how to start reading again (before it's too late)

the modern cave is here and plato warned us

Profound Ideas

Jul 27, 2025

reading = thinking

plato’s cave is now a reality; you are now a prisoner within the modern cave and you didn’t even know it

People aren't reading anymore.

Therefore, people aren't thinking anymore

You don't have the time. You have oppressive responsibilities.

Social media is effortless pleasure, which numbs your brain with shallow content that "does the thinking for you." We're living inside of Plato's Cave.

The Modern Cave is now a reality.

We're numbing our minds to death, and the only way to escape, is through intellectual enlightenment.

the modern cave

You’re lying on a couch.

You’re not even tied down; you feel so heavy and that you have no reason to move.

In your hand, in front of your eyes is a phone screen.

On it, you’re watching TikTok.

Reels.

Content.

Information.

They’re presented to you in a way that’s highly persuasive and deeply colorful.

Thousands of visuals going across the screen every second.

An overwhelming amount of text and sound.

You read the screen for something to hook and keep your “short attention span.”

You have no influence over what you see, and believe that thinking is now unnecessary.

And better than that, it’s an easy way to feel good.

All you want is more, more, more.

You spend every waking minute scrolling and scrolling.

But every once in a while, you feel a pain. Deep in your soul. There’s a tiny idea, a minuscule vision birthed from your unconscious mind. You can just about hear it trying to crack through the surface. You hear it whisper:

“this is all wrong”

And a part of you believes it to be true.

But the Cave is too much.

It’s too easy to stay there, and it’s actually alright (you think).

So why escape?

But you don’t know that you’re trapped, because you haven’t thought about it.

This is Modern Cave.

And reading is the way out.

the written page is now worthless?

In order to escape the cave, you need to use your mind.

Anything worth doing in life takes effort, and social media is not this.

You are what you eat, just like you are what you consume.

Through these actions you slowly build up a deep, concentrated neural network. You become an obedient consumer, living in a home made by someone else, suited for someone else.

There’s nothing about this that’s truly purposeful.

This is why thinking is hard.

This is why reading is hard.

Social media makes informing easy.

Most content is made for passive consumption, and thus, creates passive consumers.

This is why people aren’t reading anymore.

reading books is a f*cking nightmare

You cannot become enlightened and escape the Modern Cave without stretching your mind to and beyond its limits. This is only done actively, not passively. This is the only way to become an independent mind.

Learning how to think is hard, and that’s why people don’t do it.

Thus, one of the easiest ways to become “educated,” is to turn to social media and to let it do the thinking for you.

As a result, the cave leaves 99% of the population unenlightened, suffering with the inadequacies of how they live their lives, and falling prey to the illusion of thinking, and the toxic, pathological habit of mindless content consumption.

People aren’t reading.

So people aren’t thinking.

And people quit living for the hand that they’ve been given within the cave.

The new way to experience life is through a phone screen.

Really?

Stuck inside the cave for the only 80 years you’ll ever be given on this Earth?

It’s a f*cking disgrace.

The solution is to start living by becoming an independent thinker, exploring the world of experience outside of the Cave.

Read and think to become an independent, free mind.

the pathway to enlightenment: how to start reading again

Reading is the revolt.

A single book is impenetrable against the tyranny of meaningless, drab mass-produced content.

You’ve decided you’ve had enough.

You can’t bear the pain of sitting on your hole for the next decade accounting to nothing in your life.

You try, and struggle, to lift yourself up from the sofa you’ve shaped to comfort your arse-cheeks.

You decide to turn off the phone and pick up a book.

You sit down and begin reading again. Who knows how long it’s been.

But you immediately start to feel overwhelmed.

Your eyes flicker all around the page, along with your focus. You can’t take anything in. Your thoughts are going too fast and block out anything else as noise, like a sound-proof wall.

Your "short attention span" has beaten you.

But it’s ok.

You show up tomorrow, and fail again.

The day after that, you fail again.

But then, third time lucky, you manage to read a single sentence.

But you don’t just read it, you think about it.

You don’t just try to memorize it.

You ask yourself:

What is being said and why?

