Alas, this worthy cause is also a tall order to fill, threatened, in the present state of our country and its people, by social, economic and attitudinal impediments. Nigerians live in hard times; basic concerns of life- food on the table, roof over the head, bills to pay - dominate the thoughts of most. It is understandable then that book matters, and reading, may be far from the mind if many citizens. As Bertolt Brecht would say, “Food is the first thing; morals follow” And I agree, partially. Times like this demand even more that we read in order to know, understand, and be able to respond wisely to what we go through personally, and the events our society in general. It is said that to know more is to be more. To this end, we cannot but read. “We are what we eat”, is a popular saying. But in line with the Christian teaching that ‘man shall not live by bread alone…’ we are also what we read- and what we know. Indeed, what we know can, and do determine what and how we eat, drink, dress, and speak. If we do not read, the mind suffers atrophy and the spirit operates at the level of pedestrianism. This, to me is a sure way to personal perdition. By extension, a country of ’non-reading’ citizens is set on a course of regression, nay, self-abolition.
It is also a cause for regret that, the dominant values in Nigeria today are primitive accumulation and conspicuous consumptions by the adults, obsession with the utmost trivialities by the youths, and of mindless materialism by both young and old. The desire to cultivate the mind, to develop the intellect, - in sum, to be more - is neglected, even disdained? The consequence is that Nigeria today is as ridden with crises as can be imagined. It is my opinion that the conflicts that rage in this land and elsewhere, be they domestic, communal, social, even conflict within the self, can be resolved if we nurture the triune of body, mind and spirit. Reading is the instrumentality to achieve this. The benefits of reading are many; I shall state only a few in this essay. But first, reading in what sense?
Reading, in this context, is the voluntary education (we read for education, we are educated by reading) that we give ourselves after the classroom teachers have gone home for good. Although it is voluntary, it is more pleasurable even as we do it with more seriousness. But, make no mistake, it is of immense value because, like Sir Richard Steele: says, “[it] is to mind what exercise is to the body”.
Nigerians should therefore constantly ask themselves, and one another: What are you reading? I am convinced that this is the most relevant question of this information-centered, knowledge-driven age; it is one question that those who would survive the intellection-driven challenges of a twenty-first century global society must constantly ask themselves. Sadly, it is a question far from the consideration by most Nigerians and Africans. So, as things stand now, Africa is among the losers in this unstoppable and inescapable process called globalization said Prof. Ali Mazrui in his Du Bois-Padmore-Nkrumah Lecture some years ago. The reason for this, obviously, is the poverty of (developmental) ideas in the land. Of course, a lack of education (from reading) is the first cause of the poverty of ideas.
A nation blessed with all the natural resources in the world, but bereft of ideas cannot make up for this lack because, as succinctly put by former UN secretary-general U-Thant, it is not the resources that make the decisions; it is the decisions that make the resources. Knowledge then is a key decider of the quality of decisions – and in turn, resources. Again this is why E.F. Schumacher in his book Small is Beautiful wrote that there is no such thing as a viable nation, only a viable people. Modern Japan and Israel evidentially support this assertion.
Reading is the building block of education, and education, in its holistic form, determines the quality of the man. Aristotle, asked how much the educated was superior to the uneducated replied, as reported by Diogenes Laertius, “as much as the living is to the dead”. If he lived in our age, he might say: “as much as the First World is to the Fourth World”.
