The older I get, the less impressed I am with talking, and especially with debate, for I observe that it is filled with error—with slips of the tongue and with faulty memory—with biases and with the hard-to-resist influence of common hearsay we so love to repeat as if we knew already it were true. For practically all of us, it seems to me, speech is in too big a hurry, and debate is not a search for the truth, but a contest between those vying for glory.
As I writer, I have more opportunity to slow it down and to examine each thought before I add it to the page (and again and again afterward!), just as I think that any good writer organizes his thoughts to the reality of things, to the well-ordered mind, and to the best conventions of the language he speaks. And while there might, from time to time, flow from his lips some particular gem in discussion, he recognizes how prone he is to error in the heat of the moment.
And really, what’s the point in saying things if I’m going to get them wrong? What good does this do for the world? Or for me?
Indeed, even as I write, what sounded find the first time so often gets reworked as I edit and proofread—as I consider it further, for as long as the time and patience of the day will allow.
Now, I don’t mean to suggest that I think that I never err in what I publish. Indeed, my very own “Pelham’s Law of Cognitive Error” still stands from 2011 or 2012 when I first realized it: “I am most likely wrong about many things.” That was the year when I first turned my attention back in earnest on the quality of my own thinking, as I began a wholesale study of what cognitive scientists have learned about the common human shortcomings in epistemic rationality—which is that type of thinking that deals with identifying what is real and true.
And that’s largely what writing is for me—an exercise in sorting out the truth of things. And now, more than a decade after my big epiphany (of Pelham’s Law), I do also recognize the truth of this: I am more likely right about the things I have put in order through research and writing than about the things that roll out of my mouth.
Writing is how I talk to myself when I’m not around anybody else who wants to sort out the truth of a matter. And it’s how I leave my thoughts on the record, in case someone else might be searching for such himself. It’s what I can do to keep my own mind in check—beholden to fact, logic, and sourcing.
And I may chance upon this post a month from now, having forgotten that I wrote it, just as I forget so much of what pops into my mind our out of my mouth from day to day. But at least, if I have written it down—the thoughts, along with the breadcrumbs that led me there—then I am one step closer to finding the place better the next time.
I’m not sure how much it helps me to write, for I don’t think that I can keep it all in my head in some cumulative library of memorized items. (If I could, I would be so much better as a speaker!) But much of it seems to stay in my head inasmuch as it shapes my impressions of how things are, and of how they should be—and of how I should be, of course. And it provides some basis for how I can grasp what goes on around me in real-time—knowing the quicker what to make of new things than I would had I not taken the time to sit down to sort out similar things before.
Especially as I am aging, I can see that I will likely not become any sharper in my speech from here on out, as the body and faculties slow in time. A good sentence, however, is good forever, no matter how long it took to put it together. And being in print, it is not vulnerable to the ebb and flow of memory. And though I did not start writing to leave any manner of monument to my own life, I can certainly see how it could serve as some manner of a record—though I tend to write much more in the generalities of my observations than in the details of what happens day to day. (And I often regret that each post does not come with the story of what prompted the thoughts in it!)
I suppose I shall learn in time what God thinks of it all. And who knows if I’ll come to see that it was for me some manner of coping mechanism in this insane world. But of this one thing I am fairly certain—that I will have much more to show for my time writing than I will for the time I spent watching TV or playing Spider Solitaire.
And I’m not nearly done yet, as far as I’m concerned, for there is so much left to be considered and set in order. And after the next thing is learned and examined, it may well alter my view as to what I think I have learned before. I will never run out of things to consider. And I am so grateful that the world works this way!
But I must confess that I will find it a great relief if I should get to Heaven and discover it to be as I imagine—where there is always there someone who knows for sure, who may be consulted definitively in all matters, and whose opinions are not subject to all the error of this Earth!
