On Freedom in Writing
Essay 28
The writer needn't go beyond the capacities of his readers. I would advise all those seeking to write upon something to mainly do it either in the mood or in a non-serious manner. The spoil of all good thought is that when undertaken without due consideration to the previous sentiment felt within the heart. All things that are worth thinking are equally worth fawning over for the sake of getting at their true expression, purpose, or essence.
One man says a wise thing and all of mankind ignores. Another says a thing in jest or scorn—a thing that is known by intuition or feeling—and is marked as a one of a kind genius. There is within wisdom a shallowness. Our own thoughts, we think, matter not if they are not found within the mouth of another.
This is especially true if you be a writer familiar with—nay, I dare say consumed by—the classical tradition. To read Seneca or Shakespeare is to be at once confronted with yourself, and to see firsthand what is and isn't art in terms of expression. A master and a novice differ only in their capacity to listen to the brooding soul within.
The natural flow of ideas have a tendency to stop the moment we try to reflect upon them. There is no use composing this or that if it is not done with honesty. A man who sets upon his work in writing with a single principle in mind, namely, to be honest, has all he needs in composition.
Reading is nothing more than the communication of ideas which we already know intuitively. To be awakened by another's words, to feel roused to some duty or action, is the core purpose of writing. We should not consume elegance merely because it is elegant, but because it allows us to become elegant.
If more knew what greatness lay hidden in words, if they knew the satisfaction that could be had by merely thinking clearly and without prejudice or hesitation, they would desire a complete understanding of all literature. Most of culture is bound in books, and he who seeks wisdom must venture there to acquire it.
Too many authors in the modern day feel the need to stick to tradition or custom in composition, not realizing that such an attitude spells the death of creativity. All this erudition, for what? Of what use is it to us if we are to merely stick to some long done and dead approach. This is not freedom. This is not why I write. I do not wish to be associated with people who cannot think for themselves.
Spending hour after hour gobbling up books as if they were food. To think how shallow their mind must be if they feel the need to go on all fours and devour page after page of some classic. Some great classic that they consume ignominiously in a manner that would cause the author to shudder in their grave. They feel they must emulate first before they try for themselves; and usually I would agree with this approach, but they rely too heavily upon it.
They take it to such extremes that it scarce seems possible what they compose is anything but a mere facsimile of whatever author they previously read. They gradually lose the capacity to beautify their own ideas, and so feel determined to cull whatever pretty flower they see in another for themselves. They wear such things on their lapel as if they were the authors of it, but they are frauds and liars. The most wretched beings to ever grace the page.
Grace! What a mockery, destroy rather I should say. It is much easier to go through the world with a negative aspect than with a positive one, for to endure life is to come face-to-face with all its wretched follies and shortcomings. The world offers us nothing but a continual proof of its obvious vanity and duplicity.
Then again, there are people who find it the most joyous thing conceivable; they would even believe in God. What range of possibility lies in life. Sure, I spout as much cant and hatred towards it as the next, but who would be so bold as to actually go through life as a nihilist? I merely appear the misanthrope as a means of protecting my own happiness.
Fools dare not approach the man who appears capable of action inspired precisely by the cause of his misanthropy. Power is a fickle thing, for while it is temporary, and remains ever subject to the caprices of our will, it seemingly has the character of always appearing in us the moment we least expect it.
The power to write is one such example. How easy it is to idly think and yet fail to recognize how profound such thoughts really are. Man, if he's interested in his own capacities at all, takes such stances that are common to his nature, and that appear intuitive to his soul brought forth from his heart.
To be empowered to write is to no longer care what is writ. It is merely to allow the thoughts the space they require, so that they may sit within the mind of the reader and may be allowed to stir the soul. Lay aside all hesitation. It matters not. Anything in composition that feels wrong is placed there by prejudice and tradition.
To contradict yourself in writing is merely to think a better thought than the one you had yesterday. One cannot let fear or writer's block get in the way. Write when you have something to say. This always forces itself upon us when we least expect it to because inspiration only comes in moments when the unconscious takes the reins of our prior thought, and thus formulates such structures of thought so as to allow it to coincide with what we feel is intuitive.
The capacity to write primarily rests in our ability to remain comfortable in not being able to find something to say. No one is fully transparent with themselves, for if they were, they would not have trouble giving precisely what they think at all times on any topic whatever. There is a necessary limit to what we experience, and thus, what we are able to sympathize with and write about.
You must listen to yourself. You must sit in your chair and be at ease when you feel tongue-tied. The mind is working even when your hands are not. If you find you have nothing to say, don't write.
Then again, why not write? Who is stopping you from pouring forth the most incoherent babble possible? Who is so bold as to proclaim falsehood as truth, and that evil is really good? Who is to say what is and isn't good composition.
Existence is perspectival. It is subjective but not relative. It can never be relative, for as long as consciousness exists, there will always be a self-aware agent who places a value on this or that modus operandi—the mode of proceeding in existence. Values are king. They are the rulers of the universe. They determine for us what is and isn't good in composition—or anything else for that matter.
You may find yourself writing nothing meaningful but feeling the need to write nonetheless. In such an action you shall find what you are looking for perhaps. Often in the most confusing stream of consciousness comes the clearest lucidity. Only after penning nothingness does creation speak things into existence.