If for selfish reasons alone, we must constantly seek to know both the what and the why of things. From reading I understand that both are important because, the man who only knows what ends up working for the man who knows why. If for selfish reasons alone, we must constantly seek to know both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of things. My reading tells me that both are important because, the man who only knows what ends up working for the man who knows why. To not read is to deny oneself a place among the cognitariat in the emerging global knowledge society wherein, to quote Taichi Sakaiya “… increased weight is given to knowledge value in the pricing of things”. Therefore to deny oneself the pleasure and the gains of reading is not only ‘stupidity’ as defined by James F. Welles, it is mentacide. According to James F. Welles’ “epistemological” definition, ‘stupidity’ is “the failure to gather and use information efficiently”. So, we do ourselves a favor to read because, armed with relevant information, (knowledge), we out-think- and out-perform - competition. This is true for every area of human endeavor that I know. Furthermore, “By reading,” wrote Joseph Wood Crutch, “ you learn to read, become more and more capable of receiving more and more completely more subtle and complicated communications…”
Reading, like travel, expands the frontier of our mind. But we can never travel enough to experience the world, meet people, share our thoughts with them and learn from one another other. Yet there is so much to learn, this is why, argued T.S Eliot, we must read, taking thus, a shortcut to meet and hear authors on the bridge of books, to adapt the phrase of Harold Shaw. Indeed, by reading the really good authors of enduring literature, we rub minds with them to nurture our own and, who knows; we may even ‘out-write’ them. Charles Lamb said “We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves; we encourage each other in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself”.
Tony Lane, writing on the importance of reading History opined that, like foreign travel, (again that comparison) it shows us that ours is not the only way to do things, that our grasp of the truth might be less than perfect, and that it is possible to learn from those with a different perspective. This much can be said too for reading in general: it tells us the stories of other peoples and from these we learn that ours are neither the worst nor the best of situation. Said Nadine Gordimer, in an interview “Books, I think saved me, perhaps from growing up, thinking that the way that people among whom I lived [in a little segregated mining town South Africa] was the only way to live”. Furthermore, reading teaches us – or should I say trains our mind – to ask and to ponder deep and important questions: Can things be done better? Is this the best I can be? Is this all there is to life? Why am I here?
Reading refines us. Do you observe that widely read (not merely well read) people are generally more humble, more polished, more cultured and more confident of whom they are in terms of character, values and other characteristics? Whereas they know too well that the Self is the true worth of a man, the others derive confidence only from what they have. So we are what we know.
Because it equips us with a large body of information from which to cross-refer facts and weigh issues, reading deepens our understanding and equips us with the analytical power to perceive hidden meanings and to detect motives. Because study equips us to think deeply and broadly, and judge more finely, we take more intelligent decisions, make wiser choices, and act from what I would term ‘inclusive thinking’ that sees the larger picture of issues.
Reading broadens our perceptions such that we refrain from narrow-mindedness, hasty judgment, and stereotyping. We are saved thereby from the disease –and sin - of bigotry or something worse. The French king, Louis IV, is quoted to have said, somewhat dismissively, “I see no point in reading”. It is a pity indeed that he failed to see such an obvious point of life. No wonder that he was an embodiment of monarchical absolutism, one who would feel threatened by an educated, and therefore a questioning, citizenry. And for good reason.
The well and widely read person is inevitably a questioning mind because, according to Goethe, “we know accurately when we know little; with knowledge, doubt increases”. So the questioning mind sees things differently, asks the why and the why not of things, thinks differently and, acts differently, or, as some might say, un-usually. But, every time the motive is to do things better; the aim is to do better things. Indeed, un-usual thinking – call it ‘thinking out of the box’ or in the words of Thinking expert Edward de Bono, ‘lateral thinking’ - often leads to new discoveries. Needless to say, this is the way of science.
Students of the Bible would appreciate how much St. Paul was a reading man from the incomparable explication of the Christian faith. In 2 Timothy 4:13, Paul told Timothy to bring along “… the books, but especially the parchments”. Does it surprise that the Pauline writings are, arguably, the most intellectually dense in the New Testament?
Reading counsels too; and I have in mind the spiritual texts as well as motivational books widely on sale today. A sober and careful reading of, say, the wisdom books in the Holy Bible, say, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, the Book of Job, Ecclesiasticus, offer immeasurable counseling on life’s vicissitudes. The book of Ecclesiastes teaches : “For wisdom is a defense as money is a defense,/ But the excellence of knowledge is that wisdom gives life to those who have it” (NKJV)’.the excellent writings of John C. Maxwell Stephen Covey, and others are quite inspirational.
