Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. ~Nicholas Berdyaev#
When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist. ~Dom Helder Camara#
Putting two ideas next to each other like that creates an opportunity for writing and thinking. There's something as yet unsaid, perhaps as yet unknown, that might link them. And the link will need to be illustrated and tested.#
As democracy (for men of a certain class, anyway) was developing in ancient Athens, men who were citizens understood the need to generate fresh thought for speeches they were now called upon as citizens to give.#
They called the art of generating ideas for speeches invention. They found ways to make it happen. Putting two things side by side and talking about them together was one method of invention that they had in their toolkit.#
It sounds almost naive to say that something as simple as putting things side by side can really speed along thinking and writing, but just imagine how many sentences it would take to construct, illustrate, and test a conceptual bridge between those sentences by Berdyaev and Helder.#
And putting two ideas side by side is easy in an outliner, and writing the bridge that links them is handy too. #
Bookmarking or linking to particular places in an outline is obviously a finer-grain function that linking to the outline. I recall in my first days of paying attention to blogging, where people wrote endlessly about better ways to blog, that there was maybe a consensus that linking to a site without linking to the particular thing in the site that you were writing about was a rookie move.#
Linking to the site was a way of providing a wider context--who is this writer, what is this writer's project, what is this writer's claim to authority?#
Linking to the particular posting was a way of saying that we all agree that the real chance for thinking together involves paying attention to the specific things the other person is saying. If we're not doing that, helping each other do that, we're not really all that interested in communication.#
Most honorable of all practices was providing those two links AND quoting and discussing a key passage.#
In about 2003, that seemed to be what bloggers had arrived at as a shared body of best practice, to be tried for most of the time.#
Bookmarking or linking to particular places in an outline operates in the same spirit, I think, helping readers and writers speed along the pathways we recognize as essential to thinking alone and together. #
I assume that one of the underreported news stories this month is the rolling out of newly gerrymandered voting districts in states across the nation. I've noticed Indiana, Texas, and Ohio so far.#
The story is huge because gerrymandered supermajorities in state legislatures lock up those power centers for one party (or sometimes the other) for a decade, and edge Congress close to sand-in-the-gears status as well.#
Business as usual, in a way, except that we are running low on time to address nation-shattering, planet-busting, economy-trashing crises where a functional set of legislatures, peopled by folks who are not in somebody's pocket, would come in handy.#
Journalists should see this as front page-worthy every day. Not just which state has handed down its new districts, but connecting the dots, the broad patterns, the finer grain implications, the places where people somehow manage to push back.#
The price we're likely to pay for this level of corruption.#
Front page every day. "You have to give the people time..." (parallel case, from TV fiction)#
Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. ~Nicholas Berdyaev#
When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist. ~Dom Helder Camara#
Putting two ideas next to each other like that creates an opportunity for writing and thinking. There's something as yet unsaid, perhaps as yet unknown, that might link them. And the link will need to be illustrated and tested.#
As democracy (for men of a certain class, anyway) was developing in ancient Athens, men who were citizens understood the need to generate fresh thought for speeches they were now called upon as citizens to give.#
They called the art of generating ideas for speeches invention. They found ways to make it happen. Putting two things side by side and talking about them together was one method of invention that they had in their toolkit.#
It sounds almost naive to say that something as simple as putting things side by side can really speed along thinking and writing, but just imagine how many sentences it would take to construct, illustrate, and test a conceptual bridge between those sentences by Berdyaev and Helder.#
And putting two ideas side by side is easy in an outliner, and writing the bridge that links them is handy too. #
Bookmarking or linking to particular places in an outline is obviously a finer-grain function that linking to the outline. I recall in my first days of paying attention to blogging, where people wrote endlessly about better ways to blog, that there was maybe a consensus that linking to a site without linking to the particular thing in the site that you were writing about was a rookie move.#
Linking to the site was a way of providing a wider context--who is this writer, what is this writer's project, what is this writer's claim to authority?#
Linking to the particular posting was a way of saying that we all agree that the real chance for thinking together involves paying attention to the specific things the other person is saying. If we're not doing that, helping each other do that, we're not really all that interested in communication.#
Most honorable of all practices was providing those two links AND quoting and discussing a key passage.#
In about 2003, that seemed to be what bloggers had arrived at as a shared body of best practice, to be tried for most of the time.#
Bookmarking or linking to particular places in an outline operates in the same spirit, I think, helping readers and writers speed along the pathways we recognize as essential to thinking alone and together. #
I assume that one of the underreported news stories this month is the rolling out of newly gerrymandered voting districts in states across the nation. I've noticed Indiana, Texas, and Ohio so far.#
The story is huge because gerrymandered supermajorities in state legislatures lock up those power centers for one party (or sometimes the other) for a decade, and edge Congress close to sand-in-the-gears status as well.#
Business as usual, in a way, except that we are running low on time to address nation-shattering, planet-busting, economy-trashing crises where a functional set of legislatures, peopled by folks who are not in somebody's pocket, would come in handy.#
Journalists should see this as front page-worthy every day. Not just which state has handed down its new districts, but connecting the dots, the broad patterns, the finer grain implications, the places where people somehow manage to push back.#
The price we're likely to pay for this level of corruption.#
Front page every day. "You have to give the people time..." (parallel case, from TV fiction)#
Copyright ⓒ 2021 by Ken Smith
Last update: Tuesday September 28, 2021; 9:28 AM EDT.