The Power of the Written Word

 In this age of social media and the convenience of electronic gadgetry being accessible to practically anyone on the planet, there is no shortage of information available on practically any topic known to man under the sun.  However, have we lost something in the process of this technological explosion?  I guess for those of us raised in the BD era (before digital), this is perhaps a more significant issue than it would be with the Millennials and the emerging Gen Zers.  After all, when those two generations came of age, most of the world was already wired for cyber-communication, and thus to them it is not a big issue in many cases because social media, smart phones, and other amenities are part of their own daily existence in a far greater way than it was for us who are Gen Xers and older.  This has created some debate and discussion in recent decades as to what degree are we as a society becoming so dependent upon technology.  That being said, I wanted to just discuss a few things today that got my attention. 

First, be advised I am by no means a Luddite or anything like that - I utilize technology myself as part of everyday life, and to be honest in some ways it has made things easier. The smartphone, for instance, has become a sort of all-purpose tool - you can pay bills, compose correspondence, shop, order food or a taxi, research the internet, and so many other things with it.  I myself have been the proud owner of an Android phone for many years, and it does help me to keep track of a lot of things better.  However, technology is just that - a tool.  This is why many of us who are older often are somewhat perplexed by how addicted people can get to something as simple as a cellphone.  When a tool becomes a master of one's life, there is a problem at that point, and it has caused a lot of the atomization we see in today's society.  While we all cherish a bit of solitude at times (I know I do), we are not mere islands unto ourselves - man was created by God to be a social being, and human interaction with others is integral to our own wellbeing.  And, you cannot have that interaction on social media or online chats - they serve a purpose, but they don't replace the need for human interaction that is integral to us as a species.  As a result of an over-reliance upon gadgetry, this present age is characterized by a lot of loneliness, depression, and other abnormalities we should not be experiencing.  There is no organic support structure anymore in many places because everyone is glued to a smartphone, tablet, or other electronic device.  It has gotten so critical now that people are resorting to weird trends - robot "girlfriends," professional cuddlers (I still don't understand that one!), and other crazy stuff. What happened to us??  As I have been thinking about this over the past few days, I began to reminisce about a few simple pleasures I once had and wanted to talk about those today. 

Beginning in my high school years, I started widening my interests to a variety of things - I was into Church history, I had started to get more involved in Armenian and Assyrian advocacy, and of course my music interest I have talked about many times before.  40 years ago, the primary ways to get information on anything like this was limited to two venues - you wrote letters or you called on a phone to get the information you wanted.  One of the major bones of contention my mother had with me in those years was the fact I would dial long-distance a lot to request specific things, and while many of those calls did come with a high return (I would get a package with a huge bunch of material in it within days of said call), they also racked up the phone charges.  What was even more complicated about that was in my high school days, my mom was a live-in caretaker for a nonagenarian lady in the small town in West Virginia where we lived, and thus the house phone was the source of many of my calls. Mom was understandably embarrassed when about $25 of extra calls showed up on the monthly phone bill, but I was also always good to utilize a part of my monthly allowance to cover that too, so as long as I paid for them, I could make calls. The other venue which was much more economical then was to simply write and request things I wanted, and it was not uncommon for me to mail out a stack of letters every couple of weeks.  The thing with those was that some would actually respond, and in a couple of weeks I would either get a letter from my intended contact or a parcel with the information I requested.  One skill I gained doing this was an appreciation for writing - I honed my writing skills well, and they bore fruit.  If you could write an articulate letter - even a hand-written one - it would often merit a response.  Of course, a cadre of capable teachers over the years helped and encouraged my writing skills, and I am indebted to them for their dedication. That being said, let me talk about mail delivery.

Beginning in my early teens, getting mail was considered a real simple pleasure in life.  Whether it was that package of Columbia House records or cassettes one could get back in the day for a penny, or a letter from a friend, a package from my dad, or a fruitful bounty of information from one of that stack of letters I sent out for stuff, it was exciting.  I used to do two things beginning in my early teens with the mail flow I received.  First, I would keep a list of who I was expecting responses from, and as something arrived, I would scratch it off the list.  Secondly, I would always mark on a calendar what I got and on the day I received it, a practice I still do today.  It was an efficient way to keep records of everything, and it also helped writing skills become more developed as well as learning how to keep personal records of my own activities. I do still have all those calendars today, extending back over 40 years, and they will play an integral role later as I start to document my own life story reflections. Between calendars, journal books, and even financial records, I have kept a very efficient and detailed history of my own life that may even serve the purpose of giving a more comprehensive picture to future generations who may be interested in knowing more about who I was. Any rate, getting back to the mail, I began from about the age of 14 to receive a ton of mail on a weekly basis, and that would intensify over the next several years. Anticipating mail delivery became a big thing for me, as I would religiously watch the mailbox to see what the local mail carrier was bringing, and then I would make sure to get to the mailbox as quickly as possible to collect it.  However, it also caused some friction with myself and delivery people, and I could be very impatient with the mail or other delivery carriers.  It was a source of amusement for my mother and others, but I took it very seriously.  In recent years, I have become less aggressive towards mail delivery, as for the most part service has been relatively good in recent years.  On occasion, however, I still have some issues and am not hesitant to make my concerns known. Especially in a small town which was largely isolated from the outside world, the mailbox was a daily highlight, and perhaps I wrote for and requested more information due to boredom.  However, I felt I did have genuine interest too, and those days of sending letters and receiving information back were exciting times.  

