Maybe I should have done this on Thursday, as a kind of commemoration of 9/11 — that’s what made me begin to practice writing seriously.
Previously I’ve written about how the dotcom crash that began in 2000 was a turning point in my education. It convinced me that “nobody really knows anything,” and “sometimes answers have to be postponed while we cultivate the ability to ask and answer the right questions…”
September 11, 2001 was a complementary and equally important moment in my education. Having just learned, a year prior, the importance of humility and delayed judgement, the lesson of 9/11 was that that judgement can’t be delayed indefinitely.
Not many people know that “nobody knows anything.” There are people who are wrong but nevertheless believe they’re right; their wrongness — or at least their lack of humility — needs to be addressed, if not with force, then at least with a sense of confidence and authority.
Yes, some of these people speak Arabic, but many of them are making important decisions in Washington, Ottawa, and London; many of them write the editorials in our daily newspapers; many of them are intellectuals pretending to “educate” in our universities; many of them are “normal Canadians” pretending to have discussions in small town coffee shops and arenas; many of them are “good” people we relate with and trust every day.
As I tried to wrap my mind around what happened on the 11th, I was tempted to resort to the “nobody really knows” conclusion I came to in 2000. I couldn’t. Whether it was because the event was much more vivid and real, or because everybody was talking about it without actually generating any sensible ideas, I couldn’t let myself stop thinking and digging and reworking the conceptual angles.
I couldn’t buy into easy answers like the “clash of civilizations” theory — not to mention the more common simplifications that were based on notions of “them” as “evil,” which were downright frightening and had to be addressed (and still have to).
So I began to write, partly because I felt the need to have a voice, but mainly because writing is the most effective way to think clearly.
Sure, we might tacitly “understand” why the terrorists attacked the U.S., along with its values and principles — our values and principles — just as everybody “understands” why objects thrown up in the air will fall. But in the everyday way of “just knowing,” even dogs “understand” that gravity will bring a ball back to Earth.
Everybody “understands” gravity well enough to lob a ball at a target, but to design a system that consistently uses the laws of gravity to generate positive effects, you need paper and a pen — and discipline.
Public policies can’t be lobbed-balls, they have to be articulated and systematized to be consistent. For one thing, executing policies involves a lot of different people — not all of whom have will have the same orientation, experience, and skills. There must be methods, instructions, and measurements to ensure policy’s effectiveness.
Then there is the evaluative function. Policy designers need to “show their work.” When unexpected results occur (which they certainly will), we need to be able to look into which factors are working and which variables need to be adjusted.
That may be obvious, but even concepts of “freedom” need to be articulated in this way. As we witnessed with the recent events in Georgia, unless we take care to define our terms and give underlying substance to our slogans, concepts like “liberation” are vulnerable to misappropriation and abuse — and we can’t even be sure if we’re the ones abusing them.
(In fact, I’m quite sure that our politicians are abusing these terms.)
Now the whole point of liberal democracy is that all of us are responsible for the conceptual accounting of our society — not just for government policy, but also for the most essential norms and assumptions of what’s right and good.
Writing like this isn’t just a right or a privilege in our society, it’s a cost and an obligation. Each of us is responsible for not just protecting our rights and freedoms, but keeping them vital — keeping them alive.
Being right is an activity that requires ongoing work and attention. It isn’t merely a title or permanent quality that can be given, taken, and rested upon — nor is it a fortress to be dug-in and defended.
Since I began in 2001, it took six years of work before I developed the confidence to say “I’m right.” It didn’t happen through natural intelligence or chance, it happened because I kept working on accounting for and systematizing my thinking (systematizing in the most open way possible — which was the biggest challenge).
To be blunt, I earned the right to say, “I’m right” — and I keep earning it every day. I accepted responsibility and invested the necessary time and effort — and, ironically, paid the price of not having any concrete status or accomplishments to signal “authority”… for now.
