"Liberty Like a Tree: Letter to Children"
Hu Yong Author
People's Literature Press Published
This book is a letter written by Hu Yong, a professor and communication scholar at Peking University, to the children of the fetus - Weiwei and Momo.
is not only a warm and vivid "multiple child" family education sample that records the little things of children's growth, but also a philosophical meditation on the education of love, personality and life. In 12 years, 24 letters are written to children - hoping to guide them to fully realize themselves in the rapidly changing current era and in an unprecedented digital world, face the virtual world more freely without getting lost, and experience colorful life more richly and three-dimensionally.
Selected text reading
Reading is an adventure, not a travel
Dear Weiwei, Momo:
...
11 years old, you have read a lot of books. Dad thinks that you can share with you some of my reading experiences.
There are many good things to read that are visible to the naked eye, but not the good things that people usually think are good - for example, reading for the sake of gaining knowledge, or reading for exams, promotions, and adding a touch of your resume.
is really good at reading. Dad thinks that the first thing is that it helps you see your state and the surrounding environment. Because people live in concrete ways and live under specific environmental conditions. We must have a clear understanding of ourselves and the surrounding environment.
Dad judges a person and depends on whether he or she can clearly describe himself and whether he or she can form a complete description of the living environment. If you can do this, you will live "awareness".
Life is short, and it is wrong to waste your own time. So many people are very busy. However, if a person loses himself during the busy process and does not know what he is busy for, then even if he is very busy, he is still wasting his time. This is the lack of "awareness". People without "awareness" are like walking corpses, suspended in their own lives.
's understanding of yourself and your surroundings depends on the accumulation of life experience, and on the other hand, we can also draw extensively from books. For example, excellent literary works can expose us to various emotions and events, which often take several years or even decades to experience in real life, or even cannot be directly witnessed. Literature is the greatest reality simulator—a magical machine that allows you to experience infinite possibilities.
As Virginia Wulf said, "Reading is not for gaining knowledge, not for making a living, but for expanding communication beyond our era and region." Dad believes that this kind of communication is the most convenient way to broaden cognition, especially for you who are not well-versed in the world.
So, how to explain that some people love reading but are very immature in life? Ultimately, the relationship between life experience and books is as follows: people transition from the life of action to the life of contemplative, and then return from the life of contemplative to the life of action, and they are constantly reciprocating each other. After experiencing such a dynamic process of transition and return, is the truly fun place in life and can you live in a balanced, complete and rich manner.
So, the meaning of reading is not to look at how many books we have read, but to look at what state the books we have read make us stay in... Looking at what the survival of streets, clouds and others means to us, and whether reading makes us more like we are alive.
This is the first reading experience that my father wants to share: reading is not to acquire knowledge, but mainly to solve his own life state. The core of
reading has therefore become "Encounter with Self". In other words, the ultimate goal of reading is not to acquire information, but to absorb and reflect on information, and in this process, develop a better self.
The second reading experience is to learn to quickly and accurately determine any problem through reading and form your own knowledge judgment.
You have entered an era of great knowledge integration and explosion.The pursuit of knowledge is not as useful as before, because knowledge is like milk, and the shelf life is very short; knowledge is also like flood, mud and sand, and it is urgent to rush and promote the turbid and clear. Everyone must develop a ability, not to be an expert in some kind of knowledge, but to know where to obtain the knowledge needed in a very short time; and in this process, form their own knowledge judgment.
If you don’t have this ability, it will be like the example that dad often calls: you turn your mind into someone else’s racetrack.
The third reading experience is to form associations through structured and systematic reading. From this, the seedlings of knowledge begin to bloom and grow into forests.
The problem with many people reading is that the first is that there is no structure, which means that there is no connection between books. This directly leads to the second problem. Even if you encounter a good book, you cannot grasp its essence, because the book leaves shortly after entering the brain, and even a little wave of water has not risen. Therefore, reading without a knowledge system is of little use.
People are reeds that can think. If they truly release their minds, they will bloom endlessly. There is no isolated thought at all, never before, there is only a net of thought. This is why Isaac Newton said the famous saying: "If I see further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants."
Only by experiencing the above three points can I feel that reading is a pleasant thing, not a homework or other burden that I have to do. The latter two are still difficult for you at the moment. I believe you will have a deeper experience in high school and even college in the future.
