#656： The Hidden Pleasures of Learning for Its Own Sake
Episode Stats
Summary
When we typically think about learning, we tend to think about being in a structured school and doing it for some reason, to get a grade, or get a certain job. But my guest today says that if you want to live a truly flourishing life, we ought to make time for studying thought long after we leave formal education behind and embrace learning as something wonderfully useless. Her name is Zena Hitz, and she is the author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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When we typically think about learning, we tend to think about being in a structured
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school and doing it for some reason, to get a grade, to get a degree, to get a certain
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But my guest today says that if you want to live a truly flourishing life, we ought to
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make time for studying thought long after we leave formal education behind and embrace
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Her name is Zena Hitz, and she's the author of Lost in Thought, The Hidden Pleasures of
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We begin our conversation with how the unique great books curriculum at St. John's College
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works, and how Zena got her undergraduate degree there and went on to pursue a more traditional
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academic path, only to discover the downsides of the modern university system and be drawn
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From there, we turn to what Zena argues are the hidden pleasures of the intellectual life,
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which include learning for its own sake, as opposed to doing it to advance some goal,
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developing a rich inner life, and embracing the idea of true leisure.
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We then discuss how thinking and studying for its own sake is different from watching
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TV or playing video games, and how it can create a resilience-building, inner-directed
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We end our conversation with how you can carve out space for contemplation amidst the overload
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and noise of modern life, the importance of finding a community that wants the same
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thing, and how to get started with deeper study and reflection by reading the great books.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash lostinthought.
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So you got a new book out, Lost in Thought, The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life,
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And for those who aren't familiar with St. John's, it's a unique university, but a lot
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We have about, on each campus, somewhere around 400, 450 undergraduate students.
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And the program is set up as a encounter with great books, starting with ancient Greece in
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the freshman year and concluding with 20th century authors in the senior year.
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And what's particularly unique about our program is that we have a seminar where we read great
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works of literature, philosophy, political theory, Plato, Aristotle, Adam Smith, et cetera,
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But we also have a mathematics and a science component where we do mathematics, also chronologically,
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We have a science curriculum that looks at science from original papers and original experiments.
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So one of the many things that's unique is that it's an all-required curriculum.
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Everyone does the same thing, which builds a really intense sense of community on campus
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that not only is everyone, say, among the freshmen reading at the same time, but there's
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a common store of books that the students can call upon as they progress in their studies.
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And they can talk to anyone on campus about these things.
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So the other unique thing about it, apart from the, so to speak, the content of the curriculum
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and the books is that the classes are conducted by discussion.
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So the faculty, like myself, we take a more of a side role, more of a collaborative role.
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We don't call ourselves professors for that reason.
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We don't hand down the truth from on high about what is going on with the material, but we
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And that helps not only to keep the discussions fresh and spontaneous, but also it makes sure
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that the learning is directed by the students' own questions.
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So we're trying to keep the liberal, that is, the freedom in liberal arts education.
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We think that education is about cultivating a free mind, a person who can formulate their
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And so it's important to us that the students be given a lot of responsibility over their
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We have also MA programs for adults, which are probably more common among your listeners,
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but that's the core of what we do is our undergraduate program.
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And the two campuses, there's one in Maryland and the other one's in Santa Fe, right?
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So the Annapolis campus is closer to all the East Coast stuff, but the Santa Fe campus is
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So that's what divides us is the preferences between the two places.
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Is there like tests or do you take an oral examination?
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Like, how do you, is there, do you figure out proficiency?
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Like, how do you decide, yes, you understand this concept or is that, does that even happen?
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Well, what I would say is that the education is really student directed in the sense I was
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That is, an individual student is meant to bring their own questions to class and undertake
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their own work and come to their own conclusions.
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And going along with that, we think of learning as being progress that a student makes.
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I mean, if you think about it, what's learning?
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You start in one starting place, you end up in another place.
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And our ordinary schemes of education, which rely on testing and competency and so on,
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It's more about reaching a certain set standard.
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And for this type of education, I guess I'd say there, there's a minimum standard.
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You have to be putting in some work, turning up for class.
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But there's no, I think we're reluctant to say there's one thing that a liberal educated
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We do have some oral exams, which are really more like conversations about what the student
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read, a way to explore one-on-one with a student, what they've been thinking about.
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And we have large essays every year and also for many small essays for classes.
