Pretty stupid questions – why write, why read – yet sometimes the stupidest questions can uncover useful insights. So why does a writer write – and why does a reader read?
A writer may feel she or he has something to say that others can benefit from hearing. Or a writer may write to be paid, or to be admired, or to express self – which is a purely personal affair, like a dancer may dance or a ballplayer play ball even with no audience.
Similarly, a reader may read to learn something uplifting or enlightening, to fulfill an assignment, to appear smart, or for pleasure.
Suppose we refine the questions. If you want to change the world, or even just your own country, why do you write, why do you read?
General edification of one’s audience or oneself is presumably no longer a prime issue. Nor is doing one’s art per se or self expression. Nor is being held in esteem. Or being paid. Or appearing smart. Or even having fun. Or at least these aims shouldn’t be pivotal if one is mainly seeking to help change society.
Seeking change, one would instead write or read to disperse or imbibe insights, ideas, aims, evaluations – whatever – to further social change.
So far, so simple. But suppose we look at all the writing that gets done by all writers who want to contribute to social change, and derivatively, at all the reading, too. Does it seem to display the motives we expect?
I happen to see as part of my daily activity a large proportion of what is written by social change seekers, at least in English.
If I actually read it all, every day, I would wind up in an asylum or an early grave. Too much negativity to endure. Too little aspiration to bear. Too little agenda to adopt.
Do you watch TV news or entertainment shows? If so you may have noticed whenever some show does well, that type proliferates. We get tons of reality TV, or cop shows, or medical shows, or Zombies, or whatever – with new instances piling on older ones, until the formula stops working. Only then is there some searching for something new, which once something seems to work, again proliferates. An even more stark and ubiquitous version of this is that news stations and papers basically cover all the same stuff, a tiny fraction of what could be discussed, and the same for talk shows, and even magazines. Even if we set aside ideological conformity, a different conformity still persists. I don’t know what to call the phenomenon. It offends creativity. I think perhaps it reflects cowardice.
It seems those who decide what appears on our TVs are way more motivated by fear of failing and being considered culpable for failure, than they are motivated by a desire to innovate or even entertain. So, if some type of show catches on in one case, people developing and choosing programs know they can pursue that type program and it may well work, since everyone is expecting that type and getting acclimated to that type. But more, even if a programmer opts for that type, and it doesn’t work, no problem because he or she won’t get blamed. All the programmer, publisher, whatever, has to do is try to do it as well as others. There is no need to think about something new, at least until nothing is working. I don’t have to risk being be deemed a failure due to trying to innovate.
So the news shows all cover the same stories, and since people want news, and are acclimated to seeing the same old stuff, the pattern persists.
Returning to the left, isn’t it similar? Don’t our writers generate piece after piece that is safe and familiar for their constituencies in the sense that they have no doubt about the validity of what they are saying because it has been said over and over – so that at least within left circles, which is where they are operating, their words are awfully redundant but also in no danger of appearing dumb or off the beaten path?
If the public is concerned about X, some event or whatever, sure there should be some good writing about X, but should people turn toward writing about X again and again, long after they are saying anything new about it, and indeed, should they continue to say the same things as one another, and often the same things they have already said themselves, to the exclusion of writing about Y, which no one is writing about, but, which could well be comparably or even more important?
If you don’t see this as a common occurrence, okay, maybe my perception is way off. Forget it. But if you do see this pattern, as I do, then the question arises, why does it happen? Why do writers and readers stick to the tried and true, but redundant, instead of trying to innovate, to raise and tackle new concerns, to offer new ideas – to write what people haven’t yet been reading bearing on social change? Why wouldn’t writers more often want to explore what isn’t being explored by others, much less by almost everyone? Why wouldn’t they want to address what isn’t already on people’s minds but which the writer thinks ought to be on people’s minds, rather than writing solely about what is on people’s minds, and in most cases long since agreed? And for that matter, one might ask the same about readers reading what they already pretty much know and not wanting to read what is challenging.
Suppose reconsider the reasons that we thought made sense for why people seeking social change write and read. Aren’t they inconsistent with the pattern I mention. If you are intent on contributing to social change won’t you address issues that need voice because they aren’t visible, not issues everyone has already written to death? And, yet that is not predominately what happens.
But consider the rest of the reasons why people write such as writing for pay, to seem smart, for enjoyment, to not be wrong, etc., especially in the contexts that we inhabit, including publishers competing for audience to sell to advertisers, editors worried lest they be blamed for deviating from “normal” behavior only to lose their jobs, and friends and communities one wants to look smart in and feel welcomed by that are prone to reward being right about what is familiar but to chastise being wrong about anything. These other reasons are quite consistent with the pattern I at least see.
