What do we get from reading?

Words you encountered and modified and added on the way to dusty death:

We read in order to learn about the world, about others and about ourselves in that world of ours. We want to get informed. We also want to get "entertained". We read stories so we can remember our moral education learned during childhood and later about the movements of the heart. We soar with the language. The stories get hold of us and give us hope and strength. They remind us that people who are hurt and vulnerable can also be feisty and resourceful and ultimately become in their own ways the owners of their fates, notwithstanding the observations of some of us who have not been able to put ourselves in their shoes.

You are reading two books that argue that there's a non-materialistic basis for God. You want to know how the opposing camp thinks. You want to keep an open mind. As a writer wannabe, you must learn to live comfortably with irony and paradox and inconsistency and contradiction, and to be able to render that in a story spacious enough to allow for ambiguity, rather than feeling the need to resolve it through pronouncements. Art is evocation, not exhortation.

We read so we can grapple with the issue of power which manifests itself in all aspects of human society. Power is intimately linked with control of resources and  how and what to think and thus survival itself. You instinctively resent power because you love independence and have confidence of who you are and the powers of your brain. You sometimes can't help but evince contempt and arrogance for ignoramuses and cowards because you are angry, but you are now more conscious of the emotional dynamics at work and hence keep things in check and perspective. The meaning of any human action, especially yours, can only be understood by putting it in a context and in a broader pattern. But in the end our ability to understand others is limited by our ability to understand ourselves and our imagination. Humans simply cannot understand the unfamiliar. Thus, almost all comments, criticisms, and interpretations are expressions of self-projection. One way to understand a person is to make him angry, for in anger we often reveal our true self. We let others see our emotional makeup without the normal interference of the higher neocortex. Very often we show to the world we are men made of clay, unbaked and unhardened. One hard rain---a few chosen biting words of comment---will reduce us to a lump of melting, crumbling, and pathetic being, a slave of emotions, instead of a dignified, stoic, wise man who tried to show to the world before with our sagacious advice and bon mots. You used to be like a sword cutting through the hypocrisy and falsehood, exposing the raw cowardice masqueraded as a desire for peace and quiet. You demanded other humans live a life of authenticity and responsibility, not rampant selfishness. You made them uncomfortable. You got into their faces, itching for a debate. Nobody wanted to debate with you because it was hard to debate against truth and reason and responsibility. You were the voice of truth and reason and responsibility. You sounded superior because you were superior. An asshole wondered out loud of who the hell you thought you were by asking other humans living up to their potential. By asking such a stupid question in a peevish, crude, and rude manner, the asshole revealed to the world its true color, that it was a true, stinking asshole, afraid and unwilling to live up to the pious advice it had dispensed to the world. It could not walk the talk. One simple test and it failed miserably. It showed to the world that it was weak and undisciplined. All fat men are weak and undisciplined. It earned your eternal contempt, disdain, and scorn. From that moment on, you have regarded it as a piece of stinking dogshit lying on a sidewalk that every man, woman, and child all want to avoid contact. One stupid outburst and it revealed itself. It didn't know one simple rule of human communication: by showing contempt to others in a vile, profane, crude manner, it ironically earned and got  the disrespect and disdain it wished to inflict on its target. Its two predecessors didn't fare much better, but at least they managed to avoid using the profane language. Hypocrisy is a sign of moral weakness. Failure to apologize is an indication of gross sensibilities, a failure to know the difference between right and wrong. All three assholes are prime examples of hypocrisy and moral cowardice. Your words are tough and demanding. Your questions are not idle; they go to the core of being, of asking who we really are, and what we are here for on this planet, for what purpose and for what meaning?

Wissai