(Photo source: Visual China )
In China, something is popular in the past few years called "knowledge payment". Some people sell the quick way to read books by secondary processing. Reading a hundred books a year is like collecting stamps. This completely deviates from the essence of reading, that is, reading was originally an adventure, but now it has been turned into a simple journey.
American poet Emily Dickinson once wrote: "No warship will lead us to a distant continent like a book." In the past, people read because books could take them anywhere; now, people do not read because they mistakenly think that they have been to many places.
When dad tells you both that reading is an adventure, it is not a very common cliché, but can be proven in brain science .
For example, when you read Harry Potter jumped underwater and tried to pick up the sword of Gryffindor, the part of your brain that involved motion control is really jumping with him. When you read a silky piece of clothing brushing across the skin or leaves are blown by the wind, the part of your brain that involves sensory perception is activated, and you feel like you really hear the rustling sound. At the level of brain neural response, we do experience the same things as the characters in the novel – we don’t just understand a book, we live in it.
In your reading experience, you have encountered this situation: Oh, this character is so interesting. It turns out that I am not the only weird person with this idea; why the author said so well, I have never considered it from this perspective before!
Through text, you are transferred to another person. You see the world with their eyes. You understand their pain and joy. Only by putting ourselves in others' shoes can we realize that everyone has often conflicting emotions, and at the same time make us realize the complexity of our hearts.
Novelist Proust has a description called "the fruitful miracle of communication produced in solitude", which describes an intimate emotional dimension in the reading experience: to learn about other people's views and feelings without having to leave our private world one inch. This is what Dickinson metaphored about as a warship, taking you away without taking root, not only in your own habitat, but also breaking into other life and land. This is one of the most profound and under-published contributions in in-depth reading.
Therefore, reading requires patience and solitude, but this patience and solitude are for contacting others, especially those who are different from you.
In addition, true reading and exploration always starts with humility and knowing that there are so many unknowns in this world.
Yes, it is entirely possible for a person to read for mistakes, such as the philosopher Russell said: "There are two motivations to read a book. One is that you like it. The other is that you can brag about it." Reading with a second motivation will only inspire your arrogance.
Those who are truly well-read are more intellectually humble. They are increasingly aware of their ignorance and limitations, which makes them more willing to learn from others. Many of the smartest people in the business world, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk , insist that the best way to get smarter is to read.
But anyone who reads seriously has a distress: there are too many good books, what should I do if I can’t read them? There is a good way to think about this problem, which was proposed by the best-selling book "Black Swan" author Nasim Nicholas Taleb . Taleb got inspired from the library of Italian writer Umberto Eco:
Writer Umberto Eco is a knowledgeable, profound and not boring minority scholars. He owns a large private library (with 30,000 books) and guests can be divided into two categories. One type of people's reaction is: "Wow! Professor Aike, how spectacular your library is! How many books have you read?" Another type of people accounted for an absolute minority. They know that private libraries are not a self-inflated decoration, but a research tool. The books you have read are far less valuable than those you have not read. …In fact, the more you know, the more books you unread take up. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library.
Has Eiko really read all these books? Of course not, but showing off to the guests is not his purpose of surrounding himself with a lot of knowledge. By constantly reminding himself of everything he didn't know, Eco's library kept him intellectually hungry and permanent curiosity. This is the utility of "anti-library". It is a powerful warning to human limitations—there are so many things you don’t know, half know, or one day you will realize that you are wrong.
All the books you have not read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you will be ahead of most people. After all, Socrates has long told us that all wisdom begins with admitting one's own ignorance.
So, children, read! Reading is a gift for everyone because it enhances our imagination and turns the impossible into possible. When we discover in books that there are so many possibilities in the world, we feel even more like we are alive.
A good book provides temporary protection between its cover and back cover to our unanticipated solitude.
read once allows us to liberate ourselves, cross to others, and in doing so, learn what it means to be another person.
. An adventure, daily life with reminders of self-limits, can prompt yourself toward intellectual humility and the enrichment of your personal world.
Author profile
Hu Yong, Professor , School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University, and a well-known communication scholar. He has written "Digital Displacement", "Noisy Voices", "The Internet is King", etc. He calls himself a "teacher", reading, writing, and translating books. In addition to being a scholar, he is also the father of three children.
Author: Hu Yong
Editor: Jin Jiuchao
