 Welcome to the reading guide for dumb people, for the village idiots, for the post-literate masses in 2022. If we are going to create a non-violent world, we need everyone in the world to achieve a certain base level of knowledge, physical control, and emotional control. So it's okay if you are dumb. We've been programmed by the public education system through standardized testing, through grades, and through our economic status to think that if we aren't into books or if we aren't as smart as the elites, that we are inferior. You can't get caught in that dialect though, the us versus them mentality, because that creates resentment. I know so many people who are resentful about knowledge, but when you go on the path of knowledge, it can create an immense amount of joy. If you love movies, if you love stories, if you love talking with your friends, books can give you that much and more. If you love learning and being curious, you can understand the world at levels that you never, and yourself at levels you never have before. But a lot of people who try and spread knowledge in the world come at it through an elitist point of view, come at it through a literary Napoleonic point of view, and they think that you, the dumb people of the world, need to be conquered, that you need to be changed at some fundamental level and get on board with all of our ideas. No, I feel like that if everyone reads just a little bit, reads and gets into knowledge in their own personal way, we will hit that baseline level of knowledge, which creates a moral code, which creates a human autonomous group that doesn't hurt each other anymore. Once we reach that baseline level of knowledge, physical and emotional control that prevents us from being violent toward others and continuing the cycle of abuse, we can then accept that we are all very different and then move on from there. But we need to start from where we're at, which is that most people since high school, since college, have not continued reading, that they suck at reading. I know, I know, I have a friend and she can't even read because she can't sit down and focus. I could show her a book, for instance, and she couldn't, she can read, I guess, signs and stuff, but she doesn't even have the focus and the energy to read. So let's start off with some tips for those people, the people that can't, who know, you know, who know how to read, but can't seem to read. Tip number one is that you need to get more into movies. You need to get off of social media, right? You need to move away from social media and you need to get into storytelling. You need to start to move and lean into storytelling and good storytelling because if you become a connoisseur of movies, eventually there are movies out there that are adaptions of books and you could start off very simple. The Twilight series, the Harry Potter series, it's almost like ELL, English language learners type stuff. If you want to get back into reading, you need to lean into it with some easy things. For instance, the Dune movie just came out and the Dune series are very complicated, but if you could work through the first Dune book because you love the movie Dune, then by the time you finish that book, and that is tip number two, that if you are reading a hard book like Dune, for instance, whatever you don't understand or maybe even from the start, you just need to read slowly and read out loud, shut your phone off and read it out loud. And if you read it out loud slowly to yourself and repeat things you don't know and take it line by line, that is the number one recommendation or to gain literacy in any language. And I know so many people who have, including myself, because at one point, I was dumb, everybody. When I was in college, my freshman year, I had suffered multiple concussions from just being an idiot, right? Being the village idiot, skiing accidents, long-boarding accidents, falling down while drunk. I cracked my head open three times in two months and got knocked out each time. And after that, I literally couldn't read anymore. I couldn't think. I didn't have the focus. So what I had to do was I had to read out loud almost for an entire year to gain at least a semblance of being able to focus and listen. I understand that reading out loud may seem silly, but for instance, when I read poetry, I'm a huge poet and love reading poetry, I read all the poems out loud. So because it resonates differently, it does something to your soul. When you read out loud, I think it increases literacy and understanding. And tip number three is that before you read a book, so if I'm going to read this book right here, the sibling society, I should read, maybe flip through it, maybe read some summaries online. This is a huge tip that you should x-ray the book. You should understand what's in the book, maybe understand what's in the chapter, kind of flip through the chapter and understand what you're going to read before you're going to read it. And that kind of goes back to tip number one, that when you watch a movie, when you watch the Harry Potter series, you know what's happening so that you can fill in the blanks that if you don't understand something, you don't get caught up on it. That's something you don't want to do, that if you're reading something and it's a little bit too hard and even if you're reading out loud and you can't get what's