what are all the things to talk about<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- blast from a trumpet <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- godly sheen dust<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- vocabulary<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- a lot of our concepts are broken\/wrong<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- translation, violin<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- importance of being oblique<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
A grammar of one’s own:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Camille paglia \u2013 PC
\u201cEverything is a vague to a degree you Bertrand russell \u2013 vague
George orwell \u2013 battlefield
James baldwin? \u2013\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n[comments?] I\u2019ve spilled a lot of metaphorical ink over the years writing about how much I love words, and writing. When I loosely analyzed my \u201clets write 1000 essays of 1000 words each\u201d project, I found that it accounted for about ~7-8% of my writing. Which I think is a fairly reasonable amount of self-reflexive to be. I would be annoyed if it were much more than that. But I always would like some<\/em> meta-commentary, I want to know what the author is thinking while they\u2019re writing the thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I finally figured out the question I wish someone would ask me, or the observation I wish someone would make, which is how careful I am to avoid using any of the labels that are thrown around in culture wars. Racism sexism feminism capitalism communism religion spirituality etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I believe in trying to talk about these things with the starting assumption that I don\u2019t know what the word means and that I have to derive everything from what I personally know. \u201cLiberalism conservatism left right red blue woke cancel\u201d none of these words mean anything to me<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAre you worried about being cancelled\u201d I don\u2019t know what that means!! Do you mean I say something that offends some group of motivated people who are eager to cause me personal harm? I have worked to design my life to avoid being at the mercy of other people\u2019s whims<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAre you more worried about the wokes or the alt right\u201d again I have no idea wtf any of this means, you\u2019ll have to be more specific. What are the precise, specific outcomes we are concerned about here? If you define your problems well it\u2019s easier to address them<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
[cracks knuckles] ok let me try and fit FAN into this frame<\/p>\n\n\n\n
the big world problem is, in a handful of words: fragmentation, disorientation, disillusionment, alienation, loneliness, distrust, despair<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FAN is a kind of bottom-up chaos-surfing syncretic MMA-dance to address \ud83d\udc46\ud83c\udffe<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
sometimes a little rephrase makes things much more agreeable<\/p>\n\n\n\n
eg saying “stress is the cause of health problems” is disputable. “stress often makes health problems worse, and stress relief often makes health problems less bad” is easier to agree with. If you get better with words you might realize you could say catalyst instead of cause, ie “stress is a catalyst in health problems”. Dexterity and nimbleness are very useful to have in the domain of speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
mind glitches: one interesting one is when you’re careful to avoid using a word, and the other person uses it at you. its an accidental reveal of cached thinking. If you’re careful with your words you can see who’s really listening to you and who’s glazed over<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speak, friend, and enter…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nAuthor\u2019s personal preamble:<\/em><\/strong> This is one of a set of essays that I\u2019ve been trying to write for ages. I have to make my peace with the fact that I\u2019m not going to do the perfect job that I envision in my mind. I have to resort to a bunch of guiding questions like, \u201cWhy am I writing this? Why does this essay want to exist?\u201d And there are many answers to that, but the one that I think is most significant right now is that I simply want to persuade people to experiment more with their language. Why do I want to do that? Selfishly because I think it\u2019ll make for a more interesting world for me to inhabit. I write this primarily for my friends and peers, and I\u2019d like to see them experiment more with their language. Less selfishly though, I do honestly think it\u2019ll benefit everyone, in almost every dimension. So why aren\u2019t people already doing it? I suppose it\u2019s because most people just never got around to thinking about it. I am sort of an outlier in that I read a lot as a kid, have written a lot over the years, and have direct personal experience with the power of the word.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is it realistic to expect everyone to want to become word-magicians? Of course not. Ultimately each person should probably specialize in whatever makes their heart sing, whatever they are personally suited to do. But I\u2019d like people to at least appreciate the power of words better, the same way a chef might want you to appreciate good food better, even if you\u2019re never actually going to seriously pursue the culinary arts yourself. Appreciation counts for something. I don\u2019t necessarily expect every reader to become a chef themselves \u2013 but I think it\u2019s quite likely that a lot of my readers are \u201cchef-curious\u201d. Which brings me to an ongoing tension in my work. I want my writing to be accessible, but I also want it to be good. All creatives grapple with this in some sense, but again, we must each do what our hearts dictate. Mine tells me that\u2026 I have spent years trying to explain things to people who didn\u2019t get it \u2013 and that was quite worthwhile, actually, because it helped<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n
language is a massive multiplayer game we are all playing together<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
One of my favorite books is The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974), by Lewis Thomas. It\u2019s really a collection of 29 essays. I first read it when I was about 20 years old, and I remember reveling in the author\u2019s wide range of interests and perspectives. The book is primarily about biology, but it\u2019s also about music, and language, and ecosystems, and societies\u2014 it\u2019s a book about something that ends up being a book about everything. I mention this book because Thomas influenced my thinking about the massive multiplayer nature of language. Every one of us contributes to language, simply by speaking and writing. Some of us are disproportionately more influential than others, and this is something we can actively strive to do. We can do it well or we can do it poorly. Here I think I might segue to talking about Orwell and Russell\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n
