Reading Backwards
One of the most powerful ways to educate yourself, to open your mind to alternative ways of experiencing the world, and thus to counteract the influence of social conditioning and the mass media, is to read backwards—to read books printed 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago, even 2,000 years ago, and so on. This enables you to step outside the presuppositions and ideologies of the present day and develop an informed world perspective.
“If we encountered a man of rare intelligence we should ask him what books he read.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you read only in the present, no matter how extensively, you are apt to absorb widely shared misconceptions taught and ...
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