Funny, that.
I.
I believe in the unfortunate power of white noise. Back when I was doing my M.A., I noticed there were a lot of very intelligent people around me, and they were all talking. A lot. Also, I wandered into the library one day and it dawned on me - there were a lot of books there. Likewise, it turned out there were quite a few channels on TV, all producing quite a bit of programing...And meanwhile, there was this internet thing producing a positively unfathomable amount of text (not to mention garish little .gif animations). I also noticed amongst all this roar, nearly everyone - from erudite English professors and their budding acolytes, to reclusive novelists, to game show contestants - well, they were a fair bit more interested in being heard than in listening to anything. You do the metaphorical math on that one, but here are some fun numbers: According to UNESCO data, there were 178,000 books printed in the US and Britain during 2005. If those averaged 200 pages each - almost certainly a low estimate - that would be over 35 million pages, and if you read a page-per-minute constantly you could get caught up in 67.7 years.
Do I think that nothing can ever be heard amongst all that sound and fury? No, but I do think it is a strong argument that dumb luck and connections have a far greater influence on what is read/heard than the actual quality of anyone's ideas or articulation. It also makes me a bit embarrassed by how seriously I used to take myself.
II.
In terms of permanence, thinking, speaking, and writing lie on a continuum. Western society always posits permanence as a good thing, as that which we aim for. That gets problematic when you are talking about ideas, though. For ideas (and society) to progress they must be able to develop -- they must be flexible, they must be adaptable. The beauty of thought, left alone in one's relatively vacant head, is that it is infinitely mutable. The simple fact that one can forget all or part of an idea left ephemeral means that it must always be re-invented, and likewise, it will always be influenced by the present more than the past. Similarly, speaking/discussing keeps ideas ethereal, though provides a bit more fixation via multiple memories; more importantly, development is encouraged by multiple voices, each a unique incarnation of the present.
Now, the written idea is of course adaptable through a different method -- that of interpretation -- but ultimately the stuff of ideas contained in textual discourse is far more tethered to the "literal" and historical. That is, after all, the purpose of textual communication - and this sense of permanence contained in cultural texts (Das Kapital, Wealth of Nations, Barbie, the Eiffel Tower, etc.) congeals every society.
Does that mean writing should be abandoned in favor of bathroom pondering and bar chit-chat? No, but it does make the notion of putting things to paper quite sobering. A great American thinker claimed the mark of an intelligent man was the ability to change his mind*; putting today's mind to paper goes a long way toward making tomorrow's mind. Yes, my fear of commitment is that fundamental.
III.
Tyler Durden said it best: You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. Neither are our ideas. A quick look at the history of scientific discovery shows a seemingly bizarre number of simultaneous discoveries. Leibniz/Newton's discovery of calculus is likely the most famous, but a little digging will turn up tons of others, even if only one name generally makes the history books. Yes, this seems quite strange, until you accept that the ideas they are advancing are the product of a common intellectual history, and furthermore, their approach to those ideas are typically the product of common cultural history.
I deny that the prime motivator of history is individual genius. I deny it as Randian stupidity. I posit instead that the prime motivator of history is the combination of prior history, necessity, and a bit of blind chance. Yes, Einstein's ideas were groundbreaking and unique at that particular moment, but I would argue that they were more the product of intellectual history and present cultural necessity than of individual genius. That's not to say he wasn't a genius, but their was plenty of genius about at the time (the majority going unrecorded in popular history) and a different voice would have eventually been found for the same ideas. If it can happen, it must happen - eventually.
So, am I arguing that there is no point in tossing out one's ideas, as others will get around to them anyway? Of course not. But I do feel that any personal feeling of obligation and urgency for speaking out is more the product of egotism than necessity. Ultimately, there are only these possibilities for a given idea: you or someone else will speak it, and it will either be heard or ignored. I'm a Taoist, after all. Our meddling is ultimately irrelevant, if nonetheless necessary.
------
Blah, blah, blah. I also avoid writing because I can't spell for shit, and I sound a lot more intelligent when you don't see me saying alot. Anyway, there are things I like about writing, too. Like punctuation. I love punctuation. Maybe if I can stick with this blogging bit a little longer this time I'll remember what the others are.
