Write to think

Been missing writing here so, here’s a reminder to my self.

The reason I write is to think: For myself and also to help the people who read what I’m writing, and to think together with them.

A lot of the time I approach writing as a way of being right- raise the funds, recruit the people, talk the person out of doing , etc.

Writing to think is different. It’s about clarifying your thoughts, checking them for inconsistencies, concentrating them and showing them to other people for them to ingest and disagree with and think against and through and with.

Writing to think is messy and collaborative and incredibly fucking scary because it’s about being wrong.

If you’re writing to think you’re hoping you’re wrong all the way through, and you move on even though you know it’s wrong and if you’re fucking stupid like me you show it to other people even though you know it’s wrong.

And if you’re at all subject to disposability that’s especially fucking stupid because you’re explicitly giving people with power over you and who hate you the tools to destroy you.

Anyway when you write the wrong thing to think you get other people to tell you it’s wrong and hopefully they’re mostly in good faith ish and then you’re thinking together.

Writing to persuade is different(it’s writing to be right), and is less good at making you think. Doing it all the time destroys your ability to learn(lol tankies). Writing to persuade and instruct has value, but it’s not what this blog is for. That comes later.

Write to be wrong, and write to think, don’t write to persuade as your default.