Absolutely.
Fundamentally, only reading about ideas that you already agree with is bad for you. You will learn less about your beliefs than if you had read something that challenges your beliefs.
Let’s say you’re very pro-capitalist, and you want to know everything about capitalism, so you read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Great! You learned some things about the historical basis of your beliefs, and there’s value in that. So then you read Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. Okay! So you’re tripling down on the same ideas. You probably already know most of those ideas, though, right? There will be some new stuff, but ultimately it’s more of the same stuff you already know.
So you try some more recent authors, and give a shrug to Ayn Rand, and you give Lions and Scavengers a shot. And maybe you pick up a new thing or two. But mostly, it’s the same ideas that you’re already familiar with.
Do you know what none of these books have? An angle of critique (except Smith, sort of). They’re all just listing all of the good things about capitalism, and they’re not telling you the bad things. Do you believe that Capitalism is a perfect system to organize a nation’s economic policy, with no flaws? No? Then you should be interested in someone who elaborates on some of the negative aspects of capitalism, and what can be done to address those flaws, right? Because if there are flaws, you want to know what they are, so they can be fixed, right?
That’s why you should read Das Kapital.
Exercise:
Set a timer for 1 minute.
Sit down and do nothing.
Do that every day. After a while, you’ll adjust and it wont be painful. Then do 2 minutes. Then do 5. Then do 15. Every day.
Here’s what happened:
You’ve lived your entire life in a bowl of cocaine. You were born into it. When your parents wanted a break, they gave you some coke. When you were good, they gave you some coke. After you completed your homework, you were allowed a little coke. When you grew up, if you feel tired, or feel like you don’t want to do something, you can have a little nose candy to recharge.
If you want to stop using so much cocaine, you can’t just go cold turkey. You need to start by being able to survive one minute at a time without it.
It’s easy to just remove the bowl of cocaine and not use cocaine. But that’s not going to help you practice choosing not to do cocaine when it is available.