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But we try to de-emphasize grades and de-emphasize in general the cultural achievement, not because
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we're hippies necessarily, but because we think that learning is something which is individual
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and is best determined by an individual and an individual's progress.
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Well, let's talk about how you ended up at St. John's, being a tutor at St. John's, because
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I think it talks, I mean, it's sort of like this book is in a little, in some ways, it's
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a sort of an intellectual biography of how you've gotten to think about what it means
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I had heard about it as a high school student and was totally repelled.
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It sounded completely boring and uninteresting and nothing like I wanted to do.
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But I was on campus for a summer program for high school students that was, we had a class
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that was taught in the St. John's style and I was just instantly enchanted and wanted to
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So I had a very formative or maybe transformative experience there as an undergraduate.
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Then I went away to graduate school and I ended up by some good luck and some very elite
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So research academia is the most prestigious part of academia.
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And that's what, you know, the great research universities, the R1 universities are the prestige
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So I was a research academic and I taught at mostly public universities for a number of years,
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And I think there were two things that went wrong.
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At first, of course, coming from St. John's, it's a wonderful place, but we prize the amateur,
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you know, we prize the lover of learning for its own sake.
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That is, you can miss out on really understanding a topic in depth in all of its context and all
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And I actually loved that aspect of being a research academic.
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I loved getting into the depths of the details of the materials.
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And so I was doing scholarly research and that was supposed to be the center of my life,
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And I found it harder and harder to feel motivated by it.
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I enjoyed it, but it seemed a bit, the audiences are small and it's not obvious really what the
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social worth of that kind of research was, or it wasn't clear to me then.
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And then the other thing that drove me down in ordinary academia was the teaching, which
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as in most places, it's a large classrooms, which really require, you know, focus on lectures,
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a focus on digesting down the material into a few points that need to be memorized or learned
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And that just wasn't the type of learning that I wanted to pass on to my students.
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And it was frankly boring after a while to keep doing it.
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It's not intellectually exciting for the professor.
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And I suspect in most cases, it's really not intellectually exciting for the, for the students.
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I think a lot of what's happened in our universities, as far as the humanities and liberal arts is
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concerned, is a kind of deadening of intellectual excitement, thanks to these large classes,
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which are really not suited to the subject matter.
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I kept casting around for something different, some different way of doing things.
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I finally, I had undergone a religious conversion right after I finished my PhD.
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And so I, it was natural for me as a new convert to look at the various kinds of weird ways of
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So I ended up leaving the profession and living in a Catholic religious community for a time
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And when I was there, I thought a lot about, I couldn't do much intellectual work.
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I had to really just be a more ordinary, grounded human being.
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And that forced me to really think about why, why intellectual work, why study matters for
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And that in turn made me realize that I could be happy as an academic if I went back to St.
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John's as a, as opposed to the, the research academic life that I've been living previously.
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So that, that's a somewhat long-winded version of, of the story that I tell in the first part of my
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Well, let's talk about digging into the book and sort of your philosophy about learning.
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You, you say that learning the intellectual life, there's hidden pleasures to it.
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Like what, what do you, what sense is the intellectual life, the pleasures of an intellectual
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Well, the concept that seems to be central is learning for its own sake.
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So if most of us these days, when we think about going to college or going back to graduate
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school, we're thinking about trying to either advance ourselves in our careers in some way,
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get better jobs, get more prominence, or make an impact in the world in some way, make a
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So that is, that is what you might call worldliness or publicity or something like that.
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So learning for its own sake is hidden in the sense that in one way, because it's useless,
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it doesn't make a difference in the same way that say, pharmaceutical research makes a difference
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when people are figuring out how to cure COVID or similar life-threatening diseases.
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It doesn't have an obvious use and that makes it hidden.
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The second way it's hidden is that I think it's part of the inner life of a human being.
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So it's something that we keep in ourselves, regardless of what else is going on in our
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So I think one stock example, right, the bookworm sort of hiding in the corner, reading a book,
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And likewise, if you are the sort of person who goes on walks and thinks about things,
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many of us are, that too is a kind of inner life.
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So I wanted in my book, because we hear so much praise of impact and making a difference,
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I wanted to praise those other features of being a human being, what's private, what's
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inward, what is for its own sake, what doesn't necessarily make a splash.
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Because I think that, in fact, we need those things in order to be happy, healthy, flourishing
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Well, let's dig into these ideas a little bit deeper.