How it relates to the world and your own life

How could I explain this in my own words?

The journey towards enlightenment begins.

You're beginning to free your capacity for thought; a widening of consciousness.

If you want to transform from being an mindless zombie to an enlightened thinker, this is how to do it.

Maybe you’ll be able to help others once you crack the surface-level thinking that plagues our entire society today.

Maybe you’ll encourage others and contribute to the world like a true thinker.

Maybe if we thought a little more, we'd all suffer less.

the escape plan

Here’s your framework:

Carry a book or Kindle with you everywhere (maybe instead of your phone entirely)
Plan when you’re going to sit down and read
Pick the right book for a purpose
Use the 85% rule to define your reading and intellectual limits daily
Learn the art of reading, thinking, and understanding anything you read
Consistency, consistency, consistency

It’s a simple framework, but it will open up your mind extremely quickly.

The results I found after 5 days of applying this framework was nothing short of astonishing.

My brain stopped feeling numb and tired all the time.
My anxiety and overthinking lessened by 80% (by my standards).
My thinking improved massively, along with my thinking patterns throughout the day.

And the best part is that you don’t need to spend hours doing this, and you have the time.

You just have to substitute Cave-time with reading-time.

step 1: grab your weapon

Phone-reaching is your new trigger for book-opening.

Boredom is healthy, unless you live in 2025. If you cannot stand still, alone, staring at a wall for 5 minutes, there's a problem.

And a quick bit of "TikTok time" is the contemporary fix.

Don't fight this impulse, but learn reprogram it like a computer code.

Input → Algorithm → Output

Change the algorithm.

Carry a book or Kindle everywhere with you in your hand/pocket

Place a book in every location where you would go to charge your phone

Leave a book in the side-door of your car and on top of the pillow in your bed

Make books easier to access than your phone; put your phone in a separate room, turned off

This changed my life within a week.

I used to have a terrible addiction to listening to music. I couldn't get out of bed unless I had headphones on. But once I started reading on the bus to college, instead of blaring TOOL and Linkin Park (love you guys xx), it felt like my brain changed.

And I did this by leaving my headphones at home.

I had my default option waiting for me.

But you may object, saying that some people need their phones.

I get that.

If you're absolutely against not having your phone away from you for whatever f*cking reason, I want you carrying a book/Kindle stacked underneath your phone 24/7.

You go nowhere without the two.

No exceptions.

step 2: the mental revolution needs a time and place

If it's not given any time, it's not worthy of your time on this Earth. Thus, the importance of scheduling in dedicated time to read.

I like to take two approaches to actually reading.

The first is our previous step. Read whenever you would usually scroll through Instagram or YouTube shorts. Sitting on the toilet, waiting for food, picking up your girlfriend. You get the point.

The second works dualistically with step one. You block in dedicated reading times during your week and you hit them no matter what.

Start off by reading for 15 minutes across Week 1, that's it

Preferably choose when you're most alert and least likely to procrastinate

Treat this as investing in the version of yourself in a week's time

Stack reading with existing habits (I like to read with my morning mocha(s) in work)

Every minute of time you carve out of your calendar is a dedication to intellectual liberality. You're freeing yourself one minute at a time, with a compounding effect that prioritizes profit over pleasure.

Week 1 might be hell. But it's only 15 minutes across the entire week.

Maybe week 2 is a little easier, and week 3 with that.

Maybe in week 4 you start understanding your limits a little more, and you change your weekly reading target to 30 minutes, and so on.

Open up your Google calendar and block in your first 15 minutes of week 1. It could be done in one day or spread across all seven.

Prioritize how you'd like to.

step 3: choose your intellectual ammunition

You need to choose your first book with purpose, it needs to fill a gap, solve a specific problem, or answer a question that you're genuinely interested in and care about deeply.

This is crucial.

Reading should never be random, but rather, it must be strategic. Every book should answer a specific question you're wrestling with or solve a particular problem you're facing with how you're living your daily life.

How do you choose what to read?

