On the Nature of Writing.
In the 2100’s, we are living through a long, strange journey into night. We should be tired of the walking somnolence of the 21st century. Through my writing, I want to shake people awake. I tried being a true artist so as to make my statement in tempura or clay. Turns out, I can’t paint worth a lick, and my sculptures all look like Humpty Dumpty. The only weapon I have left is a pen.
I want people to look at my writing and react to it. I care less with what people as say, as long as they say something. A response makes us all more awake and aware. A discussion, a frank exchange of views, an argument; it is all to the good. I take satisfaction if people agree with me, or denounce my name. I just have no interest in going gentle into that good night. Thus, I have a second reason for writing: I fear my own mortality.
If I can be so presumptuous, I try to follow in the footsteps of the philosopher Voltaire. This 18th century French author had two weapons: wit and moral passion. On the first count, Voltaire opposed bigotry with ridicule:
“I have never made but one prayer to God,” Voltaire wrote, “a very short one: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.”
Voltaire wrote with great passion to defend what was then an extreme view of liberty and human dignity — a view that we now understand to be universal and self-evident. For example, Voltaire defended the rights of the persecuted and oppressed French Protestants in the time of Catholic ascension in France. According to Harvard professor Robert Darnton:
“Beyond the persecution of Protestants, Voltaire saw intolerance in general, and beyond intolerance, barbarism. Voltaire seized his pen. He composed the “Treatise on Tolerance,” one of the greatest defenses of religious liberty and civil rights ever written.”
