Why I Write: Essay II (Thanks to George Orwell)

In the previous essay I discussed Orwell's 1946 essay "Why I Write" before laying out my method in knowledge-searching that leads to writing. My overall philosophy is that the "knowledge-game" or the task/joy knowledge-creation has been captured by those who ensconsed in universities, law firms and other places where professionals write a lot, and that this knowledge is then mediated to the world in ways that betray not simply narrowness or self-interest, but also end up hurting those who aren't in the "knowledge-game." I think I need to explain this statement.

Let me do so by means of an illustration. One of the dangers that the United States (or any other, for that matter) government faces has been called "industry-capture"--that those who will end up regulating important spheres of human activity, spheres that affect us all, are those with a vested interest in making money off those spheres. For example, homebuilders want to control the city planning process; chemical executives want to sit on EPA committees; insurance industry lobbyists want to become state insurance commissioners. Why do they want to do this? For the good of the amorphous "people" out there? Because of nascent or well-developed democratic longings? Of course not. They want to get into the regulatory business or the planning process in order to capture it to buttress their own economic or power interests. They want to relax environmental regulations so that their chemical company can spew out more junk into the atmosphere (or, at least, pay less money in fines for so doing); redefine concepts in insurance law to protect insurance companies, etc. They want to capture the agency which is supposed to be doing work for "the people."

So it is with knowledge. Knowledge is "out there" for all who see and study. It is one of the most powerful tools to understand the world and ourselves, to effect change, to call people to account. But there are all kinds of people who would like to "capture" knowledge--to make sure it "flows" into channels which they control. Those who do so are principally in universities but they also can be other places, too--such as law firms, book presses, government agencies, etc. These institutions are stocked with experts who arrange knowledge in certain categories and then present it to the world in those categories which they "control." They heighten and tighten control on knowledge through conferences, friendship circles, publications and other things to try to make people see and receive knowledge in the way they want to see it.

On one level there is nothing wrong with this. Humans crave some kind of systematic understanding of things, some way to negotiate the bewildering mass of sensory perceptions that we receive all the time. We need guides and guideposts in life. We need a vocabulary that helps describe what we see or experience. But we also are people who know that knowledge just doesn't "fit" into tightly-constrained boxes into which people place it. It seeks to break forth from the grooves (or ruts?) into which it has been channeled and flow in new directions and avenues. Knowledge longs for different ways to be organized, different ways of being "seen." When knowledge, then, is seen differently, the entire world looks no longer like it formerly did.

Two Examples

While I am giving examples, let me give you two to show what I mean. When the modern Impressionist movement in art began in France in the last quarter of the 19th century, it challenged the basic principle of Western Art--that art was to be a representational "thing," or that art was to present the world as it was seen by the eye. One of the contributions of this movement was to show that when you looked simply at the phenomenon of light, for example (the Rouen Cathedral), you saw the so-called "stable" world much differently. Or, when you looked simply at the phenomenon of shape (the cubist movement), the mountains, hills and all of nature looked different. That is, a slight reorientation in the questions we asked led to a whole new way of conceptualizing the world. In 2007 the paintings of these masters are going for unprecedented amounts. Why? Because they were successful in redefining the nature of knowledge.

Or, let me take an example from our own day. Most of us have heard of DNA research and its utility in criminal law cases--either to place someone at the scene of the crime, possibly exonerate him, or discover another party who really was responsible for the crime (whom Barry Scheck calls the "unindicted co-ejaculator." I am not sure that he originated the phrase--probably not). But DNA research is becoming especially helpful in the study of plants and animals, particularly in the area of taxonomy. What that means is that by studying the genetic code of various living things, we are being led to throw out our former classifications of things and develop new arrangements of living things. Linnaeus, a great genius from the 18th century, is still responsible for how we "see" the natural world at the present, but because of new knowledge, we will "see" it differently in two more decades.

Conclusion

These illustrations demonstrate that when you just see things "from a different angle" the entire world may eventually be in your debt. You may change the way that knowledge is seen and perceived. That, fundamentally, is what I am trying to argue for in all my essays--that we currently channel knowledge into rutted grooves, grooves that might have one day served their purposes but now are outmoded. It is like having a department of religion that still organizes its faculty appointments according to the categories of a liberal protestant seminary in the 1920s (not surprisingly, many departments are still so organized in 2007). So, let the knowledge break forth, and let us begin the fascinating, and sometimes frustrating, process of (re)arranging knowledge. The world will never look the same.

I guess I need one more essay to tell you about how my writing aspires to do this.

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