Write down one thing you want to change about you or how you live your life (career transition, relationship issues, meaninglessness, financial issues)

Find the best books that suit these needs

Choose books at 85% of your comprehension level. Remember, we want to ease into reading

Always have a "why" when you read. This creates that purpose we spoke about

My recommendations (these are the books I read first):

Lack of meaning: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

The unconscious mind and the soul: Modern Man in Search of a Soul by Carl Jung

Fiction: Animal Farm/1984 by George Orwell

An introduction to philosophy for beginners: The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

How to build an excellent character: The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

Reading is a planned attack against your weaknesses. You're literally programming your mind with solutions to your real problems.

Write down one specific problem you have that's killing you.

Find one book that directly addresses it.

That's your next read.

You're now reading to start!

step 4: find your unique sweet spot

Now that you can start reading, you need to sustain it across time in a way that’s beneficial to you now, tomorrow, in a week, and so on.

To do this, you need to stay just below your limits.

You want the reading to be challenging, just enough so you can maintain it across time.

Use the 85% rule.

Work at 85% of your limit.

How to calibrate your personal 85%:

You feel challenged enough as to not feel bored
You feel challenged enough as to not feel so overwhelmed that you want to quit
You finish reading feeling intellectually stimulated, not excessively fatigued
Find out how much quality work you can do, and once the quality starts to drop, you’re done; this is your limit.

Don’t even ask me how but I’ve somehow managed to increase my daily reading limit to 2 hours a day.

A month ago, I’d have tapped out after 25-40 minutes.

This works.

Growth is stimulated by discomfort. It f*cking hurts. But this is the cost of progressively overloading your mind, and it’s worth it. Consistent quality work across time leads to constant progress. Find your limits, back off, and sustain it across time.

Start with 15 minutes of reading a week. Slowly add more time across the weeks and you’ll eventually exceed your limit, and thus, define it.

step 5: transform from consumer to creator

Reading can be more or less active. We just don't want it to be very passive.

Always ask yourself these 3 questions while reading:

What is being said and why? (Comprehension)
How does this connect to the world and my daily life? (Application)
How would I explain this to a 12-year-old? (Mastery)

Pause after each chapter and summarize the logical argument out loud.

Connect new ideas to concepts from previous books or life experience as quickly as possible.

Read with a pen or pencil in your hand; literally write down your questions and answer in the book that you're reading. This is more active than reading without!

I personally read most of my books on Kindle, but I still go through highlighting the assertions, outlining the logical argument, and writing down notes where necessary.

When you start having conversations with the authors, instead of merely receiving information from them, you're starting to escape the Cave.

When reading becomes thinking, transformation happens.

In other words, enlightenment happens.

step 6: live like a reader

Daily.

No buts or maybes.

This has to be a daily practice, a way of life.

Read something every single day, even if it's just one sentence. If you can watch one reel, like one carousel, comment below one tweet, you can escape the cave and read one bloody page.

You become what you do. Excellence is habit, and thus, enlightenment can be created one page at a time.

One page beats zero.

This doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be a non-negotiable way as how you live.

15 minutes a week.

It’s a low aim. But it’s you investing in your future self and developing your mind.

If you don’t start now, you’ll soon have the mind of an immature adolescent in a 50 year old’s body.

Pick your poison.

time will pass, so use it wisely

What if you did this for the next 10 years?

Only 15 minutes a week?

Here’s the math:

15x52 = 780 minutes or 13 hours per year
13x10 = 130 hours across 10 years
= 13-15 books a year

It doesn’t sound like a lot only if you read like a surface level thinker.

Imagine mastering 13-15 of the greatest books of all time, and making them a deep part of who you are?

Do not disregard the value of deep reading.

Shallow reading is for racking up numbers.

Deep reading is for escaping the cave one step at a time.

By all means, stay trapped in the Modern Cave, letting the world think for you.

Or choose the better poison and work towards intellectual freedom.

You don't need quantity of hours for transformation. You just need quality changes in how you act, both in the physical and the mental world.

Stop reading this.

Pick up any book

Read one sentence with absolute attention. That one sentence is your first step out of the Cave.

The Cave is comfortable.

But freedom is better.

(and turn that bloody phone off and get sunlight into your eyes)

- Profound Ideas

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