks and taking on responsibility. Books, in describing the scenarios of life, give us a better foothold on how events are, and how people behave. For example, by understanding how Talleyrand ensured that not all Napoleon’s enemies (i.e. the entire rest of Europe) ganged up on him at the same time⁴, we add another strategy into our arsenal—specifically, when faced with a diplomatic situation, which may be as simple as negotiating with a professor or student, we can now call upon the techniques we read about in a Talleyrand book. By reading about mathematics, we gain a mature perspective on the fundamental questions thereof, and as a natural consequence, we have a more encompassing view of mathematics. Such is the natural cascade of implication: maturity implies the creation of a higher perspective. In this sense, books are simply repositories of knowledge. The same way we eat food to download nutrients to our body and keep us healthy is the same way we read books to download knowledge to make us smarter and more capable.

If books are stored knowledge, as food is stored nutrients, then they will give us clarity of description. As a child, it was not easy to put in words what I thought or felt. There were always essences and themes of life which I felt vividly, but could not explain. Such thoughts were found in works of philosophy, which provided, at last, well-defined terminologies and explanations. By adopting these terminologies, and defining concepts clearly, just as mathematicians lay down formal definitions for phenomena, I could ascend to a higher philosophical plane⁵, because now I could express my thoughts and continue to the next step of synthesis and exploration. This is how we sublimate. One looks at the world today and recognizes that most non-technical aspects of our lives seem to be expressed informally at best, in social contexts, and oftentimes lacking conviction or substance. Philosophy solves this issue by providing clarity.

Combining the previous qualities books inspire, we gain companionship, as if we were walking with the legends of the past, imbued now with their qualities. Books tell us we are not alone, that our struggles—and greater ones—have been faced before, that we can succeed if we analyze the previous strivings. It breeds community, but more importantly, confidence and a fighting spirit. If we read about Carl Friedrich Gauss’s proof of the costructibility of the 17-gon using a compass and straightedge, what is to prevent us from doing the same and going further? If we read about Sun Tzu’s accounts of successful warfare, what is to prevent us from applying the same strategies in our own lives?⁶ It takes a certain foundation about history and past endeavors to become internally strong. And books provide that foundation.

Books are a great source of power, for within them lies transformation. We face a simple rectangular prism of paper and ink, but our minds are working in overdrive to analyze and interpret the contents within that book. When our lives lose meaning, as is a growing concern in general society, we do ourselves a favor to open up a book and start downloading knowledge. Our minds will look different, and with it, the world.

Footnotes

¹ Yes, this is once again another pun off “For the Beauty of the World”. I can’t seem to stop making puns off this great hymn!

² When I was a child, I played many great platformer games on Miniclip, and I do not regret Deep Freeze, Bearbarians, and Frost Bite. On the other hand, I had, and still have, zero social media.

³ Consciously, this is clearly true. As for the unconscious case, that’s another story.

⁴ They eventually did in the 7th Coalition, but not until after Napoleon had already dominated the continent for over a decade.

⁵ It goes without saying that I still have an immense amount of work to do here; I am nowhere near the top.

⁶ In a Christian undertone: If we read about Jesus’ dying for our sins in the Bible, what is to prevent us from carrying forth His message to the world and living in righteousness?