Ben Douglass: April 2008 Archives
The other day I received an email from an ardent admirer of my online column. She happens to live in Providence, Rhode Island, and knows me from a time during the mid-1990's when we both posted comments on a world wide web discussion group. She was quite frustrated with me saying: "I love your writing but there's not enough of it-please write more." I was not too pleased with her email and told her so, while trying not to dampen her enthusiasm for my new column. (I have so very few ardent admirers that I can't afford to lose any.) I hope I was successful with her. Only time will tell.
This email brought up an important issue with me about my writing, or I should say my lack of writing. I have too many other things in my life to feel guilty about and I don't need my lack of productive writing to be one of them, especially when ardent fans remind me of this. It may sound silly to my readers, considering the fact that I am not famous or even well known, but comments like the one she made, puts a lot of pressure on me and I end up over thinking the issue and actually produce less.
When I responded to this woman I offered her six reasons (she later said the reasons sounded more like rationalizations...) why my writing output was probably so sparse. I told her that the great bulk of writers in the Internet blogosphere are there to get attention, to show off or to impress others, to compensate for weaknesses or frustrations, to try to secure oneupmanship over another person, to try to impose their will or ideas over others, and lastly, as an outlet for frustration or tension or hostility. These six reasons, by no means discrete or inclusive, are personal reasons.
Writing of this type pervades the Internet like so much emotional vomit. It tends to be intellectually impotent, lacking maturity, and filled with unnecessary fluff. It is easy to spot this kind of writing because it usually rambles, goes off on all sorts of tangents, is filled with much irrelevancy, and often with much misplaced emotion. There is often considerable hyperbole, overreaction, and confusion in thinking something through. The personality of this type of writer, not the outcome, is what appears to be at stake. There is rarely a harmonious conclusion or resolution to such writing; usually it just stops. This type of writing becomes a form of play, sometimes very aggressive play. A person writing from any of these six motivations may not be seeking a higher road to truth about themselves or the world, or writing for writing's sake, or to achieve perfection of an art form.
My writing is an exercise to discover hidden truths about myself, others and the world at large. A good example of this was my short story, "Konstantin's Birthday," posted earlier on this column. The motivation behind this story was to force myself to become better acquainted with the suffering that happened during Nazi Germany's airborne assault on the island of Crete during World War Two. And it is primarily for this reason only that I am incapable of any sort of hack writing that is so prevalent on the world wide web today. The few words that I do write I want to count for something substantial and offer others something to chew on intellectually and cogitate upon during their quiet hours.
I would like to end this essay by stating that good and endearing writing always has purpose. At the core of my personal essays or stories is the supposition that there is a certain unity to human experience. As the great essayist, Michel de Montaigne said: "Every man has within himself the entire human condition." I would add that how a writer manifests that human condition, or simply overlooks it in favor of the trivial and mundane, shows whether they are a moron or someone struggling to find truth within themselves, others or the world.
"Enlightenment is the emancipation of man from a state of self-imposed tutelage. This state is due to his incapacity to use his own intelligence without external guidance. Such a state of tutelage I call 'self-imposed' (or 'culpable') if it is due not to lack of intelligence but to lack of courage or determinism to use one's own intelligence without the help of a leader. Saper aude! dare to use your own intelligence! That is the battlecry of the Enlightenment."
Immanual Kant
Essay: What Is Enlightenment
It was August 1994.
A very great and everlasting change came upon me suddenly but not without some warning. I was a seeker without a home, walking the side streets of the universe, begging a cup of nectar from the gods. All I had left in the world was the memories of my previous homes, homes that I was unable to return to.
Then one fine afternoon I sat down, staring at a blank wall, with the intention of never arising until I found home again. Seven hours later I stood up and found myself in my new home. The same one I had been born into. It was startling! I had come full circle.
Images of all the religious figures I had studied and honored over my life swirled in my brain like fast moving pictures, going on, and on, and on.....then subsiding into the far reaches of memory. A calmness moved over my entire being. I felt light, as if I could fly or jump over trees with a single push. Then peace and knowing washed over me like a breaker wave at the beach. I suddenly knew! Then I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.....until my stomach ached and my eyes watered. I finally knew what I had been searching for all my life and it was inside of me all the time.
I walked outside into the warm August evening and looked up into the dark sky and trembled slightly. Everything was now crystal clear. I had no where to go, no one to see or no one to follow.....but myself. With that awareness I looked at the task before me and trembled again. I would be walking alone once again on the back streets of the universe with nothing but a knapsack full of memories and a cup to fill back-up with new experiences.
(This is a true story)
