The word essay derives from the French infinitive essayer, "to try" or "to attempt". In English essay first meant "a trial" or "an attempt", and this is still an alternative meaning. The Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) was the first author to describe his work as essays; he used the term to characterize these as "attempts" to put his thoughts into writing.
One of my continuing struggles in life (one I will probably die struggling with) is the desire to structure everything in a rationalist and materialist manner. I have a sneaking hunch that the world doesn’t work that way and I know definitely that people are for the most part not so much rational as self-absorbed (which, to be honest, is pretty rational).
So let’s begin with the simple fact that individuals of any type or flavor will attempt to impose their personal point of view/ideology on the world around them. I tend to think that this is “human nature”. Most folks just want to be seen as the “smartest guy in the room” and the only way to do that in a social setting is to brag to a socially acceptable degree.
I suppose that my struggles with the long form is that in order to do so truthfully, I have to address the flaws in my thinking. I tend to think that the process will be to write, then put it away for a while, then re-read and correct flaws, then repeat the process until I get sick of it and then publish.
The nature of my subject matter will change. I suppose that I will need to change the structure of the blogs. I am thinking that my writing needs to be in two different forms: “Diary” entries will be marked as such in the title and be short, maybe a quick bitch about stupid shit or an anecdote relating to something that I find amusing. The big pieces (the ones that are so difficult to regularly pen will be labelled “Essay”.
But these rubrics are fraught with the importance I put on them. Diary entries are almost by definition a form of an essay. There doesn’t seem to be a clear definition of essay, and I think that my proposed labelling will merely signal how much time I put into the piece. I have a hunch that, taken as a whole, the quick diary pieces will be as revealing as the essays when judged by their content.
So today is a true essay, I am attempting to come up with an answer to a question that I have been skirting around for nearly two decades. I seem to have an unreasonable need to write almost every day, and to place said writing out there in the hopes that others will occasionally read it. I don’t really track the number of people who see it, as I am somewhat unwilling to go to the effort of modifying my site to maintain statistics. Most of the time the simple act of posting scratches the weird writing itch.
I suppose that I don’t write to convince anyone but myself. I was listening to a podcast the other day and the subject of “Quietism” came up and I was drawn to it.
(https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-of-ideas/montaigne)
I think that I will do some more reading on the subject. Today I hit up Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(philosophy)
And later today I will try and digest this piece:
https://petemandik.substack.com/p/the-qualia-quietism-manifesto
Mostly, I am coming to believe that this discussion is somewhat akin to angels dancing on the head of a pin. I am beginning to wonder if the subject can be answered in a universal sense and I am more and more drawn to the protestant reformation as an example where both sides of the discussion are merely folks trying to make their description of a personal and internal phenomenon an across the board mandate for “how people perceive the world”.
I am attempting to figure out how my mind works, not to impose that particular straight jacket on a description of how all human’s minds work, but just as an understanding of how I get from the real world “experience” to the decisions that stem from those data points.
What I find difficult to bear is the tendency of folks who look into this kind of thing to attempt to create “laws” for the multitudes when at best they can only attempt a documentation of a model that exists solely inside their bodies (I’ll discuss the effects of non-cranial inputs to “thought” in another essay).
Philosophers argue all the time and during all ages. It is kind of normal. The key to it is to not take their points of view all that seriously and try to see what you can distill from their thoughts that allow you to structure your mental model (good artists borrow, great artists steal). But as soon as you start pushing off your personal views as universal truth, you are becoming religious.
Overall, philosophy and religion are two sides of the same coin. What is happening with both is the universal need to think that you are “right”. This is the path that I am trying hard to steer clear of (albeit unsuccessfully). Always in the back of my thoughts is the annoyed, self-important, and unwelcome thought that people who don’t understand what I am trying to say are stupid. I work hard at squelching this, but it is an ongoing battle.
So my essays will continue to be “attempts”. I will continue to put in digressions not quite appropriate to the core thesis, but that is how my mind works. I will continue to use crude language interspersed with technicalia because that is how my mind works as well.
Please don’t expect epiphanies, because I sure don’t. When I write something down here, it is because I know that I don’t really understand it and ossifying my thinking in words lets me return later to try and continue in the ongoing, and ultimately unsuccessful attempt for understanding.
(final weird digression: Since I recently finished Harry Potter, I really wish that I could invent or buy a “pensieve”. It would be great to accurately document your past thoughts without the years wearing down the edges to make you forget the places you were wrong. I know that folk around here sneer at ‘Arry Potter, but it is at it’s core a well-written escapist fantasy and those are pretty thin on the ground.)
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