Education, in the opinion of William Durant, is the progressive discovery of our ignorance. As we read more, we are humbled us to the fact that we know so much that is so little in comparison to just how much remains to know. In the words of William Harvey, “All we know is infinitely less than all that still remains unknown”. This may have caused Francis Bacon, the philosopher I mean, not the painter, that “I have taken all knowledge to be my province”. Just as well for, as Pope put it, “A little learning is a dangerous thing… [and] shallow draughts intoxicate the Brain…”
Now, it should be emphasized that to read only for knowledge would make a man merely clever, and equip him for intellectual deviousness employed, for example, to rationalize mis-governance by bad leaders; but it would not make a man wise. Surely, no one would want to live in a world of clever devils. Francis Bacon [the philosopher, I mean] therefore, counseled that we read “not to confute and contradict… but to weigh and consider”. We should do our reading then as a humble striving for Knowledge and Understanding that leads to Wisdom. And to act, repeat, act, accordingly. “The great purpose of education”, says Herbert Spencer is not knowledge, but action”. By action, I cannot imagine but that he means action for the Common Good.
It is said that knowledge is power. Not quite so. It is what you do with knowledge- call it education if you will, that earns you power. After all, the world is full of men of knowledge – professors in all sorts of disciplines - , but who do not command as much power to make things happen the way they would want, like do those who obviously know much less. Therefore, we must read and, like men of knowledge and wisdom, improve the world wherever we find ourselves. It seems to me that our country is in the present sorry state , importantly because its affairs have for long been run by a non-reading leadership. Nearly half a century after independence is Nigeria is being led for the first time by a university graduate. And these little things make a big difference. Indeed, see now who is pushing the reading agenda.
Philosopher Martin Buber wrote -and I am fully at one with him – “Books are pure, men are mixed; books are spirit and word, pure spirit and purified word; men are made up of prattle and silence, and their silence is not that of animals, but of men”. Besides, to borrow from Buber again, purely delightful books are easier to come by than purely delightful men.
Are we then to prefer books to men? I do not think so. Only, that books will converse with us in their peculiarly silent way, neither interrupting our thoughts nor arguing with us; hardly can we find men like that.
Now, although it is good to read, it is even better to study. “Reading gives us breadth, but study gives us depth” said Jerry Bridges. But beyond this and in line with Francis Bacon’s thinking, it is best to write. Reading”, he wrote, “maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man”. One other reason that we should write it that there would be nothing to read if people didn’t write, and add thereby to the universal pool of knowledge that drives human progress. But again, we cannot write unless we read, and we cannot write well unless we read incessantly an opinion of Ziauddin Sardar that I share.
But writing isn’t easy, this I know and so William F. Buckley Jr. a full time writer admits too. Hear him: “I do not like to write, for writing is extremely hard work, and I do not like extremely hard work”. He writes nonetheless, and for a living too- as columnist, editor and author. Even George Orwell, a writer of no mean stature, opined that “writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness”. And yet, he too wrote such books as influential Animal Farm and 1984, and the deeply engaging, perennially relevant essay ‘Politics and the English Language’.
Nonetheless we must, like one in search of excellence, or perfection, read - and write -, to upgrade ourselves, to raise the total quality of our being so that like a man with a lantern in a dark place, (and believe me, literally and metaphorically, darkness abounds thickly in this Nigeria) share the light of our discoveries with, and touch the lives for the good of whomsoever we meet on the journey of life. In this process, reading deepens us spiritually, and raises our personal values to a higher plane. As we become what we read, we become more excellent.
In fine, I read somewhere that if you want to know, read; but if you want to be known, write. I agree.
Onaiyekan is a a visiting member of The Guardian editorial board
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