Read a book every two weeks for a year

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that members of Generation Y are largely ignorant but opinionated.

Don’t get me wrong, we know a lot about some things, like pop culture and how to harness social media. But I think we entertain a very superficial interest in what we know. We’re very comfortable with being aware of only whats relevant and not delving into an issue and really trying to understand its complicated nature. We’re an opinionated group, but we’re also deeply uninformed. In a world where national revolutions are being organized through social media, we’re also gravely disconnected.

The world is determined to make us dumb. Companies don’t want us to know certain things so that they can profit from our lack of knowledge. From locking you in high-interest bank loans to convincing you to try a “shocking results” diet plan, how do protect yourself from this? Traditionally, you go to college/university and get a solid education and become an expert your field. But that’s not enough, because a wedding planner doesn’t know any more about macroeconomics than engineer does. And contrary to popular belief, it’s not all common sense.

Society has become obsessed with being able to produce of a lot of knowledge about a very broad category of topics. To someone who is trying to figure out what the heck is going on in this world, all of that information can be very daunting to approach. There are those of us who subscribe to 100+ RSS feeds in their feed syndicator (myself included) and spend hours trying to sort through this information and ultimately give up. Then they discover other software designed to give them all of their news tidbits in a nice, shiny, magazine-like interface (like the popular Flipboard app for iOS and Android). After realizing that they can add more news sources to these applications, they go ahead and indulge themselves, and the cycle repeats again.

In short, there’s simply too much information out there and there’s no safe way to look at it all.

I feel that the best way to educate yourself, to truly become a global citizen and understand the impact of events occuring around the world, is to speak to someone who is an expert in their field (even if they’re probably wrong). Because in speaking with other people you start to develop a reflective lens through which you view the world. You go back and think about that article you read in the news, but maybe this time you can see the journalist’s bias, and perhaps you actually change your mind about how you feel the topic.

Young people today don’t often get the chance to meet experts and have a chat with them. So, in my eyes, the next best thing is to read books (no, I’m not talking about pulp fiction).

Starting this week, I will be challenging myself to read a book every week for an entire year and blog about it as I go. If you’d like to see my reading list, here is a link. Note that I will be constantly updating it as I discover new books. I’ll take recommendations as well (comment below).

That’s it for today. I’ll be starting tomorrow with Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies, and Aid by Samantha Nutt (if you haven’t heard of it, buy a copy!).

Also, if you’d like to take part in this challenge with me, feel free to comment along on the blog posts and share your insights! Or shoot me an email!