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So we can talk about learning for the sake of learning, because this goes to Aristotle,
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And I think today in the modern world, we typically think of education.
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I think we give it a lot of lip service, like, hey, learning for the sake of learning.
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But when we go to college, like what we mean is, well, you go to college so you can get
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I, in a way that I'm not always in these types of interviews, there's nothing wrong
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That is, there's something wrong with studying medicine in order to become a doctor or studying
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massage in order to become a massage therapist or any of these things.
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There's, there's nothing wrong with that, becoming an engineer.
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It's, the problem is when we think that that's all there is to learning.
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And I think we think that's all there is to learning because we think that's all there
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Whereas if you think it through along the lines that someone like Aristotle thought about
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it, your life doesn't make sense if everything is a means to an end.
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If you want certain things, you do certain things to get them.
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Um, but we have a weird tendency to be workaholic, to instrumentalize absolutely everything, to
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seek, seek out, uh, modes of achievement as if they were valuable for their own sake and
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So the, in other words, if you, so let me use a more down to earth example.
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You know, if I ask myself, why do I eat breakfast?
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Usually you eat breakfast for the sake of a bit of energy to get through your day, to
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You do that because you want to be there for your family.
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You could imagine giving a string of answers, which never culminate in anything.
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What you want, it seems to me to say about your own life is that there's some activity
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or set of activities that is what your life culminates in that constitute your wellbeing
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Whether that's playing music or being with your family or studying or going on walks in
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nature or whatever it is, it has, there has to be something like that, or your life doesn't
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So that's, that's the thought about means and ends.
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And that's, that's the danger of instrumentalizing learning is that we lose track of the fact
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that there are forms of learning that are really just for their own sake.
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And those are the things that need to be especially preserved in a, in a market economy or in a very
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We need to make a special effort to preserve the things which don't have an obvious use because
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they're in fact, in a certain way, the most central things for us, the things that, the
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places in which we flourish and are happy in which our lives culminate.
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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Well, all those things you described, taking walks in nature, spending time with family
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and friends, learning because you just enjoy it.
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Like that's what we would call leisure, but you have this great section of the book, like
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particularly in America, we kind of lost touch with what it means to have a leisurely life.
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And I, I think you can see that actually in, I mean, it's a bit of a cliche, but the contrast
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with European culture, where there's a bit more of a sense that there's more to life than
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And you see that in the way they take vacations and the way they use their weekends.
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I'm sure it's changing just as, just as we have much built into Europe or anything like
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But whereas I, myself, and I know many people who are like me, we're content working 60,
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And you, you know, you have to ask yourself at some point, what are you doing that for?
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One example I use in the book that was, I found very moving.
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It was an essay on Medium a couple of years ago by a journalist named Lauren Smiley, who's
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And she was describing how, you know, in what's called the gig economy, you have these workers
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who are stacking job upon job to make a living.
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You know, they, they're an Uber driver part of the time and they do Amazon delivery part
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of the time and they just stack thing upon thing.
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And then she looks at the people that they're serving, the sort of high-end tech workers in
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And what are they doing with all of this time that's created by all of these conveniences,
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the DoorDash and the Uber and the delivery and the home cleaning service and the home
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hairdressing service and the home organizing service?
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Now, what are they doing with all the free time?
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Well, they're working more for their companies.
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So you get this image of an upper class and a lower class, each of which is working their
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Human beings are meant to have some parts of their life that are dedicated to leisure.
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And leisure is not just resting up so you can do more work.
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And that, that requires some discernment for individuals, but it's, it's, it's always something
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Now you had this great section, you're describing that, that dynamic and heavy, all these like gig
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economy workers working for these titans of Silicon Valley.
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It says the master's quotation marks of our current serving class have no leisure either.
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And these days at the top of the heap of slaves, there's not even an exploitative gentleman
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farmer writing essays, dissecting animals and speculating on the nature of the political,
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I, when Aristotle wrote, of course, uh, Aristotle's notoriously what you'd call elitist.
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Elitist is in a way kind of a weak word for it.
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So he thinks that if some human beings can live the best life and only a few are really
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capable of living the best life, because for Aristotle, the best life is really just philosophy,
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then it's perfectly reasonable to ask other people not to live a, to live a sort of substandard
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human life in order to provide for the necessities of the best people.
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And that's an idea that's had a lot of influence in the history of, of Europe and the U S and
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that's has a history for intellectual life, because of course, that's, it's that intellectual
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work, which belongs to the top with the country gentleman and his researches.
