What is the #1 advice you would give to an average adult in regards to reading so that he might reach at least a somewhat respectable level of intellect?
What you believe is the extent of the Western canon is actually a mountain plateau above clouds that obscure the infinitely larger landscape below. Most people will never even master the plateau, let alone venture beneath the clouds, and the few people who do the latter still end up doing it too late, by accident in their 40s, and realising there are actually about 646 guys they should have read if they were "interested in [philosophical topic]," and now they're too fucking old. And the few people who make it down there, and do so on time, have the entire process repeated, this time with the earth vis-a-vis the oceans, the former of which they assume to be the absolute extent of the available terrain (emboldened as they are by the rarity of their discovery of even that), without ever thinking that the much larger ocean floor, and the ocean waters which are much more difficult to penetrate than the clouds ever were, are where the real mystery and mystical lay.
If you want to at least penetrate the clouds, start reading a lot, start reading early. Read messily rather than not reading until you have a perfect grasp. A random foray in a random direction will yield more fruit than a night wasted in a familiar camp mulling over the plans for the next day's foray. Make friends who have been beneath the clouds, or if you're lucky, ones who are maybe learning to swim.
Everyone beneath this level of effort inevitably winds up provincial in their thought. To invert the metaphor in its content and in its length: Every time you reach a peak, remind yourself that it's the ground from the perspective of the next peak. Don't stop climbing until there are no more clouds.
>>7696916
I wanted to call you a redditfag but damn, that was well-said.
First learn the difference between intelligence and knowledge.
Find a movement / author that you can enjoy and enjoy it.
>>7696930
what is the difference?
no hope for plebs