Let's Talk About Writing

Why? Why not. Writing is a kind of thinking. Especially blogging, since the point of it is to get it out there. To be honest, I have not honed the art of the argument; I have a lot of work to do in developing my mind before I'm there.

The question in writing is whether to write down whatever it is you just thought. Is that important? Does it support what I'm trying to do? Okay, so outlines help, but do they really? I find outlines are quickly abandoned. Perhaps I simply lack discipline.

Writing is a train of thought, but I cannot bring myself to lay the tracks in an ordered way. They just go wherever they want to go. Then, when I've written a little bit of writing, I go back to the start. What was I trying to say again? Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I'll just repeat it, think it again, and this time I'll see what words come to mind to say it. And the words are always different. And the cat is on the counter again, so I have to go put him on the floor. Where was I?

In writing, the writer is trying to reproduce the pattern of thoughts that exist in our minds. The writer is trying to lead the reader from point A to point Z, through points B, C, D, and so on. me though, as a reader, I am rarely so receptive. Never grateful for a path laid out for me. I'm always heading off. I try to get through a work, but if I engage it, then I am distracted from it. If I let myself get caught up in this other man's thoughts, then I forget that I'm reading, and my comprehension and retention are reduced to nothing. Or, if I read while thinking of other things, my eyes move across the page, but my brain doesn't pick up any of it.

So, writing. Now the cat is in my lap. Now he wants to overturn the wastebasket, which has empty jerky packages in it. Those two sentences were not in chronological order; I obviously couldn't have written them while dealing with the cat.

The writer has to be able to freeze-frame the thought process. He has to capture each moment as a photograph in words. The photograph portrays a thoughtscape, not a landscape. Thus, it is never enough for the writer to merely think. Otherwise he would speak. Speech can take place in real time. An audio-video recording device can preserve a thought process. Only writing can create a totally new one. Only writing can create something from the ground up.

But can it be done? Has anyone ever done it? Perhaps not. The problem with charting out a thought process is that the terrain to be encountered in each mind is different. How can you anticipate the attitudes that your text is going to be encountering as it plunges through the space of the mind. Well, good writers do anticipate objections. They anticipate the most common objections. The objections that they themselves had as they were exploring this idea in their mind. However, it is impossible to anticipate all objections. For one thing, not all objections are equally valid as each other. To be sure, no objection is truly valid. The nature of an objection is that it contradicts the text in question. The objection is a challenge. One or the other must be sustained. This is a zero-sum game. If the objection is valid, it kills the argument. But if the objection is not valid, which must be shown by the argument itself or in a supporting statement demonstrating the bankruptcy of the objection, then the argument kills the objection.

Valid or not, objections do tend to arise. As I have already stated, the skilled writer predicts common objections. He does this through his education and through his knowledge of the reader, who probably has some education in common with the writer. Obviously they share a language, unless the work is in translation.

The skilled reader learns to ignore the objections that arise in the corners of his mind, threatening to overshadow his understanding of the text in question. The reader assimilates what is needed, and even compensates for any extraneous writing that the writer has included. For example, a reader who does not share a certain opinion expressed can simply disregard the opinion while continuing to assimilate the useful knowledge that is contained within the work, even if the only useful knowledge is the fact that the writer does purportedly hold the opinion expressed.

However, it is not enough for someone to write something down. That does not make it an opinion. Note that I said "purportedly". Some readers read believing that the writer means everything he says. This is not necessarily the case. This is also why writing is both superior to and more dangerous than speech. A writer has many different options for what he writes down. A speaker has fewer. A speaker only has access to the thoughts that he currently holds in his mind at the moment. The writer has months or years to revise. (Objection: Some speakers practice and hone the same speech repeatedly; Defense: these are more akin to writers than speakers, in the sense that I am using here.)

When a writer writes, he will consider several alternative methods of expressing the idea, before typing it out. Or, he may even type out several examples, trying out the best one before committing to it, and moving on to the next portion of his argument. I know I'm doing a bad job at arguing any single point. I have not created a thesis for this blog post.

Yes, people seem to prefer theses, but there is something liberating about just writing to discuss, not to come to conclusions. Besides, no one comes to clear conclusions anymore anyways. Even in the

Damn! The roof is leaking, and my bowl is full. I have to go empty it. I'll be right back.

It's kind of funny. I think a very large number of thoughts about certain other individuals. For example, my mother. Or my brother. Or my friend. And yet, if I am to go and write a letter to them, how can I express these multitudinous thoughts? I must selectively choose what to say to them in order to evince a desired response. I want my mother to know that I love her, but isn't that the part that you put at the end of the letter? And isn't it evidence enough that I am writing to her? I want her to know that I am well, but again, the letter itself is evidence of that fact. I want her to know that I enjoyed our last visit. Ah! Good, something concrete. I want her to know that I'm looking forward to our next visit. Well, it stands to reason that if I tend to enjoy our visits, then obviously I'd be looking forward to the next one, so that's out. Shall I send her news? The problem with news is that I have already shared anything newsworthy with her on the telephone. Perhaps with instant global communications, letter-writing is forever going to die. And yet, I do want something permanent by which to remember our relationship.

Still there are many things I could write. Some are true. Some are not true. Some will only become true by virtue of them being written down. There are feelings invented for the purpose of a letter. In writing a letter to my mother, my main purpose is to make my mother happy. Feelings can be assumed.

And, I have to go to work. I have a lot more to say on this subject, but it is not organized. Just looking back over what I've written, I see several places where I'd like to clarify my thoughts, and address objections that I've thought of. But if I don't get in the shower right now, I'll be late for work.

Nationalism: The Great Lie or the Greatest Lie?

