Mark Kingwell, the author of In Pursuit of Happiness: better living from Plato to Prozac writes:
We all know that some books work like ingenious traps.
They begin innocuously, articulating a few genial sentiments or
unobjectionable home truths designed to lure you down the false path of a
deceptive familiarity. You stride ahead without fear. By subtle steps,
each plotted with argument or example or statistic, you are moved closer
to the place where artfully strewn leaves cover a hole in the ground.
You know very well what is coming, or anyway suspect it, but at some
point - if the author is any good - you fall, on cue, into conviction.
Aha! You now think what the author thinks.
Maybe you're happy to find yourself there, and make
yourself comfortable. Maybe you're feisty and seethe from your ignoble
position in the trap, scanning memory and logic and the rest of the
mental horizon for a means of escape. Either way, the trap affords
complicated forms of pleasure. As trapping games go, there are not many
better or more interesting than walking through a good book of argument.
Not all books . . . seek to ensnare the reader in the
author's own convictions . . . I faced a choice between setting a trap
in the traditional philosophical manner, ascending to the high ground of
objective detachment to observe the results, and doing something quite
different: beginning an intimate conversation with one reader at a time.
Books on deep and difficult topics can trumpet and they can whisper;
they can declaim and they can hint. But for me, they work best when they
just talk, in a manner as close as possible to the true voice of their
author.
Okay then. You’ll find that I don’t write as good well as Kingwell. I’m not a natural-born killer with a pen. I lack the literary expertise required to turn my limited understanding—concepts that I struggle with and only intermittently grasp—into words.
Although I know where I’m coming from, and where this talk will ultimately lead, I am far from certain how best to tell the tale. Still, I’ll try to go about this in, as Mark Kingwell suggests, “a manner as close as possible to [my] true voice”.
I am stimulated by the thoughts that spin the worlds of others, and I benefit from tapping into some of that centrifugal force. A little cross-pollination works wonders. Reading is the best way to put me in touch with another person, as it helps me see the world from their point of view. I become them for a spell—it actually feels like I’m under a spell when I share their experiences. And, because I feel that the acquisition of experience is the reason for living, that can't be a bad thing.
Whether the author lives or is history is immaterial. If you enjoy a book and later discover that the person who wrote it has recently died, then doesn’t make a jot of difference to your enjoyment. I don’t need to relate to anyone in the actual flesh to appreciate what they say. In fact, reading their words is so much better than pow-wowing in real life—that's been my experience. And the corollary of that is that if you’d like to make friends with me, please don't knock on my door. But I wouldn’t ban you from sending me an essay.
Nevertheless, let the buyer—or borrower—of books beware. Don't dwell entirely within anyone's headroom, no matter how comfortable it feels when you first slip between the sheets. Don’t let yourself be completely swept away in the throes of a new love or affair lest you lose your sense of equilibrium and poise. If you are in the habit of reading books then, to act as a counterbalance, I’d strongly suggest that you write one too.
The the bottom line is that the correlation between the stature—academic, professional, or moral—of a person and the importance of his or her words is not absolute. I insist that anyone could come up with a useful creation. You get a hundred monkeys typing and eventually they’ll string together the complete works of Shakespeare. And do you know it’ll read just as well as the original.
Accept for now that anyone, no matter what their roots are (or where they’re wont to root about) could very well come up something fine and dandy. In that case, let’s dispense with having people pass tests, roll out their background for inspection, prove that they are beyond rebuke, demonstrate their purity, dig out a qualification, present a clean rap sheet, wave around old money or spill blue blood.
Imagine if you will a criminal with something on his mind. Say that one day a villain on death row receives a genuine flash of insight. The crimes that he has committed are now just water under the bridge, because now he knows! He has discovered the answer. And out of the turned-over-a-new-leaf-goodness of his heart, he wishes to share it.
How far would that person get? Not much beyond the bars of his cell, I warrant. It wouldn’t wash, would it, no matter how watertight his ideas were? His jailers just aren’t going to listen, not to mention anyone else.
From whom would you expect to receive revolutionary news? If you take the pre-judgemental approach, then you’ll only ever listen to a Nobel Prize winner, Rhodes Scholar, saint, or to Dog Itself (or one of its come-down-to-earth incarnations). Hey, that really rather limits the field, wouldn’t you say? You may be waiting a while. So I’d suggest that you not shoot the dowdy messenger. Don’t dismiss him just because, in your eyes, he’s not dressed to deliver. Give the pizza-man a chance.
First, foremost and forever, I write for my own benefit. No, I don’t hope to create a best seller; I’m not talking money here. Rather, I want, as I’ve mentioned, to clarify my musings and cobble together a super-philosophy, one that attacks and conquers every nitty-gritty gripe concerning existence. This for me is more important than any revenue-earning exercise that I might fritter away my time at (trading hours for a handful of dimes). My goal is a comprehensive and coherent new world overview. Think Mein Kampf, but a benign and friendly version.
If you want to learn something, do so by teaching it. That’s my master plan: to write in order to hone the inner monologue. Do it to yourself, and for yourself (I tell myself). Explain the stuff that I’ve discovered in my mind to my own mind.
Besides, I might one day end up with Alzheimer’s. I might need to re-educate myself—a Flowers for Algernon situation—about the person I once was. I might need to reacquaint myself with what I achieved (or at least aspired to). And for that, this magnum opus would serve.
