AF: Intellectual Courage

A few messages have landed in my inbox that ask questions about the text, and what things mean, or whether the thinking is on track.  I would prefer you to direct these questions to one another on the blog than to me.  I would rather you not look to me as the holder of all wisdom and knowledge.  Yes, I understand this book, and I know how to read complex texts and make meaning from them.  I want you to learn how too.  It's a process, and it takes time and practice.

This is scary, I know.  You have been conditioned to seek answers, and to be right, and to get all the points.  Notice my use of the word "condition," and think about what I am suggesting by using that word.  

But do you know what scholars do?  They share their thinking.  We are not trying to patent a secret battery design; we are examining the imagined consequences of a dumbed down, trivial culture that is happy with things just the way they are.

So go ahead and ask a question you really don't know the answer to.  Don't bother posturing for one another, to see who sounds smartest.  Write well, but don't write beyond your comfort level.  It sounds crazy when writers reach for syntactical patterns and vocabulary that they don't actually have command of.   Instead, I would rather see you generously share your thinking, and to just write the way you write.  

(However, I did get an email that used "u" instead of "you," and I had to go lie down in a dark room with an ice pack.  Horrifying.)   

What I am saying is that I would rather see you express doubt with authority and honesty than try to write on the blog like an aspirational Wikipedia writer.  One of the hallmarks of our post-post modern era is that authority has been defused and re-contextualized.  Moses will not be coming down the mountain with the answers on a stone tablet.  

So don't hold your insights or confusions like a nickel clutched inside a toddler's sweaty fist.  Open that hand.  Give your nickel away.  

Just thought I'd mention that as I am sitting here writing this, there may be killer in my backyard.  I keep hearing scary sounds out there.