I've never considered myself a nationalist. I don't believe that I inherently belong to any particular nation. I guess the reason is that I find myself almost indistinguishable from a large number of English-speaking white people from countries around the world.

I do, however, consider myself a humble person, or in other words, a cultural relativist. I'm probably using the term wrong, but I'm trying to say that I don't want to be quick to jump to conclusions about what the right way of living is for other people. In other other [sic] words, if someone in a faraway land wants to be a nationalist, that's fine with me. In fact, if the people of my own countries were to divide themselves into nations, that's okay with me too. Indians and Quebecois come immediately to mind. Weird how that works: Indians and Quebecois have nationss, but I have none. Or if I do, it's the nation of Canada, whose self definition implies the non-existence or compositional existence of the Indian and Quebecois nations. Ie. the nation of Canada is made up of many smaller, weaker nations, plus miscellaneous English-speaking white people who happen to live in the territory and be the majority.

Well now, what's the problem with this kind of nationalism? Isn't it kind of organic? If you're living in the Stone Age, then yes. But anything beyond the age of empires has to have a different mode of organization. I have no tribal council to bring my grievances to my government. I have no heroes, no young men to fight in the name of my tribe. I have personal access to government services acting in the name of the monarch. If I have a complaint, I can take it to the court. This has been the case for just about as long as we have had civilization. And yet, somehow tribes and nations have continued to exist. The reason for this has something to do with the inefficiency of central authority. When the central authority is designed to deal with all people, inevitably some of the people fall through the cracks. And when these people are similar enough to each other, as happens when they share a common origin, territory, culture, and language; they can assign a council and a band of heroes to advance their cause within the empire.

But what is it that seems strange? Well, I was actually surprised at something that was said about the war in Georgia, or rather, I was surprised at my own reaction to what was said. Mr. Gorbachev was giving his opinion on the situation, and he said that the people of Georgia and the people of Russia and South Ossetia have nothing against each other. They like each other. This makes sense to me. I have relatives in Alberta, Washington, and Idaho. I wouldn't want Canada and the United States to go to war, because that puts all of my friends in danger. Civilians don't like war. Huh.

No duh. But what surprised me was that I hadn't even thought of this when the first news of the war came in on my Google feeds. When news services tell us about wars, they tell us: "South Ossetia tried to break away from Georgia, so Georgia attacked them. Russia likes South Ossetia, so Russia attacked Georgia." The problem is in the proper names. And when I read this, I read it in a nationalistic sense, for some reason. Am I just used to nationalist conflicts? I read it and thought to myself "ah, yes, two nations who hate each other." Why else would anyone go to war?

Well, apparently (and I knew this already) war is not fought between people who dislike each other. We don't kill because we want to kill. We kill because our friends, brothers, and neighbours are in our way. And when we outsource our warrior class to a professional military and centralized state government, they kill our friends, brothers, and neighbours in our name, whether we like it or not.

It's kind of interesting how soldiers think and operate. A normal person works his whole life for a house and a family, and a car or two. A soldier is given millions of dollars worth of equipment and the capability to destroy thousands of normal people's lives. The difference in scale is almost unbelievable. A man could work his entire life to build a life, only to have it all destroyed by a "wayward" missile. A soldier doesn't make as much money as a businessman, but a soldier has the power to bring a thousand businessmen to ruin. Or, more like a few dozen if the soldier has the authority to destroy a small town.

Anyways, I just found it strange to find nationalistic assumptions collecting cobwebs in the back of my mind. I know that nationalism is not true or correct, but I seem to have believed that some people in the world are still nationalists. Or that there is some connection between nationalism and interstate conflict.

3 Radical Conclusions

Okay, not entirely original ideas. I've seen these expressed before, but I did sort of derive them myself, through my own thought process. It was only after thinking them through that I realized I'm just copying other people. Oh well, it's not like there's anything new under the sun.

1. One of the biggest complaints about capitalism is that it focuses so heavily on money, which is often considered evil. But that's not what capitalism does. Money has gotten a lot of attention as the mechanism for capitalism, but what capitalism really does is make ideas the new capital. In a capitalist system, money is no longer relevant. Good ideas succeed financially because they are good ideas. Contrary to what you may have been taught, money doesn't just grow new money. Money does need to be present in order for an idea to be allowed to fly, but money alone isn't sufficient. Think of money as the tracks, and ideas as the train. Better ideas move you along faster, and the type of tracks doesn't make much difference, as long as they're durable and well-maintained. Ideas are the true motivating force of capitalism.

2. The pre-toppled statue. As a regime, we build a statue that already appears toppled. It's not top-heavy: no hands upraised, no branches, no great heights. It is simply a wide, circular, almost puck-like shape, already appearing to slip off whatever base it sits on. It's leaning over at what appears to be almost an unnatural angle, as if it's been violently pushed over. But that's the intent. The message to be sent is that there is no establishment. This way, it is impossible for a revolution to destroy what is already in its most entropic state. This obviously isn't my own idea, since I only got it after looking at a bunch of modern architecture and wondering "why the heck would they build something that doesn't even look like anything." Well, that's why.

3. The media is not reality. Do not worry at all what the media, that is, the newspapers, television, etc. are saying. They do not dictate what is real. What is real is independent of the media. Don't worry about them getting the facts "right". The facts are the facts no matter what is reported. It's not your job to keep the media honest. Everyone complains about the media, saying that they're getting a bad deal, not enough coverage, the wrong coverage. People have to begin to realize that you can't believe everything you hear from the media. The media was never meant to be gospel truth. I'm surprised that the media even tries to portray itself as fair. They never should have started that trend. That the media never lies is just another lie that the media tells us.

Another Aphorism

I don't like leftovers because they taste good (though they do); I like them because they take so little time to prepare.