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And of course, I think I was probably thinking of someone like Thomas, a polymath like Thomas
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Who, you know, if you've got a Monticello, this guy was interested in absolutely everything
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and studied and thought and wrote, and that was all possible of course, by, by slave labor.
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So part of what I want to do in my book, and it's not original to me, it's something which
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thinkers of the early to mid 20th century were also striving to do.
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It's to keep that idea, that Aristotelian idea of an intellectual life as involving leisure,
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as involving contemplation, as being necessary for human happiness, but noticing the ways in
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So my book has a very strong egalitarian motive in that.
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I, I think that this type of, I think that thinking and study for its own sake are really
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And I, I want to bring out the ways in which they benefit the lives of thinking and studying
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And going along with that, I think it's going back to the passage you read, it's, it's of
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course, deeply ironic that aristocracy that we have now, such as it is, has no leisure,
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has no beautiful products or incredible books, or it's just, it just keeps producing more
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That is more and more conveniences, more and more devices.
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And there's a sense in which our common life, as well as our individual life is missing
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a point, is, is missing some meaning or some, something fundamental.
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And what is it about learning, you know, reading the great books, it could be like, or learning
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You know, someone can say, well, I, I have leisure.
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I mean, how is, how are, how are those different from what you're kind of encouraging in the
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So it's, I do think there's a difference between Netflix, doom scrolling on social media,
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Those are normally what I would call a distraction.
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You're just too tired to do anything else, but they're not restorative.
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There isn't necessarily any kind of personal growth that results from them.
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The way that you, you tend to grow from learning.
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It's one of the things that makes learning, learning.
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So it's, the distinction's a bit intuitive and it's a bit flexible because of course you
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can imagine someone who really thought there's actually a philosopher working now named T.
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Nguyen who is thinking about games, including video games and the ways in which they can
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be contemplative or the ways in which they involve real thinking.
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And that's of course a real possibility that you're, you're really thinking about things
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when you're playing games or, or you're exercising a creative capacity, like as you would in creating
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art or music, but in general, the differences between distraction, something which wears you
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down in the end, if you do it for too long, something which makes you feel empty after a long period of
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time and the kinds of activities, which are nutritious, so to speak.
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They, they, they give you something to, to grow from, to live on, to find rest in.
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And I think everyone can feel that distinction with a bit of reflection.
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We all know which things are restorative or make us grow and which things really just in
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That's my, that's my distraction of choice, but I know there's a difference between that
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and reading a good book or playing music or, or what have you.
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So I, I think most people have some, some way of making the distinction in their own
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And I want to go back to this idea you talked about.
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It's not, there's nothing wrong with learning for the sake of a job, et cetera, status.
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And in fact, because you have to make a living, there's a certain satisfaction that comes from
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But you also make this point in the book that what starts off as a means, like for, you know,
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Like the instrumentality of like learning can actually end up being the thing that leads
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that person to doing it just for the love of it.
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So yeah, that's, that's something I say to try to bring out too, that it's not learning
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for its own sake, as opposed to learning for the sake of something else, learning instrumentally.
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So it's not as if you've got to just only do absolutely the most pure forms of learning
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and examine your conscience and make sure you're really doing it for your own sake and not its
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own sake and not for the sake of the grade or the achievement or the degree or anything
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The fact is that most of the time, the types of learning we undertake have mixed motives.
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And what's interesting to me is that you can easily make a transition.
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I think it's very common from a very instrumental achievement oriented approach to learning and
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So my favorite example is from Steve Martin's autobiography.
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He's dating this woman as a, as a teenager, he's madly in love with her.
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And she's, she reads this book called the, the razor's edge by Somerset mom.
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And he says, you know, I, if she'd told me to want to put on a ball gown, I would have
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So I read this book and by reading the book, he falls in love with, with learning for its
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own sake, with wisdom, with philosophy as depicted there.
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And of course he became a philosophy major in college, thanks to that.
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And that's an example of, you know, why did he start to read that book?
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And what happened along the way is that he actually ended up being touched in a different
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way by the learning and doing learning for its own sake.
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So similarly, I think it's very common, you know, people learn, say their math and physics
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because they've, they've got to get into a good college.