So is the pattern of narrow focus actual? If not, okay. But if it is, isn’t a change needed?
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3 Comments
Mike, well, of course it is not “a stupid question,” but a vital question, too often avoided as you suggest.
Eduardo Galeano took up the question. I think it is in his Book of Embraces. He suggests that we read and write to put ourselves back together after having suffered under the alienating and atomizing impacts of capital, in schools, at work, in churches, etc. He then shares an anecdote about learned philosophers in Colombia who are seeking to discover a word that describes “language that speaks the truth.”
They deliberate for weeks and months and still there is no appropriate word. They finally decide a new word must be invented. The new word is: sentipensante (i.e. feelingthinking). It is one word, not two. So, language that speaks the truth must be “feelingthinking” language, no less about feeling than about thinking and no less about thinking than about feeling. The feeling informs and inhabits the thinking and the thinking informs and inhabits the feeling. I think this too is what James, in part, is suggesting in his earlier comment on your piece.
The learned philosophers were humble and illiterate fisherman working collectively to make sense of a complex and ever-changing world.
So, Galeano argues that we read and write as a way to express and experience feelingthinking.
The question remains as to what is the best form of expressing feelingthinking so that it is individually, collectively, socially, and structurally transformative.
Elsewhere Galeano suggests it must be oppositional/constructive language (where thought is seen as a material force in the world linked to acting in the world) so that it contains analysis of what must be negated (i.e. capital, all forms of exploitation, subjugating hierarchies, etc., etc.) and what it is we might be working to progressively construct as a feasible, commendable, and sustainable alternative (Parecon?). But we already know that much, yes?
Perhaps your question is avoided because of something Orwell suggested: Orwell’s test. The test, as I recall, calls on writers to ask if they can really justify fellow human beings taking time out of their all too short and busy lives to read what the writer has written. In all too many cases, might it be true that writers would fail the test if self-administered?
A comrade for years has been asking: “How much do we really need to know to start making a difference?”
Your question is crucially important as we each day swim through a deluge of information, and it is hoped it will stimulate further reflections and discussions…
Thanks for writing another thought and action provoking piece.
Doug,
“Elsewhere Galeano suggests it must be oppositional/constructive language (where thought is seen as a material force in the world linked to acting in the world) so that it contains analysis of what must be negated (i.e. capital, all forms of exploitation, subjugating hierarchies, etc., etc.) and what it is we might be working to progressively construct as a feasible, commendable, and sustainable alternative (Parecon?). But we already know that much, yes?””
The first bit, probably. The second bit, a sustainable alternative? That’s the important bit. The necessary bit. The bit that has to extend beyond vague and fearful grasping in the dark. But then, Michael could be a little more specific about what it is he thinks writers aren’t writing. Readers got no choice really unless they become writers.
Michael is probably right in that readers don’t really want to read the hard stuff. Vision is hard. Hard sometimes to wrap your head around but also because it can cause arguments. Be divisive.
You need three kinds of vision. On the ground shit. Transition shit. And then future shit. Parecon is the best future shit going ’round. There is quite a bit of on the ground shit that needs to be more closely connected and integrated with transition shit and future shit.
George Lakey wrote a piece recently that was posted here about the real need for future shit. But haven’t seen much follow up. The Next System Project is about this kind of integration of on the ground, transitional and future shit. But haven’t seen much promotion about it here.
I am more and more convinced that a planned economy is the only way to go. Participatory planned. No choice. You can’t be wishy washy about markets. Markets are really just rhetorical cover for what is a planned economy anyway. Planned for very specific reasons of which we all bloody know. All private tyrannies are planned economies and markets are just there to price determine and those prices carry no signals as to the true social costs and benefits of commodities. That can only be achieved if consumers are involved in the whole process. No other way. Talk of the possibility of some sort of market with socially redeeming qualities is just plain bullshit born out of some irrational fear of the word planning. And anarchists have to get a grip on their own inability to let go of their fear any kind of future shit (vision) because there is some unwritten anarchist rule that forbids it!
Most writers here are well read. All the usual shit. They know what’s out there as to alternatives and supercreator-damn have to start alerting readers to these proposals and maybe even, just to be provocative, put their own names to some and start a friggin’ debate. I want to see some writers here start to put their visionary money where their mouth is. Like Michael has. Like Takis Fotopoulos has. Like Ted Trainer has. Like Christian Siefkes has. Like David Schweickart has. Then they can all duke it out. And the debate?discussion/dialogue has to keep going and be drawn out into the mainstream public arena by whatever methods science has made available. Regular working folk have to be made aware of what’s out there. That’s why Russell Brand is WRONG to go off the grid. It’s the exact right time to stay in it. Selfish bastard. Forsupercreatorsake someone who has his number go tell him that.