happening, it may be a major point in the story and then you're confused for the rest of the story. So you want to prevent yourself from being confused and the best way to do that is to preview what you're going to read. And another recommendation for novels, especially if you're really trying to get back into it, is that you read the summary online before you do it. The fun of reading is in the journey, not in the surprises or the climax. Vince McMahon, the CEO of the WWE said that if you gave him enough time, he could sell it a stadium for a fight between two broomsticks. People know that pro wrestling is fake and still show up. MMA most of the time is very boring, but people don't show up to see the punches and the kicks and the takedowns. They show up because of the storylines. That's why there's so much emphasis, for instance, in MMA or in football on all these storylines. It's boring most of the time in sports, but the storylines are what makes it fun for us. And that's the same thing with reading that if you are a beginner, if you were just trying to get back into it, it's better to know what's going on until you get your chops back. Think of a runner, a retired runner. I'm sure you guys have, you know, not worked out for a while before or ever in your life. And that first day back absolutely sucks. Your sore running or excuse me, reading is the same way. You have to build yourself back up. And the best way to do that is to know where you're going. You don't come back to working out without a plan. If you want to have the most amount of success, you buy a plan from someone or a higher personal trainer and they tell you what you're going to do for the next six weeks. It's not all surprised. What do I want to do right now? People who do that don't get results. Imagine Mr. Olympia saying, I'm just going to go with the flow. We are readers. We need a game plan and we need a roadmap for our success. Tip number four is that you need to figure out what books that you are into because at the face axiomatic level, when we read a book, we are trying to figure out what is this book about? What is the theme? And it comes back to, you know, being in grade school. What is the theme of this story? That's what we want when we are reading a text. So you need to figure out things that fit your vibe. And at the start, maybe you don't know. And that's why you read summaries and work your way through it. And, but once you know, that now will help you accelerate your growth. Next, tip number five, I think you need to learn how to underline. You need to start underlying. I have right over here, a multicolor pen that I am always using. I'm always underlining and doing different colors, which brings things to me. That's a little bit complicated. You can also tab. You can also divot the page for a long time. I would do this. I would just highlight whole sections like this. I want to underline. If you're a little bit lazy and don't want to underline, you can do this section. And I'm inspired by this book. If you guys want to dive a little bit deeper into becoming a better reader, I'm going to be covering a lot more of this on the course. There's this book right here called How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler. And this is a great book. I reread this a couple of times. Like I said, a veteran, someone who's read over 2000 books, I'm still trying to become a better reader, a better active reader, a better even superficial reader when I need to be. And tip number six is that you need to understand that you are not just doing this for you. You're doing this as a part of society, that knowledge and the path to higher consciousness requires you to become selfless at some level, that the hedonistic path, the path of pleasure, if you don't know what that means, is very tempting. And you should take that path at times. I'm not saying to give up things. I'm saying that you need to make small replacements. Social media is great, but how much time do you need on social media every single day? If you dedicate 30 minutes a day to reading, you should be able to finish three books a month or so. That is 156 books a year. That's a great start. 36 books a year could change your life. For instance, if you read 20 books on personal development or business, your life could change in terms of the money you're making or how you approach life or your job. You could be happier on that end. If you read 30 books on poetry, you could have more of an understanding of the deeper web of life and experience or fiction. You could understand multiculturalism. If you read books on the economy, you could become an informed person year by year on different topics or just over the course of 10 years. Over the course of 10 years, if you read 30 minutes a day, you could have read 350 books. That's insane. 350 books is enough to surpass that level of understanding the moral code to not be a violent human being anymore, but better yet, to become an actual member of our society. A democratic member of society needs to know what is exactly happening in our society. You need to know what economic policy is. And just reading a couple of introductory books will give you more knowledge than 99% of people in our country. So thank you guys for joining me. And if you guys are interested in this book, check out this video over here on who my favorite author is.