Kyle Mathews :: Dreams With In

A year ago in just my second blog post, I explained why I write a blog. My answer then (and now) is I keep a blog as an intellectual journal of sorts. Blogging is my way of pulling together into a coherent form all the stray thoughts rolling around in my mind. Writing helps me sift the good thoughts from all the bad and fit them all together in a logical pattern.

I've been thinking lately about stories. The stories we tell others, the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we find in books and on TV. There is a great power in stories. Stories change how we think and view the world. Marketers know this -- every advertisement is a story. A particularly famous example of this is Jared the Subway guy. His story of how he lost weight from eating subways powerfully sells the idea that Subway's food is healthy.

Earlier I was looking at the website for the Python programming language. One might think a website devoted to a programming language, a technical and geeky subject, wouldn't have any stories. But no, programming languages have stories too apparently, there are some 33 "success stories" written by users of Python.

Oftentimes, while reading or listening, we only remember the stories the speech or book. Jesus Christ was a master at teaching with stories, or parables (a story with a moral) as they are called in the Bible. In his seminal book, "Jesus the Christ", James Talmage wrote:

[A] simple story will live, even in minds which for the time being are incapable of comprehending any meaning beyond that of the commonplace story itself. Many a peasant who heard the little incident of the sower and the four kinds of soil, of the tares sown by an enemy at night, of the seed that grew through the planter had temporarily forgotten it, would be reminded by the recurring circumstances of his daily work. . . and then, when time and experience, including suffering perhaps, had prepared them for deeper thought, they would find the living kernel of gospel truth within the husk of the simple tale.

As social animals, we love to tell stories. We turn every event in our life into a story. A friend meeting another friend, the first word of of their mouths is, "I've got to tell you what happened last night". We have this strong impulse inside us to turn our lives into a story.

This blog post started to form when I was thinking about journal writing. I was trying to understand what compels me to write in my journal and why is the experience of writing so powerful. While thinking, I had the insight that it's because of stories.

When I write in my journal I find my story and myself. I weave the threads of my life, past, present, and future, into a coherent story. I create a plot line, a protagonist (me hopefully), antagonists, and an destiny. I decide why what happened, happened, I decide what needs to happen and if my story is in need of a plot or character shift.

"Know yourself", the Philosopher shouts. I write to know myself. I write as a historian, to know my past. I write as a journalist, to know my present. And I must write as a prophet, write my most powerful stories, to know my future.

What if my life doesn't have a story? Then my life is meaningless, without root or branch. I am not stable but pushed about by every fad or fashion. So in short, writing a journal helps me discover my story. And knowing my story gives me purpose and direction.

I've just made a new writing goal -- I will write 200 words a day -- 100 words in my journal and 100 words for my blog. This isn't much really, just 4 paragraphs or so. Some days if I want to write more, I can or course, but I'm never to write less.

(Later) I've changed my mind after thinking it over. I need a goal that is completely realistic. The idea for setting a word target for my writing came from a blog post on productivity over at Crooked Timber. The writer said that the main productivity killer for academics are distractions that pull them from writing. The key to writing productivity is to write at least something every day. Something is better then nothing and little things add up to big things. So even though 200 words for my journal/blog isn't much, I can foresee days where I won't reach my target. So I'm dropping the number a bit to 50 words for both categories - again with the caveat that I can go over -- just as long as I reach 50 words every day. And speaking of which, I've already written over 200 words -- and I think I'll post this as well so I've exceeded both my journal and blog writing goals. Wow, my goals are working already!

I'd been thinking about blogging for a long time but what finally pushed me over the edge was this post. The author, Scott McLemee, wrote about what he's learned from a pamphlet by C. Wright Mill "On Intellectual Craftsmanship". Here's the key quote,

What Mills calls “intellectual craftsmanship” involves more than the ability to produce work that can pass peer review. “Scholarship is a choice of how to live,” he writes, “as well as a choice of career.” It is (if I may be excused for borrowing another old Greek word) an ethos. That is, a structure of habits that sustains and embodies a quality of mind, a tendency of character.

“Whether he knows it or not,” Mills goes on to say, “the intellectual workman forms his own self as he works towards the perfection of his craft.” The notion of having a “career” is subordinate to — even a side-effect of — this process of inner shaping. “To realize his own potentialities, and any opportunities that come his way,” the scholar “constructs a character which has its core the qualities of the good workman.”

For Mills, there is a kind of bench where all of this crafting takes place. He calls it “the file.” I’m not sure this is the happiest of expressions. It’s simple enough, but Mills uses it in his own sense."

Mills suggests that aspiring young intellectuals keep what he calls, "the file," or the term I like, "intellectual journal." Here are collected reading notes, stray ideas, and complications or successes in research. It serves as a journal as you analyze and sort through ideas. Mill writes that the process of collecting and sifting through your notes and ideas leads to more systematic thinking as well as more directed and thorough learning.

Starting my junior and senior years of high school, I came to love writing. Not that it is entertaining or easy – it's about the hardest thing to do intellectually – but for the powerful and beneficial effect it has on my thinking. I find that when I write about an idea I've had or a book I've read, the writing serves to clarify my thinking and make explicit my reasoning.

My experience with the effects of writing fits with Mill's main assertion, that the keeping of the file or intellectual journal is critical to the “[construction of] a character which has its core the qualities of the good workman.” My writing refined and shaped my intellectual charecter.

A critical realization I've come to over the past several years is the importance of my habits. My life is directed more by what I choose to do every day then any so-called life changing decisions. I like to think of habits as bricks. A single brick is really quite insignificant but from thousands of bricks mortared together come sturdy houses and soaring cathedrals. And from habits we build, one brick at a time, our lives. My life, whether it will be useful and great or broken and poor, depends a great deal on my habits.

The great disconnect in most people's lives is between what they know they should do and what they actually do. Witness the vast number of people enslaved by addictions: alcohol, drugs, gambling, food, and so forth. What they lack is internal discipline or the character to live what they know is right. For whatever reason they have never built the character that allows their mind to rule their body. Instead, their bodies enslave their minds.

So how does this bring us back to Mill's file? For many years, there has been a disconnect between what I want to be intellectually, and what I actually do, my habits. I feel far too often I don't think as I should. I don't analysis, probe, collect, sift, sort, synthesize. In other words, as much as I want to, I don't have the character of an intellectual workman.

My hope is this blog will provide the motivation and discipline to write so as to help me develop the habits of the mind of an intellectual craftsman.

Update: Other people seem to be thinking along the same lines: here and here. Also, here is a link to a PDF of Mill's orginal essay, "On Intellectual Craftsmanship".