WRITING DOES THAT

Writing is a good thing, maybe not so much for others but certainly for me. The process requires mental dexterity and my mind needs the exercise. Language is one of, if not the most important evolutionary leaps in human history. Some people can talk faster than they can think the words. You just open the mouth and words come tumbling out. I have to think about this word and the next word and how they string together. Sometimes, often, I get trapped mid sentence, selecting the right words and getting them organized. In awkward pauses my mouth waits for the brain to deliver. People who know me allow me think space. Others want to help and finish my sentence for me. I reply, “No, that’s not what I was going to say,” and finish with my own phrasing. There in lies the beauty of writing; the pause works in your favor. Once the word is out of your mouth it has a life of its own and you can not take it back. With writing there can be any number of edits and revisions. If I have a problem it is that I talk and write at the same rate, self editing as I go. 

You can not have story without words and without story we would still be sleeping in trees and community grooming would be our most sophisticated social behavior. So I write. I use similes and metaphors like a machinist uses grease and ballbearings. I weigh words for multiple meanings and by how easily they fly off the tongue or off the page. In the end, if my story is clumsy or remote then I’ve either misled someone or worse, I’ve wasted our time. 

I tend to write in one of two genres. Sometimes I just spin story, real or imagined, worth the telling, worth the reading/listening. It can entertain or it can inform. Sometimes story is like Christmas decorations. At a deeper level it reveals a purpose that serves a greater good. Sometimes it just makes you feel better. Other times my writing is about clarification and continuity with my feelings, beliefs and values. Writing does that. It adds layers of understanding, decision making, word selection, ordering and streamlining to an issue that needs to be refined. My ideas and opinions are not always well received. Still, if you want any semblance of knowing what you’re talking about it requires defending your story in a civil manner. When strong opinions clash, people can get upset or even angry. You make enemies who must be argued with. It requires winners and losers, a long standing American birthright; the zero sum game. If it generates dialogue that’s good but usually, people who feel the need to push back aren’t interested in dialogue. They just want to leave the room feeling they have won the battle. 

In my journal I write in both genres, where I can pick and choose which ones I post on my blog, ‘Stones In The Road’. With no reason to upset anyone’s comfort zone, I keep the blog out of the trenches. At the root of every controversial issue is a moral principle that manifests itself in one disputed belief or another. When one’s investment in any ideology runs deep, objectivity is the first rational rule to be sacrificed. I work hard at being objective, recognizing the boundary between titilation and due diligence after all, if left to its own device, human nature would steer us all onto the low road. At the end of the day, feelings overrule intelligence. If not, there would be no seemingly insoluble issues; not climate change, not a woman’s reproductive rights, not immigration, but convincing the zealot is a steep, slippery hill to climb. 

Objectivity requires an open mind, a willingness to be wrong, to change, at least tweak a previously held position and to move on. You don’t do that as a concession but rather as better understanding. Those who can not challenge or see their own beliefs evolve, they confuse the benefit of rational thought with an ego-stroking reinforcement of redundant remembering  (tongue twister) and that closes the door to enlightenment. In some circles the word ‘enlightened’ is a dirty word. You must be willing to be wrong, willing to change. But being wrong is morally sinful if you’ve been steeped in that school of thought. 

Five presidents from Truman to Nixon, when they realized that a war in Viet Nam would be unwinnable they stuck to their guns, literally, rather than lose face and appear weak. Nothing is driven by defects in Human Nature more so than politics and governance. Overcoming that flaw is a really, really big rock to be pushing up the hill. Needless to say, I don’t meet many wanna be thinkers who dare to resist the pressure of their own partisan/religious conditioning. Maybe I should put out another blog where we begin by exchanging insults and superimposing polarized propaganda that we’ve been spoon fed since we were in diapers. Everybody wants to believe they have the right story, I certainly do. Being right carries a moral caveat that is so deeply rooted in our experience, we do almost anything to validate what we want to believe. Still, I try to focus on listening for the sake of enlightenment. Defaulting to orchestrated, canned rebuttals is easy enough to diagnose. If you don’t want to go there, you don’t have to. In a world that is predicated on change, sticking to your guns is not a virtue. It can serve you well or leave you in the lurch but you won't know which until it's too late to rectify. Human Nature would have us rewrite the story to sanctify the sin. Influential people, none of them truly want a taught plumb line or a level playing field. What they want is an unauthorized ace in the hole. I feel like the journalist who knows they are doing their job when they get criticism from every direction.