Why should one read my JP series? I anticipate this very probable and reasonable question from my intrigued website visitors. I hereby present some features, ideas, characteristics, etc., and thus explain my approach to analyzing the book by describing it.
A practical book, like a guide to successful Bonsai care, focuses on a small, particularly delicate, beautiful, yet relatively simple subject. Accordingly, a directive like “Trim the leaves regularly with a specialized scissors.” is mostly self-explanatory and actionable, without needing to justify its purpose. Similarly, 12RFL is a practical guide, but it addresses our brain or the human spirit or a person in their entirety. This subject, in contrast to a small tree, is by far the most complex entity in the known universe. A seemingly simple rule, like “Be brave!”, and supplementary notes like “Stand tall and walk with your head held high”, needs thorough justification. If the reader is not fully convinced, they won’t undertake the often painful process involved. In any case, 12RFL deserves to be read analytically – no, it rather must be read thoroughly.
JP, as is common in high-quality texts, incorporates a primary thought in every paragraph. Accordingly, each of my posts addresses only one significant train of thought. I proceed very slowly and meticulously, providing my analysis in bite-sized pieces, as justified previously. It’s like in the BBC mini-series “Dracula” (spoiler alert!) where the vampire treats his special adversary, his strongest foe “Agatha van Helsing”, not like fast food but as a multi-course gourmet meal. He reserves her for slow and enjoyable consumption. The blood of this highly educated nun is so rich in knowledge, emotions, and insights that he couldn’t digest it all at once – she is a particularly dense yet nourishing feast. While I condense each paragraph of 12RFL, potentially shortening the book and theoretically reducing the reading duration, I also illustrate each main idea with examples, comments, and mind maps. As a result, all posts in the blog series end up being much longer than the original (negatively put, one could say the book gets diluted?). Here, I’m immediately reminded of Goethe. Part of his genius was attributed to his principle of only absorbing as much new knowledge as he could promptly process. If he couldn’t creatively respond to new insights or explain them through his contemplation, he would slow down his intake or the pace of his intellectual consumption. Perhaps we, too, occasionally need reminders that our brain isn’t a funnel where one can simply pour information rapidly.
The knowledge underpinning a book is networked within the author. A book, especially in physical or printed form, is inherently linear, starting with the first word at the top left and ending with the last word at the bottom right, page by page. My blog utilizes WordPress as its CMS, granting it far more flexibility and, with the support of formats like audio, video, and large vector graphics, it offers many more possibilities. With these tools, I aid readers in knowledge transfer. Many people also find graphics, images, and sketches easier to digest. In a simple black and white sketch, dependencies and connections between the few essential elements of an often very long text can be effortlessly illustrated. That’s why I try to illustrate each of JP’s thought processes with a mind map, providing a bird’s-eye view.
Sometimes, there’s so much text between two important or related pieces of information that the reader forgets the first by the time they reach the second. It’s reminiscent of Proust’s vast novel series “In Search of Lost Time”, where sometimes hundreds of pages separate two events. There are also times when it’s not easily discernible in JP’s argumentation which proofs support each other and how strongly they do, or whether pros and cons almost cancel each other out or balance each other. That’s why I visualize the argument structures in so-called argument maps.
The seasoned, professional reader might argue at this point that they never read without a pencil, enabling them to navigate complex texts more easily in their own way…