What I really care about (confessional 2)

What do I really care about? There's a lengthy answer to that question. And I'm not clear on the details. That's why I decided to start another blog.

This blog is about writing and about academic work. And these are things that I really do care about, especially the parts that are about learning to interact in new ways with your writing, because I have struggled with writer's block myself. This blog has been an integral part of my working on my relationship with writing. Especially important has been learning to be willing to release a piece of work that is imperfect. In the context of blogging, I have allowed myself a great deal of lenience in presenting to the public work that has basically not been edited in any way, and has been often left incomplete.

The result has happily been that I feel much more comfortable writing. For all the mastery I had before, the constant, regular practice has only served to give me greater ease. I'm having so much fun, in fact, that I have been feeling like writing more.

The focus on writing in this blog doesn't address larger issues that I see in the world around me. Its focus guides me away from philosophical speculation and the development of random ideas; it discourages flights of fancy; it discourages questions of morals, and values; it has no place for questions of most everything in the world around. I believe in focus. I believe it's important to keep focus, so this blog is going to stay focused, but there are a lot of things other than writing that I care about.

I invite you to take a look.

"Sri Vision"

This is going to be quick.

Today my yoga teacher was talking about "sri vision"--which, I suspect, but do not know, may be her own use of the idea of "sri".
In any event she was speaking of it as a way of looking at things that notices their beauty and their goodness--an all-encompassing vision that looks at the whole, rather than analyzing and breaking the vision down into little parts.

It is very easy, she was saying, to focus in on details, on pieces, and to lose sight of the larger picture, and thus to lose sight of the beauty in that larger picture.

While the notion of "sri vision" is relevant in a number of different ways in the context of academic writing, I was thinking of it particularly in terms of the loss of enthusiasm and the loss of the sense of significance that can occur, especially if your ideas--or your presentation or ideas--is treated harshly and subjected to destructive criticism.

Which reminds me that my yoga teacher specifically mentioned constructive vs. destructive criticism--something that had slipped my mind until I wrote the phrase "destructive criticism"--the difference between the two, she suggested, was the presence of "sri vision"--a sense or and appreciation of the whole, and the beauty that is inherent in the work.

I don't know if one has a choice, but it seems to me that it would be better to use sri vision, and remain passionate about a project than it would be to become jaded and cynical. Wherever we look, we can see problems if we look closely enough. Can we see the beauty in things as well?

Uncertainty

The other day my yoga teacher was talking about the importance of the ability to embrace uncertainty. She mentioned to me a book by Pema Chodron called Comfortable with Uncertainty. I've not read the book, but if you don't write down your references when you remember them, you forget them (hard to believe, I know!).

Anyway, this is a principle that I think is useful on many levels. (As, indeed, are many ideas--which was almost the subject of this post--if I hadn't written about uncertainty.)

Logically speaking, we are faced with limits to our certainty. The work of David Hume, especially his Treatise of Human Nature, clearly framed the limits of our logical certainty in many different ways. On a very basic level Hume argued "that the supposition, that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is deriv'd entirely from habit, by which we are determin'd to expect for the future the same train of objects, to which we have been accustom'd" (Treatise, Book I, Part III, Section XII, italics are Hume's). Essentially he is saying that there is no logical argument that proves that the future will resemble the past--logical in the sense of a priori logic--something that can be proved from basic premises. Yes, he says, we expect the future to resemble the past, because we have seen patterns repeat in the past, but this expectation is not certain--it is only probable (part III of book I is titled "Of knowledge and probability"). Later in the same section he says "even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have experience" (the italics, again, are Hume's).

This general logical principle, sometimes called "Hume's Problem," is also called the problem of induction. It is still debated; no response to Hume has swept away his claims. The most notable response was that of Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Popper's response was to suggest that we cannot prove the truth of a claim through induction, but that we can prove the falsity of a claim, and therefore science can proceed using the hypotheses that have survived the most tests. But this too, one must note, is logically uncertain: we have certainty (perhaps) that we've rejected bad theories, but we have no certainty that the theory we have not yet rejected is actually good.