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And all they're thinking about is getting the A or maybe the A plus and maybe the extra
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But it can happen that you pause for a second and suddenly realize how beautiful and fascinating
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And I think that is, is very, that's probably the way that most people who love learning for
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its own sake and do it at a professional or academic level.
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That's probably the way most, it happens for most of us is you start out in the world of
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achievement and you, you find yourself doing it for other reasons.
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You find yourself exploring different ideas, which aren't necessarily directed at achievement.
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So that to me is a sign that there's something in us that really wants to learn this way.
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It's, it's just something that we want and something that's good for us.
00:27:02.760
And that we need to just recognize and try to cultivate.
00:27:07.020
I got my bachelor's degree in letters, which is basically a humanities degree at the University
00:27:13.100
And I did that because like everyone, I guess I wanted to go to law school and they're
00:27:15.620
like, well, if you're going to go to law school, letters is a good degree to get.
00:27:18.040
It's like, okay, well, that's what I'm going to do.
00:27:19.640
Well, I ended up just falling in love with philosophy and literature.
00:27:22.720
And like, you know, 20 years later, I'm, I'm still reading the stuff I was reading as
00:27:26.180
an undergrad, but just, just for fun, because I enjoy it.
00:27:32.440
So I, for that reason, I, I try to be, I try to moderate my, my critique of the instrumental
00:27:39.660
I think it, it does a lot of good for people and it, and it also can really be valuable.
00:27:44.560
I mean, you, you, there's stuff that needs to be done and you've got to do some learning
00:27:48.880
The only worry is when that, when you never get past that or, or when you're really discouraged
00:27:54.020
from getting past that because you're so anxious about taking the time to really do
00:28:00.500
So there's just a pleasure of just learning for the sake of learning, because it's just
00:28:04.340
We have a chance to do something that has no other, it's like not a means to anything
00:28:12.660
Well, another pleasure of it is that learning, the intellectual life can be a refuge from what
00:28:22.180
So the world is a term of art, as we say, it's, it's a word I'm using in a very specific
00:28:31.500
So I don't mean the world as in the outside world or the natural world.
00:28:36.360
What I mean is the world basically of social competition, the world of striving for status
00:28:48.040
So it's a place where the standards are a place that is, it's a state of being really, or an
00:28:58.300
attitude towards what you do, which involves thinking about other people's standards.
00:29:07.320
And what's wrong with it is not that there's anything wrong with being aware of the standards
00:29:13.020
of other people or that there's necessarily anything wrong with engaging in the world of
00:29:19.920
But I do think that if you live totally in the, immersed in the world in this sense, then
00:29:27.560
the way you're living is task after task, achievement after achievement.
00:29:32.400
And there's an emptiness that goes along with that.
00:29:38.880
There's a dependence on others, which is not healthy.
00:29:42.860
So much of our great literature, 19th century novels, it's about people who strive for recognition
00:29:52.300
And they may get it for a time, but the world is capricious.
00:29:57.160
It gives favor one day and it takes it away the next.
00:30:00.140
So we need in our lives sort of spaces of being, modes of being, which are withdrawn from considerations
00:30:10.600
of status, withdrawn from considerations of money-making, withdrawn from the standards of
00:30:18.600
And so the inner life, in other words, what I call it, an inner life where you withdraw from
00:30:25.240
the world and cultivate things that you care about most.
00:30:29.440
And it's the inner life that's a source of resilience.
00:30:33.340
One of my beefs with contemporary ways that we talk about education is we talk about educating
00:30:40.900
There's nothing wrong with success and achievement, but they're not exactly always in our control.
00:30:44.800
And you need to have resources within yourself to handle whatever happens.
00:30:51.820
You need a way for your life to be rich and meaningful, even in the worst circumstances,
00:31:01.100
Because when I was reading that section, it really resonated with me because this idea of
00:31:04.740
the world, whenever we engage, I think everyone has to engage with it to a certain extent.
00:31:09.180
But whenever I do, I often feel like I don't really own this.
00:31:11.680
A part of me, whenever I put myself out there, I no longer own myself, right?
00:31:17.340
Then other people can say and have opinions about what I do.
00:31:20.360
And I don't know, you become aware that you're performing and that just feels weird.
00:31:27.920
And so I like having that idea where I have a place where it doesn't matter what I do.
00:31:35.060
It's a way to like, when you withdraw inward, it's a way to, I don't know, a way to restore
00:31:43.380
And I, as I'm thinking about it, there's in a way two ways of thinking about it.
