Years ago, I wrote a thing about the idea of “dangerous books”.
The premise was simple. There’s a type of book that’s more than just inspirational, educational or entertaining. Such book is dangerous for your mind. Not because it will do you harm (though those books exist), but because it will fundamentally change the way you think. So fundamentally that you won’t recognise your thoughts pre-book anymore. You might not even recognise your own self after a while.
Why is this dangerous? Because it means that until you get to a place where a book makes you feel good, you go through a place where you just feel… wrong. Out of place. Disconnected. The contents of the book are so different from what you’re used to, that it doesn’t feel right. That’s the danger part: feeling unsafe, not knowing when that will go away. It’s scary. It doesn't feel normal. Nor comfortable.
Dangerous books say “fuck normal” because they change things. And in the process, we change with them. They’re the original influencers, minus all the fraud and aspirational bullshit (though that exists in books as well). Change is one of those things that we love to see in the world but hate to see in ourselves, because to change ourselves is to stop "being authentic”. Dangerous books make you question what authenticity is, in you and in others.
If you think and do creative things for a living, you’re always toying with that fine line between knowing what works and trying something new all the same. It’s a dangerous line, full of biases, because depending on how much time you have you might just settle for “best practice” and being proved right. The interesting things, of course, happen not when we set out to be proven right, but when we set out to get to places we didn’t even knew existed in our mind’s eye.
Dangerous books do that. Good qual research does that. A great conversation can do that. A morning run can do that. Yoga or meditation can do that after a while, if you sustain the habit. And the point of those changes is not to question “our authentic selves”, but rather to see what else is out there and bring it back in. A series of clues to paint a richer picture, not a puzzle waiting to be completed and never again retouched.
“We are all so much the poorer if all we can do is agree with the books we read.” – The Book of Life
Perception bubbles and avoiding cognitive dissonance are one of the major themes of our times. We have so much “relevant” content that all we see are things that feel relevant to us, but end up crystallising world views that never change. Ideology is important but fixed ideologies are overrated. The whole point of having a conscious brain is to embrace the luxury of changing our minds, and in fact hope that we do more often than not. [tweet this]
Some books have been dangerous for me over the years. Good Strategy Bad Strategy. We Children of Bahnhof Zoo. Rework. Sapiens. H Is For Hawk. Ego Is The Enemy. Not because I felt I agreed with everything they said, but precisely because they challenged me to re-evaluate whatever I thought I knew about the world. Some of them made me feel I was living and working in the wrong country, until I found myself in the right one. Others made me feel I was worrying about the wrong things, until I started learning to worry about the right ones.
That’s the pattern. They felt wrong for a long while. Until they felt right. It's very similar to any creative process, really. If we're not careful, all this danger can drive us nuts, but then again it’s just like the movies: in the end, the most dangerous scenes usually give you the best viewing experience.
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