You are the scribe. Your soul is merely the oracle. The heart reacts accordingly. With all its beating and pumping, suddenly shook at its core by a single true idea. At once is apprehension captured, and the fire of Prometheus finds its eternal wick.
Homer began with an invocation. Virgil began with one as well. So too did Muhammad. Shall not we? Shall not we be both prophet and provider. To give to those in need but also be our own source of giving? We are the eternal source.
So long as the senses be aware of their surroundings, and feel in tune with the harmony of all that is possible to conceive, we shall always be provided for. Our bread is our thoughts. The writer must sup on whatever they come across, for all is nourishment in the realm of creativity.
This is why I abhor tradition, and standards, and so-called objective criticism: all is mere opinion when it is not lived. It is only objective by the implicit nature of its definition, by the intuitive, self-evidentness of it. Our deductions are carried only so far by reason.
What stultifies is what kills by a slow and painful death. All standards are mere agreements made on the basis of how the whole perceives it. This insufferable gnashing of teeth and tearing out of hair is the result of limitations placed upon our will's capacity to take action. The will can only justify itself so as to appear self-evident for those who seek a reason for it.
Schopenhauer always amused me in his On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, by titling the third chapter INSUFFICIENCY OF THE OLD AND OUTLINES OF A NEW DEMONSTRATION; as if the principle of sufficient reason needed a justification. I mean, he says himself—right before the third chapter:
To seek a proof for the Principle of Sufficient Reason, is, moreover, an especially flagrant absurdity, which shows a want of reflection.... This necessity for a reason is exactly what the Principle of Sufficient Reason expresses.
And yet he goes on to spend another 165 pages seeking a demonstration for that exact absurdity. Insane! That is ultimately what transcendental idealism culminates in, a circular argument routing back to the assumed conclusion: a typical begging the question fallacy.
You cannot demonstrate a principle that is self-evident, and yet Kant—the greatest pseudointellectual history has known—tries to do exactly that by introducing to empirical reality a numenal quality. This was nothing more than his attempt to get around Hume's problem of induction, forgetting that science and reason is not in the enterprise of discovering objective truths, but merely providing explanations (what Aristotle dubbed causes, as distinct from reasons) for physical phenomena and experience.
Countless books and ink wasted on a self-evident truth: that our perceptions are mere representations—the organization of which is done by the nervous system, and which can never be understood absolutely but only in respect to the subject's capacity to perceive. There's nothing profound in Kant.
And to think writing must suffer at the hands of some fiend, some crazed lunatic obsessed only with what is objective. This is deleterious to the capacity to express feeling. There is a dualistic nature to mankind: that of the hidden and that of the seen. What is hidden is simply what we have yet to recognize as becoming, that is, what shall come to us as we experience life. All of life is hidden until it is not. We must wait until it is ready to reveal itself to us. We cannot call upon the muse and always expect a reply. Waiting is a necessary part of the process.
All writing is but patience made manifest, when what we perceive is allowed to be put in the form of expression. We have to rid ourselves of the need to always justify to others how smart we are, how hard-working we are, how skilled in composition we are. These are but weights that provide no greater stability towards our thought. They merely hold us back. They cause us to hesitate. What we think at once is scared away when we pair it with the opinions of another.
Nature has no fear of criticism. She is within us, and so understands at once all that could be said of her. We must be the same for ourselves. Become one with our own nature. Understand who WE think WE are. This is what it means to be existential: it is to actively reflect on the process of existence, that continuously turning wheel of becoming.
The seen become the words on the page, but the thoughts that occur without our conscious awareness are the hidden. The trite speculations and assumptions from those who do not understand us, and who wish, rather, to misrepresent us, must never be realized by us. Let those comments about prolixity and confusion pass by like a leaf upon the raging shore.
Most people fear a lack of objectivity because without it, they feel lost amidst the sea of ever-changing perspectives. They want certainty in a world that is everything but. They lack the tools or mental clarity to reconcile themselves to an uncertain world.
And woe to them, for they do not realize how much greater the world is freed from the need to know. They hate seeking. They simply wish to be told what is already true, or what they think is true. They want answers to be given to them, to conform to their presuppositions which they are not privy to, rather than finding it for themselves. They don't like having to investigate or question what is to them something uncertain.
Like the individual who has yet to know what to do with their life, they remain stagnant and forever contemplating but never acting, for the uncertainty is too scary, and the possibility of rejection or confusion only further confirms their fears. One must act in the face of uncertainty if anything great is to be brought about. Every self-evident truth hits us particularly hard because of how visceral its obviousness is to us upon hearing it.
Within man is an invisible flame which burns forever until his last breath, and while that fire still subsists, it is incumbent on him to make something of himself with his time. Time is precious and all too short for all mortal activities, and so, it makes sense to follow only what your heart is in. Anything that goes against your conscience is not meant for you to follow. Opinions are worthless if they incite violence against yourself.
In writing this is particularly true, for you cannot hold yourself to the standards of others. You must be prepared to say many foolish things before something of actual subsistence can become visible. The only principle I wish to espouse, and which to get others to recognize, is that you are beholden to no one but yourself; that you are absurdly important and magnificent in your person, in your aspect, in your thoughts, and lastly, that you are capable of whatever is conceivable to you.
Too long have we artists and free-spirits remained captured by a tyrannous thralldom, a base servility unbecoming of people with powerful minds. Rid yourself of all preconceptions, and act!