00:31:47.320
There's the way that I write about it mostly in the book, which is in the way that you just
00:31:51.880
talked about it, where you're, and I think this is a perfectly healthy way to live.
00:31:55.320
You live part of your life out in the world, in the realm of competition, in the realm of
00:32:01.540
And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that.
00:32:07.520
That's really withdrawn from, from all of that stuff.
00:32:12.100
I also think that, and maybe I wish I'd said a bit more about this in the book.
00:32:16.860
I think that if you become accustomed to living more inwardly and less focused on the external,
00:32:25.320
the status markers, the competitive, the sense of performance and performance for an audience,
00:32:31.340
I think truthfully, when you do get involved in the world, that is to say in the community,
00:32:39.720
in the political world, that I think what you do is actually more effective.
00:32:44.320
I think you have, you can see more clearly what really matters.
00:32:50.000
There's some independence from the judgments of others and some independence from competition
00:32:55.960
for status is good, even for outward directed activity.
00:33:00.640
It, it, it makes you more aware of what matters and more able to focus on doing work that's
00:33:06.800
good, as opposed to doing work that meets the market at the moment.
00:33:12.160
Well, this is a, this reminds me of an example from Thoreau.
00:33:15.760
Thoreau, you know, when he first started his career, he went to New York, he wanted to make
00:33:21.840
He just, just everyone laughed at him and said, get out of here.
00:33:25.800
And so what he does, what he goes to the Walden pond and he just starts doing it.
00:33:29.820
He writes about nature, builds a shack, writes about whatever.
00:33:33.460
And that's the thing that became like, that's, we, that's why we were talking about Thoreau
00:33:39.840
And of course it's ironic, just in the same way it's ironic that of course, you know,
00:33:43.400
this is, this is my first book and it's, it's being received well.
00:33:47.940
And it's all about how you shouldn't just try to do nothing but publish books and have
00:33:53.900
So I mean, a bit of not, I'm not as brilliant as Thoreau, but it's a similar situation where
00:34:00.120
you, you can make your career by promoting being anti-career or something like that.
00:34:06.260
I think Thoreau is also a great example for thinking about inwardness.
00:34:09.320
One of the things I discovered recently is Thoreau's journals, which are extremely beautiful.
00:34:14.760
You know, they're just full of these little reflections, usually on nature or, or something
00:34:21.040
And, uh, you know, they're, they're not things he wrote for an audience so far as I know.
00:34:26.640
And they're, they're some of the best things he wrote.
00:34:29.100
So I, that's another example I think of, yeah, just how much inwardness can matter, not only
00:34:37.120
So what does this look like in the 21st century?
00:34:39.000
Doesn't, doesn't necessarily mean you have to go to a pond and build a shack.
00:34:42.040
So, but how can you sort of withdraw and set up an intellectual space just for yourself?
00:34:48.280
Well, I, I think that's what's challenging for most of us, especially these days, if you're,
00:34:54.180
you know, if you have the good fortune to work remotely, it's hard to find a space that's
00:35:00.360
not workspace or time that's not work time, or that's not, you need time that's not designated
00:35:10.240
And so carving out some piece of time, even if it's 10 minutes, 15 minutes, half an hour,
00:35:16.040
an hour to sit and think, to reflect, to write in a journal, to read any of those things,
00:35:26.260
The other thing I say in this context is I think it's very important to try to find other
00:35:31.620
people who are also interested in undertaking learning for their own sake or, or cultivating
00:35:40.900
It sounds paradoxical because I'm talking about inwardness and a certain kind of self-sufficiency,
00:35:45.620
but for all of these things, we need, we need a bit of help and support.
00:35:50.100
And I think that a friend or two who, who are also trying to do the same thing, who you can
00:35:55.540
touch base with and swap notes with, I think that can make a huge difference to one's success
00:36:02.480
in, in, in really carving out, carving out space for oneself, but it's so variable.
00:36:08.620
And so dependent on people's circumstances, the types of work they have, the types of family
00:36:12.220
life they have that I, it's hard to give very specific advice apart from carving out space,
00:36:18.880
no matter how, how small carving out time, no matter how short and finding people to talk
00:36:25.500
to about what you're doing so that you can have some support in that.
00:36:30.900
Conversation, one of those human activities, just it's pleasurable just for the sake of
00:36:37.480
I think that conversation for its own sake is also something a bit endangered and where
00:36:44.000
a conversation that's where you're really trying to seriously work something out with
00:36:49.500
someone else, but not, not for any particular purpose.
