The Essence of Good Writing
Good writing is such a curiously necessary blend of different temperaments. It begins with a good mind; contemplative, quiet and questioning. But it is only voiced once its words have been scrupulously chewed, and uttered with a considered deference to what has been said before, and a curiosity about the questions which will come after. It is fuelled from an innate fire, but it tames the fire into measured words. Good writing values the insight of instinct, but it does not allow it to rage into outburst. It listens to instinct, but grabs it, and processes it before letting it free. That is the soul. The essential, but tamed spirit, which willed the words onto the page.
I have sometimes thought that this is what so many writers of our age lacked; this necessary sense of conviction. But I realised it was in fact the opposite. One soon realises that it is not the lack of a cause which plagues our pages, but the placing on a pedestal of the wrong one. Many triumph a cause, but sadly the cause is only themselves. It is a reductive ‘I’, never one of collective importance. Never ‘I’ as a human being, a free-thinking person of reason, merely an individual of various injustices. We demand everything as our right, and invite nothing from the measured merits of our own good character and considered mind.
We have endless platforms upon which to express our opinions with shrill and temerarious words. They have made us lazy. We do not reflect on fundamentals. We do not think. We only demand, cry out, scream of our misfortunes and throw our unconsidered opinions to the world with proud, unthinking enthusiasm.
There is an eagerness in people to rage into hot-headed argument, rather than discussion, discussion as a means of pursuing a common goal of truth. Good writing shows itself as an expression of something greater than itself. Bad writing is narrow-minded and self-absorbed. It furthers its own opinion for its own opinion’s sake. It is fuelled, as Schopenhauer put it, by ‘our innate vanity which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers.’
Two hundred years ago Schopenhauer taught us the way out. ‘The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think.’
And yet, here we are two hundred years later. Truths pervade the ages, but then so do the sheep. It is quite sobering to think of how many people have been and gone and have shed their towering insight and wisdom on matters still intensely pertinent to us today, yet we continue in our masses to be as ignorant as the centuries before us. We are like Fitzgerald’s boat, beating on against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
It is so easy to be aware of a piercing littleness before such great minds. Why would we have cause to say anything when Voltaire, Spinoza and Goethe said it before us? That is perhaps the great trouble. Out of modesty, the wise speak less than the fools of fiery enthusiasm.
You remember also, the above, that whilst the wisdom has already been dished out, there are few who actually seek out the philosophical feast. And so, each age must have its deliverers. Someone needs to keep the world on the straight and level.
This is why it seems philosophers tend often to be so worldly withdrawn. Their enlightened vision is one which can be comprehended only by such a tiny portion of the world. Humans in their sheep-like droves will continue to act the way that they do. Yet the philosophers of each age continue their efforts, endeavouring to teach blind people to see, who aren’t even aware of their blindness. Such a fight continues for one reason: because of the single, unshakeable conviction that what they say matters. Not just because they sense it, but because their mind has scrupulously reasoned why.
This is precisely what much writing lacks. Reflection. So little of the words we see committed to articles, books or tweets display any air of reflection. Like a smartphone selfie to a Holbein portrait, they are spontaneous, instant, without the studied depth, the pensive accuracy or penetrating truth of something laboured over with a mindful, searching eye. Fuelled by the rage of unchecked impulses, their words often say less about their subject matter, and more about the minds of those who wrote them. As Spinoza aptly put it, ‘What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.’
The world is regrettable minefield of incendiary bombs, being detonated at will everywhere. And what conversation, what enlightenment is there to be had from an incendiary bomb?
