PURPOSES & INSPIRATION FOR WRITING
Someone once asked Socrates, 'What are you good for?' And he replied, only half in jest, 'pimping!' By which he meant (he explained once they’d all stopped laughing) bringing people together who have something good to share with one another. This, I think, captures the overall purpose of my work.
Since all writing is in context, it’s difficult to separate the vision of a book from the biography of the author. So please allow me to share a few of the more motivating experiences that have inspired me to write. Probably few will care much (maybe my grandkids, someday), but I might never get another chance to examine how some of my life's challenges have moved me to continue working on the same book for more than thirty years.
Why blog about a book?
My book is entitled MANY PATHS to the SAME SUMMIT, and I created this blog to introduce it, to catch the overflow, and to satisfy my compulsion to leave nothing out that has precluded my calling it finished, which is a relative term. If it can be improved - which it ALWAYS can - then it isn't ever finished. This is how the perfect becomes the enemy of the good, as they say.
So a blog is a practical endeavor, at this point, because in the event that my time runs out before I’ve had time to publish, my grandchildren at least will have some idea what it was I was working on all those mornings, and why I thought it was so important that I gave up time that I might have spent with them for its sake. I hope they'll someday understand what Lou Marinoff meant when he said, "We plant olive trees for our grandchildren; perhaps we do philosophical practice for them too."
A blog also has some special virtues that other medium tend to lack. For one thing, there are no rules or reader's expectations, so it can be whatever I need it to be. The beauty of a book, for instance, is its linearity, for when there is a clear beginning and ending, then every idea can nest logically between others, and each builds on what came before and sheds light on those that follow. But this is also the trouble with books - for they are not infinitely deep, so there is simply not room for everything one wants to say, so there is more to be said about many important topics than can possibly fit between two covers (at least within a book of a length that most people will be tempted to read). And what’s more, in a book, the end of one chapter should connect logically to the beginning of the next, which assumes a straight line of reasoning that can preclude a dialectic argument. While in a nonlinear blog many threads may all lead to the same central conclusion - yet another path to the same summit.
What’s more, a blog can be published such as it is, and yet continually edited and improved. My fascination with the power of words has been, at once, the best and most challenging thing about being a writer. I’ve spent my life pouring my thoughts onto the page, but in the process, I've written more than anyone will ever have time, or probably inclination, to read. Plato had the luxury of an under-stimulated audience, but these days, we are anything but. So I’ve spent all my mornings for thirty years writing, and most of the rest of my available time editing - which ideally improves the written word, but it can also suck the life out of it, abbreviating what deserves elaboration. To my dismay, the first version of my first book (written in the 1980s) was 800+ pages long – quite satisfying for me, but the very thing that gave it its quality practically guaranteed that no one would ever read it. I was encouraged though by academic mentors who read and praised every word, but they were initiated, unlike a general audience to whom I hoped to appeal. So after years of editing, it was down to 400 pages or so in the early 90s – more likely to be read, but less worthy of it perhaps. And this accordion process has been the story of my writing life since.
So this is part of the beauty of a blog – it’s nonlinearity. I might write as much as my heart feels the need, and have a place for the overflow that won’t fit in a book. What's more, I can hypertext footnotes (when I figure out how), and readers can take it or leave them, as they please. And not only can I work and rework what I have to say to my hearts delight, but each topic can stand alone, since the end does not depend on the beginning. In fact, there is no end, and even if there were, readers could not see where it is or be discouraged by the length of text between beginning and end. It could be infinitely deep, for all they know.
Ideally, one might hope, a book could generate interest in a blog, but either way, I can die satisfied that I said what I felt the need to, for whatever it is or might someday be worth. And even if my grandkids are the only ones who care, they are worth everything I’ve got to give!
Someone once asked Socrates, 'What are you good for?' And he replied, only half in jest, 'pimping!' By which he meant (he explained once they’d all stopped laughing) bringing people together who have something good to share with one another. This, I think, captures the overall purpose of my work.
Since all writing is in context, it’s difficult to separate the vision of a book from the biography of the author. So please allow me to share a few of the more motivating experiences that have inspired me to write. Probably few will care much (maybe my grandkids, someday), but I might never get another chance to examine how some of my life's challenges have moved me to continue working on the same book for more than thirty years.
Why blog about a book?
My book is entitled MANY PATHS to the SAME SUMMIT, and I created this blog to introduce it, to catch the overflow, and to satisfy my compulsion to leave nothing out that has precluded my calling it finished, which is a relative term. If it can be improved - which it ALWAYS can - then it isn't ever finished. This is how the perfect becomes the enemy of the good, as they say.
So a blog is a practical endeavor, at this point, because in the event that my time runs out before I’ve had time to publish, my grandchildren at least will have some idea what it was I was working on all those mornings, and why I thought it was so important that I gave up time that I might have spent with them for its sake. I hope they'll someday understand what Lou Marinoff meant when he said, "We plant olive trees for our grandchildren; perhaps we do philosophical practice for them too."
A blog also has some special virtues that other medium tend to lack. For one thing, there are no rules or reader's expectations, so it can be whatever I need it to be. The beauty of a book, for instance, is its linearity, for when there is a clear beginning and ending, then every idea can nest logically between others, and each builds on what came before and sheds light on those that follow. But this is also the trouble with books - for they are not infinitely deep, so there is simply not room for everything one wants to say, so there is more to be said about many important topics than can possibly fit between two covers (at least within a book of a length that most people will be tempted to read). And what’s more, in a book, the end of one chapter should connect logically to the beginning of the next, which assumes a straight line of reasoning that can preclude a dialectic argument. While in a nonlinear blog many threads may all lead to the same central conclusion - yet another path to the same summit.
What’s more, a blog can be published such as it is, and yet continually edited and improved. My fascination with the power of words has been, at once, the best and most challenging thing about being a writer. I’ve spent my life pouring my thoughts onto the page, but in the process, I've written more than anyone will ever have time, or probably inclination, to read. Plato had the luxury of an under-stimulated audience, but these days, we are anything but. So I’ve spent all my mornings for thirty years writing, and most of the rest of my available time editing - which ideally improves the written word, but it can also suck the life out of it, abbreviating what deserves elaboration. To my dismay, the first version of my first book (written in the 1980s) was 800+ pages long – quite satisfying for me, but the very thing that gave it its quality practically guaranteed that no one would ever read it. I was encouraged though by academic mentors who read and praised every word, but they were initiated, unlike a general audience to whom I hoped to appeal. So after years of editing, it was down to 400 pages or so in the early 90s – more likely to be read, but less worthy of it perhaps. And this accordion process has been the story of my writing life since.
So this is part of the beauty of a blog – it’s nonlinearity. I might write as much as my heart feels the need, and have a place for the overflow that won’t fit in a book. What's more, I can hypertext footnotes (when I figure out how), and readers can take it or leave them, as they please. And not only can I work and rework what I have to say to my hearts delight, but each topic can stand alone, since the end does not depend on the beginning. In fact, there is no end, and even if there were, readers could not see where it is or be discouraged by the length of text between beginning and end. It could be infinitely deep, for all they know.
Ideally, one might hope, a book could generate interest in a blog, but either way, I can die satisfied that I said what I felt the need to, for whatever it is or might someday be worth. And even if my grandkids are the only ones who care, they are worth everything I’ve got to give!