Learning to communicate by writing letters of interest and requests for material was actually a good skill to develop, and it is one that is lost today in the more abbreviated and less-articulate world of social media. I actually miss those days of writing for things that caught my fancy, mainly because almost everything can be easily downloaded online now and thus it sapped a lot of the mystery out of receiving information now.  And, I still get high volumes of mail, but that is due in part to a far more effective measure of exchange than just sending a letter - money! Most everything I receive today is ordered online from either Amazon or Ebay, as well as the occasional private vendor who is more specialized.  Money definitely gets you things faster that you want, as in the past many letters I would send would often be ignored - I am wagering that many ended up in burn piles or shredders of the recipients and were never taken seriously. But, pay a certain amount for something and you will not only receive it, but you will get it in record time.  However, in all honesty, I miss the old days of the effort to track down something, after which a letter of sincere interest to find out more about it was composed, sealed, and sent. But we definitely now live in a different world.  So, we adjust.  

Whether it is keeping calendars or personal journals, documenting daily life is a rich endeavor that more of us should engage in.  It is a journey of self-discovery, and it also helps sort out thoughts and feelings in such a way that it can birth a creative talent.  In his book The Assyrian and Other Stories (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1950), acclaimed Armenian-American writer William Saroyan devotes an entire chapter to the topic of "The Writer on the Writing," and in the chapter he has some very priceless gems of wisdom.  On page xxix of the text for instance, he says this:  "The man who does not need to know about himself is not apt to be a writer in the first place, hence we may presume that a writer has self-knowledge to begin with, that in all probability having self-knowledge impelled him to start writing, and that if he is to have self-knowledge at all, the more he has of it the better it will be for him and his work."  Immediately prior to this statement, Saroyan notes that the creation of a character is essential, and in doing so there are six attributes entailed in doing so:

1. Self-knowledge

2. Health

3. Intelligence

4. Imagination, Intuition, Collective Unconscious

5. Social Responsibility

6. Technical Skill

With that, I am also reminded of the words of another favorite writer, the late Robert Newton Peck, whom I also had the pleasure of speaking with and knowing later in life.  Rob Peck wrote a series of books based around the character of his childhood friend, a rambunctious and resourceful kid named Luther Wesley "Soup" Vinson.  I was first introduced to these books in fourth grade by my teacher then, and really enjoyed them ever since.  I have the whole collection of those in my own library now.  Rob notes the value of the written word by connecting it to personhood, as he affirms in the following quote:

 " Writing is not showing off with big words. Nor is teaching. The dearest rabbi who ever lived, a Nazarene carpenter, preached of little things in common terms . . . loaves and fishes, a camel passing through the eye of a needle, a mustard seed. Tangibles.  Stuff, not abstracts."  (from About Peck (blahnik.info), 2000)

What Peck is saying here is in line with Saroyan's idea - self-knowledge is tangible, relatable, and not pretentious.  A person who has to write a bunch of BS in pithy, Harvardesque language to self-promote is fake, simply put.  Knowing yourself, and being able to communicate who you are in a way that is tangible and has some sort of pulse to it will go further than anything.  So, learning to write is not simply just about proper grammar (although that is good too), but it is about knowing who one is.  So, taking from Peck and Saroyan, tangibility and self-knowledge will resonate with the reader. 

