Greetings,
My name is Michael Timm. I am a writer and this is my Web log, PlatypusFound.
I have resisted this form of communication for some time, for various reasons. Among them is fear of exposure—that words published here would be used against me. I recently reread a portion of the Chuang Tzu, however, that encouraged me to take this risk: "The one who's earned a name for 'knowing' has really just been storing goods for the Big Thief…What the world calls a knowing person is merely one who piles up goods for the Big Thief, right? And what the world calls a sage is just the Big Thief's guard."
The Big Thief.
This passage is from a section titled "Baggage Gets Stolen." It occurred to me that I have been fearing the "Big Thief" out there who will steal my ideas, my words, and use them against me. One strategy with which to confront such a fear is, as the Chuang Tzu author identifies, to bind your luggage even more tightly, locking it with more locks and lashes. While this makes it more difficult for a thief to rip open, it makes it much easier for a thief to pick up and haul off. So, I asked myself, have I been fearing the Big Thief by not balling up to publishing something like a Web log? Is that a rational fear or an irrational fear, as Agent Scully might ask? And what action would be appropriate given my character and my life goals in the face of such an identified fear?
While the context of the two works is different, and I am taking the Chuang Tzu passage a bit out of context in my above interpretation, it reminds me of the parable of the burying of the talents where Jesus Christ reportedly relates the tale of an investor who doled out talents, money, to several people. One used his talents, reaping dividends over time, and another buried them, fearing he lose them. Although the burier acted to conserve what he had been given, he was scolded for not investing what he had been given. No life occurred.
So the point I was trying to make is this: perhaps by not publishing a Web log I have been burying my talents and tying up my luggage too tightly, keeping it close to my chest, keeping it where it can't be stolen. And maybe this isn't the only or the best way to live or write.
Of course, perhaps unfortunately, by publishing anything online I can't just wade into the water—anyone with a computer and internet access could stumble upon these words and peer into one window of my life. That's a risk. That's a pretty Big Thief.
Thus, I will still take certain measures to protect my identity, despite venturing into the permanent cyberspace archive that is indefinitely cached somewhere by someone at some time and perhaps for all time and thus for anyone.
In this introductory and confessional posting, I'd also like to reflect upon the writing that I have written to date. Recently, I glanced with genuine pride at the many volumes of notebooks I have accrued, filled with words written by my own hand. Some of the writing is personal, some is specious, some is descriptive or recordkeeping; other writing is inventive, funny, creative. It is my personal history. When I look upon most of these words, I can transport myself to my state of mind when they were written; I can access memory and thought and image and emotion latent or hidden or cached within the structures of my mind—perhaps arranged in patterns made possible by the quantum fluctuations within my brain's neurons and perhaps metaphysically real despite our current inability to map the contours of non-material existence. These notebooks are precious to me. I would not want them splattered across the internet for anyone to casually peruse—for how could the depth of personal historical sensation be replicated in another's mind? (As a sidebar, one of the neat things about communication, when successful, is that a concord between two or more persons seems to exist—a sort of spontaneous macroscopic neuronic bridge that did not exist before—and so perhaps among certain persons in certain circumstances, something very much like the richness of current-self-relating-to-past-self is not only possible but perhaps also desired and perhaps also ought to be sought, either for its own sake or for the sake of the macroscopic structure that we as its small potential constituents cannot quite yet comprehend.) I would look on this Web log as an extension of those notebooks, but ready to be shared in the public domain (in this statement I do not mean to abrogate any copyright; I retain copyright on all material published at PlatypusFound; I simply refer to the public accessibility of these words as opposed to the private accessibility of my hard-copy notebooks). I wish I could claim I do this selflessly, on behalf of any and all potential or actual readers. Right now, I do not feel this is the case. I publish this Web log selfishly in the sense that I do not desire nor expect any particular audience, though I would be flattered by any or all general audiences.