00:36:53.600
I think even I don't have conversations like that as much as I used to have, or as much
00:36:57.560
as I might want to have, even though I'm supposed to have built my life around it.
00:37:04.220
Well, I think, I think what a lot of people try to do, they try to do it on the internet.
00:37:07.400
Like they try to tweet this stuff or like, and like that never works.
00:37:13.900
I've never had good, but like the best experiences I've had is when I've been with people I know
00:37:19.180
We're in person and we just sort of balance ideas off each other.
00:37:25.840
When you try to do that on Twitter, I don't know, the mode of communication doesn't really
00:37:30.760
You know, I have to say I've had a very good experience on Twitter.
00:37:37.840
I think one thing it's good for is connecting with people who have similar concerns or similar
00:37:45.760
So I've, I've met a ton of people on Twitter who are seriously interested in learning for
00:37:51.060
its own sake, who I never would have known about otherwise.
00:37:53.100
Some of them are academics who are working, doing similar work as I am.
00:37:56.400
Some of them are just ordinary people who are, who are trying to learn in kind of straightened
00:38:01.580
And Twitter is one of their only points of access.
00:38:06.860
I agree with you that as far as real conversation is concerned, probably the best thing to do
00:38:13.860
would be to use the internet to, to find the people and then bring those conversations into
00:38:20.160
something like real life, even a telephone conversation, if not an in-person conversation,
00:38:26.700
try to build a real friendship beyond just the social media connection.
00:38:33.040
Well, so we've been talking about the pleasures of an intellectual life.
00:38:36.160
What's something like, say someone, they're like, I want to do this, but I don't know how
00:38:40.600
Like, what's the first step someone can take in embracing this love of learning for the,
00:38:46.320
So I think that I'm a big fan of what are called great books.
00:38:51.660
You can take as broad a view of what they are as you like.
00:38:55.020
There's great books in a variety of traditions from all over the world.
00:38:59.260
Some of those overlap with, you know, the stuff that I tend to teach, which is what you'd
00:39:03.580
call the Western tradition, but some of them don't overlap.
00:39:06.980
And there's all kinds, every culture in the world has some repository of wisdom and learning
00:39:14.860
So you, I think reading great books is a really, really good way of cultivating one's inner life
00:39:21.760
and cultivating a life of reflection and cultivating a life of leisure.
00:39:25.780
I think that the key obstacle actually more than time is, of course, community.
00:39:31.700
So there's a, there's a, that's why I say find a friend or a pair of friends to read with.
00:39:39.520
You just need a couple of people and some books and some time to talk.
00:39:43.340
And, you know, work through a book, like a book club style and have conversations about
00:39:49.660
And that will make it easier to motivate yourself.
00:39:51.960
Because most of us nowadays with the intent, with the attention spans we have, it's hard
00:39:59.440
So, so a little bit of social pressure is going to help.
00:40:02.700
There's some online programs which help, which provide community.
00:40:07.480
There's also, of course, local programs through public libraries and things like that, depending
00:40:11.500
So I think trying to find a way to, to study and to read seriously is, is one of the best
00:40:18.860
Well, Zena, this has been a great conversation.
00:40:20.100
There's some place people can go to learn more about the book and your work.
00:40:23.760
I have a webpage, zenahits.net, and there's reviews and a few other interviews and some
00:40:29.960
podcasts on there if you want to get a taste of it.
00:40:32.780
And the book itself, I'm proud to say I worked hard to make it pretty easy read.
00:40:37.460
So I hope you'll, you'll take a look at that too.
00:40:40.020
But anyway, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
00:40:42.340
Thanks so much for listening, all of you listening.
00:40:44.360
And, and thanks so much for your questions, Brett.
00:40:50.820
She's the author of the book, Lost in Thought, The Hidden Pleasures of Intellectual Life.
00:40:54.260
It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:40:56.580
You can find out more information about her work at our website, zenahits.net.
00:41:00.000
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash lost in thought.
00:41:03.100
Where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:41:13.020
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.
00:41:15.900
Check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as
00:41:19.540
well as thousands of articles written over the years.
00:41:26.080
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00:41:34.280
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00:41:46.580
And until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you not only listen to the AOM Podcast,
00:41:58.560
AOM Podcast is a production of the AOM Podcast.