Private thinking made Public
On Writing
A few years ago, I was asked what exactly writing does for me?
After thinking about this question for a couple years, as one does, I’ve come to the following conclusion: In order to properly formulate your thoughts, you have to write them all down.
A large portion of my youth was spent thinking, mainly in my own head, observing how the world interacts, and forming what I might now describe as fragmentary thoughts and opinions about various things, like personal interaction, the state of other people, the state of institutions, how particular things work. I was described by others as being in my own head, which I find to be accurate.
My thoughts on this topic are very Petersonian; writing is a tool to sharpen thinking. It is the only way to take abstract, fragmentary micronarratives and combine them to create a more complete narrative about the world.
You can’t properly form opinions without writing. I mean this literally. A person has to spend a considerable amount of time with a particular matter to hold their own opinion. Otherwise, they are just copying someone else’s opinion and holding it as their own. This is not a criticism; it is an observation that most people form opinions based on a chain of trust. People trust the opinions of close friends, relatives, a local community, or even a particular commentator or influencer, and they take those opinions as their own.
I have no problem with people taking other people’s opinions as their own; however, a borrowed opinion tends to have little value, because the underlying context that formed the original opinion disappears when passed to another person. To take a political example, in order for me to hold the opinion that US Federal Entitlements should be cut and burned, I have to have reviewed the US budget obligations for the next decade and read The High Cost of Good Intentions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlements, which is a great historical analysis on the ineffectiveness of Entitlements, to then form the opinion that not only can the US not afford the current level of federal entitlements, the entire premise of just giving people money has never worked in the long term, and we shouldn’t be doing it.
That is a good example of forming a real opinion from spending a certain amount of time with the subject, instead of taking another person’s opinion as my own. Whether a bit of research, and listening to a lengthy book on the topic is sufficient to have a useful opinion is up for debate, but we can all agree that the more time you spend developing your views on a topic, the more valuable your opinion will become. It is quite useful to spend time forming your worldview, instead of adopting the worldview of those around you.
What does all this have to do with publishing my work? Simple answer really, I like feedback. Every time I write or edit, there are hundreds of things I tweak and adjust. There have been a few times where the main point of my column was so fundamentally flawed, I had to re-examine my entire worldview on a particular topic. Getting someone’s opinion on what I’ve written is a mutually beneficial practice and is a great medium to enter a deeper conversation, even if the person I’m speaking to is offended by what I’ve written. In order to think, you have to risk being offensive. You can’t risk being offensive by just writing to the void. So whether the feedback is positive or negative, hopefully it serves as a medium for an interesting conversation, so I don’t have to drag every conversation kicking and screaming into the abstract realm where I spend most of my time.
It might seem risky, foolish, or reputation-damaging to post what I write publicly, but I’ve found throughout the years that anything I’ve thought might damage my reputation has never done so, and often the risk of putting my name behind something has been more rewarding than anything else.
My worldview is very abstract and complicated, and I never advertise what I happen to be thinking about, so writing columns serves another purpose, which is to open a window into my perspective. I try my best to keep that perspective useful, and unique for the passing reader.