That's another reason I shied away from Web log publishing in the past—when I write I take audience into account, but how can a writer take every Web-accessing human being on the planet into account as an audience? As Homo sapiens, having evolved within clan-based social structures, I argue we are not yet adequately prepared to, as a species, compassionately and proactively love all. And by loving all, I mean, in a certain way, write for everyone as an audience. For is not writing loving in the sense of funneling one's personal energy toward a specific audience with a specific purpose—creating a narrative to be shared, perhaps with meaning or meanings exchanged? I think we have and have had some exemplary examples of individuals who might justifiably claim they unconditionally love all or love well (or more likely, others would claim this on their behalf). And we have some groups of individuals who also approach very good ends. But we're imperfect. And perhaps more importantly, on some important levels we seem to be finite. And while I do not theoretically disagree with a global all-loving ethics, I'm concerned that we are—or perhaps I should claim only that I am—not good enough at loving local humans to skip them and love instead the idea of all humans globally. This is a tricky point and I'm not sure I have made it or even if it's the point I want to make, but I'll stand by it for now. The point I wanted to make as relates to writing for an audience is that there's a wind-tunnel, echo-chamber danger in Web log publishing. Here are the dilemma horns: A writer attracts those interested and energetic few supporters or detractors who reinforce or oppose his opinions with or without sound argumentation or provocative thought, or, a writer encounters an empty room devoid of listeners, reinforcing the abysmal loneliness that looms below the precipice he naturally always walks along when catering words to no specific audience at all.
One might ask: What's the point?
To this Web log, or to life in general, depending on one's disposition.
At this point in time, my motivation remains what it has been when I write that which I remain proudest of and happiest with: to write for myself. I am my target audience. I, and myself of the future. I cannot adequately fathom all of you who may at some point read this. I cannot fully appreciate your subjectivity, at least not right now. And I write to deepen my own personal connection with myself and with the world, and sometimes, with other persons. So that will continue to be my goal on these pages.
Many anthropologists, and some philosophers, consider that we human beings exist in a universe devoid of meaning except that meaning which we create. I agree that we human beings create meaning, our own meaning, our own meanings. I am not now ready to agree that no other meaning exists or can exist. But clearly, this Web log is one of my attempts to create meaning and deepen the significance of what I mean. This sounds like gibberish, but no doubt some of you will sense what I am meaning to say. In this sense, I do hope, and at least suspect, that some potential or actual readers will find this meaningful. And in this very real sense, my writing here is not purely selfish. I anticipate readers, audiences, who resonate with the ideas and modes negotiated by my words. And I am happy to spur spontaneous macroscopic neuronic bridges with you, all of you.
There will be some challenges along the way.
One I anticipate is guarding against falling into criticism. Criticism is often easy for those who, like me, whether fortunately or unfortunately, feel they possess a certain intelligence about the way the world works or at least about the way it might work. Like good editing, good criticism is valuable. Yet not all criticism is useful, for the critic or the criticized. And here I mean to express that the greater danger for me is not in being criticized but rather in criticizing without counterbalancing creativity. There are things and persons which anger me from time to time—I am a human being and emotional response is part of life as a human being as I understand it. How I react to that anger or frustration or distaste will be interesting to observe. It is not my goal to use this Web log for explicitly political discussion. This is not because I find political discussion always problematic or not useful. It is because, in my observation, political discussion too often degenerates into polarizing political bickering. I don't know about you, but polarizing political bickering often saps me of energy—even if I am not involved in whatever political dispute is being argued. I venture to speculate that this is because in political discussion, various parties begin with their premises established and proceed from certain premises that they are not willing to negotiate, although everything else becomes negotiable. In part because certain bedrock political assumptions remain outside of the discursive realm—they remain locked luggage—resultant discussions achieve an isolating quality rather than an inclusive one. It is war—offense and defense—rather than curiosity. It should be noted that polarizing political bickering is not limited to politics per se. Thus, the mode of discourse will be a challenge, though I make no claim that I will not from time to time enter into potentially polarizing political discussion—only that on some level I hope I will believe that such discussion genuinely has the potential to encourage more inclusion than isolation.
