Book Flap Syndrome

19-11-21. N8

Hello, friends of read.cash. The topic that I bring to you today I decided to address it thanks to one of the questions in my previous article that you can see here in case you have not taken a look at it Random Questions About Me.

In answering that question, something that I had heard recently came to mind, the "Book Flap Syndrome". What does this syndrome?,I tell you.

Here I bring you a reflection on the people who believe that with the flap of a book is enough to know something.

The book flap is an extension of the front or back cover of a book that folds inward.

It has many uses, the publishers announce other publications of the collection or publisher, to present the author with a short biographical synthesis, and in some cases summaries of the book's contents, not detailed but from the motivational and advertising marketing point of view with in order to entice readers to buy the copies, in some way summoning what is known as the "Book Flap Syndrome".

This syndrome arises from the observation of those people who read the summary described on the flap of the book and already assumed that they were specialists in what the book was about.

They assumed that knowing what was on the flap of the book was knowing the contents of the book.

What elements make up this syndrome

First of all irresponsibility and little personal respect trying to build an image of connoisseurs and specialists.

Unfortunately this happens not only when we refer to the flap of a book, we can transpose the flap of the book in its essence, such as the physical appearance of a person and judge this person by it, listen to only one sentence in a conversation and emit wrong judgment. It is not as simple as observing the basic things of the events and making generalizations that have no foundation or support, in essence an empty whole without content.

I put the literal translation in Spanish: "Solapa de un libro" in English is "Book Flap". Therefore, referring to the person who suffers from this syndrome, I will refer to them as "solaperos" or that they are "solapiando".

The "solaperos" believe that because they know what the flap says they already know what the book says. That is why the difference between the terms know and know is very important, where knowing goes beyond knowing and implies not only the superficiality of the subject, but also an investigation, study and analysis of forceful and precise information.

Secondly, there is an erratic element, "the replacement of the whole by one part", that is to say I read just one column and I already draw conclusions about the whole. In order to infer something correctly, we cannot take a part of something and from there we start talking about the whole, then we are making an inadequate inference. Criticizing something that we have not read just for an element to take into account as obviously it is "solapiando".

Third, the superficiality, brought to the human being, our brain, which is an impressive, complex instrument and even with unknown capacities, also has its dark sides, and sometimes it tends to work with cognitive ease, with immediate intuition and makes us commit errors, are also these inadequate inferences.

That is why when we are going to give a judgment, issue an opinion, above all, it must be done with responsibility, which means, among other things, to do it from the knowledge.

I recommend you see the poem The six blind wise men and the elephant. It is a story of Indian origin, which illustrates the inability of man to know the absolute truth, it was taken to poem by the poet John Godfrey Saxe.

They were six blind wise who wanted to know what an elephant was like. Each one only touched a part of the animal's body with their hand, you can find it in this 👆video.

After sentencing and imposing their criteria according to what they considered to be the absolute truth, based on that part they had touched, considering that all the others were wrong, a man who did see made them reflect.

Everyone is right but no one knows the whole truth, if instead of discussing and discrediting the opinion of others, they had cooperated with each other, they would have already formed the precise image of an elephant, it may be one way or another depending from which angle you look at it, uniting the partial truths they would have conformed the whole and the absolute truth.

We must be tolerant and respectful of the opinion of others, we can all be right and wrong at the same time, because each of us has a limited perspective of objective truth, no one is a possessor of absolute truth and humility is needed to. In his article Improve Your Life With Humility, @Peter-Molnar tells us about it.

The problem is not in being blind, the problem is in making an unjustified act of inference, that is, for a fragment I make generalizations of the whole. This is one of the great problems that social networks face, due to isolated elements that enter their dynamics.

Do you know people with this syndrome?

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