And just as an aside, in relation to what Doug wrote above, just about everything I write comes out of “feeling.” I cannot do otherwise. And I ain’t apologising for it neither.
PS: Just in case no-one noticed but my Dylan and Raging Machine singer stuff was more than sarcastic and facetious. I know, like explaining a joke, but, well, you never know.
You gotta read to know what it is they are writing. So the writing is the problem. Reading takes time and if everyone is writing the same stuff or close to it, why bother after a while. I can’t read it all, it’s too much, and you get to know the writers after a while like you get to know radio commentators and start to ignore them. Like ignoring mainstream newspapers, even the “good” ones. Why people keep reading and discussing stuff found within supposedly “informative” newspapers I don’t know?
But how much is there to say? What to say that’s new? Would be nice to know what you, Michael, think deserves greater airing or coverage. More complex theory? Perhaps it’s vision? Yep, I reckon that’s part of it. Vision. No-one writes about vision, they point to it, but are to friggin’ scared to write about it decisively. “Oh, I don’t know, they’re all kinda good, and all kinda have their good and bad points but we gotta organise first don’t we? Like Occupy or something. Oh, and get that lead singer from that band about raging and machines to come and sing that Woody Guthrie song about our land. That was was really good. Even though it isn’t really our land.”
Writing is read that leads to talk and maybe action. So what do we need to talk about more that leads to action that may be more transformative than usual? Reading lyrics of songs is always good. Like Dylan’s It Takes A Lot To laugh It Takes A Train To Cry (shit that was long). That’ll give ya some good ideas. Or Subtarranean Homesick Blues. Dylan informs in profound ways that us regular folk just can’t, as some writer who had his thing published here recently wrote. Sorry, I just nearly choked on my own laughter.
Capitalism bad. Must change. Markets bad. Must change. Markets not all bad. Not change completely. Party politics boring and bad. No, not all the time, sometimes good. Syriza good. Podemos good. No, not always, sometimes they are bad. Racism always bad. Sexism always bad. Climate change bad. Must change. Democratic centralism bad. Anarchism good. Anarchism wishy washy. Marxism good. Mixing Marxism with anarchism good. Separating bad. Too much writing not enough action bad. Less writing and talk good. Reading take too long sometimes, bad. Write shorter, good. Sing more songs. Dylan good. Raging machine singer good. Eugene Chadbourne excellent.
Who are they anyway? These scared writers.?These writers who do not wish to be wrong? These right writers who do not wish to embarrass themselves? Out them. Come on, point the finger and get the ball rolling. Get them all up in your face and defensive.
At least start a fight so that I have something interesting to read because it IS all getting a tad boring people. No really, friggin’ boring.
Hey, maybe ring up Russell Brand and see what he is doing? He’s gone offline, off the grid, to educate himself and learn so he is primed for the coming revolution. So he probably knows what and who to read and talk to. But if ya do get in contact with him tell him that staying on the grid is probably a better idea because he could help others along the way. You know, others less able to take time off to ready themselves! Selfish bastard. And he’s probably reading all that “spiritual” crap anyway. Selfish bastard!
Maybe I’d better stop writing this because it’s starting to sound like the sameold sameold and it’s obviously too long (and one must be precise and concise mustn’t one, or people just won’t bother, will they.) and even more obvious, and I should pay more attention to this as it has been pointed out here a couple of times before, that this place or forum is probably not the place to be discussing this sort of stuff anyway.
So see ya, I’m off to read Eugene Chadbourne’s Dreamory because everybody who writes here is boring, repetitive and usually has little sense of humour and you really need that shit to stay sane when you devote lots of time to reading the boring, repetitive drivel that purports to be informative and helpful – like half of Russell Brand’s book. And even the good half was much of the sameold sameold anyway. And why the frick doesn’t someone like Brand, who doesn’t need the money, publish such shit under creative commons and make the bloody thing available for free. I had to pay good money for it. Give your finger to the rock and roll revolutionary comedian writer who’s dancing upon your paycheck. As Beck would say, possibly. Maybe he wouldn’t say that anymore. Anyway, pay no mind, at least Brand is funny.
Anyway, I’m a sustainer here so I demand a change, better quality writing for my hardearned. Start writing good shit people.
But first let’s out all the boring people, the scared who don’t want to embarrasss themselves writers. Come on, who are they, please. I WANT NAMES.
Cheerio.