Starting from kinder garden people are told that learning to read is one of the most important skills you can have. I do agree. Reading - and writing - are advanced forms of thinking, with which you can make sense of your world, organise yourself and solve very complex problems.
But, I have a long-standing pain. I haven’t really seen proper explanations about what it means to really know how to read. In this blogpost, I will look a bit deeper into the idea of literacy. I’ll mostly focus on reading, and those interested in writing should be able to draw valuable lessons for their craft too.
Reading Is Very Complicated
To understand what it means to be able to read, to read god-damn-hard, we’ll be using the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC) to guide our thinking.
I’ve covered the MHC before here, but the gist of it is this: the MHC is a 16-stage framework that can be used to evaluate the complexity of things.
In the case of humans, the simplest actions are physical, chemical and physiological actions, that mostly happen without our conscious interference. But, as we mature, we gain the ability to use language, tell stories, construct systems, combine systems and even develop paradigms.
In fact, the 16th stage in MHC is the “meta-cross-paradigmatic” stage, which means that some people are able to think about the relationships between different paradigms. This is the most complex stage, an example of which might be the difficult topics of different cultures clashing, or big systems of thought like science and religion interacting.
The Early Stages Of Reading
The question “can I read” won’t get an easy answer. The truth is, that there are different levels of reading ability. By using the MHC, you can better understand how deeply you can read.
With this knowledge you’ll be able to take a proper position in the world of written communications, helping those who aren’t as skilled as you, enjoying and sharing your abilities with your peers and looking for guidance from those more advanced.
On the 5th stage of the MHC children learn to name objects. This turns out to be usually between the years 1-2.
The 6th stage is called “sentential”, and children learn to form sentences and simple stories. But it still takes some time for the actual skill of reading to properly develop.
Then, between the years 4-7 kids are able to learn to read. Recognising words, attributing real-life phenomena to the words and understanding the relationships between individual things and the abstract categories they form starts to solidify here. In the MHC these correspond to stages 7, 8 and 9, called the pre-operational, primary and concrete stages respectively.
Between the stages 5 and 9 kids can consume various kinds of written products. In the case of books, it all starts with picture-books, that slowly advance to books with single words, then sentences, building up to storylines spanning even several paragraphs.
On the 10th stage of the MHC, the abstract stage, children can already follow very complex stories. Examples from my adolescence are Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, for example.
Think back to your childhood, around ages 8-12. At this point you likely started noticing that some people were drawn to reading books, while others were not. Here, the tastes and drives of people start to differentiate. These differences can last well into adulthood, as some people might read less than a book a year, mostly consuming short news-stories and audio-visual media, while others start getting engaged with more and more complex and demanding books.
In the 11th stage, the formal stage, reading abilities come more and more into play. The ability to collect evidence and construct arguments is developed here. This is often done by reading, as it is very difficult to hold several points of view in your mind at the same time. This stage starts around 12 years of age and continues on into adulthood.
If you are able to read well on the formal 11th stage, you may be able to participate in doing science on some level. Similarly, you can understand legal contracts on an okay level, and your ability to verbalise topics related to human relationships should be decent. In the case of books, it isn’t that surprising that many of the most popular types of books, such as romance novels found in airports and kiosks hit this stage pretty well.
Knowing how to read well based on the demands of the formal stage is a good accomplishment, and it is one of the backbones of modern societies, that rely heavily on written communications.
The Deeper Stages Of Reading
However, there are still five more stages to go, and here the idea of literacy starts becoming way more complicated and nuanced. There are a lot of people who never develop skills beyond this point, at least not consciously. Many professions that are regarded highly in society emerge, as we go higher in the stages.
On the 12th stage, the systematic stage, people learn to properly understand legal, societal, corporate, economic and national systems. The ability to understand issues from several points of view is developed here, as is the ability to construct multivariate systems, that are often required in complex problem solving.
Think of all the complicated legal, scientific and business transactions going on every day. It has required a long history of institutionalised education to develop societies, where people are able to carefully write and read the documents required for these kinds of co-operation. Not only are the people on this level able to read and follow instructions, but they can also make well-informed decisions that might be contrary to the system they are operating in.