Some discussion lends itself to feeling of right or wrong. Another reason I had previously rejected publishing a Web log is that from a certain perspective Web logs by their very nature seem to erode epistemological foundations of truth. They do this, it seems to me, in two ways. First, because often we as readers will not always know how Web log authors know something to be true. As a journalist, this is why I am critical of many Web logs—we don't always have a source citation or rational argumentation. How do we know? is not prioritized while Look what I know is. The other way they destabilize truth is through attrition—that repetition of an idea is equivalent to the idea's fitness. This claim is complicated because from an evolutionary perspective fitness is equivalent to reproductive fitness. On the internet, where reproduction and survival of offspring are much more easy than in the biological world, an easily and oft-copied idea gains traction regardless of its actual truth value. I have always believed that this is also one of the inherent dangers in a democratic society—what some have called the tyranny of the majority. Anyone who has been to grade school where children form playground coalitions can probably relate. Just because the mob says it is so does not make it so. (As a sidebar, this is also a weakness in our judicial system—that the decision of 12 social peers based on the argumentation of two lawyers should determine the future of someone accused of a crime, although it is also arguably a strength of the same system.) What the internet and Web logs allow even more easily than a democratic society is the advancement of popular or easily-promoted ideas, often at the expense of logical ones. Logic is not the end-all on the many roads to or from truth, but it is a useful tool to have along the way. As a philosopher, I will not here offer an authoritative account of truth, but as a journalist I do believe certain things are true and certain things are not true. When, like invasive species, popular ideas crowd out a natural plurality of ideas, especially true ideas, then I think there is a problem in the discussion. Our culture, and our internet culture, suffers from a high degree of metastasis. While in terms of themselves, there is nothing wrong with cancer cells—they're just doing what they do, and well, better than their neighbors—from the perspective of the living body, there is disease. I do not oppose popular ideas on the basis of their popularity—for there is a reason they are popular. But popularity is only one measure of fitness in the internet jungle and I think it is a mistake to automatically conflate popularity and truth, as I feel is easily implicit using this medium of the 21st century, the internet.
While libraries and publications organize information according to some rational human-decided principle—we might even call such systems rational narratives—information "on the internet" is organized in a substantially different way—according to a relational narrative determined by computerized assumptions of specific human desires. That is, we type something into Google that we think is like what we want to learn and the addresses of Web sites incorporating some aspect of what we've typed are shown to us for a finer-tuned selection process. The addresses most likely have nothing to do with the information content itself, unlike in most rational human-decided organizational systems—it's some aspect of their content that connects with our search term, limited and striped-down as it may be. We might consider the organizing principle of the internet to be self-organizing—almost a living narrative. Although it has become the norm, this process is, considered from a step back, quite amazing. It is also not without its flaws, as any researcher knows. Past internet searches of mine remind me of that truth sung by the Rolling Stones: "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need." Fortunately or unfortunately, in my experience, Google et al. also often lead to the converse—you get what you want, you stop trying, and you don't get what you need.
It is my hope that PlatypusFound offers a little bit of everything. It is my hope it reflects at once upon the diversity and unity of the human experience. I will offer book recommendations, pose questions, ponder answers, and suggest connections. We are still learning how to use the internet as the medium of the 21st century, and indeed even how it might be used. I also am learning.
It is also a plan of mine to create a Web-based magazine of the liberal arts for general audiences. I still have not decided exactly how this will work. But I think it will start by asking various people, expert voices within various disciplines, the question pondered by Erwin Schrödinger: What is Life?
As a final historical note for the record, I am not ashamed to admit the tangential role a certain female has played in inspiring me to publish PlatypusFound as a Web log at this particular point in time. While searching for Debussy's "Clair de Lune" on YouTube, which I like to play in the background on my computer, I came across a YouTube link to The Guild, a Webisode produced and written by Felicia Day. The Guild features an online gaming community that meets in real life. Hilarity ensues. I was taken by the lovely, talented, intelligent, and good-humored Day, who also acts in the show, and discovered her Web log, The Flog. This, among other things, convinced me that this mode of communication can't be all bad, and might actually be good—feeling inspired by a person who I've never met but who has used the internet as a creative medium through which to express that which is good about herself and interesting about her experiences—and so it is with a small degree of confidence that I enter the field.
Big Thief beware.