if you\u2019re precise about what you mean and choose your words carefully you can improve language just by speaking and writing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A big part of why I write is so I can think clearly without all of the inelegant clutter of most people<\/a>\u2019s words, and models. It\u2019s an act of compression. My goal is often to reproduce signal with less noise. (\u201cInelegant clutter\u201d is also quite a semi-subjective thing \u2013 words are made up of other words, ideas of other ideas, models of other models. What is elegant to one person might be inscrutable to another. Interestingly though, (partially?) because we are social creatures using a communal language pool, personal sense-making, when shared, can also benefit others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bertrand Russell and George Orwell both had riffs related to this: if you\u2019re precise about what you mean, and choose your words carefully, you end up improving language just by speaking and writing.<\/strong> This happens largely because other thoughtful players validate your choices as good ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russell\u2019s point was more about the limits of language, and of knowledge \u2013 how we don\u2019t even really know what we think until we attempt to articulate ourselves and find our articulations dissatisfactory:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEverything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise, and everything precise is so remote from everything that we normally think, that you cannot for a moment suppose that is what we really mean when we say what we think.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas Orwell\u2019s point is political \u2013 in his essay Politics and The English Language (1946), he argued that<\/a> the quality of a language rises and falls in tandem with the quality of the society that uses it. Sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking and vice versa, each becoming a catalyst for the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The implications here are staggering. it suggests that a handful of people being uncommonly, persistently deliberate in their work can have a transformative effect on society. To paraphrase Margaret Mead, perhaps its the only thing that ever has.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Mead: \u201cNever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it\u2019s the only thing that ever has.\u201d<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Borges was clued in too.\u201cThe task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us\u2026 into something which can last in man\u2019s memory.\u201d<\/em> Artists are in the business of remembrance. They tend to the connective tissue that holds us together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
William Faulkner, too: \u201cThe past is never dead. It\u2019s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates back to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
And countless other artists throughout history, many of them nameless, forgotten, unappreciated. We honor them in our work. They who sang and danced and kept the flame of human consciousness alight, amidst wretchedness and despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have a whole nother essay I\u2019ve been wanting to write called \u201cjust describe stuff bro\u201d, and maybe it should just be condensed into a section in this essay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just Describe Stuff Bro<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
CS Lewis: \u201cThe greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become\u2026 useless synonyms for good or for bad.\u201d<\/em> (Source: Studies in Words)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cadvice for myself: describe things. Get back into the heart of yourself, feel what you feel, inhabit your body and write from your heart to your fingers\u2026\u2026. I did a consult call and Describe Things came up. It occurs to me that if I describe my calls better, I\u2019d get more clients. Because they\u2019d have a clearer picture of what they\u2019re opting in to. Most of my clients are people who are familiar with my work. It would be helpful to make a list of the books that I\u2019m familiar with\u2026. I wanna describe my calls better so I can get more clients\u2026. help more people\u2026. make more money\u2026..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Storytelling is always a good way to contextualize things. I was watching a documentary. I was talking to someone. It occurred to me. Woke up with the idea\u2026 been thinking lately\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every word is a roughly-hewn representation of an idea, with some vague consensus about what it means. We stretch, distort, invert, resist. Words don\u2019t have static meanings, not for very long. Sometimes a word comes to mean the complete opposite of what it meant before. The word \u201cliterally\u201d, often used figuratively, also means \u201cnot literally\u201d. Some people find this agonizing, and a sign that language is broken, or that people are cursed. I\u2019d say\u2026 sometimes. Maybe. It depends on the context. Subverting language is one of the top uses of language. Subverting a word is a way of signalling to an ingroup \u201cwe are the people for whom this word means something differently than what it means for others\u201d. This is part of how reclaiming slurs work, and why \u201csome people are allowed to use it and others aren\u2019t\u201d. It kinda depends on which side of the group you\u2019re on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dictionaries are history books. They attempt to capture\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Changing your vocabulary is the most cheat-code-esque way to change your life I can think of and it\u2019s perfectly legal. Sometimes the point of reinventing a thing is just to start fresh without the baggage of old connotations. this is also why it\u2019s actually great to switch to a new note-taking app every 2-3 years<\/p>\n\n\n\n
changing your vocabulary can be a starting point for changing your entire model(s) of reality. a lot of the main roads are congested beyond belief, but it\u2019s possible to cut through the back alleys and crooked paths<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the best things I\u2019ve written for myself is an essay from before I started my substack, titled The Library Ethos<\/a>. I\u2019m very proud of it, because I think it does a pretty good job of capturing what I care about, and arguably, who I am. I find myself thinking now about why I even wrote it. A part of me has always wanted to write my memoirs. The library feels like an important part of my origin story, in multiple senses. I spent my formative years in libraries and they shaped how I think, how I conceive of reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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