I want to address something else in regard to writing as an art and cultivated skill.  In this age of "wokism," a new type of iconoclasm has gripped society and it threatens the very essence of our civilization.  Many have already talked about the societal consequences of this junk, but there is a more personal level to it.  The concept of self-knowledge, for one thing, has become a mentality of self-hate, and an embrace of the quasi-gnostic sentiment that appearance is evil and only "feelings" matter.  This has had catastrophic consequences upon cultural and intellectual development overall, in that it suggests that somehow everything in the "past" was evil and now not only does the individual have to re-create themselves into something they are not, but they even have to manipulate language to force this on everyone else.  There are two ways this happens in modern society.  First, a radical re-invention of language itself, creating non-existent "pronouns" for non-existent genders.  That in itself is insane.  Second, there is a destructive tendency among radical extremists who embrace such stuff to enact a forced iconoclasm - these kooks burn books, tear down and deface statues, and even desecrate art and religious expression.  This is very, very evil and detrimental to our nation and indeed to our world.  And, it has resulted in what is called "cancel culture" - if it doesn't go along with the agenda of the day, it must be destroyed and purged from society in their minds.  We have seen the consequences of this before - look to the Nazis as well as their Voelkisch predecessors, and to Stalin, Mao, and other demonic despots who made themselves godlike in their regimes and possessed an evil lack of empathy that deprived them of a regard and respect for their fellow human beings.  As part of my dissertation I am completing for my doctoral program as well as research for an upcoming article here, I have been studying what is called the "horseshoe theory" of politics, and essentially what this entails is that what is often called the radical Right or radical Left are essentially two expressions of the same thing, and going to either extreme leads to the same destructive consequence. Therefore, a "woke" group like Antifa is in essence the same as the National Socialists in 1920s Germany, and many of them hold similar views (ironically, Antifa is a shortened form of "anti-fascist," but in reality Antifa is as fascist as the Nazis were, if not more so.  Since October 7 of last year when Hamas massacred over 1200 Israelis, Antifa now has the same antisemitism as the Nazis).  "Cancel culture" and "wokeness" are the greatest threats to individuality the world faces today, as these attitudes seek to suppress independent thought and free expression in favor of their own wacky dystopian nonsense.  "Wokeness" is the enemy of self-knowledge, in other words, because "wokeness" denies the self in favor of the agenda.  And, that is why it must be exposed, opposed, and deposed from Western civilization for good, and true cultural expression restored. 

In relation to this, the postmodernist who embraces "wokeness" is enslaved to a mentality of iconoclasm and a skewered idea of "change."  Change is integral, yes, and to a degree change does happen as a necessary part of the human experience, but true change never seeks to eliminate the past, nor can it.  Rather, proper change builds upon the foundation already there and never wants to destroy it. Anthony Esolen, in his book Nostalgia: Going Home in A Homeless World (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 2018) notes on page 92 what the consequence of the more radical, iconoclastic form of "change" will bring - it wars against reality, and it creates anger and destruction rather than true progress toward anything.  He is correct, because the modern definition of "progressive" is anything but actually about progress - it is destructive, and seeks to tribalize human beings into a caste system of "oppressed vs. oppressor," and in doing so it is inherently Marxist at its core and promotes hate, racism, and rebellion. This Marxist-derived "cancel culture" mentality, as Max Eastman notes in his seminal book Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 1955), seeks to make over all human society in its image (p. 123) and also to eliminate anything it perceives as a "threat" to its agenda - the very definition of totalitarianism.  This is why the purple-haired, black-clad mobs of insane kids rioting in cities over the past several years are anti-free speech - they are spoiled brats who were enabled by Marxist gobbledygook to try to impose their will on everyone else.  It is not merely enough for instance to let a "same-sex marriage" take place, but it must be affirmed and celebrated by everyone or else someone will have a "milkshake" lobbed at their heads.  So, what does this political commentary have to do with writing and self-knowledge?  Let me get to that now.

Self-knowledge entails being able to know, accept, and appreciate yourself in a way that also values the individuality of others.  If people see that you have a good sense of self-recollection, it inspires them. And besides, you are the person God created you to be - it is a cardinal offense against yourself to deny that.  Too many radicals though have this weird idea that they are the right expression of self, and while on one hand they think in antinomian Crowleyite terms about "do what thou wilt," in reality they are so rebellious and stubborn that they cannot fathom someone who doesn't think exactly like they do.  This has been true of extremists from time immemorial, be they radical Islamic jihadis, Nazi Sturmabteilung , or Stalinist mobs of all stripes.  And, they all started the same exact way - the Wandervogel in 19th-century Germany, the "hippies" in 1960s San Francisco, and now Antifa/BLM rioters in American cities. When you see movements like that spring up, beware - that radicalism underlies a groupthink which despises individual expression despite how they claim to emphasize it. Therefore, write down your own thoughts and cherish them, and keep them in a safe place.  Many of us older people learned rhetoric, literature, and proper grammar, and we should make that work for us.  What we preserve now may inspire others later - that is why Anne Frank's diary is a classic now, and it is also why Lech Walesa succeeded in eradicating totalitarianism in Poland.  There is power in the written word, and it can be both an effective weapon as well as a valuable tool.  Therefore, use it to your advantage.

I have rambled on and on here I know, but I feel it is important information we need in this day and time.  It is important on a personal level because many of us are getting older, and thus a preserved written history of ourselves is integral.  It is also important on a broader societal level because the preservation of legacy ensures the survival of a culture.  If we glean nothing else from that lesson, let it be preservation of legacy, and how it may impact someone generations in the future who may be seeking answers.  Thank you, and hope you all have a good weekend coming up.