Well, the litany of sources of uncertainty in logic is long, and I don't want to go into it here. There are similar ideas outside the realm of Western Philosophy: is there not uncertainty in "The Tao that can be told of is not the absolute Tao."?

I think there are benefits in embracing uncertainty. Especially in logical debate: it's an escape hatch--if we know uncertainty exists, we can use that to justify some degree of imperfection in our argument: we simply cannot know everything; we must somewhere start with something unproven.

We embrace the uncertainty. Of course, we also need to act decisively: so we balance the uncertainty somehow. Ultimately we chose what we believe is important and act on that--if we cannot make such a choice then we're paralyzed.

Of course lots of people go through life thinking that they're certain about everything, but it's hard to get away with that as an academic--at least we're taught to question. So for the academic--or for any philosophical, thinking person--we look at the uncertainties that face us and choose among them the ones that seem best.
If we understand that we are choosing from a place of logical uncertainty, we have to embrace our beliefs for another reason. There's a certain freedom to believing in an idea and knowing that you may be wrong--there's a danger, but also a freedom.

Practice, Practice, Practice

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, Practice, Practice.

All that practicing can be tiring, frustrating and unpleasant. How does one do it?
Even things that we love can be difficult. I enjoy writing, but it's hard. I enjoy playing music but it's not easy.

What is it that can allow us to struggle through the difficult moments to keep working on a lengthy project? What if we are beset by immediate distractions and demands on our time--such as family responsibility or the need to earn money? How do we keep working on the difficult, frustrating project whose payoff seems far down the line?

What sets the virtuoso apart from the hack? Edison said genius was 99% perspiration. There's the other one percent--that's needed, too, but practice, practice, practice.

I'm currently working on a cover letter that's on its 10th revision.

Hemingway was asked "How much rewriting do you do?"
He answered "It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied." (excerpt from interview taken from The Writer's home Companion, Bolker, editor)

And none of that answers where the motivation to continue in the frustrating moment comes from.

Rock and Roll

I was playing in a rock and roll band for a couple of years recently--from
2005 to 2007.

The guitarist and I did not quite see eye to eye on the purpose of performing. His desire was that even the public performance be all about the music and about creating the music he wanted, the way he wanted. My interest in playing in public is to connect with audience.

I don't think that either of these positions is right or wrong. I think, actually, that we are trying to balance these two. As writers (or as any sort of artist, I think): we have the paired goals of self-expression and sharing.

One thing I'm wondering about: where do the carrots come in?
Is successful connection with an audience a carrot?

I can see answering both ways, but right now I don't think so.
If we are filled with a sense of purpose--a message that we have to get out--whether that is my guitarist's musical vision, or some verbal message--then we are trying to connect with an audience because of what we have inside us--the vision that we are trying to manifest. Our measure of success is how well we have connected with the audience, and yet we are not doing what we are doing for the approval of the audience.

Some rock and roll was really about nothing more than the passion inside and the message expressed. From protest singers to punks to rap, great music arises from a sense of passion and sense of purpose. And audiences connect with that sense of purpose because it seems real.

Academics, of course, don't get to say "we don't give a f--k what anyone else thinks," because they have to please other academics--especially professors. And the outrage that drives punk music isn't so easily passed off in academic circles. But that doesn't mean that it can't be used to direct a project.

One thing about passion is that it can be overwhelming. But if we can ride the edge where we can see both the passion that drives us, and the compromises we make to communicate that passion in the appropriate context, then we can create something special. It's a difficult balance point to find. Emotional content is volatile and dynamic, making finding balance very difficult. Working with strong emotional content means slipping, perhaps, into a sense of being overwhelmed when the emotions run strong, or slipping into a sense of disillusionment at moments the emotions run weak.

Despite this difficulty, I personally wouldn't recommend anything but to seek this place where a sense of purpose and passion drive you. I know that lots of people make their living writing things they don't care about. I know that writing about things that you don't care about strongly is a safe place to write: the material doesn't shift under your grasp in the same way.

I believe that there are times to seek expediency instead of the noblest aims, and I believe that we shouldn't let a dissertation be delayed by an attempt to make it do too much. But I also believe that we should still work with things that we care about.