Then, on the 13th stage, people know how to combine and compare systems, which are meta-systematic skills. Here a well-informed lawyer might be reading documents from several different field of law, a neurobiologist might be discussing research questions with a chemist, or a priest might be solving a conflict between to different religious sects.
This kind of understanding is unlikely to develop without a thorough background in reading. Reading about your own field, its subfields, its history, its recent developments, its sister- and competing fields and so on. On top of this, a wider background of general knowledge helps here, absorbed through novels, non-fiction books and more. It requires a considerable amount of brainpower to operate on this level, and generally societies reward people operating on this level relatively highly - with money, resources, safety and stability.
On the 14th stage we enter paradigmatic thinking. The amount of books written on this level is relatively small on this stage, and they can mostly be found in university libraries and dedicated professionals’ bookshelves. Understanding your field thoroughly and having the ability to assess the different systems within it is cognitively very demanding.
Deep-seated arguments about the “right way of doing” science, law, spiritual practices and more become very sophisticated here. Different schools of thought develop, with the innovative and knowledgeable pioneers becoming the founding fathers and mothers.
As these pioneers in their fields become established, they may expand into new territories, beyond their core-expertise. Or similarly, their disciples may sneak in influences from the outside, bringing us to the 15th, cross-paradigmatic stage of the MHC.
Great examples of cross-paradigmatic writing are Karl Popper's and Thomas Kuhn’s books about the philosophy of science. In their books the philosophers articulate and question the development of the whole scientific enterprise. Sharing these kinds of thoughts with a wider audience would be impossible without the ability to read widely and deeply, having the ability to contextualise different paradigms, extract out common patterns and find points of contention on a very abstract level.
Most people will be absolutely bored to death when approaching these topics, as they are very far removed from everyday life. However, an even smaller crowd operates on the 16th, meta-cross-paradigmatic stage. The greatest thinkers, spiritual leaders and generally super-smart and well-read people can operate here.
People like Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Edward Said and Karl Friston are examples of those few people who have gotten their say in their own ways on this stage. These people are the giants, on whose shoulders everyone else stands, as they articulate and formulate the directions whole societies take.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that a person needs to be able to read and write on the highest level to have a large impact. Most of our actions are guided by unconscious processes. Just like a six-year-old kid can play marbles but doesn’t explicitly know the rules, many great people who have changed our societies are not men or women of the book, so to speak.
But in any case, the ability to read deeply is a powerful one.
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| In fact, reading is so powerful, that if you want absolute control over people's minds, burn their books. This way it's easier to keep "the peasants" from messing up your paradigms and systems... |
Good Reading Makes You Act
So what about you? If you read this far, you can definitely read children’s books.
Are you able to understand the moral lessons behind children’s stories?
Are you able to take action on the valuable lessons about humanity contained in the classic novels of mankind?
Are you able to read a news story, understand its political, economical, legal, philosophical and even spiritual implications?
When you read an advertisement, can you see how it might draw from Christian morality, the concept of original sin, while simultaneously feeding the idea that your subjective experiences are more important than the objective truth, ultimately prompting you to feel like crap because your armpit doesn't smell like daffodils?
Can you see when Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson debate about the nature of truth, they are participating in a meta-cross-paradigmatic discussion about the foundations of our society - leaving themselves and the audience in a state of confusion, as talking about ideas on that level is so god damn difficult, that there are very few people capable of even attempting that?
How deeply can you read? How deeply do you think you need to know how to read? Is reading simply about recognising words and putting them in order?
Reading and writing have layers and layers of meaning. Single sentences may contain wisdom gathered through thousands of years. Whole libraries may be full of empty words.
So, if you thought you can read, I now hope that you know better, how well you can read.
With this, I hope you can go forward in your life, focusing your reading time on those texts that serve you the best, and then taking action on the valuable lessons you learn from your reading efforts.
Thanks for reading (shallow or deep, it's your choice)!
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