Having lost the compulsion to explain, how do I find a new voice? Or, is an essay always an explanation? Is this a case of running into yet another limitaion of form?
Another coincidence here is that I've just been having a conversation (and writing a few essays) on the very same things, including, "my complicity" 'and "is an essay necessarily an explanation?"
The only reason I'm still writing is because I don't think that's the only thing an essay can do. Whether this is true or not can be left suspended. But I approach essays as if there were another potential that can be unfolded. One that is neither a description nor an explanation, although some of that may be involved in writing an essay.
The hard part is that there's no way to see essays as something more than an explanation or a description (positive assertions) unless the potential for a negative force in essays is held in suspension, as an hypothesis. Because explanations and descriptions will be part of this other force. It won't be the absence of such things; so people can easily find explanations and descriptions and presume that it's the same old thing, and thereby miss the negative impact of an essay.
In miniature, an example would be the old saw: "the emperor has no clothes." It can be read as a mere description or yet another posited theory. But rather than reading it as a description of reality itself (the emperor), it also functions as a mirror to Thought and/or thinking itself, exposing not the emperor, but all the courtiers who are lying to themselves about reality (including the complicit author). And this mirror form of essay writing (or negational writing) is proprioceptive. This negative function neither describes nor explains, but triggers a new relationship by default, in the absence of old positive forms. It triggers the death of Thought as an edifice, restores active thinking, or even something more subtle.
And this notes is explanatory, but its effect could be a trigger over and above that, by altering our Thought that essays can only be explanatory. It could delete that certainty and allow us to read and write with activation in mind, not explanation. At least that's the posited theory through which we have to look without certainty.
How does an author discover their own complicity in writing? I don't know, but this is why writing is interesting. If it were merely trying to explain things to others from on high, it wouldn't be worth the trouble. Or, rather, the exposure of this very complicity would either become the very insight of the essay, or the author would avoid writing to avoid exposing themself. But writing is constantly an encounter with oneself, or, rather, the falseness of a Self, which completely derails that train of thought and leaves the writer (or the sufficiently suspended reader) in a state of self-awareness that is more real than mere positive description. Ending in an action, rather than an explanation.
Greetings, my friend. One could point you to the direct experience of nonviolence - in reality and truth beyond the trap of identity. A mind-identified world is lost in suffering. Yet, all knowledge is insufficient for the fundamental illusions of separate selves. What is reality? Do other worlds exist - where nonviolence is seen?
Another coincidence here is that I've just been having a conversation (and writing a few essays) on the very same things, including, "my complicity" 'and "is an essay necessarily an explanation?"
The only reason I'm still writing is because I don't think that's the only thing an essay can do. Whether this is true or not can be left suspended. But I approach essays as if there were another potential that can be unfolded. One that is neither a description nor an explanation, although some of that may be involved in writing an essay.
The hard part is that there's no way to see essays as something more than an explanation or a description (positive assertions) unless the potential for a negative force in essays is held in suspension, as an hypothesis. Because explanations and descriptions will be part of this other force. It won't be the absence of such things; so people can easily find explanations and descriptions and presume that it's the same old thing, and thereby miss the negative impact of an essay.
In miniature, an example would be the old saw: "the emperor has no clothes." It can be read as a mere description or yet another posited theory. But rather than reading it as a description of reality itself (the emperor), it also functions as a mirror to Thought and/or thinking itself, exposing not the emperor, but all the courtiers who are lying to themselves about reality (including the complicit author). And this mirror form of essay writing (or negational writing) is proprioceptive. This negative function neither describes nor explains, but triggers a new relationship by default, in the absence of old positive forms. It triggers the death of Thought as an edifice, restores active thinking, or even something more subtle.
And this notes is explanatory, but its effect could be a trigger over and above that, by altering our Thought that essays can only be explanatory. It could delete that certainty and allow us to read and write with activation in mind, not explanation. At least that's the posited theory through which we have to look without certainty.
How does an author discover their own complicity in writing? I don't know, but this is why writing is interesting. If it were merely trying to explain things to others from on high, it wouldn't be worth the trouble. Or, rather, the exposure of this very complicity would either become the very insight of the essay, or the author would avoid writing to avoid exposing themself. But writing is constantly an encounter with oneself, or, rather, the falseness of a Self, which completely derails that train of thought and leaves the writer (or the sufficiently suspended reader) in a state of self-awareness that is more real than mere positive description. Ending in an action, rather than an explanation.
Greetings, my friend. One could point you to the direct experience of nonviolence - in reality and truth beyond the trap of identity. A mind-identified world is lost in suffering. Yet, all knowledge is insufficient for the fundamental illusions of separate selves. What is reality? Do other worlds exist - where nonviolence is seen?