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Hi, I’m Jon.
I’ve written a [ [link removed] ] handful [ [link removed] ] of [ [link removed] ] pieces [ [link removed] ] for Discourse over the past few months and was grateful when asked to contribute a monthly column. Hence, welcome to The Autodidact.
For full disclosure, I’m not completely self-taught. The U.S. Navy provided me rigorous training in submarine reactor operations. I don’t use what I learned there that much. After my tour of duty, I sought an engineering degree but was seduced into journalism by the promise of smaller paychecks and low job security.
But most of my education, at least in important matters, was self-directed. I read many books, listened to endless seminars online, and found people smarter than me and peppered them with questions. All that adds up after several decades. Pair that with my hyperactive interest in just about everything and a desire to master one subject before moving on to the next, and this column is the result.
We Need to Talk…To Each Other
One day years ago, I blogged about old sci-fi TV shows, then shifted to economic theory, and ended up disputing early theological heresies. This prompted a reader to dub me the “King of Stuff.” In other words, a rushing locomotive of not very useful information that keeps jumping tracks and leaves passengers wondering why they ended up in Topeka when they bought a ticket to Sacramento. And to be honest, “Autodidact” sounded more professional than “King of Stuff,” so I set aside the royal title.
I spent years providing communications and marketing services in the private sector before joining the local free-market think tank and pursuing writing full-time. Most recently, I served as Editor-in-Chief of Ricochet.com, a center-right community and podcast platform. With Discourse magazine’s dedication to publishing a wide array of writers on myriad subjects, this seemed like a perfect fit.
What I most admire about Discourse is its commitment to time-tested liberal values while encouraging innovation in how best to pursue them. Let’s face it: We live in an illiberal age. Instead of open dialogue, politicians and media personalities demonize and try to silence their opponents. I still believe most Americans don’t engage in this behavior, but some of the most vocal certainly do.
On occasion, I’ll close my laptop to gas up my car or buy groceries. In my experience, everyone gets along famously. People of widely varying incomes, races and faiths hold doors for each other and joke while waiting in line, while politics, mercifully, never comes up. Granted, I live well outside of The Beltway, but this is the common day-to-day experience for most Americans.
Meanwhile, digital life has devolved into a war of all against all. “Too-online” citizens must remember that social media isn’t reality. Discourse is one place we can still discuss big ideas, disagree fiercely and gather for virtual drinks afterward.
A New Journey
Intelligence is easy to find online, but there’s precious little wisdom. Those of us who spend too much time in the digital world (for me, it’s a job requirement) are all too familiar with the firehose of the latest news, trends and controversies. Within hours, they’ll be replaced by new topics just as meaningless.
Many experts have sounded alarms that this torrent of ephemera and the mad chase for clicks are rewiring brains, reducing attention spans and altering how we process information. Too often, we focus on the transient and urgent and abandon the meaningful and eternal.
I didn’t want to waste so much of each day, so six years ago, I embarked on a new media journey. Or, should I say, a very old one. My daughter was attending a classical charter school, and one look at her reading list revealed major gaps in my formal education. Not wanting a child smarter than me, I printed out that list and started at the beginning.
On Jan. 1, 2018, I cracked open “The Iliad” by Homer. Apparently the 3,000-year-old book is kind of a big deal, which is why every smart person I know has read it (or at least has claimed to). But, as with most classics, I had never quite gotten around to it.
It was a bit slow-going at first (I apparently chose a dated translation), but I soon fell into the rhythm of the brutal war epic. After a few days, I was done and… I actually had enjoyed it. Might as well knock out the sequel, I thought, so I dipped into “The Odyssey.” This adventure story was more readable and a lot more fun. Someone recommended Xenophon’s “Anabasis,” the first behind-enemy-lines story, and that was the best of the three.
What about Virgil’s “Aeneid?” Why not—I’m on a roll!
I was expecting the classics to be a slog, the literary equivalent of eating my vegetables when all I wanted was Buffalo wings. But a month and a half into 2018, four classics were down, and I was eager for more. No one was more surprised than me.
Once I got hooked on these ancient tales, popping onto TwiXter felt like an obligation. I would pull out my phone, discover that one of the lesser Kardashians was pregnant, then return to that old book to find out how Aeneas would defeat the Latin army. It was just much more interesting than the latest “must-see” premiere TV show.
By early 2022, I had read all the Great Books that interested me in semi-chronological order. From the Greeks and Romans to the Russians and Brits, I enjoyed most of them. Dostoevsky was a revelation, Oscar Wilde got on my nerves, and I learned never to read two Kafka books in a row. (Really messes with your dreams.)
In the modern academy, these dusty texts are denigrated as hopelessly retrograde. Dante skirts over climate change, and Tolstoy ignores #MeToo. What can we learn from dead white males like Homer and Virgil when they were steeped in such a politically incorrect age?
As another dead white male once wrote, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Today, we’re struggling with similar questions about how to do the right thing in a petty, ugly and violent world. Granted, if we choose the wrong side today, we aren’t likely to see our city sacked, but human nature is a pretty consistent thing.
Whether you choose the books mentioned above or pick up something more recent, you’re going to learn a lot more about people, politics and principle than you will from your smartphone. Better yet, you’ll be filling your life with ideas that have stood for centuries.
If I can be an autodidact, anyone can. And I offer this column as one more way to make sense of our current moment, drawing in lessons from history as we prepare for the future.

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