Avid Reading

Avid reading would mean a keen interest in reading everything while the other is focusing only on reading books. The enthusiasm of reading motivates a person to read everything. But being an avid reader does not portray his or her intellectual capacity. Intellectual capacity does not come only by being an avid reader. It requires more than that but surely it needs someone to first be an avid reader.

Being an avid reader is good. It ranges from reading the tiniest details of food ingredients on its packages up to reading all those big signboards along the roads. And yes, it would include all those good and crappy stuff you read on the social media. It may give you a lot of information and people will find you to be very informative. But it doesn't make you smarter, intellectually. 

What you read may be true and maybe not. You are considered smart if you have the ability to process all these information and being able to crop out things that are not important while being an informative person. Just a simple example, when you read about news on the economy of the up and downs of the graph on the bars. Being an avid reader would only give you the access to the words you read and the graphs it shows. but you may not understand what you read and do not have the capacity to understand the meaning and the effect of the economic graph.

Most people I interacted with in the social media prefer just to read the headlines and makes his or her judgment and assumption. And in most situation, their judgment and assumption are wrong. So much being an avid reader. And some others do read the whole news. But fail to understand its meaning and having common sense in interpreting what they read. It just shows that being an avid reader is not enough. So what do you need?

You need to have a framework in thinking. The worldview in which you have the ability to process what you read in daily life. You do not just read the words. You read between the line. Understanding not just what the words shows or mean in a sentence but also read what it implies and it relation to life. This worldview would guide you in having a belief on what to understand to agree or not to agree with what you read. This is what makes your intellect capacity into works. 

Avid reading is not enough to gain a proper intellectual capacity guided with a true worldview. As your understanding might be wrong and at times will even be contradictory and is not consistent. To have a worldview to gain an intellectual capacity, you need to be guided by one who has achieved it. Yes, you must be guided by a teacher, a guru, a sage or whatever you want to call them. They will be your light in the darkness.

So I say, avid reading is not enough. What is your worldview?