Embracing Tsundoku — How a Library of Unread Books Can Expand Your Mind
By: Zachary Minott
Tags: Books, Philosophy, Life Lessons, Advice, Psychology

The Antilibrary — A Boundless Fountain of Curiosity

Understanding that read books are far less valuable than unread ones might appear very counter-intuitive and confusing to you.

That’s okay. Knowledge itself seems to have been put on a pedestal these days where people tend to form their identity around the number of books that they’ve read, their educational institution, and everything that they do know.

The problem with this is perfectly illuminated by Lincoln Steffens’ quote from his 1925 essay, Radiant Fatherhood:

“It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.”

Certainty in a world clouded in mystery has become mainstream. Marcello Gleiser highlights in his book, The Island of Knowledge, that we have a tendency to constantly strive towards more and more knowledge, but that it is essential to understand that we are, and will remain, surrounded by mystery. Science after all is driven by the unknown answers to calibrated questions of nature.

That’s why the antilibrary is such an important tool— the intentional act of pursuing Tsundoku for monetary personal growth.

Coined by Nassim Taleb in his book, The Black Swan, he describes the antilibrary and its role in battling ignorant certainty by using legendary writer Umberto Eco’s relationship with books as a means to show what a fruitful relationship with knowledge really looks like.

Umberto Eco had a very large personal library amounting to thousands of books, so whenever he had visitors, he’d often separate them into two categories. There were those who were fascinated by his library and would ask how much he has read, whereas the other very small minority would actually understand that a library was not meant to be an ego-booster, but rather a very powerful research tool. The library, to him, was not a mere ornament of knowledge, but rather a means to constantly remind himself that there exists a sea of knowledge out there that has yet to be explored — that he will never be able to explore.

Therefore it’s clear that the antilibrary serves the purpose of being an intellectual reminder about how much there is to explore in the world, to stay curious, and that you don’t know as much as you think you know — there’s always more to learn and knowledge will never be complete.

It allows you to be comfortably conscious of your ignorance, thus sparking a fire in your belly to keep on learning. As Stuart Feinstein points out in his Ted Talk and book, Ignorance: How it Drives Science, being consciously ignorant is to have faith in uncertainty, finding pleasure in mystery, and learning to cultivate doubt as there is no surer way to screw up an experiment than to be certain of its outcome.

Though I may find a little discomfort in knowing that I won’t finish all of the books that I have in my library, I have cultivated this constant drive to learn more and more in due part to that discomfort. Every time I look, I get reminded of the pressing reality that I will never know all that I want to know, but I can at least try and bring light to the shadows of my ignorant mind.