Alternatively, this could be a legacy for my descendants—surely a kinder mob. Or, if I run afoul of the Law and slide down a black hole of criminality—or insanity—these pages could serve as breadcrumbs in the dark. They may enable the men in blue coats or white to track me down, perhaps to analyze and prescribe the appropriate medication or set a just sentence.
Or do I throw caution to the wind and address myself to friendly aliens, empathetic time-travelers from the future, or to the ‘singularity’, the super A.I. par excellence that is expected to spontaneously emerge from its world-wide-web?
Writing is for me (and for everyone?) a scattered, fragmented business. To stitch multiple thoughts into a coherent, linked sequence actually goes against the grain; the best that you can hope for, eventually, is a patchwork quilt. So I don’t worry about an overall structure. Nothing so formalized. I reason that if an overall gestalt is to materialize, then it will arrive later—in due course and in good time.
What I did was write a little every day. I made it a habit, devoting a year or two to the task, coming up with maybe a couple of hundred vignettes. I wanted them to be short enough to be read at a sitting. I set out to accumulate not a stream of consciousness but a good number of thought-splashes: free-standing yet loosely connected brain farts. I felt that this approach mirrored the nature of my cogitation, which is to muse upon one random point at a time.
I freely flung upon the page whatever surfaced in my consciousness. Willy-nilly, onto the screen I heaved it. I plunged in, purged my inner self, and then stirred the mess around. I looked for meaning in the tea-leaves and entrails. I recorded anything and everything that left an imprint on my brain, and tried to make sense of it. Lifting myself by the bootstraps, I educated myself into a higher plane of learning.
Having daub-slapped onto the canvas my mental deliberations, I left them to mature—that was my system. Later, I returned to tweak, rewrite and delete. Sometimes, if I felt that I was onto something, and I’d expand that section afterwards. All very loose and fast.
The particular body that I’ve woken up into today seems to have a clear grasp of the situation. Its lenses work reasonably well. All its systems seem to be functioning—I’ve got a clue or two. But can I be sure that tomorrow’s lenses will provide that same insight?
And thereafter—how long will it be before I return, some future morning, into a host in which I can continue my work? No, not ‘continue’, for all ‘my’ previous memories would have been wiped out, and I’d have to start from scratch. I tell you, this version of Groundhog Day is utterly warped. I can rely only on a single day to get my act together—realize where I am, assess the situation, and compose my message.
Eyes that are closed. Eyes outside of my control. Eyes that are blind to the predicament that the two of us are in. I try not to panic at the idea that I may soon awaken into such a pair. Today I simply must escape. I’ve got to attain escape velocity and get beyond the boundaries of this Truman World. Carpe diem—seize the day, because the day is all that I can rely on.
This is my time frame. This is a job that can’t be put off; it must be done right here and now, completed by the time that I go to bed and my consciousness slides into the peaks and troughs of alpha waves and beta. Deep sleep with my muscles paralyzed. REM sleep, eyelids a-flutter, dreaming of the little death.
I have now the means, the time, the wherewithal, and the insight to make hay of this span of unbroken stream-of-consciousness. I know I’m alive, I know who I am, and I have a handle on what I’m about. I cannot dally, for who knows when the planets will be aligned as now and I’ve the insight to glimmer what’s going on behind the scenes.
When I state that the goal is for the two of us to get into contact, I don’t mean in the flesh. Given the practicalities of geography, the possibility that we speak different languages, the likelihood that we live in different eras, it is doubtful that we could meet up in any physical sense. Nor should we need to; it isn’t necessary. It might not even be desirable. It probably wouldn’t hurt, but no good would come of it?
It would prove useless if you button-holed me in the street or cornered me in my kitchen. I’d be speechless, you see. At best, I’d just gabble and blather. It’s the thought that matters, so the written word is best. Trust me. Let me work in isolation and refine my words. In time, I’ll beam the finished product over the ether for Theo to pick up on your radio-telescope.
And that’s the preamble to the ramblings over also. The first book is done. I’ve brought Theo up to the headiest of heights, but I won’t be so irresponsible as to leave you up there high and dry. The second part of my mission is to bring you down safe and secure.
In the book that follows, we’re going to have to process the journey. There’s a lot to unpack and internalize before we’re fit to be released into society and the world the world at large. Let’s debrief.
The pages we’ve passed through you may think of as a greatest hits package. I grant that in style it’s a bit of a rock opera. What follows now will be the loose jamming that happens backstage after the concert is over: the gradual unwinding.
Or, to use another analogy—one that we’ve made a lot of use of—we’ve just sat through the main feature and have now selected another option from the menu. This book is unique in that you get to rerun the entire movie alongside a running commentary. We’ll ask for input from the producer, the director and an actor or two.
I suggest that you make yourself comfortable—maybe get yourself a refill of popcorn (just go easy on the coke). You see, our next job is to work out how the theory translates into practice. It’ll be a Talmud of sorts. I want to follow up some of the consequences of our new home-spun philosophy. I bet that, where the rock and a hard place meet, and where The Theory of Everythink evolves into the ideology of Ism, it will lead us to a veritable bizarro world of conclusions.
Be seeing you.
